Apologetics Session 17 - Theology - Part 2

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Cornerstone Church Men's Bible Study. Apologetics. Presenting the Rational Case for Belief. This video is session 17 focusing on Theology.

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Apologetics Session 18 - Theology - Part 3

Apologetics Session 18 - Theology - Part 3

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So we have an honored guest with us tonight, Russell Kennedy. I thought I was going to say Pastor Kennedy.
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Russell, can you open us up in prayer tonight? I'll try. Okay. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day that we've got through so far.
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Thank you, Lord, for the fellowship that we spend here to worship you and learn about you.
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Thank you, Lord, for this night and for tomorrow. Watch over us,
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Father. Guide us in your direction. We praise you and give you thanks.
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In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So last week we were introduced to theology.
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And we talked about the many ways that God has revealed Himself, most particularly in these last days through His Son, Jesus Christ, and also obviously through the written
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Word of God. And we said, you know, by His grace now we know
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Him. And praise God that He has done that. He's revealed Himself and we can know Him and we can know who
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He is. And we did our best to start describing how the Scriptures lay out the eternal nature of God, the omnipotence of God we talked about, the fact that He is the sovereign creator.
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We started talking about a lot of things. And I gave you guys some homework. If anyone was here last week, most of you guys were.
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And it was in a cross that I gave everyone an acronym. Billy was going to have dinner.
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And his mom said, it's going to be liver and peas tonight. And Billy's like, oh.
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And his mom says, don't worry, Billy, I'll let you have Jell -O first. And Billy says, ooh,
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Jell -O first. That is your acronym, folks. O -O -J -E -L -L -O -F -I -R -S -T.
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And we said, forget about the copyright on the Jell -O. We don't care about that. Jell -O,
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Jell -O. That acronym has helped me over the last 25 years remember the eternal attributes of God.
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And we talked about some of them being communicable, which God has passed on to His creation, and some incommunicable, which means
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He keeps for Himself. When He creates a being, they're not going to be translated like omnipotence.
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He doesn't create an omnipotent angel or an omnipotent human being. And we talked about omnipotence last time.
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But the ooh, Jell -O first. O, omnipotence. And you guys can guess.
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O, omnipresence. It could be in any order, right?
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J is justice. E -L is the only double one.
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Eternal life. Everlasting life. L, the other L, is love.
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The other O is whichever one you didn't say the last time. It's omniscience this time. F is faithfulness.
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I is immutability. R is righteousness, which is a little different than justice.
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So we'll talk about both. S is sovereignty. And T is truth.
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Now, there are a few other things that we spoke about as far as God's attributes, like His transcendence and things.
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But I think this acrostic helps us get a good picture of who
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God has revealed Himself to be. And that's where we are right now. We're going through these attributes. And the last time, we just got started and we talked about the omnipotence of God.
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We read quite a few scriptures. We talked about what His power means to the believer and both to the unbeliever.
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One thing we didn't talk about last time, I'm not sure if I didn't have the verses written down for this, but we talked about His incredible power, that He can do whatever
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He wants, however He wants. There's nothing impossible with God. But what we didn't talk about last time when we talked about what does it mean for us, the believer, we talked about His protection for us,
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His providence over us, His keeping all His promises, those kinds of things. He has the power to do all these things, so we can trust in Him and lay our lives before Him.
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But what I didn't say, we didn't look at the scriptures that talk about His power working in us, that actually
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His power works within us. And we see that in several places, but Colossians is one,
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Philippians chapter 2 is another, where He works mightily within us, and Ephesians is another one.
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And to think that God Almighty is infusing us with His power, even when
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He says, you shall receive power and become my witnesses to Samaria, to Judea, to even the uttermost parts of the world,
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Jerusalem first, and then the uttermost parts of the earth, that God provides the believer with power in His life.
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So, that's an incredible thing to think about, that the very power of God works within you, and He is going to continue to work in you to do miraculous things, and not necessarily what we would call the supernatural things, but the changing of our lives into the conformity of the
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Son, Jesus Christ, is a miracle in of itself. And He's going to continue to work through His power to do these things in our lives, and it is a great, great promise that He has given us.
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So, He's given us wonderful power, even us. So, any comments on power before we go to omnipresence?
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God's power or the power that He provides in our lives? Well, I'm reminded of the disciples and what they did through His power, and also the seven sons of Sceva, and how they wanted to sort of appropriate that power, but because they didn't know
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Him, didn't have it. Paul we know, Jesus we know, but who are you? And Matt's favorite verse,
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I can do all things through a scripture verse taken out of context. Philippians 4 .13,
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the context there is obviously Paul has gone through so much, and he says, if I'm abased, if I abound,
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I still can walk with joy and walk in faithfulness before the Lord, and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
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And that power to do those things, to continue to go on, to continue to trust, to continue to have faith in the midst of crises and suffering, the
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Lord gives that power to His children, and thank God for it. So, power.
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Omnipresence, all these attributes are fantastic. What does omnipresence mean? Omnipresence everywhere, everywhere at the same time.
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That's the one that always trips me up. And what I mean by that is I really don't think about that too much.
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I think about Him being everywhere, and we talked about it being not pantheism, in a sense that God's in this table, right, or God's in this chair.
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Pantheism is saying that, well, God is everything and everything makes up God. No, God is transcendent over His creation.
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He is separate from His creation, but He watches over His creation, and He is omnipresent within His creature or through His creation.
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Let me read this quote from Got Questions. We looked at that once in a while, right?
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Great site. We like that website. It says this, Although God is present in all time and space,
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God is not locally limited to any time or space. God is everywhere and in every now.
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No molecule or atomic particle is so small that God is not fully present to it.
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No galaxy is so vast that God does not circumscribe it. I like that definition.
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But the time thing really blows my mind, because it's like I can kind of grasp that God can, like everything is in His presence.
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Everything is within His sight, His ability to perceive.
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But then that timeless factor, like all things are in His presence.
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It collapsed in one moment. And moment isn't even the right word. He is omnitemporal.
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Yeah. I'm going to have another quote about the omnipresence that gets into the time thing in a second again.
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But the time thing really blows my mind. I think of Him as outside of time. So almost as if, since time was
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His creation as well, He's not existing through time the way we are.
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He's outside of that. I almost think of it sort of in our own primitive terms as kind of like a flip book.
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He can flip backwards or forwards however He wants. He can look down the corridor of time backwards or forwards however
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He wants because He's outside of it. To piggyback on something you said, when we were talking about omnipresence years ago,
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He has relationship with everything He created, which is something the mind cannot even get their head around, but everything
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He has a relationship with of what He did. That's amazing.
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So let's start reading some verses. Again, with each one of these categories that I'm going to talk about,
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I probably have 15 to 20 verses in the document, but we're only going to go over about five.
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So after this is all done, I'll provide a link to this and you can just pause it in and look at all the other verses because there's a lot of them for each category.
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So does someone have Isaiah 66 1? I do. Okay. Yeah, it says 1
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B 2. I probably should have put
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A and B then. Why don't you read that first? All right. Just follow directions. Okay, that was more like it.
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So heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. How can we describe the expanse of what is in God's presence?
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He's there in heaven, He's there on earth, He sees it all, He's right there, and obviously we can't contain
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Him in a building made by a man, right? That is not going to happen. Although many people treat
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God like a puppet or a statue or something that they can contain and box in and do whatever they want with it, that's not the
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God of the Bible. Does someone have 1 Kings 8 27? I have that. But will
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God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built.
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So that's very much the same kind of idea as the last verse. Who's the builder there? Solomon.
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1 Kings 8, yeah. Solomon had a great idea in his mind, and he wanted to honor the
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Lord, and obviously he wanted a place where Israel would worship centrally, but that building was not going to contain
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God the Lord. Not at all. How about Jeremiah 23, 23 -24?
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Am I a God who is near, declares the Lord, and not a God far off?
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Can a man hide himself in hiding places, so I do not see him, declares the Lord?
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Do I not fill the heavens and the earth, declares the Lord? So there's a lot of rhetorical questions in there.
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Is he a God who's near? And not a God who's far off? Can a man hide himself in hiding places so he doesn't see?
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It's a rhetorical question. The answer is no. Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?
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And that rhetorical question answer is yes. And there's going to be some implications to all this in our lives and the unbelievers' lives.
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Well, let's read a few more verses regarding this. Wow, I only selected one more.
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We'll read this one. Psalm 139, there's a couple of sections here, so it's a long one. Do you have that,
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Jack? Yes. Verse 7, where shall I go from your spirit, or where shall
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I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed and chill, you are there.
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And then verses 11 and 12. If I say, surely the darkness shall come over me, and the light about me by night.
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Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for the darkness is as light with you.
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Is there any place that God does not see? Where can
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I go from my spirit? And I guess I didn't quote some of that stuff, because it says if I make my bed on the wings of the morning and sail to the outermost parts of the sea, there's no place.
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There's not going... Is that good news or bad news? It's good news for the saved, bad news for the unsaved.
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It's relative. It's perspective. Let's think about what this means, right?
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For Adam and Eve, it wasn't good news. They were trying to hide from God. I think we all get into hide mode sometimes, where we're a little bit ashamed of what we've done.
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But let's talk about the benefits of the Lord always being there.
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There's a lot of verses in the Scriptures that say, I will always be with you. It says that in Joshua early on, when the
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Lord commands him to be strong and courageous. Do not fear for I will always be with you. And of course, we remember that from Matthew 28 as well, where He is giving the commission to the disciples, the great commission to go out and make disciples of all those nations, baptize them in the name of the
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Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Hebrews 13, I will never leave you or forsake you. Right. There's a lot of verses that talk about it.
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So, will He ever leave us or forsake us? He can't.
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So, He will always be there. And there are a lot of Scripture verses that talk about us not fearing because He's right there with us.
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So, when you're right there with your wife, and you hear the report she has cancer,
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He's there. He's there with you. Sometimes we might not feel like His presence is there with us during some of these difficult times.
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Sometimes, you know, you lose your job, or someone is mistreating you some way, and you think, well,
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Lord, where are you in all this? But these things we need to have locked up in our minds and in our hearts to know
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He is there, and He is a good Father. And we're going to find out, you know, later, we're going to talk about His faithfulness, and the things
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He does in goodness and righteousness. He never does anything bad. But He's there with you when you're in trouble, when you're in need.
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He knows all the things that you're going through. And He's right there beside you.
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Sometimes we don't feel that way. But studying the Lord for who He is, and kind of breaking down the
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Scriptures, you know, this is kind of a topical study, right? We're studying the nature of God and His attributes, but these things we need to lock up to know who the
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Lord is and what He's done for us. So, is there any other thing comforting about Him always being right there?
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I mentioned maybe a couple of things, but... Provision. He knows what we need to provide.
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C .S. Lewis says this. This is our other time verse, which is interesting. Almost certainly,
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God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments following one another.
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If a million people are praying to Him at 10 .30 tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet, which we call 10 .30.
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10 .30 and every other moment from the beginning of the world is always present before Him.
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That's another one hard to get your head around. It's like, you know, if we try to do something, we have to do it serially, right?
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Okay, this guy prayed. I better listen to that. That's not the way God is.
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God can handle everything in a moment or expand everything.
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And time just doesn't matter to Him because He's over time. He's outside of time, as Matt said.
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And to know that your need or your prayer is
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His child comes before Him just as importantly as another believer who's praying at the same time, maybe for something totally different.
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It's not going to whiz past him because he wasn't paying attention to you. It is a great comfort to know
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God is that amazing and can handle all of these things by His wisdom and His power and just by His essence, just by who
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He is. And Ron, I didn't see you come in, but it's good to see you back there. I'm here.
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Yeah, you and your wife are having a competition on how beat up you can both be. It's good to see you.
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Thanks. Any other thoughts about God's omnipresence for the believer?
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Is it always comforting? Is it convicting sometimes? And we don't always realize it.
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We should though, right? Right. But at times it doesn't. God's with us when we turn that computer on.
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He knows what we're looking at. Go ahead, Dave. You know, there's a lot of passages that talk about the fear of God.
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And I think of that, and I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but I think of that as an awareness of God, of His existence, of, like you said, about time and space and everything, that it's an awareness.
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And there's a lot of different verses that speak to the fear of God. And I don't know that it's something that we have to be afraid of.
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It's reverent. But it's an awareness, like you said, of reverence too.
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It's a purifying force in our life. Because, you know, even the
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Lord said, if the servant knew at what time his master was going to come home, he would have made sure his house was in order and kept things operating the way they were supposed to be instead of slacking off.
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Well, for the believer, the true believer, and obviously the Lord has left us as stewards over the life that He's given to us and the experiences and relationships we have with other people.
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We are stewards of all the things that take place in our lives, and He is right there.
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It's not like, oh, you know, the master's gone away, and I can goof off for a while.
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There's a purifying factor in this, knowing that He's right there with us, and we want to please Him in all aspects.
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We want to walk in a manner worthy of our Lord. And it's a joy when you are doing that, and it's pretty convicting when you're not.
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Because He knows when you are, like I said, turning on the computer, turning on the TV, doing whatever you're doing that might not be something that He would do.
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Like if the physical Jesus Christ was in your presence, and you've heard this kind of thing before, right? If Jesus was right there with you, would you be watching that movie that you are watching right now?
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Well, He is. So it is a very healthy thing for us to remember these things, and it's a purifying factor in our lives.
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Now, for the unbeliever, it's not necessarily convicting, because yes, the
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Holy Spirit does convict the unsaved world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. So there's a conviction of the righteousness of God.
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And they understand that, even though they're suppressing it in their hearts, and they're not worried necessarily about walking in God's ways, they know they're making steps in their lives that are going to be judged one day, but they try to suppress it, suppress it, suppress it.
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But when I think of the omnipresence of the Lord, that there is nothing that's ever going to be hidden.
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You know, the unbelievers try to do their deeds in darkness, so that men don't see.
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And men might not see, but the Lord sees all. So there's not going to be anything that an unbeliever ever does that is not revealed, certainly at the last day.
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But everything is going to come to light. And that's a scary thought.
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It's a very scary thought for someone who's an unbeliever. Hebrews 4 .13 says, Every creature is not hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.
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That's a good one. There's a lot of them like that too. I don't have them written down necessarily in this, but that is the reality for the unbeliever.
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And that's why we preach the Gospel. Because we don't want anyone to go through being in a situation where they have rejected
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God their whole life and then come before Him to give an account of their deeds. Because they will.
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When we speak the word, we're the sweet -smelling saver to those who are going to be saved. And we stink to everybody else.
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So I think we should make ourselves stink a little more. Yeah, you're right. We're going to smell one way or another. Okay, God's justice.
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That's next on the list. How would you describe justice?
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We all want justice. When we think of justice, what is justice in general?
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We think about a court system. When somebody's violated the law or broken the law, he's got to meet justice for that violation.
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Due payment for an act. Okay, and you were going to say? Something similar, a just result of actions.
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And we like justice, right? We want things to be made right.
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Things that are not right, we want things to be made right. God is totally just, and He will not overlook sin.
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He will not overlook things, to sweep things under the carpet. It's impossible to bribe
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God. He will never do anything that's unfair. All His judgments are perfect and just.
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He's the supreme judge, and He must judge those who violate
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His law. And that's a very comforting thought to those who love the law of God and love
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Him. Amen. We'll talk a second about what that means to the believer and the unbeliever, but let's turn to a few verses.
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Deuteronomy 32 .4. This is one of my favorite verses. Deuteronomy 32 .4. Who has that one?
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I do, and it's marked out, let me see. Right here.
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Deuteronomy 32 .4. It says, um, okay.
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Fourth verse. Okay. He is the
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Rock. His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice, and a
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God of truth without injustice, righteousness, and upright is
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He. Amen. I love that verse. I mean, it's great. The only problem is that I'm going to use it probably again for God is truth and God is faithful.
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So I'm going to use it two more times. But that really is a beautiful picture of our
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Lord, 32 .4. How about 2 Chronicles 19 .7? Does someone have that? Now then, let the fear of the
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Lord be upon you. Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the
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Lord our God, for impartiality or taking bribes. That's the kind of judge we want.
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Impartial. Right. And we'll have no part in unrighteousness at all. Okay, how about Psalm?
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You know, I think, um, I didn't write a lot. You know, there's, like I said, I have about 15 or 20 in each section.
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There's a lot in, like, Psalm 89 to 99. I can't remember how many times it talks about the
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Lord being the just judge over all the earth. This is one of them, though. Psalm 89 .14.
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I got that one. Righteous and justice are the foundation of your throne. Steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.
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Amen. When you think about the Lord, the foundation of His throne, righteousness and justice.
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And the difference, we might as well talk about this right now, the difference between righteousness and justice is, can somebody maybe think about that?
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Like, what's the difference between righteousness and then justice? Are they compatible?
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Are they complementary? Or, you know, how does one, or are they equivalent? Like I said,
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I think back to the court system. If you violate righteousness, you will face justice.
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So I would say they're complementary. Complementary, yeah. Because being right, totally right, doing right all the time is righteousness.
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If any of these things on the righteousness side is broken or violated, then justice takes over and must judge that and penalize that, which is, you know, broken the righteous law of God.
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So they're hand in hand. They're not exactly the same, but thank God He is a righteous judge.
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Let's turn to Revelation 15 -3. Does someone have that one? That's Russ.
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Okay. That's a long one, Russ. Take your time. Amen. Second verse.
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There's more people for that. They sing this one.
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Of Moses, the servant of God, and one song of the
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Lamb, saying, Great and amazing are your deeds,
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O Lord God, the Almighty, just and true are your ways,
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O King of the nations. And just in there again.
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The justice of God. And it looks like we have... I have one more circled in this section.
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So Psalm 98. Eight and nine. Somebody got that?
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You got that, Chad? Let the rivers clap their hands, let the hills sing for joy together before the
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Lord, for He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.
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And sometimes we read that, and we know that in those verses, that sometimes we think, how long, the
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Lord? Like the tribulation saints we see in Revelation where they have seen wickedness being poured out on the earth, and they're saying,
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Lord, how long? How long before Your justice and Your righteousness comes?
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When you think about justice for the believer, God's justice, how can we be encouraged?
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How can we be comforted by the fact that God is a just God? I was listening to a survivor of Hitler's Holocaust.
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The justice will come, because Hitler and his SS soldiers will face justice. Better this world than the next.
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But they will face God's justice. So anybody that commits a crime here in any way, if they're not judged down here, they'll be judged in eternity.
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That's guaranteed. And that is a comfort. It is a great comfort, because we're not going to see man necessarily institute righteous government all the time.
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Now, the government and the authorities have been given by the Lord, but they're supposed to institute righteous judgments and righteous laws.
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And when that happens, that's a wonderful thing, but it doesn't always happen, does it? Sometimes we see things that are very, very evil on the part of governments and men.
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But we need to hang on to these verses. In Matthew 5, where we see that the blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the humble, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are the poor in spirit. It's not for they should ever see God, that's the peacemakers.
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But you guys know the Beatitudes. In the middle of those
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Beatitudes, there is a blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled, for they shall be satisfied.
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I hold on to that verse because there's a couple levels to that verse,
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I think. Because one is, if you have the
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Beatitudes of Matthew 5, first of all, you want your own life to be filled with righteousness.
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And we often don't measure up to that, God's righteousness. But one day we will, because we're going to be conformed to the image of Christ, and He is going to transform our corruptible state into an incorruptible state, where we will sin no more.
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So we will be filled in that sense, our longing and thirsting for righteousness in our own lives.
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But there's also an expanded view of that, which is we also want to see God's name glorified on this earth, and righteousness ruling and reigning on this earth, that we would not see injustice anymore.
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You know, babies killed in the womb. We talked a lot about that recently.
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And many, many other things you can think of where men do evil things.
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And sometimes we lose sight of the fact that God sees all.
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He knows what's going on. All things are going to be revealed. And His judgment is going to come, and He's going to bring about righteousness.
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In our timing, we would say, well, it should happen now. Why doesn't it happen now?
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It needs to happen now. That's when we need to just trust the
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Lord, because He knows exactly what He's doing, and He will judge in righteousness.
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It is going to happen. And of course, the way we've been studying the end times recently, it's been very, very much on our minds that that judgment can be ushered in at any moment, really.
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So as believers, we have a great hope that there is going to be righteousness restored on this earth, and we can count on that, because our
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God will judge the nations in equity. So anything else you can think of as far as God's justice for the believer?
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Well, first of all, we don't... I know we're talking about justice in a general sense, but as human beings, we don't have the capability of understanding justice.
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We simply do not. God's justice is completely different than we can put and capitalize.
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And if you read through Psalms, on all aspects of how they reach out and try to figure out judgment, that's the trap, trying to figure out
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His justice. You cannot do that just from the simple fact that He's omnipresent and omnipotent, and He sees the before, during, and after that He knows justice.
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But we have a great hope, you know, and there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Romans 8 .1.
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And so, you know, the propitiation that He did through Jesus Christ allows to have that type of justice be manifested in our lives.
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And that's the great hope. But to fall into the trap, and I think that in darkness plays with our minds in that sense because it's like poking a finger at us, saying, okay, where's
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God now? Where's God now? Figure it out. Where's God now? Where's God now? And people can fall into that trap of what is happening in their lives and actually be stuck in it.
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They cannot get out of it. And I think there's a good case to say that a lot of people have walked away from the
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Lord because of that, because they were looking for that justice instead of realizing that if He was truly a just person the way we think, we wouldn't even be here.
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We wouldn't be existing right now. Well, there are many people in the Scriptures who stumbled over the
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God they expect as opposed to the God who is. Amen, yeah. Because there are many that would say, well, if you were
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God, you would do this. Exactly. We would know exactly what God would do. It goes back to that. Can a loving God let evil continue to exist?
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Well, we have to remember, His time is not our time. Like you said, He's above time. So one day, it says a thousand years to the
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Lord, God will inaugurate His justice in His time. Now, I didn't mention this, but Ivan touched on it just now, which is for the believer, we also deserve
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God's justice because we have all fallen short. We all deserve the good health. Right.
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But we know His justice has been satisfied through the offering of the Son, Jesus Christ. So, is that a little bit of a reason to rejoice?
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Yes, indeed. Absolutely. We know that His judgment is not going to befall anybody who puts their trust in the sacrifice of His Son.
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Just as Ivan's quoted in Romans 8, Romans 8, no condemnation. Now there is a no condemnation.
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Now. Not tomorrow. Now. Right. I'd like to refute one thing you said. You said we can't know justice.
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We can know justice where He's told us where it's just. That's true. It is communicable. It is communicable.
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An eye for an eye. That's justice, for example. So, we can't get too esoteric.
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And Ivan, much learning has made you insane. Where are we here for?
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It's funny. Well, you know. One of the things. A good man has suffered that same accusation. So, you're in good company.
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You know, we look about when Samuel was looking and he was told from God to pick another person and he was very emphatic.
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He said, don't look at a person. Look at, he's looking at his heart. He's looking at the motivation.
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He's looking at what is going on there, which is a different type of justice than compared to human beings look at.
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I'm going to use that for omniscience in a second. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to steal it. Do you have something,
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Dave? I was just going to say that God gave us the Ten Commandments so that we could recognize what sin is and how.
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We try to follow the Ten Commandments, but we fall short. But those commandments, though, give us a recognition of what sin is.
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So, even if we can't follow that, at least then we can identify it. And so, that somehow works into our seeking of justice as well.
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And we remember the Galatian versions, right? That says the law was given to be our tutor, right?
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To lead us to Christ. Because we couldn't keep the law. The law was always there, demanding this perfect obedience to it.
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And it was given by the Lord to show us that, yes, we failed.
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And we need a Savior. And that's a good thing. That reminds me of another C .S. Lewis quote.
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He said, There is a straight line. That's how we know when something deviates. Oh, that's a family.
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You guys know that quote. I didn't even know that. Okay. To the unbeliever, similar to what we've been talking about, obviously the unbeliever, their works are going to be judged.
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Their life is going to be judged before the Lord. They're going to give an account for what they've done. Everything.
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They've said. They've thought. Again, a very scary position for someone who has not put their trust in the
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Lord and who wants to live by their own way. But God's going to be fair in His judgment.
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No one is going to get anything they didn't deserve. He will be fair in His judgment. Okay. E .L.
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Eternal life. This is similar to what we talked about before where we said
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God has the attribute of aseity, which means
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He's self -existent. Nothing brings Him to life.
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He is not a created being. He has never not been. Remember I messed up with the double negatives before?
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He has never not been. He will always be. That's easier to say because it's on the positive side.
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He contains life within Himself. No one is going to kill God. It's impossible to kill
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God even though it's... Was it written on the subway in New York City or whatever? God exists.
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Now, let's read a few verses and talk about what that means to us and just be in awe of who
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He is. Isaiah 43, 13. Oh man, what are you reading out of there?
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Could you read that first part again? There is no one that can deliver from my hand.
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I work, and who can turn it back? Well, it talks about His sovereignty again.
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I act and who can reverse it again. We'll talk about that. But henceforth, I have His eternity. Even from eternity,
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I am His. In the NASB. Now, I didn't look up the Hebrew word on that because, like I said, I have 20 verses that point to His eternality and His life existing all in of itself.
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Does somebody else maybe have KJV or NKJV on that? Just for kicks? Go ahead.
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It's Isaiah 43, 13. Sorry? No.
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Just go. If you're distracted, though, if you have pecklers over you, that would be really good.
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That's all right. We need pecklers. That's right. Keeps us humble. Isaiah 43, right?
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43, 13. Okay. 43, 13 says...
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Oh, okay. Indeed, before the day was, I am He. And there is no one who can deliver out of My hand.
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I work, and who will reverse it?
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Nobody. But the point of this particular sentence is from all eternity
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He has been. Let's read Colossians 1, 17. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
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Okay. Before all things, that's the... You know, there's a lot of other nuances that come out in all these verses.
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Obviously, He's the creator of all, and He sustains all things He holds. So there's more than just His eternality, but that's part of that verse.
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That, if I can jump in. Does that make you think of dark matter? Holds all things together?
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It makes me think of 2 Peter, honestly. Because when it talks about the world being reserved for fire, and that the elements are going to dissolve into fervent heat, where it's like all the bonds that are at the molecular level or the atomic level...
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Hold it together. And held together. It's like, why is a nucleus all positive elements? And still it doesn't fly apart.
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That doesn't make any sense electronically. And then at the quantum level, there's all kinds of wild things that happen.
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Where are these bonds coming from? Who's holding all this stuff together? Colossians 1 .17 answers that.
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Colossians 1 .17. When the Lord takes off His restraining hand, and we know what happens during basically an atomic explosion.
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It's going to be an atomic explosion of some magnitude we can't even imagine.
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That's what I think of. I was thinking, because they can't define it, and they know it's there, but just because they can't see it or feel it or prove it...
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Well, they know something's holding it together because it's staying together. That's what I'm thinking about God who's holding everything all together.
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So yes, we do think of that. I think your brain goes bigger than mine. Oh, please.
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Absolutely. Did we hit Psalm 135 yet? No.
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Who's got that? Psalm 135 .13? Okay. Your name, O Lord, endures forever.
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You're renowned, O Lord, throughout all ages. Again, everlasting all ages.
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John 1 .1 -4. Somebody should have this memorized in this room. John 4 what?
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Are you going to read it? You probably got it memorized too, Ron. In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning was the
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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him.
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Nothing came into being, that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the life of men.
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Okay. So, again, this section, we're talking about the eternality of God, the fact that He contains life within Himself, and He's existed for all eternity.
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1 Timothy 1 .17. That's me. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only
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God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Praise God. Yeah, we know songs about that one, don't we?
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Yes. Now to the King of eternity. Yeah, immortal.
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Forever lasting, forever and ever. He's going to exist forever. Now, I didn't read... You know, when you think of these verses,
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I'm talking about eternal life, there are so many more. But, you know, if you have another favorite verse that's in some of these sections, in John 5, for instance,
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Jesus says, the Father has life in Himself, and He's given authority for the
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Son to have life within Himself as well, and I think in John 6, it says that He gives life,
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He gives eternal life to whoever He pleases. And that's one of the things that we think of as a believer.
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God has eternal life, and it's not just an everlasting life, it is a quality of life, it is a purity, it is a righteousness, it is a sinless existence, it is an existence that is beyond comprehension as far as the value of it, the beauty of it, the creation, the creative mind that He has, the life that He has in Him.
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It says that He grants eternal life to men. Eternal life. Both quantitative and qualitative.
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And, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ today, it's not like you are going to have eternal life in the future sometime when you die.
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You have eternal life right now. It is present within you right now.
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Seated in the heavens. We are seated in the heavens. And no one is ever going to take that life away from you.
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It's impossible. And that's, you know, we talk about our maybe friends who think you can lose your salvation.
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If you have acquired eternal life through God's gift, eternal life is eternal life.
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It doesn't come back. It doesn't, you know, cease to exist. It is eternal within us.
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So, when we think of God possessing eternal life, which is a mind -blowing thing,
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I think also of Him giving eternal life to those whom He's loved and those whose He's chosen.
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It's called. True. I subscribe to the voice of the martyrs. And you read some of those stories, how horrendous they are, and what they were willing to suffer knowing that they had eternal life.
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A lot of them entered death fearlessly. It really is. And that really does.
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Knowing all these things about the Lord and about His care for His creation, us, gives us incredible encouragement and power to live this life before Him.
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Now, to the unbeliever, eternal life means something too.
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For if the unbeliever doesn't receive eternal life, there is an eternal future waiting for the unbeliever as well.
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They have been created in the image of God, all men are, and they have an eternal spirit, but that spirit will not be residing with Jesus in eternity.
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It will be separated from Jesus for all eternity, which is hell.
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A place of fire and torment from everything we read in the Bible. So, again, to the unbeliever, these things about God are very ominous and very scary, but they don't have to end up that way.
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No. Because all of us are in the same situation, and anyone who surrenders their heart to the
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Lord and repents of their sin, God will give eternal life to them. So that's the message to the unbeliever, and again, it's the message we want to get out there in the world, because we wouldn't want anyone to go through eternity in hell.
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No one. Even the worst person in the world. So, again, wonderful if you know the truth about the
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Lord and you've embraced it. If you haven't, very scary. Okay, how about love?
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It's hard to... You know, such a word we throw around and we think of all the time, but how do we define love?
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What is love? God is love. Well, God is love. It says that. And the nice thing is, we've talked about His eternality, so His love is eternal, which is fantastic.
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But how would you describe love? Is it fondness?
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Is it attraction? Is it desire? How would you lay your hands on love?
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You have to define which type of love. Perhaps you're talking about agape love. Yeah, we won't be talking about...
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Well, phileo is important too. That's the brother we love, right? Amongst the brothers. And the eros love.
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And we know those different facets of love. But yes, we are talking,
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I guess, about really the agape love, which is what we would call, what? The unconditional love.
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An unmerited love. That no one kind of does something for you so that you respond in a loving way.
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This is a love that's initiated by the one who, you know, is the owner of the love.
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And the person receiving it, or the... I don't want to say the animal, but really the person receiving it really hasn't done anything to merit that love.
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It's just given because the person desires to love. So unconditional is a good word.
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That's a word we've heard, right? And that's kind of like... That's kind of like a foreign love to us.
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In 1 John, where it says, What manner of love has the Father bestowed upon us that we would be the children of Israel?
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What manner of love is like... What kind of foreign love? Because we don't experience that on the human level.
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I mean, as much as we love our children, as much as we love our wives, or anyone else, a brother, sister, whoever it would be, we still have strings attached.
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We can still get bent out of shape. We can still kind of withdraw and say, Well, I've given you enough.
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You've hurt me too many times. That kind of thing. God's beyond that. Love is like the wind.
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We can't see it. We can't define it, but we can see its effects. You know, when you love somebody, you esteem them higher than yourself.
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You deny yourself and do things for them. That's a good way to put it. That's a good way to put it.
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We're always sacrificing for their benefit. And you know what is great? The Bible gives us some help on this.
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Okay. We thought we were in trouble here. We're really not.
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And you can remember, when we think of love, we're going to be all over John and 1
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John. And you've heard John is called the apostle of love for good reason, because we're going to get a lot from John on this.
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But first, let's turn to Jeremiah 31 -3. That's neat.
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The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love.
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Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you. Everlasting love. Wow. 1
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John 4 -16 That is also me. 4 -16
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So we have come to know and to believe the love of God, the love that God has for us.
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God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
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Okay. 1 John 4 -9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent
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His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. By this the love of God was manifest, so that we may know.
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And I only have one more highlighted here. I'll read 1
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John 3 -16. I said, 1 John 3 -16. Not John 3 -16.
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Could have had that one too, right? 1 John 3 -16 And that's, by the way, an easy way to remember
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God's love verses, right? If you can remember 3 -16, you can go 1 John 4 -John.
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1 John 3 -16 says, We know love by this. So this is the definition. We know love by this.
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That He laid down His life for us, and we ought also to lay down our lives for the brethren.
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For each other. In reaction to His love for us, we should love one another. And Romans 8 -38 -39
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For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, that is in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. Amen. And our old pastor used to say that nothing created also means yourself.
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Because sometimes we think when we blow it, God's not going to love us anymore. That is not the case.
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Nothing is going to separate us from the love of God. What a faithful God He is.
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Those kinds of statements are... We just have to take hold of them. And when we are going...
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I've mentioned before, you know, we go through things in our lives, so many we don't understand. We have to take hold of these kind of verses.
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Because it means so much to us to know that nothing is ever going to separate us from Him. So, we said a lot about the meaning for the believer.
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Does anything else come to mind as far as God's love? Yeah. The fact that He reprimands us is proof that He loves us.
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What son does not, God just does. That's right. And we talked about because He loved us, we'll love others.
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So He definitely desires us to be loving people in response. Loving others as He loved us.
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I think of the freedom too. When you're in the world, unbeliever, but even as a believer sometimes, and people cast you down, people cast insults at you, people say you're not good enough, and those kind of things are very condemning, they're binding upon you.
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They want to enslave you with thoughts of inadequacy. But knowing that God loves you and accepts you for who you are, in the
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Beloved, Jesus, it's tremendously freeing to a person who's enslaved by fear and anxiety and worry about what others think about him, about the things that they're not measuring up to doing.
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So there's an incredible amount of benefits that come when you know the Lord and you know His love.
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It gives you worth. Absolutely. I think just to boil it down to its basic elements, it fulfills the law.
59:59
Love God, love your neighbors as yourself. Kind of a simple motto. And it's good to be simple sometimes.
01:00:05
Yeah. It's not confusing. We don't have to use that big intellect. All your fancy words there, $3 words.
01:00:14
But the motto of our church, love God, love others. It's that simple. It is. Wow, I wish
01:00:19
I thought of that. That's the beauty of it, isn't it? That is the beauty of it. The motto of this church. And the love of God means something to the unbeliever too.
01:00:29
Even though he doesn't know it at this point, God does love the unbeliever.
01:00:34
I know there's a few different psalms that say the Lord hates the unbeliever. Psalm 9 in particular,
01:00:40
I think. Psalm 5. Psalm 11. Was it Psalm 11 and 5?
01:00:45
And 5, yeah. Yeah, it's a couple. But He does talk about just what
01:00:58
He's done for the unbelieving world, the fact that He's poured out wrath on His Son. Well, isn't that the definition that we've just been talking about?
01:01:09
Self -sacrifice? Yeah. And God, through His Son, sacrificed Himself, right? Right. For us.
01:01:16
And the unbeliever can receive God's love, even though the unbeliever has done possibly the most vile things that have ever been accomplished by a man.
01:01:28
And Jesus said, No greater love has this than a man give his life for his friend. The only pushback
01:01:36
I would say to all that is, we're living in a time now where, and Jeff has spoken about this too in the sermons, that we're seeing
01:01:44
God's hand being lifted off. Off. And the base mind is now...
01:01:50
We're seeing that happen. And that is a form of justice. And they're never going to...
01:02:00
The love of many have grown cold. Exactly. Searing of the conscience. It does seem like that.
01:02:08
We're holding out hope for a flood of conversions.
01:02:14
You know, I think I told you before, I haven't been up too much on my church history, but I've heard so much about the
01:02:21
Great Awakening, and George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards preaching. I say, why not
01:02:27
Jeff Kleewer? Why not Phil DeMoss? As he rides through Mount Laurel Park and preaches the
01:02:35
Gospel. Is the Lord going to pour out His Spirit in these last days and have a great in -gathering?
01:02:42
That would be incredible. And we know His love hasn't changed, because He's eternal.
01:02:49
Let's read Romans 5, 8, and 10 too, because these are really another real demonstration of what love is.
01:02:59
Not how we measure love, but how God demonstrates His love. Oh, you know what?
01:03:06
Nobody has that, so I do need a volunteer here. I got it. Romans 5, 8?
01:03:13
8 and 10, you can skip that. 8 and 10, okay. But God shows His love for us, and that while we were still sinners,
01:03:20
Christ died for us. And then verse 10, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His love.
01:03:36
So this is the encouragement to the unbeliever, and it's a looking back for the believer, thinking,
01:03:44
I was a sinner. I was an enemy of the Lord, but yet He poured out His life for me.
01:03:51
How can anyone ever measure that love? And that love is available to all those who are wayward right now and have gone astray.
01:04:04
It says in there as well, it's like somebody may, if maybe the right circumstances, maybe your friend or something, you may lay your life down for a good person, right?
01:04:20
Whoever's good, who's good? But God demonstrates His own love towards us, and while we were yet sinners against Him.
01:04:30
So that would be like, if someone broke into your house, and I don't want to get too graphic here, but let's say you just beat up one of your children, and you were willing to go and take the punishment for that person and say, you know, there's no real reason for it, but I don't want that person to have to suffer for his sin.
01:04:57
So for no other reason except that you love that heinous person, you lay your life down for that person.
01:05:05
Why would anyone ever do that? That's the kind of picture we get in Jesus. Why would anyone ever lay down their life for sinners and enemies?
01:05:16
But that's who the Lord is. So, that might be as far as we get tonight, guys.
01:05:25
Does anyone have any more thoughts? Does anyone still have verses in their hands?
01:05:32
There's still a couple, right? I guess we'll have to get to them next. That's omniscience, right? We'll get to omniscience next time.
01:05:40
Harumph. You don't have to hand it back. That means
01:05:46
I have to come back. That's right. Does anyone have any closing thoughts, though, on God's justice or his omnipresence?
01:05:56
Well, the last verse you read, it said even more saving them. Digging down into it, wouldn't it be defined as making whole?
01:06:07
In the way it's in the Greek, to be made whole. Because when you're saved, you are made whole in Christ.
01:06:14
You're not manifesting as much early on, but as you walk and you get closer to the
01:06:20
Lord, then you'll manifest it more, so you're constantly sanctification. Sanctification, yeah. Yeah, so that thought on that.
01:06:27
Because it just sounded kind of odd to be more saved, however the phrase. It says, where was it, was it 10?
01:06:38
Yeah. It says, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son much more.
01:06:44
Now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life? Okay, so that's, yeah, emphasis on that more.
01:06:52
I put that in the wrong spot. Still, I think it means, do you mean being whole, doesn't it? I have to look that up.
01:06:59
Right, sanctification is the lifetime process leading to glorification, but that takes...
01:07:05
I haven't stunned her now. Oh, you're on that next? Well, not next, but close. So, we're doing the best we can, right?
01:07:14
We're trying to describe an eternal, infinite, immortal
01:07:22
God. Something indescribable. Thank God He's revealed Himself through His Word and through His Son, because we can latch on to these verses and say that's what
01:07:32
God is like because He's revealed Himself in it. So, hopefully these things we've talked about today will stick in your minds, especially tomorrow.
01:07:41
Maybe something will go wrong tomorrow for you, or at least we perceive it as going wrong, even if it's a flat tire or something.
01:07:48
Like, oh man, we've all been out of shape about a flat tire. None of us are going to work.
01:07:55
Yeah. Pastor talked about work. It's a good thing.
01:08:04
So, let's close up in prayer and let's think on these things, okay? Pastor, could you close?
01:08:10
Sure, yeah. So, Father, we want to thank You for Your great love, to love the world so much that You gave
01:08:18
Your only Son. Lord, we recognize that love is valuing, it is esteeming, it is treasuring, and Lord, You love
01:08:26
Your own self above all. You treasure and esteem Yourself in the universe.
01:08:33
You have a passion for Your own glory, and this is love, Lord, and You love us, which is inexplicable that You would love
01:08:41
Your enemies and make us Your friends. Thank You, Lord, for this great love with which You have loved us and how
01:08:47
You gave Your Son to die in our place. And Lord, so thank You as we think about Your attributes, we know that we can never fully understand and fully grasp, but thank
01:08:57
You for what You've revealed to us that belongs to us and to our children forever. And tonight, we just want to say we love