12-06-2020

Park Meadows Church

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Okay, Isaiah 45, starting with verse 16.

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I want you to, I want you to do what the scripture says in the

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New Testament, in the book of Romans and somewhere in Corinthians, where it says that these things were written aforetime as end samples for those of us who live at the end of the age.

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That's us. So everything in the Old Testament is an end sample, which means an example, but a much stronger word than the word example.

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It's like a dye that puts an imprint on something. That's what the word actually means. So we can apply this to us.

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Now, this is going to be speaking to the nation of Israel, but we know through the Abrahamic covenant that we're part, we're adopted into that system, aren't we?

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In fact, we're saved, the book of Galatians in the New Testament tells us that we're saved because we are made part of the

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Abrahamic covenant. Remember Abraham, Abraham was Gentile when he came out.

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And when he was circumcised, two seconds before that, he was a Gentile.

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So he represents all nations of the world and everyone who comes in through that great covenant.

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So this applies directly to us. Now, listen though, how comforting it is for us right now with regard to what

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Ron said about our nation trying to be stolen right out from under us. And we're such good people, we don't take our guns out yet, right?

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But we might, you know, we might take them out because you can't let people just steal what's true and what's good.

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Otherwise you end up being what the young people never heard of, the USSR. That's what you'll have here in 10 years if we let them do this.

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So let me just read this to you though, starting with Isaiah 45, verse 16.

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They shall be ashamed. And this is talking about the world, not God's people, but the world.

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The world that hates God, that hates Jesus Christ and hates us. They shall be ashamed someday and also confounded.

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All of them, they, now listen to this. They shall go into confusion together.

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Those that are makers of idols. In other words, those that worship other gods other than Jesus Christ.

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They shall be in confusion together. Have you ever seen anything more confused than the governments of the world trying to cure a pestilence that God sent?

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They can't touch it. And only God knows what these vaccines are gonna have in them or what they're gonna do to people.

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And I'm not against vaccines. I take flu shot every year and half my friends say, oh,

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I'll never take a flu shot. It's got chips in it and stuff. Well, I don't think so, but I know this. It keeps me from getting the flu, right?

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So I'm not against the vaccines, but I don't wanna be the first one to take one. Do you? That's up to you though.

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I mean, if you trust the government and you trust the pharmaceutical companies and you trust that all this just happened by accident and that a handful of people are going to become trillionaires, can you imagine, didn't you think

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Mr. Wrigley was pretty smart when he figured out how to get a two cents off of every human in the world when he invented chewing gum?

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Two cents off of every person in the world made him in today's terms, close to a trillionaire probably, billionaire at least.

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So what about companies that have figured out how to make, how much do you think that shot costs, brother

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Bill, at wholesale? A hundred bucks? So they're gonna make a hundred dollars off of every human in the world?

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I mean, is that 8 billion times a hundred? What is that? About 800 billion, right?

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I mean, it's close to a trillion dollars and I probably didn't do the math right, but imagine that and the love of money is the root of all evil.

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So where do you think this disease came from? I don't know, but it's worth thinking about, isn't it? But now the nations claim they can stop it.

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Our Biden thinks if he's elected, if he's elected, that he can stop it.

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It's just, it's laughable even to us, but imagine how God laughs at that. So God says,

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I'm going to bring confusion to all those that worship other gods. But Israel shall be saved.

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Now remember, Israel is a picture of us, of all God's people. Israel shall be saved in the

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Lord. You can only be saved in Christ, right? Isn't that interesting? That's Old Testament, but it sounds like New Testament.

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In the Lord. Israel will be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation.

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You shall not be ashamed nor confounded, world without end. That's an eternal, that's a word in Hebrew for eternity.

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For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth, and listen to this, and made it that hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited.

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So a lot of the planets that we can find and see in the moon, they don't have any life on them at all, do they?

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But that's because he formed this planet to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is none else,

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God said. I have not spoken in secret in a dark place of the earth.

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I said not unto the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain. I, the Lord, speak righteous.

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I declare things that are right. Assemble yourselves and come and draw near together.

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Now, do you see how that's important? And what did COVID do? It tried to keep us apart, didn't it?

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And it still has. I mean, even in our little church, our numbers are smaller than they were before COVID, except for you guys that are online, which has doubled our numbers and we appreciate that.

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And we love you guys. We wish all of you could be right here in the room physically, but we are assembling together.

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And the Lord says that that's very important. And so much, the more he says in the New Testament as the day approaches, what day you think that is?

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Election day, no. It's the day when the Lord comes back. It could be election day, right?

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All right, so assemble yourselves. So the assembly of ourselves together physically is hugely important, all through scripture,

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Old Testament, and you. Remember, we're in the Old Testament here. Assemble yourselves and come draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations.

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How do you like that phrase? I wish I could see you, but y 'all look like snowballs without the glasses, like fuzzy, big objects.

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Kind of creepy, actually. But anyway, I probably look like a blind man, right? My eyes don't look like they can see right now because they can't.

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But how do you like that phrase? Wow, I like that phrase.

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Okay, assemble yourselves together.

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They have, you that are escaped of the nations. Wow, escaped. You know, escaped from a fallen race of humans that are flat destined for hell.

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And we escaped because God plucked us out. He chose us for himself and he adopted us.

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And he loved us before the foundation of the world, before the plan even began from our point. So where was

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I? So, okay, yeah, there it is.

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They have no knowledge. Now listen to this. These are the brilliant people that are trying to take over our country and destroy our constitution.

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And here's what God says about them. They have no knowledge, those that set up the wood of their graven image and pray into a

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God that cannot save. They have no knowledge. Tell ye and bring them near.

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Yea, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient times?

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Who hath told it from that time? Have not I, the Lord? And there is no

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God else beside me, a just God and a savior. There is none beside me. Look around, he's saying, look,

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I've looked around. God said, I've looked around everywhere in all the universes that exist, and there's not another.

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It's just me. I quoted that verse to a Mormon friend of mine once, and he tapped me on the leg and said, let's talk about stuff we agree about.

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Because he did not want to deal with this one. Because I said, look, you believe that because your mama taught it to you.

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You're a smart man. He said, it was my aunt. And I said, okay, same deal. And I said, what do you do with the fact that God said he looked around and said there are no other gods and he didn't want to talk about that?

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I have sworn by myself, God said. The word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return that unto me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.

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Surely shall one say in the Lord, have I righteousness and strength. You see, that is positional righteousness that we've been talking about in our lessons lately, isn't it?

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Surely shall one say in the Lord, have I righteousness and strength. Even to him shall men come and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed.

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In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel, which includes us, we've been adopted in, in the

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Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory.

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Hallelujah. That's the good book right there, ladies and gentlemen. Now I'm gonna give you the good

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PowerPoint. Did we get the sound quite yet? Not yet?

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Okay, we'll keep it. Okay. Well, that'll fix it instantaneous. Oh, didn't you didn't find it?

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Oh, I did. We just didn't want it. Cause they didn't hear it. They said it sounded crisp and clear, so. Okay. Well, but if you wired it up,

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I'll try it. Let's try it without it. We can fix it right after. Oh, well, is it rewired?

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You wanna try it? Because I like my sound better than this, obviously.

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I mean, if it's hard to do, just tell me. We don't have to try it.

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Right where the white one was, yeah. All right. If that didn't do it, we won't worry about it, but that should do it.

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Your computer's on. Okay.

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All right, I'm gonna go ahead and share the screen and we'll move right along here. I hope

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I get the correct screen shared too. It's always fun. Thinking I'm not,

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I'm not thinking that I did. Okay, I didn't. So now we're gonna have trouble with this too.

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Well, I can't get it to share the screen now. You can share your screen. I can't see it up there.

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Oh, you can see it. You guys can see it. I can see your picture on the computer. It's just the

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PowerPoint's not on it yet. Yeah, but it should be, cause I just shared it. I think I shared the wrong screen is what

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I did. You shared the right screen. You just didn't get your PowerPoint up on the big screen. Oh, yeah, see,

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I don't do it that way. So I didn't do it right. I'll try this first. Okay, just swipe this way and you're good.

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I don't like this part of preaching. Come fix it. Come here, come help me.

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I'm done for now. That's where the people - Be back in two seconds. We'll put the papers where it is.

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Here's the wrong one. Look at that, Fern's gonna fix it. There we go.

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Fern, you're a genius. Go back to the first slide. Okay. Don't go where you're going. I won't.

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Right there? Yeah. Is that right? That's good. It's got the same thing. You're a genius. Thank you. Okay, give her a hand.

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Give her a hand. Way to go, Fern. All right, it's my newest grandbaby.

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She's already a genius. All right. Probably should have left her up here to help grandpa.

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Okay. We'll see if you guys can see this. I shall read it in case you cannot.

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This is from Ben Russell, one of our vice presidents at Tradeway. He said, and he was listening in.

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It kind of reminded me of Colin. He was listening in to the actual Congress in Arizona to the congressional state congressional meeting, not reading articles because as you know, the media is slanting everything, right?

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So he's not reading this in the news. He's listening to this. And he reported it to me and some other folks.

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At the public hearing in Arizona, and this is their state Congress, lawmakers called for their colleagues to support an upcoming resolution that would delay the release of the state's electoral college votes.

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Now, see, we really don't know how this works because it's always worked smoothly. And some dudes, one of the guys concedes and the other one wins, and you don't know about this stuff.

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But the founding fathers put a whole lot of things into the constitution in case this sort of thing happened.

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It's all already there and they are starting to use it. And the liberals hate it and the news media hates it.

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And it's going to be really interesting if this comes through. By the way, we're going to have a national prayer meeting, a

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Zoom prayer meeting with all of us and all of Prairie Way, which is 60 ,000 people now.

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I don't know if they'll all get that, but there'll be thousands of people on there. And it'll be this Tuesday night at 8 o 'clock

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PM our time. And I'll send all of you an email with the URL. Likely to be on there. We're going to pray about this very thing.

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So anyway, these lawmakers called for their colleagues to support an upcoming resolution that would delay the release of the state's electoral college votes.

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So here's what happens. You have the electoral college system that the founding fathers set up.

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And I don't want to go into the history behind why they set it up that way, but it was brilliant. It was brilliant.

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And the liberals want to get rid of it because it's the one thing that protects our republic.

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And I don't want to go into why, but it's genius. But anyway, it's how it's supposed to be.

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So what happens is you have the popular vote for the president and based on the popular vote, one of the candidates wins the electoral college votes for that state, all right?

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So all that means, and we used to think, well, that's it, right? But what that means is now, then the secretary of state or whatever the office is called in, because it's different in every state, the equivalent of the secretary of state of the state and the people running the election, which you guys, the blands know all about that, they will certify the vote when they think it's finished and done correctly, whether it was done correctly or not, they will certify the vote.

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We used to think that just means it's a done deal, right? It's not what it means. All that means it now gets sent to the

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Congress of that state and the state Congress of every state then votes rather to send those electoral colleges for that person down to the electoral college vote, which happens on the 11th, is that right?

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Or is it 14th? Okay, somebody look that up for me. I think it's the 14th.

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And on the 14th, the electoral college announces who gets how many votes, but they only count the ones that get sent to them by the states.

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Did you know that? I didn't know that, but that's how it works.

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So what these guys in Arizona are doing is they're saying, wait, we think there may have been fraud.

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We're not sure we're going to honor the electoral... The honor is not the right word. We're not sure we're going to give...

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Well, it's already been certified by electoral college people and the secretary of state, but we're not sure we're gonna vote to send those votes to Mr.

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Biden. We're not sure we will send them because we're not sure it's a fair vote. So that's what they're discussing now.

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Think about that. That's interesting. Arizona state representative, Mark Finchin, told reporters during the

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November 30th hearing that lawmakers hope to have a resolution within the next 24 to 48 hours.

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The state holds 11 electoral college votes. Here's a quote from this state representative in Arizona.

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Quote, we are clawing our electoral college votes back. We will not release them.

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Finchin said. Finchin, sorry to say. That's what I'm calling on our colleagues in both the

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House and Senate to do. This is talking about at the state level. Exercise our plenary authority under the

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U .S. Constitution. Wow. All right, now think about this a little bit.

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According to Finchin, the move would be easy to make and would be legally binding. A civil majority can call the

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House and Senate back and in a day can pass a resolution and cause those electoral votes to basically be held, he said, and it is binding.

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I'll see y 'all in court. You don't really need the court system to do this, by the way.

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Anyway, there's the link if you wanna go look that up. Ben Russell sent that to me. So thank you, Ben, in case you're listening.

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Now, Ben also made this for me and Jenny Taylor. We're just sitting there chatting about business one day and said, hey, let me put this together.

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We're all three kind of looking up stuff and Ben's over here building a spreadsheet. All right, now notice at the top, it's got

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Mr. Biden and it's got President Trump and that's what the liberal news media has certified.

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They don't really legally certify anything, but they have said that Biden has 306 and you only need 270 to become the president, right?

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And that President Trump has 232. That's where we left it a couple of three days after the election was over, right?

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All right, so now watch this. If we look at Pennsylvania, and this spreadsheet is gonna show you all the states where they have not yet decided who's gonna get the electoral college votes.

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The media hasn't reported any of this. None of you have heard of this, right? Raise your hand if you even heard of this. This is not in the news.

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It's all in the dark. Like you talked about in Sunday school, how they did Jesus's trial at night, at least two thirds of it, right?

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At night illegally, all right? So Pennsylvania, they have 20 votes to offer right now.

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Biden has 20, out of the 306 up there, 20 of those are Pennsylvania. President Trump has zero, but look at this for a minute.

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To the right of that, lo and behold, God has made it where Republicans control both houses of Pennsylvania's Congress.

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Now, what's interesting, the Constitution did not allow the governor of the states to have anything to say about this, nor did they allow the

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United States Congress yet to have anything to say about this, not until after that date that we gave you, which was it,

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December 14th for sure? Okay, not until after that. Until that, the

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U .S. Constitution only allows the Congress, both houses, if they have two houses, not every state has two probably, but the state

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Congress is the only rightful entity that can decide this. That's how our founding fathers set this up, and God, in his sovereignty, even though we have some liberal governors in those states that allow the cheating to happen, supposedly,

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I'll say that until it's all proven, but the Congress is

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Republican in Pennsylvania, both houses. So they can get together and pass a resolution, say, well, that's fine, but guess what?

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We don't think it's real, so we're not sending those down to the electoral college on the 14th, we're just gonna hold those 20.

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So if you subtract those out from Biden, that's why it's got a minus 20 there, and you add the 20 to Trump, that would make a difference, wouldn't it?

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All right, let's look at another one, Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, both houses of their legislature are

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Republican, and they only require a majority vote to do this, not a two -thirds vote, a majority vote to do this.

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They have supposedly 10 for Biden, but you could take those out and put them for Trump, but we're gonna assume we don't get

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Wisconsin in this example, we don't need Wisconsin. And Nevada, it has a

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Democratic House, so we're gonna assume nothing happens there. But what about Michigan and Georgia and Arizona?

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They all have both houses Republican, can you believe this? When he was sitting here making this,

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I'm going, really? Lord, did I give up too soon, is what I'm telling myself.

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Really? Oh, ye of little faith. God had stuff going on behind the scenes none of us knew about, none of us knew.

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President Trump, I heard him give a speech, Matt was playing a speech for us that he gave,

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I guess, yesterday, and Trump kept mentioning secret things you don't know about. He said, we just need a few key people to be honest, just a few key people to do what's right.

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And he's talking about these congressional leaders, because they've got to get up and give an arousing speech to get everybody to do this, because they want to be so nice, we don't want to take those away from Mr.

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Biden, it just wouldn't look good. That's how the human nature wants them to be. So we're gonna need to pray for some fiery individuals to stand up and preach to these people and say, look, what's important is the truth, what's important is not allowing cheating, what's important is truth, not how people feel.

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We need to not send these, it's not right, that's all we need is a few people to do that. And we would get

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Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona.

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Now, in this scenario, we said, what if we only got Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona? It would knock

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Biden down below 270 and put President Trump nine points above, just if you only got those three states to have people in their state houses to do what's right, and they're all

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Republican majorities. Not all Republicans love President Trump though, so we need the

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Lord to do whatever the Lord wants to do, but it sure gives us something to pray about.

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Now that's not all, what if we looked at it a different way? What if we just said, okay, what if we only got

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Wisconsin and Michigan and Georgia and Arizona, and we don't even get

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Pennsylvania, which most people in this room thought we have to get Pennsylvania or it's all over, right? It's not true.

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Let's say we don't get Pennsylvania, we get Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, that puts

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Biden below 270, puts Trump at 285. Wow, you don't think God can do this?

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I have no idea. Well, unfortunately, we needed a little sight to go with our faith, didn't we?

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But there's your sight, so that'll up our faith a little bit, right? I think that's amazing. Electoral college vote happens on the 14th.

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Some state legislatures are considering not awarding Biden their electoral college votes.

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See, they don't have to do anything, they can just hold them. And now here's another scenario, which

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I didn't put up here. Let's assume they don't send them at all. They don't switch them to Trump. They just don't send them.

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What that does, it leaves Trump at 232, and it puts Biden at 259 or 253.

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Neither one having a victory. At that point, the Constitution kicks in and says, now it goes to the

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U .S. House of Representatives. They will choose the president, and the Senate will choose the vice president.

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And guess what? From my understanding, and I hope I'm right about this, the House of Representatives, even though they're controlled by the

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Democrats, the Constitution was set up where they only get to vote per state. And if you count the states that are

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Republican, there's way more Republican states than there are Democratic states. So they would choose

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President Trump. We need to check on that and see if that's how they vote. But I've heard that it is.

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It is. Have you verified that? Verified. Okay, so that's how it is.

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And so they would choose President Trump, and then I don't know who, I'm sure they would,

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I don't know who the Senate would choose, but I'm sure they would just leave it like it is,

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I'm sure. The House has 26

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Republican states. Yeah. Yeah, it's 23 Democratic states in one state. Yeah.

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So isn't that fascinating? So we're having a national prayer meeting

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Tuesday night, this coming Tuesday night at, oh, I put seven. It's 8 p .m., sorry. Mark that out.

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Eight o 'clock p .m. Central Time. And here is the link.

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I will email it to you so you don't have to try to copy all that junk down. But we'll send that out to you guys, okay?

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Isn't that cool? All right, so now we got a little time left, not much. Let's talk about, let's see if we can move forward in our study just a little bit.

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Maybe I have time to at least get through the review. So we're in Romans 8, 29, and 30, through 30.

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For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, then he also called, and whom he called, then he also justified.

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And the next one, verse 31, talks about who he justified, then he also glorified, or that may actually be the end of verse 30,

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I don't remember. But when you start with 29 and you move out through 30, you go from before time began into time.

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The two things that happen in time are the calling and what else? The justification. And then on the other side, going out the other way is glorification.

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But what's interesting is that word in the Greek is put in what in English would be past tense. So in the father's mind, that's already happened too.

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So you already stand, you're standing before the father as your glorified child of his already.

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Isn't that nice that he sees you that way? All right, so the theme of election and predestination is an ancient theme.

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If you go back to Abraham, you go back to Noah, all of these people were called. That's one of the first two things that happens in time is the

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Holy Spirit had to call them and wake them up. And then they were justified, which means we've been Baptist call that they got saved.

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And it's the same way. And all of this has been happening this way since Adam and Eve.

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A lot of people call it Calvinism if you wanna talk about foreknowledge, predestination and all this, but it is not

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Calvinism. John Calvin lived in 1509 to 1564. And he did teach these things, but they weren't new to him and he didn't invent them.

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He was just a great teacher. You should read some of his writings. It's like reading the Bible, but he didn't invent it.

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Augustine, some 1100 years before Calvin was born, taught the same things.

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Augustine was a great Roman Catholic father and he taught predestination, election, salvation by grace and internal security of the believer.

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And if he had won the argument in the church, we'd all still be Catholics and be happy to be one, but he didn't win.

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Courses of evil won over that argument. But then he learned what he knew from the apostle

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Paul, 350 years before Augustine, Paul was taught these things by Jesus Christ himself in the wilderness out in the

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Arabian desert where Jesus spent time with him for a three -year period. And Jesus taught it, so it's actually

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Christianity. What's interesting, the study we moved into the last couple of weeks talked about Isaiah. Now, Isaiah lived 2 ,720 years ago, which is 2 ,209 years before John Calvin and he taught all these same things.

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This is not Calvinism, you get it? All right, so we went into Isaiah.

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I'll just give you a couple of the verses we read last time for review. Isaiah 44, six, thus saith the Lord, the

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King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. Don't you think that's interesting? It mentions

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God twice, but in two different persons. So you have the

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Lord, the King of Israel and you have his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, that's Jehovah, God, and that's

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Jesus and the Father. I am the first, I am the last, and beside me there is no

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God. And who, like me, can call people?

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Now, I know the Southern Baptists think they can call people, come down the aisle and repeat this prayer after me.

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No, God says, who can do this but me? You do hear the scripture, right? I think a lot of churches,

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Pentecostal, maybe Methodist, but I know Southern Baptists because I grew up Southern Baptist, independent

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Baptist for sure, maybe even Bible Church, but not quite so many of them would do this. But they think they can call you and get you saved.

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Only God can do the calling. Who, like me, can call, God says? Nobody, and he does it through the

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Holy Spirit. So now you have all three persons that God had mentioned in those two verses in Isaiah. In the

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Old Testament, you have the Father, the Lord, the King of Israel, you have his Redeemer, who is

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Jesus Christ, and you have the one doing the calling, which is the Holy Spirit. Who can call besides me and declare, who can declare what's gonna happen and then it happens?

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And who can set it in order besides me, God says? Now, listen to this. Since I'm the one who appointed the ancient people, there is predestination.

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Appointed means predestinated. Predestinated. So Isaiah taught it 2000, what was it?

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700 and something years before John Calvin was ever born. And we talked about that last time.

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And we saw this too, Isaiah 6110. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my

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God. Look at this. For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation.

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He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. Now, remember our theme lately has been positional righteousness. And there's

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Isaiah, you know, over 2 ,700 years ago, talking about positional righteousness.

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And that means righteousness that what you do or don't do tomorrow can't change. It's positional.

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God did it to you, he gave it to you. What he did was he imputed Jesus's righteousness to you.

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And he took your sin and imputed that to Jesus. I said that backwards, it's the other way around. But he put your sin on him while he was on the tree.

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Then after the resurrection, he took his righteousness and put that on you and me. And that's known or pictured as the robes of righteousness all throughout from Isaiah all the way through the book of Revelation.

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It talks about the church being clothed. And here you see just one example in the book of Revelation and white robes are given, you see?

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So that is positional righteousness. It's Jesus's, it's God's righteousness being put on us as if we were righteous.

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That's what that is. And that's why we're saved. Our salvation has nothing to do as far as the cause of the salvation has nothing to do with stuff we do right or wrong.

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That has no play in the cause of our salvation. The cause of it has to do with positional righteousness which is a gift of grace, which means it's free that was given to us before the world began.

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So it has nothing to do with what we do or don't do. That should be crystal clear. So remember, positional righteousness has to do with the cause of salvation, right?

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But then there's also something called experiential righteousness and that has to do with the effect of salvation.

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In other words, the fact that you get saved is what causes you to wanna live right. So the Bible does teach experiential righteousness.

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That's us trying to live right. That's us making decisions with our minds to do the right thing and not the wrong thing.

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That exists in the Bible, does it not? But not as a cause of our salvation, always only as an effect.

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In fact, until you get saved, you cannot even make that decision to live right because all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags to God.

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A natural man, woman, boy or girl who's not saved yet cannot do anything to please God. Find me a place in the

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Bible where it says they can't. They cannot. God is not pleased with a fallen human race.

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The wages of sin has been death since the Garden of Eden, never changed. That law never changed. And it never changed, but Jesus stepped up and said, you know what?

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I will die for your people, the ones that you chose to be your children. I'll die in their place, not for the whole world, but their place.

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I will die for them, give my blood and be a ransom for them. Now die for the whole world in the sense that everyone has to receive me to be saved and God will ask them, what'd you do with Jesus someday?

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If they say nothing, they're going to hell. In that sense, his death was for all humans, but his ransom was not.

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His ransom, the blood was given as a ransom only for his own and it's perfectly effective and he won't lose one single sheep for which

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God sent him to die. Scripture is so clear on that, Jesus himself said it, but all of what the work that the father did, that the son did, the

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Holy Spirit did, that's what saves us. That's the cause of it. And it culminates with the calling where the

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Holy Spirit comes and wakes us up and gives us a want to, where for the first time we want

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Jesus. We didn't want him two seconds before that. We loved ourself better. Now all of a sudden we desire him.

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That was placed in your heart by the Holy Spirit. And now you do what you want to do and those are the effects.

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So what do you want to do? Well, I'm going to get baptized. Well, I'm going to start reading my Bible. I want to live right. I want to go to church. I want to love

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Christians for the first time in my life. Put some of them before myself if I can. I'm going to try to do really good.

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I'm going to fail, but I'm going to get back up and try to do good. And God gave us 1 John 1, 9 for when we fail.

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And so that's the way it works. And we have to understand the difference between cause and effect, between positional righteousness and experiential.

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So we covered all the positional. We're done with it now. So let me just spend a little time today talking with you about what the

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Bible says about experiential righteousness. This is so interesting to study the different denominational groups and what they say about these things.

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And, you know, theologians are so smart and logical that they can lead us down roads and we'll end up thinking that we agree with that many times.

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And over a long life of studying the scripture, you'll find that sometimes later you no longer agree with that book you thought was so smart when you were a young person.

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It made logical sense, but there was a false presupposition somewhere near the front of the book, first chapter, or maybe even in the table of contents, who knows?

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But there's been so much written about how important it is to live right. So many denominations are built on living right as the cause of your salvation.

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Wouldn't you agree with that, wouldn't you, Brother Ron? You grew up in one like that, Pentecostal church. If you don't live right, you don't make it.

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What if you - One problem, you're gone. Yeah, one problem at the wrong time before you can repent and you're gone forever.

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Same way with Church of Christ. I don't mean all Church of Christ people are all Pentecostal people. I'm talking about their leadership, what their teachers teach.

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Because I've met so many, say, Pentecostal people and Church of Christ people that are flat born again despite the bad doctrine because they listened to the

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Holy Spirit instead. I fully know that's true. So I'm not talking about them, wonderful people and friends we have, but I'm talking about the guys behind their pulpits.

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But I'll say the same thing about the guys behind our pulpits. Is in the end times, Jesus said we have many false prophets and they're wearing every color,

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Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian. They're just, boy, the gospel has been changed.

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It's not even the true gospel in so many churches now. And yet even the ones we consider good churches and it's creeping in.

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And Jesus said they would creep in unawares, didn't he? So the people are not even aware of this until you start seeing some of this startling scripture.

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In other words, the startling is you never looked at it before because the preachers didn't guide us down these roads. But all of the stuff that said about living right having to do with your salvation and the cause of your salvation, all of that is entirely wrong.

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But what does the Bible teach about living right and how important is it? Don't you think that's a good question to ask?

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Are we supposed to just go out and live like the devil because we're saved by grace? I think Paul would say, God forbid, how can we who are dead to sin live any longer in it?

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Don't you think he would say that? So how does all this fit together? Well, let's just take a little look at one little passage.

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Obviously, this is not even the topic we're supposed to be on, so I'm not gonna go through the whole Bible on experiential righteousness.

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But in the chapter six of Romans, Paul says, "'For sin shall not have dominion over you.'"

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Now, what do you think about this? Who is the you in the verse? Is that anybody that picks that up and reads it or who is the you?

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Saved people. So this material is written to people that already have the cause of their salvation.

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They've already been called. They've already received Jesus as a personal Lord and Savior because they wanted to, because the

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Holy Spirit opened their eyes and it was just obvious then what to do. And they love him now, and so they received him and they're saved.

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So the cause has happened. So this is about to talk about effects to people that have already been justified.

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They've already been covered with the blood. The father has already forgotten that they ever sin or ever will sin.

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They stand justified and glorified in the father's eyes already, that's who this is written to.

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Keep that in mind before you put an overemphasis on the living right. But I don't wanna put an under emphasis on it either, do we?

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Do we? Otherwise we get the very kind of church Charlotte and I, when we were younger, tried to escape from, a worldly church that just wasn't doing much of nothing.

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So sin will not have dominion over a person that's saved. That's a promise. So do we need to worry all that much about experiential righteousness?

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Well, not really because you are not your shepherd. I've told the story many times that I was a shepherd for my grandfather, not sheep, but cows, it's the same thing.

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Bible language for shepherd just means somebody takes care of animals, right? Sort of. So his bull gets out.

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If I were to go to my grandpa and say, grandpa, your bull's out of his own free will, your bull decided to leave, he's no longer yours.

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What would my grandfather do? He'd say, well, David, that's fine. It's up to the bull.

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He has free will, he's decided not to be here, he's gone. Right? No.

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So who would my grandfather hold responsible for that bull? Me, the shepherd. And that's the same with us.

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God, the father holds Jesus Christ responsible for every soul that the father foreknew and predestinated to be his.

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And if Jesus lost one of them, Jesus would answer for it. Don't think he wouldn't. And he knows it too. And that's why he said, no man comes to me unless the father draws him of them.

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I will lose nothing. I guarantee you, I ain't facing the father over this one. I won't lose one.

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That's how salvation works. Now, look, once you've been saved, there's a promise here. Sin won't have dominion over you.

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You know how I know that? Because the shepherd's got this thing called a staff and it's got a straight end and he can whip your bottom with it.

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And it's got a hook on the other end and he can put it around your neck and pull you right back into the fold. So even if you did nothing as a saved person, you did nothing to try to live right, you would end up living right.

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Not all the time. And I'll show you why in a minute. That you don't have to be overly concerned about that for yourself or your kids.

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Listen, you can be concerned about getting a whipping from God though. And if there's children in here listening, and I see a couple, his whippings are way worse than when your parents spank you.

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But he doesn't do it to children. He lets the parents do that. Hallelujah. We don't like doing it, but we will do it.

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Not grandparents though, so come over to my house and you'll be just fine. But anyway, but when you grow up and you leave that house,

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God is really already your parent anyway. And he will spank you in ways that we might think are amazing.

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It's amazing what he can do to get us to change directions. And it's hurtful. That's why we have gray hair, some of us.

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You don't yet. We've had a few whoopings that turned your hair gray. So we can see the greatest sinners in the room, right

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Ron? Our son don't even have hair. I mean, they're the worst. They're the very worst in the room.

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Woo, that's a bunch of whooping. All right. So I wish I should turn the camera that way, guys.

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You can see it's not just me. Anyway, don't you think that's a neat promise?

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God just said, look, your mind, sin's not gonna have dominion over you for you are not under the law for one thing, but you're under grace.

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So if keeping rules is a problem for you, don't worry about it. You're not under the rules. You're under grace.

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And grace includes my Holy Spirit and my Jesus Christ as a shepherd coming to me and saving me from my own sin and causing me not to want to do that sin anymore.

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I just like, think about this. I just will praise

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God for all eternity for my relationship with Brother Otis because they're just stuff I'd have never found in the Bible myself.

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But he said, Brother David, you do realize it's true that people only do what they want to do.

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And I'm always thinking, surely I can outsmart Brother Otis at some point at coffee. I said, no,

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Brother Otis, I'm not sure I agree with you on that one. Stupid remark. I'm not sure

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I agree with you on that one. Well, why not, Brother David? Well, because I grew up on a ranch.

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We had a lot of square feet out there with leaves on it. My dad made me rake all those leaves and I didn't like it.

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So I didn't do it because I wanted to. And he said, now, Brother David, I know your dad, Fred Mitchell. I know him well.

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And he said, knowing your father like I do, I bet you didn't want to get a whooping if you didn't rake his leaves, did you?

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And I said, no. He said, see, you did it because you wanted to. Now you think about that in the context of this verse,

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I think Otis had read this verse because you're not under the law, you're under grace. Well, that sounds like you can just do anything unless you think it through.

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Because what that means is it's not the rules. It's like the one that loves you tracking you down when you mess up and he's gonna make sure sin doesn't have dominion over you.

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I wish I didn't have to spend so long on one verse. But God be thanked that you were the servants of sin.

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I like the word were. That's how we used to be. Used to, we didn't have, really it's funny how the lost world says we have free will, right?

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The Bible says that Satan moves them at his will. They don't have free will.

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He says, Satan moves them at his will. And they just don't know it. They don't even acknowledge

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Satan usually, but they think they have free will. But the truth is they obey sin and don't even know that's what they're doing and don't even have a choice not to.

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Think about that. They kind of do have a choice not to, but in reality, their flesh won't let them not sin.

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So that's how we were before salvation. But the word but is there and it's a change.

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You know, there's a big change in our lives that salvation that you have obeyed from the heart, that form of doctrine which was delivered to you.

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So you're not that way anymore. Being then made free from sin, that's in the passive in the

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Greek. Therefore it's positional, something God did to you. It's not something what you do or don't do tomorrow has anything to do with.

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You were made free from sin. I want you to think about this. We're talking about experiential righteousness, trying to live right.

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And yet it's telling us, but wait a minute, the root cause of that, even the root cause of that is positional, not effect, it's part of the cause.

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That's deep. Don't know if you know it or not. That's deep. Being then made free from sin, passive,

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God did it to us, it's positional. You became the servants of righteousness. Now this is interesting to me because when

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I just read this in English before I finished my study for the sermon today, when

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I just read it in English, see this little, this thing doesn't work. See the little part in brackets down there at the bottom? That's not part of the

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Bible. I added that. That's why it's in brackets. So read it without that down there.

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Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness. I thought, man, this is cool. Because in one verse,

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I found that you have positional righteousness where God did this to us and made us free. And then at the end, it's experiential, where we're supposed to do right.

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Doesn't it look like that in English? So what he did to us made us become servants of righteousness where now we have to live, now we have to live right.

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Isn't that what it sounds like? But you look it up in the Greek, it's passive. The second one is passive too.

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Listen, I learned new stuff. I've spent my life since my youth studying this book. Where'd I put it?

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This book right here. Practically worn it out. I learned something new every day when

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I look at it. I'm not saying I look at it every day, but every day that I look at it, because sometimes I don't study every day.

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I just study all day Saturday or whatever. Don't get legalistic about that either. Study it because you love it and get into it and spend time in it.

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You got to do that. But every time I do it, I learn something new. Even in passages I've preached on my whole life.

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So wouldn't you hate to be the people I preached to when I was 20? Because there's a lot of stuff they got wrong or didn't get.

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But anyway, here you are now, and 10 years from now we'll be saying the same thing. So Lord willing.

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Being then made free from sin, passive, God did it to you, therefore it's positional. You became servants of righteousness, that's also passive, therefore

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God did it to you. So that means now he's made you where you want to do right. And what you do or don't do tomorrow won't change that.

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Is that cool or what? And that's true of our children and grandchildren too. There's something

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God puts in them that really basically because they're born again, they want to do right.

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There's still the old man there that will do wrong, but the real you doesn't ever want to do wrong. And that's positional.

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You can't change it, it stays there your whole life. And that has to do with the cause, not the effect.

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So you say, well, where does the effect come in? Well, it's in here. You just have to get to it. I speak after the manner of men.

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Now see, Paul is saying, look, Paul's saying, what I just said is deep and you're not gonna get it probably. That's what he's saying.

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And he was maybe, who knows if he was speaking in Greek. He might've been because it was the world language back then or it might've been translated into Hebrew.

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At any reason, if he'd spoken in Greek, they knew it was passive and they're sitting there going, well, how can that be true?

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Because it just blares out at you if you know Greek. How can that be true? He made me free from sin and now

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I'm a servant of righteousness whether I want to be or not. How can that be true? And Paul comes in and says, well, I speak after the manner of men because of your infirmity of the flesh, you have a hard time understanding spiritual things.

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That's what he's saying. For as you have yielded, now he still kind of gives an example to help them understand the spiritual truth.

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He says, kind of like you yielded your members to be servants to uncleanness and sin unto sin, many sins.

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You remember how you used to do that before you got saved? That's what he's saying. It's kind of like that, only the opposite.

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Just like that was natural and normal for you to sin unto sin unto sin before you got saved, even so now, just like that was, do it this way, even so now, that's active imperative.

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Now there, there you have experiential because in the

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Greek it's active imperative, which not only means you're doing it, not God doing it to you, it's something you're doing, therefore you're responsible for this, but it's imperative means you darn well better do it.

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Isn't that interesting? So Otis wouldn't have liked that interpretation, would he,

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Bill? Don't you know what darn really means, Brother David? Sorry about that.

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I got saved late in life, Brother Otis. No excuse, Brother David. Okay, so even so now, just like your flesh used to just sin naturally, even so like that now, your members should be servants to righteousness even unto holiness.

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So what God is saying is because of the positional things I've done to you and for you when

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I saved you, the work that I've done for you already and it's still doing by the indwelling Holy Spirit and the word of God that you have there to read, you got the water is the

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Bible and you've got the spirit every day of your life and because of that to you, it's natural to do right things.

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That's the new man though, but it is just as natural for the new man to do right things as it is for the old man to do bad things.

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So yeah, experiential is important to know that that's in the Bible, but it's also important to know that the root of it is positional.

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Isn't that weird? The root of it is positional. It's because of what God did to you that even makes it possible for you to even consider doing anything good, but we ought to consider it.

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In fact, Brother Otis taught me the best way to keep from doing bad things, Brother David. I don't know why he thought I did bad things, but he said the best way is to fill your life with good things.

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Fill every moment that you can in the day doing something good for the Lord and you won't have time to do anything bad. That's good advice from an old saint.

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Sorry, Brother Otis, didn't mean to call you old. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness and so what he's saying is just like that, now that you're the servant of righteousness, you can be free from sin.

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So when you're serving righteousness, you won't sin. Children, are you hearing me? Children, if you will make it a point to fill your mind, what you're thinking about and what you're doing with good things and right things, you won't do bad things and get whoopings, all right?

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Same way when you grow up, even worse than that, even worse than that, I should say. What fruit have you then in those things where you are now ashamed?

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Like back when you, before you were saved and you just sinned, what kind of goodness did that bring to your life?

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So there's another thing Paul gives us to think about. What goodness will sin bring to our life now if we decide to drop down into that and sin again?

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Well, what good thing will that bring to our family, to our kids, our grandkids, to ourselves, our church friends and brothers and sisters?

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What good will that bring if we decide to sin? None, right? So there's another motive for living right and this is just beautiful because it's a beautiful passage on experiential righteousness and it shows how it really works but it also shows how it doesn't work.

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It doesn't work in the flesh by you trying to do better than the other church member and use that as a reason to make you more spiritual and then that plays a part in your salvation, maybe keeping you saved or something.

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It doesn't work like that at all. Based on what God's already done for us, we wouldn't have a chance at it without that.

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So what fruit have you then in those things where you are now ashamed? For the end of those things was death.

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But now being made free from sin, that's positional, that's passive, that's what

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God did to you and you are become servants of God, that's passive, that's positional, that's what

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God did to you. You have your fruit of the holiness and the end everlasting life.

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Now, it gets deeper and you're tireder. We're out of time but I'm gonna finish this one slide, okay?

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It's a really long slide, all right? Here where it says, you have your fruit of the holiness, see that?

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You have, you already have it. The Greek word is echo. Now, some of you that have done trade way, you've heard me, the thing

54:56

I wrote called the echo principle. Well, I got it from this but the

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English word echo comes from it but in the Greek, it means to hold or possess.

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It does not mean to do something. It means to have something.

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You see the difference? You remember Otis. Brother, I get him confused all the time. Brother Myron, Brother Otis, very similar but Brother Myron teaches have, be, how's it go?

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Have, be, do? Be, do, have. Be, do, have. But you switched it, that's why I get confused. You went the other way or something but anyway, the point is there's a difference between who you are and what you do.

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So what you have is who you are and then there is what you do, which is the effect. That's the effectual righteousness but this word means to have.

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So you have fruit of the holiness. It's not stuff you do, you have it. Isn't that interesting?

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Now, what is the fruit? That's the good works. So you already possess it within yourself to do them and the end of those good works,

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I've always found fascinating is everlasting life and so are you saved by works? Yeah, if you understand the work, if you understand that the works are positional and you will do them because God's got a shepherd over you who's gonna make you do them, then yeah,

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I mean, it's both all the time. I mean, the works are important. The Bible says we will stand in front of Jesus someday and answer for everything we did in this body, both good and evil as Christians, not for with regard to whether he had saved or not, we wouldn't even be at that one if we weren't already saved.

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That judgment is only for sheep but everything we do or say will be judged by Jesus unless we confess them in the way

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I understand scripture. If you confess them with sincere heart, it won't come up again. You agree with that Bill? I think so.

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Dave, you think that's about right? John, you think that's right?

56:56

What do you think Brother Raymond? I think that's probably right and if she's feeling better,

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I'm about there. Dave Senior, what do you guys think? You probably know.

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I think that's probably right but that's why we do want to use 1 John 1, 9.

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But are we gonna remember every sin we did or even know? We don't but that's why 1 John 1, 9 also says when we do confess the one we know about, he cleanses us from all the rest of them.

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He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Beautiful thing. So anyway, I think this is interesting.

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Here's the logic behind this. The fruit unto holiness is positional in its origin. You see, because it says you have it.

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It's passive. You have, God gave it to you. It's positional. The very fruit unto holiness, whatever that phrase means, that is positional in its origin.

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It is something you have, not something you do. Verse 23, for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God's eternal life through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. You agree that it's a gift, which means grace, which means it's free, which means you can't pay for it, which means you can't do anything to get it, right?

58:09

Wages of sin is it, but the gift of God is eternal life. Now look at this. If you have fruit unto holiness and the end of that is eternal life, but the eternal life's already been given to you, what does that guarantee you?

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You're going to do good works. Ephesians 2, 8, 9 says, you're saved by grace through faith, not of works, right?

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But what does verse 10 says? It says you are preordained unto good works.

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That's foreknowledge, predestination, position, passive. It's God working in your life to make that true.

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It's not experiential, but it becomes experiential. You do live it out in your life, but it's not because you do it, it's because you have it.

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Is that beautiful or what? That's a great lesson on experiential righteousness and what role it really plays in our life and where it comes from.

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It comes from God. Did not Jesus say without me, you can do what? Nothing, you can't do any good works without him doing it together with you.

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Logic, if eternal life is a gift, it is the end of something and that has to be the fruit of holiness.

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And if all that's true, then the thing which it is the end of must be a gift as well. So the very works you do, the good works are a gift or you wouldn't be doing them.

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They come from God. Oops, this is really all one slide. I'll just click a button.

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No, you're not breathing for I speak to them that know the law, how that the law has dominion over man as long as the man lives.

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And then this goes in and tells the truth that even under the law, if a woman's husband dies, she is now free to remarry.

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She's not bound by the law of the first husband because he's dead. So now she's dead to him, he's dead to her.

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She can remarry and it's not adultery. That's what that says. All of that. Verse four uses that as an allegory or an example to teach this.

01:00:06

Wherefore, no, we're just like that example up there. My brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ.

01:00:14

So when you were placed into Christ and he was crucified and buried, you became dead to the rules.

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So whether you keep or you don't keep the rules, you're dead to all that anyway. It's as if you're already in heaven. He sees you as glorified, right?

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It's like you're already in heaven. Like the rules aren't for you. They're for the lost people. And they were for you before you got saved, but they're not really for you now.

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And so it's like the husband has died that you were first married to, which was keeping the rules. And all of us raise our kids to keep rules only.

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But when they get saved and they become more mature in Christ, all of a sudden they're dead to that set of rules.

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And now they're under grace, which is a new husband, so to speak. That's what this is kind of pointing out. You should be married to another, even to him, which is raised from the dead.

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So now we're married to Jesus, not to Moses, right? We are freed from the law by the death of our old man, because we died in Christ.

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And now our new man is married to Jesus. So there is another reason we do good things and want to live for righteousness, because we're the bride of Christ, the righteous is our husband.

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That we should bring forth fruit in the God. So all of this said, all of that is true. And the fact that the old man is dead and no longer serves the law and the new man is married to Christ, all of that is true so that we can bring forth freedom to God.

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And all that stuff, God did. We didn't do any of that. He gave that to us. He married us.

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We didn't even desire him, did we? He was like the groom chasing the beautiful young girl that hadn't even noticed him yet.

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How many guys can relate to that, right? When we were young, yeah. Had to do a few flowers and candy and all kinds of cool stuff to get her to even notice that I exist.

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Well, the Lord chased us down and now we're married to him so we bring forth fruit.

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So the fruit then is a result of who we are. We are the bride of Christ.

01:02:12

So there's a couple of lessons. That's not quite done, but let's see. Okay. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin, which were by the law, didn't work in our members.

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That's in the old man. We just did sin naturally, right? And that brought forth fruit into death.

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But now, now that we're saved, now that God's done all these things to us, we are delivered from the law.

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That being dead wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

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So that's the modus operandi of the Christian is not keeping the law for the sake of trying to get saved by doing that, but being able to live right and do right because of who we are, what we have.

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We're married to Christ and we have his righteousness and we have his Holy Spirit. And we serve in the newness of the spirit, not by a list of rules.

01:03:05

Now I'm done and couldn't just stop right in the middle of that. But anyway, I hope that'll be a help to put together where experiential righteousness fits in with all the work that God's done and is doing in our lives today.

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We are doing good works for him and they're very important. But it kind of comes natural to the new man.

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And therefore Jesus gets all the glory for it. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you so much for your word.

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We thank you that your Holy Spirit is our teacher and that he being a wonderful teacher always brings forth old things we need to be reminded of and new things we never saw before.

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Thank you for that. It keeps us steady. And Lord, we love you. We ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship.

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Bless the meal we're about to have. Bless those who couldn't be with us today and raise them back up, Lord. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.