Colossians 3:22-4:6 - The Transformation of Men

Park Meadows Church

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So let's turn to Colossians chapter three and verse 22. We just finished verses 20 and 21 that talked about, it's funny because the whole topic changes here.

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But the previous topic was children obey your parents, which is right in the

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Lord. And then fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath. And we discussed that for a couple of Sundays.

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So now we're on Colossians chapter three, verse 22. Let me pray, see if I can clear up my anger with radical

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Islam. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for how it gives us light on everything that we need to know about you and about ourselves, about mankind, the heart of man, the heart of natural man, the new heart that you give your elect.

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And Lord, thank you for that. Thank you that we know you're in complete control of every single thing that happens.

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And it gives us courage. And Lord, we ask you to bless the study of your word. Amen. So let's start with this, another interesting topic.

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This is about slavery. Servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing

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God. So let me stop there and ask you, does it sound to you like that the Bible is against slavery?

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Or is it telling you how to be a good slave owner? What does it sound like? Let me read it again.

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Servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh. That means

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God's your real master, but your worldly master, obey your worldly master, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing

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God. And whatsoever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the

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Lord, you will receive the reward of the inheritance for you serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

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But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done and there is no respect of persons.

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Then Colossians chapter four, verse one speaks to the masters. Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

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So is God against slavery? Well, the answer is yes and no because there are different kinds of slavery.

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Now I've listed three and these are my own thoughts, but my thought is the first kind is slavery by military conquest.

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And that happened all over the world throughout all of human history still happens today, especially in Africa, blacks taking other blacks as slaves.

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That's how the slaves got here by the way. It was a military conquest in Africa where one tribe almost destroyed another and took all the women and children and the few men that were survived the fight and sold them to people in Europe and people in the

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United States. And many of those ended up being slaves here. So here's what's interesting about that.

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Throughout human history and biblical history, you've had slaves who are taken at the end of a war and God never said anything negative about that.

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And so that is acceptable and biblical, especially in Old Testament times.

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But what's interesting about this, this is a New Testament passage we're studying. So it was also acceptable in New Testament times.

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Secondly, if you owed a debt and you couldn't pay it off, you would become the slave of the person that you promised you would pay.

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And that is accepted by God as valid. And so it's even in the New Testament times.

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Now, we have to understand in the Western world, these things are illegal in Europe and in America, but in most, in probably all of the rest of the world, it's still legal.

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I don't know about India, I don't know about China. You would know about China, probably illegal there, but I don't know, but probably not in India, but I don't know,

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I could have researched it. But all I know is you got about 50 million slaves right now in the world, I did look that up.

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And so it's acceptable in a lot of the world. God does not condemn it.

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Now, the third kind, I would call it, I made the name up, I just call it commerce slavery.

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And this is what the South did prior to World War II. It was almost, it was worse than World War II.

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The Civil War, you can see I'm an expert at history. And I don't think that's ever been acceptable.

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There's nothing in the Bible that says God would bless that. In fact, God didn't bless it, and a lot of the trouble, racial trouble we have today is reaping what you sow.

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The white man is reaping what he sowed. Now, I understand the arguments, the people that come and say, well, we need to pay reparations.

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And then you say, well, yeah, but we didn't, we don't take slaves, neither did my parents or grandparents. And we're against that now.

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So no, we shouldn't have to do that. And that's a good argument. But then you have the biblical argument that if you go back far enough in our families, somebody might have owned a slave, though it's unlikely.

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Because if you think about it, if you really study the history of it, really only quite wealthy people owned slaves.

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Usually wealthy landowners who had plantations owned slaves because they could afford them. Not your average, like you got a guy that owns a mercantile store downtown, he didn't own slaves.

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The huge majority of white people never owned a slave in this country. But in the

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South, the big landowners did. Some of them were our founding fathers, including

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George Washington, I believe. But I mean, that was commerce slaves.

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Now, each of them will answer to God for why they thought that Jesus would support that or bless that.

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And they're gonna find out he didn't. And if they didn't confess it in their life on this earth, they will be confessing it in front of everybody in heaven.

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It says what you hide on this earth, if you don't confess it, it'll be shouted from the rooftop, Jesus said.

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You may well see George Washington standing before all of us someday, and Jesus says, okay, why'd you do that?

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And he won't be able to answer it correctly, so he'll be embarrassed in front of all of us. So make sure you confess your sins before you get to heaven.

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You don't want anything shouted from the housetop. But so there are different forms of slavery.

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It's interesting for Christians, modern Christians, to discover that the Bible supports two out of the three and says nothing's wrong with it as long as you do it right.

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And then it tells you how to do it right. It tells you how to be a slave correctly and how to be a master correctly.

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It shows that both the slave on the earth really is a servant of Jesus, not that human, but to treat the human as if he's serving

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Jesus. And then he will answer for that if he doesn't to Jesus. Isn't that interesting?

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And then he tells the master, if you don't treat them fairly and take care of them like your own family, you will answer to your master in heaven for that.

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And really, that's enough said about it. If you believe, if you fear God, that's all you needed.

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Now, how they're going to handle the commerce. What's interesting, when it started in Africa, it was acceptable.

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It was military conquest slavery. But the minute they sold those to Americans or Europeans who just wanted to make them pawns in their little money -making scheme,

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God, I don't think, is in that. I don't see any evidence. Do you, Ben, in the Bible that God supports that?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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So that solves the confusion here as far as why the Bible seems to support slavery.

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I don't believe it ever supported what happened here in the South. And God sent

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Abraham Lincoln to end it. I can't say that from a state's rights point of view,

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I agree with Lincoln. But at the same time, God, I tell you what's interesting about American history is because of that war,

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God and his sovereignty set this country up as a federal country. Because in my lifetime, the states don't really have the power.

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The federal government has always had the power. You look right now, the way our laws are written, President Trump hasn't broken any laws.

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The courts are upholding what he's doing, going into Chicago. Now, they'll try to slow it down because the liberals will go before the judge and say,

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I need you to stop this till you can look at this thing and see if this is okay. Judge looks at it for about a week and says, yeah, he can go in there.

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Going into Memphis, why? Because if the state, our constitution says if the states don't take care of the people of America and make it where they can live a life of joy and happiness and success and safety from crime and all that, then the federal government will step in and do it because the states aren't doing it.

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So there you have it. And Abraham Lincoln turned us pretty much into a centrally -led nation rather than state -led.

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Now, I know Republicans in the past, such as Reagan and the

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Bushes and even Trump and many Republicans today will always, if it's something they don't want to talk about, they'll say, well, that needs to go down to the states.

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Have you noticed that? Like when they really want to talk about abortion and they'll get someone like Ted Cruz. I don't know about Ted.

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He pretty much says what's good to say a lot of times. But a lot of them, if they say, well, do you think we should stop abortion?

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They'll say, well, I don't think the federal government should. It should go to the states. And that's exactly what President Trump has done. That's what they'll say.

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He passed it down to the states. That's where it should be. Well, that's fine and dandy until all of a sudden you don't like it when the state lets

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Antifa burn businesses and kill people. And then you go in and say, nah,

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I think this is not a state issue. You see the problem? So they're all hypocrites. They just, whatever they think's to their advantage, the politicians just do it.

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Interestingly enough, the competition, competition, what is wrong with my brain today? The Constitution has enough gray area where the courts will allow fudging on both sides.

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So what is the case? I'm not an authority. I mean, I have studied quite a bit of American history, but I'm not an authority.

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I haven't looked at it since I was 21 and I'm 71.

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So I'm no longer authority on it, but never was, but I was well -versed in it at one time.

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But if you really wanted to look and see, I really think as you read the Constitution, it really leans strongly towards the states having the most power.

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And the founding fathers wanted to push the power down to even the city level. They wanted it as close to the people as you could get it so that you'd have the furthest thing from a king that you could have.

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And with Lincoln, that ended and we became a strong central federal government.

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Well, we wouldn't have made it through World War II, World War I and II if we hadn't been. We wouldn't have.

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Think about it. You think you could get a bunch of state militias together and go attack Hitler? So it was

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God's will for it to move more in that direction and here we are. So now it has negatives too, right?

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But it's just like, we're not citizens of this world anyway, right? But we do want a free country for our kids to grow up in.

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And so we will, to the extent the Lord leads us, we would fight to keep that. To the extent that he says, run, we'll run.

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For example, if America ever decided it wasn't going to support Israel, I won't be living here.

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So, because I don't wanna be here when Dallas and Houston and Fort Hood get nuked. I wanna watch that on color

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TV from the Caribbean or somewhere. I don't know where. So you gotta think about all those things, both the prophecies in the

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Bible about where everything's headed, but now we seem to have some extra time added of peace and freedom perhaps under Donald Trump.

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I brag about him a little because me and my mother in Charlotte picked him first. And then some of the kids came along later, right?

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And not all of them came along at all, and that's okay. I don't mean my kids, but like, you know, in -laws, which we don't call them that, they're my kids too.

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And that's okay. Each person in America gets to choose how they vote. That's what freedom's all about.

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Now, we are done with slavery. So let's go to verse two in chapter four,

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Colossians 4 .2. Now you'll see that the topic changes again.

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Fortunately, I wouldn't wanna preach for like three Sundays on slavery, all right? So let's just see what we go into now.

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And I will sort of name them as we go. Colossians 4 .2, continue in prayer and watch in the same.

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What does that mean in that old English sounding stuff? Continue in prayer and watch in the same.

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Well, the same means in prayer. So while you're praying, now you will also be involved in spiritual warfare and you're gonna be watching for the enemy affecting your brothers and sisters.

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You're watching if brother Bobby has a heart attack and then decides to go car shopping the next day anyway.

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And now you have extra prayer for him because he's in trouble. He may not make it.

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His kidneys are failing in which your heart makes the kidneys work. It's all the blood pressure of your heart that makes kidneys work.

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But was that a message, brother

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John, a message? Okay, yeah, he's listening to Colossians, absolutely.

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Bring it on up if you want to. I'll tell you one thing. If we're gonna have prayer meeting,

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I'm picking Ron first every time. Isn't he something? Isn't he, he has a gift of many things, also speaking, but praying, when he prays,

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I feel like heaven has come down. Well, heaven has come down. It's just we don't recognize it until Ron prays and then we recognize it.

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Bless your heart. But anyway, so continuing prayer and watching the same.

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So while you're praying, look for the warfare that is raging around you because sometimes it seems invisible, but you can see it if you look.

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You're looking for brothers and sisters that are down. Maybe they're depressed.

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You're looking for brothers and sisters whose arms are hanging low like this. This is how

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I walk when I wake up every morning. Here's your call.

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Here's your Bible. Not necessarily in that order, but usually, usually it is in that order.

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And we're supposed to watch for that and lift up our brothers and sisters when they're down.

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The modern American church is terrible at these things. They think you'd go to church to hear a rah -rah music and a rah -rah speech and you go home.

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You don't take care of each other. But in a little church, we can. We know what's going on with each other.

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Now, we need to act though through prayer and watching, but it could lead to more while you're praying for each other and watching because it says continue in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving.

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The watching is spiritual warfare and thanksgiving is something that is always, always necessary in the prayer life of a

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Christian because when we are truly in thanksgiving, we are truly in the presence of God.

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Because when you're truly in his presence, you can't be anything other than thankful because you wouldn't be breathing, your heart wouldn't beat, you would be dirt without God.

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You can't do nothing without Jesus. And when you're in his presence, you don't need to worry about the spiritual warfare.

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You don't need to worry about what Hamas is doing. Are Hamas supporters at every university in this country except for the

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Christian ones? And even some misguided Christians now don't even understand about our stance with Israel.

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So you don't need to worry about that. If you're in God's presence, you're just thankful for your life and your family and your brothers and sisters, the greater family that you have, and even

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America, the greater family, some of them, right? Now, we wouldn't claim them all, would we, as family.

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But thanksgiving is so important. Every sin that's listed, about 21 of them in Romans chapter one, every one of them stem from being unthankful.

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So thanksgiving is the opposite of sinning. Thanksgiving is when you're in the presence of God and you know it.

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So you're praying for your brothers, you're watching for Satan attacking the weaker, like all of us have weaker times in our life and stronger times, would you agree with that?

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Spiritually, I mean. And so Satan, like a lion, they never attack the strongest in the herd.

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They get the babies, they get the ill, the crippled. They don't wanna fight, lions don't like to fight.

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They just like to devour. And that is a picture of Satan, and God made the lion so he could picture Satan with it on purpose.

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So you don't need to fear Satan, you need to stand against him. And you stand against him in prayer and watchfulness for your brothers and sisters, and being thankful that he that's in you is greater than he that's in the world.

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And then you move forward, just like David going toward the giant, not running from him.

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That's how you deal with Satan. And so this is about spiritual warfare.

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This is Paul exhorting the church how to live. In the midst of it.

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Verse three, with all praying also for us, meaning Paul and people with Paul.

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Now, who are these people? I know Paul is an apostle, but he also performed many offices because the apostles were gonna pass off the scene.

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There are no apostles today, despite what Pentecostals or anyone else tries to tell you. Read my new book. By the way, my book is finished and it's gonna get mailed to me to check in book form this week.

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I'll get a hardback and a softback copy to look at. And I'm gonna give the first copies to Katie and Ben because they helped proof the book.

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And if I have extras, who gets the hardback? Okay, you get volume one, she gets volume two of the hardback, and you get volume two, and you get volume one of the,

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I don't know how it works. They may send me more than, I don't know, they said four, but I don't know if that meant four of both volumes or that, because there's two, just two times two is four.

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I don't know. But here's the deal. If you want to understand the modern

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Pentecostal tongue speaking faith healing system, read my book. And it's not, listen,

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I cut out 200 pages of what I'd written on it so that I could get the book down to 1 ,020 pages.

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So I am gonna write a book on that topic that'll have all 400 pages on it because listen, if you know the history of it, it's nasty.

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Every founder of the modern tongues and faith, which didn't start till, what was it? I wrote, when

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I wrote the book, I knew the date, 1912 or something. Prior to that, it didn't exist.

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There's one guy named Cheryl who wrote a book to try to prove that it's always existed throughout the 2000 years.

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Every reputable church historian that I have read, and I've read a lots of them, they all say, this guy's a liar.

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This is not what, here's what actually happened. And if you go read it, you'll see. You can check me out on it. It didn't happen until 1912.

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And then in Britain and America, you had an uprising of what I call spurious tongues, not the biblical kind because that was languages.

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It wasn't gibberish. So read the book and get the history. There's enough in this, even though I cut a bunch of it out, there is enough things from scripture and church history and what our early church fathers, going back to 200 years after John lived, that long ago, the

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Apostle John, all the way up to guys like Whitefield, who was the father of the great

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American awakening, who was the most spiritual man in America. What he says about tongue speaking, he said doesn't exist anymore, not the real thing.

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And he tells why. But then I give you all the scripture. Where Paul said it would cease. And listen,

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I have talked to a lot of people about this. I got one sitting there by Charlotte that I didn't even talk to her.

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I just let my accountant show one day on a ship at a tradeway meeting.

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She was telling me her testimony and she mentioned, you don't mind me telling this, she mentioned, yeah, I've seen tongue speaking and stuff and I don't know what

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I did. I was trying to be nice and she just saw me go from to. And she noticed that somehow.

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We didn't even talk about it. But she started listening to little hints, I would say, at tradeway meetings around the country and she'd hear some of it on tape and she started studying it on her own.

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So I've had a handful of people, Ron's this way, although it wasn't me, I might have had something to do with it, but I think he had already changed her mind on the issue.

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But there've been a handful of people that I've shown scripture and church history and they've changed their minds.

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They've changed their mind and said, okay, I'm not gonna be part of that anymore. But if you read it, everybody that reads that book is not gonna change their mind and I admit that in the book.

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And I said, all I want you to do, a teacher is happy if all you do is try to prove me wrong and study.

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You study the Bible to try to prove me wrong. That's what I want you to do. And God will do the rest.

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So get into the Bible and there's a lot of stuff in this book about how to properly interpret scripture.

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The 10 rules of Bible interpretation are all throughout the book. And even a copy of it, or a way you can get a copy of it in the book.

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So it's gonna help a lot of people because if you use the right rules of Bible interpretation, you will not come up with some of the things that denominations teach that are untrue.

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And I left a denomination I grew up in, Charlotte and I left because we didn't believe some of the stuff that taught, and it was

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Southern Baptist. So it's okay when you're an adult to throw out the bad stuff your denomination taught you, and keep the good stuff, but throw out the stuff that's not true when you see that it's not true.

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Anyway, that's the deal. That is truly seeking truth, and that's what we all want to do.

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So who is this group? Was that a rabbit trail? Anyway, who is this group in verse three?

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Pray for us also, let me give you a hint, that God would open unto us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ for which

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I am also in bonds. Well, Paul wore many hats.

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He wasn't just an apostle. That's what got me on the rabbit trail. There's no apostles. The Pentecostals say they have apostles.

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Anyone that claims to be an apostle. I love what Brother Raj said about it. Y 'all know Brother Raj, right? My friend here in, of course,

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Canada. He's got two earned PhDs in theology. He had a man come up to him bragging that he was an apostle in a certain church in town, and Raj just looked at him, this is really funny when you know this, because he won't get aggressive unless the

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Holy Spirit just leads him to, which is seldom. But Raj looked at the man and said, wow, you look great.

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And the man looked at him and said, thank you, but why do you, he said, well, I've met few 2 ,000 year old people that look as good as you do, because if you're an apostle, you gotta be 2 ,000 years old, because you have to have walked with Jesus on the earth.

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That was the end of that discussion. Oh, so I defer to Raj.

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Raj and I ended up in a cowboy church near here that I had been invited there so they could whip me on the sovereignty of God thing.

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I didn't know I was set up for a trap, and Raj was with me. And so instead of being able to teach, they'd asked me to teach at a men's

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Bible study. And I had this great lesson on some subject that would have been very beneficial to him, and they just popped, the pastor had loaded the room with people that asked questions, the hardest questions for a

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Calvinist to answer. Well, if that's true, then we don't have any free will, right? You know, that kind of stuff.

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Just one after another popped like, what's that game you play where you hit the mole? What do you call it?

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I was whacking moles all night. Whacking moles, man. And Raj and I walking out in the darkness of night toward my car, just the two of us, and the rest of them were in there thinking they chewed me up, spit me out probably.

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And I said, Raj, I wish God had just chosen you to be the one to do this tonight.

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Oh no, Brother David, no, you were the perfect one. God chose you, you're the perfect one.

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You let him have it, it was awesome. It was so, he was so cute. Anyway, I love

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Raj. Okay, so Paul is wearing his hat of evangelist.

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Now, let me explain what an evangelist is because the modern meaning is incorrect. When we met Brother Rocky, who became my mentor, everybody said, well, he's an evangelist.

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He's coming into church, we're gonna have a revival meeting. That's not really the biblical gift of evangelism.

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An evangelist in the Bible language is a person who is gifted at soul winning. And you know what

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I mean by that? Like witnessing to people. Going out on the street, witnessing, maybe going into areas full of lost agnostics and atheists and even other religions and witnessing and telling them about Jesus.

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That's what an evangelist is. Rocky was not that. What he was was a revivalist.

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That's a man that goes into a church that's weak and just needs to be shown.

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So much scripture, it used to be two week long meetings they would have. In my lifetime, that was the typical, two weeks.

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And Rocky told me the whole first week was just preaching the word every night and at noon every day. And it's like tilling the soil because their hearts are so hard and they're so into the world that they just gotta till the soil and you gotta plow it.

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And he said the second week, God would come down and change hearts. So naturally, the church has moved it to where it was just one week after that.

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And then before Rocky passed away, come in Friday, I mean, come in Wednesday, Brother Rocky, and preach

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Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday morning, and then at church. So it was half a week. And then he died, which in God's will, it was a good thing because he would have gone broke because they just stopped having those kinds of people.

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Churches don't have them anymore much. Isn't that interesting? In the end times, we don't want revivalists because we don't want revival.

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And it's tough sitting here at Revivalist Preach. You're gonna think he made that sermon up just for you.

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He'd been in your house and watched you and that sermon is just for you. And the preachers feel that way too.

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That's why he didn't get, Rocky didn't get invited back to the church very often because he would nail the preachers in the church.

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Because he said to me privately, usually it's the pastor that's the problem. It's not the people. Anyway, this is

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Paul in his evangelistic mode of going out into the known Roman empire, the world of his day, and preaching the gospel with the friends that are with him and the people he had trained.

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And so he says, what I want you to do when you are praying and you're watching the spiritual warfare around your family and your church family, and you're being thankful to the

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Lord, I want you to think about me because I'm going out there. I love the way

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Charlie Kirk said it. He said, I go to college campuses so you don't have to.

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Because who would want that battle? You're dealing with just totally nutcase atheists and agnostics and pro -Hamas people that have been trained by the professors who claim to be smarter than their parents and convince them that their parents are idiots and then teach them communism.

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I am not exaggerating. You know how I know? When I went to Baylor, which was a

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Christian college supposedly in 1972, they were already doing it. I sat in a theology class taught by a

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Baylor PhD in theology that taught that all of the miracles in the

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Bible could explain by natural phenomenon. And he said, the

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Red Sea is only three feet deep. That's how the Jews made it through. This was Baylor University in 1972.

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Now you look how far we've come from that to now they don't even talk about Israel. They're talking about Hamas as the ones we should support.

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Wow, I don't know how we're still here really as a nation, except by God's will. It's the only way.

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Maybe the Christians are salt and light enough still. Maybe the Christian schools like the one we have here are putting out enough

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Americans who are maybe the ones like Trump hires. What's that amazing young woman that's his spokesperson with the media?

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What's her name? Yeah, Levitt. Have you ever seen a thing like that in your life?

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She don't give him a chance to talk. They don't have time to ask questions because he just lays out the facts.

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Here they are, and they're just quiet. I've never seen anything like it. Even President Trump said her lips are moving a thousand miles per hour.

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It is amazing the people God has brought into the government right this minute. It's a once in a century thing,

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I think. I certainly, in my lifetime, I'm almost a century old. So now

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I'm closer to a century old than I am to Maddie's age, as a matter of fact.

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So you got to spiritual warfare, and then in your prayer, you want to think about the evangelists.

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Think about the people like Charlie Kirk who are going out into your world doing stuff. You don't have to take the danger to do it.

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He's doing it for us, and we should support people like that monetarily. Paul teaches that.

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He said, look, I'm going out to do this stuff. You need the people like me that are going out.

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Give your money because then God counts you as if you're part of this ministry. I heard

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Rocky say that a million times. He said, look, you're not gonna go where I'm gonna go, but if you give a good love offering,

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God's gonna count it as if you were with me. So get a return in heaven, and man, he raised enough money to drive a brand new

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Cadillac all the time. He's Jewish, so he had to do that. Not that I'm anti -Semitic.

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I think it's cool, so I drive a Porsche. Now, pray for us that God would open a door of utterance.

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What does that tell us? The lost people around us, in Corsicana and around the world, are a closed door.

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They have been blinded. They cannot see. They cannot hear.

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They are dead. They're walking dead men and women. Some of them look good.

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They may be whited sepulchers, but on the inside are full of dead men's bones, and that's who you're witnessing to, or if you're sending someone who has the gift of evangelism, you're helping them.

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That's who they have to confront. They are talking to people that can't hear a word they're saying unless God opens a door of utterance to allow them to speak so plainly that they begin to hear it, and he has to open their ears.

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We know that from other scriptures. The one that Charlotte showed me a while back, that great one talks about speaking to them meekly.

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You know, if God perchance would help them see the truth, right, preadventure,

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God would let them see the truth. So God, he has to send the Holy Spirit to open their eyes.

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They're not gonna see it. He's got to send the Holy Spirit to open their ears, or they won't hear it, but the speaker has to have good words too, the right words of utterance despite all of it because he doesn't know who he's talking to.

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Am I talking to a lost sheep, a saved sheep, or a goat? It's never gonna be saved. Doesn't matter.

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I have to speak plain, clear truth, and that's all I'm here to do, and if you support people like that, you're part of their ministry.

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The Bible teaches that elsewhere. Don't have time to go out and look that up, but it's there, and then we need to certainly be supporting them with our prayer lives to pray for these people that are out there witnessing to people that we wouldn't have the right, we would find it very difficult to talk to people like some of these people.

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They are so well -schooled on the communist viewpoint and the antichrist viewpoint that they're difficult to debate.

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I listen to some of these debates. I mean, Ben and Matt and, you know, Dave will listen to these things, and they think it's fun.

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I'm sitting there thinking, man, I'm not quick enough to deal with these people anymore. I can't handle this.

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I'm glad that young person on that YouTube thing's nailing them, because boy, is he nailing her or she. You know, it's amazing who

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God's raised up nowadays to do this for the church, but we need to support these people with our prayer.

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Don't just watch a YouTube like that, by the way, without praying for that person. Pray for that person.

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It's a real person. We know that now after the Charlie Kirk murder, we know all of a sudden we're, hey, this is not just YouTube.

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This is spiritual warfare in its highest form. So pray for us,

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Paul says, that God would open unto us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ. What is the mystery of Christ?

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Come on, church. You've learned so much, you've forgotten more than most people know. What is it?

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In the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The mystery, even though it's worded in slightly different ways in different passages in the

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New Testament, it all comes back and is boiled down to the promise that Jesus said, when

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I go, it's better for you that I go, because when I go, I'm going to send the comforter and he's going to, he has been with you, but he shall be in you.

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That's the mystery. The Jews looked into that. All the Old Testament couldn't see it. It was dark.

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They didn't know what was going on. They knew about it a little bit, but they could not figure it out. And until God sent the apostle

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Paul, even Jesus talked about it, but they didn't figure it out. And then when the apostle Paul was sent, he wrote about it and explained it.

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And that's where we know how it works now, the indwelling and the filling of the Holy Spirit. So this, the mystery that Paul needed to speak, it was certainly a mystery to the

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Jews. And he always went to the Jew first and then the Gentile. And it was Christ in us, the hope of glory.

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The hope of glory. Christ in us is our hope of glory. We can't do it on our own. You've got to receive

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Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior by faith. And then he indwells you.

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Then he helps to start sanctifying you. And you have any hope of glory at all is because of that process.

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And that was the process Paul was preaching about and teaching people about in the first century. So pray for me that I could explain that well,

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Paul says, for which I'm also in bonds. What does that mean? Now he's still talking. Now he changed back to the original subject of slavery, doesn't he?

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Who is his master? Jesus Christ. He's a bond servant, which means he wants to be the servant.

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He's chosen of his own free will to be the servant of Jesus for the rest of his life.

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And so he has to speak. So pray that I speak well. Verse four, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak.

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I need to speak so that to the listener, I make this difficult information seem simple.

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I make this amazing plan God had from the beginning before the beginning of the world to be something they can grasp and hold onto and believe in.

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Make it manifest. The Greek word for manifest means to make it where you can see it. To take something that's spiritual and make it where it has flesh on it.

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You can see it. So imagine Paul saying, Lord, when I speak the gospel, help the people see

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Jesus. Help them see him on the cross. Help them see him in the grave. Help them see him rise from that grave and ascend into heaven.

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And help them see him in their heart walking every day. Make these things clear as I speak,

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Paul says. And we're supposed to pray that the people that are out doing this and we ourselves should be doing it also.

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So we pray for each other to speak well when it comes up at Christmas time or whenever you're with your family or friends and you hear non -truth, you're gonna just sit there and let the non -truth, it's okay sometime, just let it go if it's just you and that non -truth person.

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But if there's young people over there listening to that idiot, then you need to straighten him out and embarrass him in front of those kids.

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So you need to be ready. Or they may not be kids. At tradeway meetings, they're just sheep that may not know a whole lot about the

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Bible. And here's this guy spouting out this stuff about how he's been a prophet and he's seen this. And then I'll just step over there and say, excuse me,

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Paul said that stuff ceased. So I don't think it's the Holy Spirit. What do you think the source of that is? And he'll walk off mad.

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I've had it happen. Take off, won't even say a word, just walk off mad. And I look at the young people and say, wonder why he's angry at me.

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And then I'll walk off happy. So this, we have to pray for each other to say the right words at the right time.

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He wants to speak as he should speak. He wants to walk in wisdom toward them that are without.

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That means the lost people in the community. So those of you who are business people or school teachers or whatever you are in your walk of life, you are out there working with people that most of which are lost as a goose.

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They may be very nice, but they're lost as a goose. And Paul said to pray for each other that we would have the wisdom to walk in front of these people where they see us as wise.

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Well, I'll tell you one trick. If you will read the Bible a lot, you will be wiser than them.

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I've heard my wife say that to her children when they weren't grown yet. Honey, if you'll just read the

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Bible every day and you just study that Bible, you're gonna be wiser than your teacher someday. Don't let

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Paul Davis hear that. She didn't say wiser than your administrator though.

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Just your teachers. So walk in wisdom toward them that are without, lost people.

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Redeeming the time, what does that mean? What does to redeem mean? To set free by paying a price. What does that mean?

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You gotta give up stuff to make time for the good stuff, which is usually reading. Watching less TV, reading more books.

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I've heard it said that wealthy people have a huge library and a tiny television set and poor people have a huge television set and a tiny library.

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Don't know what chapter and verse that is, but I heard a cool old preacher say it once and I've been saying it ever since.

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All right, so walk in wisdom toward them that are without redeeming the time because you can't be wise if you don't redeem the time and spend time in the

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Word and in reading other good books. But be careful what books you read. I'm gonna tell you something, those theologians will feed you a false premise and you'll be kind of wondering if he's telling you the truth or not.

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Did you know when I was Ben's age, a little younger than Ben, I was

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Noah's age, Rocky Freeman wouldn't let me buy books and read them. He said, you may read books out of my library.

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And he would hand me five books or three books. Why? Because he said the liberals will suck you in there and destroy your faith if you sit under them.

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That includes books too. So be careful with YouTube stuff you young men are listening to. Be careful with books you're reading.

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Usually if men wrote it, there's gonna be some fallacies in their argument. Look for the fallacies.

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Always look at it with a critical eye first. And then talk to me, your old man.

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Talk to me and see what I think about it. There's nothing wrong with that. I won't always agree with you.

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You won't always agree with me, but I'll give you my opinion after 45 years in the ministry, agreeing in the word, and hanging out with some pretty smart people like Rocky and Otis and others.

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All right, so walk in wisdom toward them without redeeming the time.

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Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man when they ask you why you believe how you believe.

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So that's kind of where this thought line stops. So we'll stop there today. But boy, is there some good stuff for how to walk as a

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Christian, right? In that little passage from verse one to verse six. Let's stand and pray and we'll be dismissed.

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Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your Holy Spirit who helps us to interpret it properly.

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Thank you for our forefathers, men and women for 2000 years who have written things about these passages that we can look and see if we agree or disagree with them.

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And thank you for the godly people that we find areas where we know we can agree with them so that we know we didn't make this stuff up.

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And Lord, you have had your people in every generation. Thank you so much for that.

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And Lord, we just ask you to help us be the salt and light in our generation. Bless the food we're about to have and the fellowship in Jesus name, amen.