Mar. 18, 2018 AM An Acceptable Offering by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Mar. 18, 2018 AM: An Acceptable Offering Rom. 15:14-16 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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to what Joseph just read to you from Romans 12 to Romans 15 and our text this morning will be verses 14 through 16 in Romans 15.
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The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome 2 ,000 years ago, the church in Sunnyvale today, these words,
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I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of holiness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.
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But on some points I've written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God, to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the
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Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the
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Holy Spirit. May God bless us today as we hear His Word. Now I want you for a moment to think of a sport.
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You don't have to call it out, just think of a sport. It has to be a team sport, but doesn't have to be a sport that you know anything about, that you even like.
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Just think of a team sport. It could be soccer, football, lacrosse, curling.
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Think of a team sport. Got it? Now think of yourself as the coach of the players in that sport.
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You have a bunch of players who've come to you to be coached in how to play that sport, to be competitive in that league, wherever that sport is played, and you are the coach.
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And you've been working with this team. It could have been all amateurs who knew nothing about it when they started with you.
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They could be people who had some instruction, now they've come to you as a team, and you've been working with them, coaching them, training them, correcting them, all the things that a coach would do.
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And now they are gathered around you in the locker room, this team that you've been working with, and they're ready to go out to their first game ever.
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Or maybe they've been playing games under your coaching, and now they're gonna play for the championship. Whatever the case is, it's whatever sport you thought of, you're the coach, and the team's ready to play, and they're gathered around you, to hear what you have to say before they take the field.
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What are you going to say to them? Would you say, well
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I've been working with you for all these months, now you're ready to take the field, I'm sure that you're going to fall flat on your faces, because you never were much of a team, and neither any of you are any kind of players.
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Not one of you really knows what you're doing, and I have no confidence at all that you can do anything but embarrass me when you go out there, and probably just humiliate yourselves.
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You're gonna look more like the Keystone Cops than players of curling, or soccer, or football, or baseball, or whatever sport you put in your mind.
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I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands, but how many would actually tell that to a team that you've worked with?
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How many would say that that's the motivation speech I'm going to give before they take the field and go and face their opponent?
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Well, of course, no one would do that any more than when we raise our children, and we're ready for them to go out on their own, and we've given them the
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Word of God, and we've taught them the way they should go, and we've given them the disciplines and all the things that they should have as they step into adulthood.
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We would not sit them down at the table and say, well Johnny, or Lucy, I've been working with you for these 18 years, we've loved you as a child, but you know you're really kind of, you're not really with it, and I don't think you can do very well in the world out there, so you better get married quick and get somebody to take care of you.
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Nobody would say that, nor does the Apostle Paul say that as he closes up this letter in Romans.
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For all these chapters he's been coaching the church, if you will, coaching us along, teaching us about God, teaching us about the righteousness of God in the gospel of his
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Son Jesus Christ, what his sacrifice means, what it is to come to him by faith, and the implications of all this theology, all these doctrines beginning there in chapter 12 where Joseph read to you.
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He's quite a bit more optimistic than what I made up just a moment ago. We wouldn't say that to a team, we wouldn't say that to our children, nor does the
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Apostle, and therefore nor does God speak that way to the church. It's a lot more optimistic.
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Far from saying that we're by any stretch of the imagination good and in and of ourselves, far from saying that by any natural inclination are we able to do or even want to do what is good.
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He gives all the credit to the Triune God, to the Father who by his predestiny will determine that we should be justified by faith, to the
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Son who by his death on the cross resolved our sin before God and by his resurrection made our justification possible, even secure, to the
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Holy Spirit whose indwelling ministry secures these truths and guides us in them as we live in obedience to him and rely exclusively on him and his power.
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Having reminded the Romans 2 ,000 years ago and us today in this magisterial epistle, he sends us into the fray not by telling us how incapable we are.
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He's already made that point, he's already told us without God we can do no good thing, we could do nothing at all, we know that, that's what all that theology taught us, but now he sends us into the fray and he's full of confidence in our eventual success.
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Full of confidence in our eventual success, it doesn't, it bears repeating, not because we have anything we can do that we know how to do right, but because God working in us, because God by his
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Spirit is guiding us along, because God has called us together, his confidence in God, when we think of our abilities and what we do, what we do for God, what we do for each other in the name of God, evangelizing a dark and unsaved world out there in Christ's name,
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I mean we immediately want to think something like, you know, we're just crummy people, we're just filled with filth, we're unable to stand before God, we're depraved, we're black hearted and so forth, and I would reply to a thought like that, that that's simply not the
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Apostles and therefore not God's viewpoint. That's not God's viewpoint.
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Paul's perspective does not make light of sin, he doesn't make much of man, so nor does, nor do we.
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His outlook places no confidence in the flesh and so neither does ours, but he says here essentially that he knows that they are truly converted, that he knows that God has begun a work in them, that he,
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God, will finish, and that they, or we, can, in submission to his power and by the in -working of his indwellings
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Holy Spirit, we can do it. We have to go out there and accomplish the things that God would have us to accomplish.
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This is Paul's certainty, this is what he's confident in. He is certain that they have acquired the body of knowledge that they need to instruct each other and by God's grace are able to wield that resource competently, and he is confident that they will do so, and not just they.
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This letter was written to the church, the church then and the church now. So I introduce this this way to make sure that we understand that as I preach this and I tell us that Paul is confident in us that we're not putting confidence in the flesh, that we're not saying we can do it, that we're not divorced from God, this is all in submission to God and by the working of his
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Holy Spirit and by obedience to his scripture, and he gets all the credit, he gets all the glory, and understanding all of that, which is the whole of the first twelve chapters of this book, understanding all that,
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Paul says what? I'm confident in you, that you can go out and now with this competency, with this training, with this coaching, do it.
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Far from saying that you're gonna go out like a bunch of keystone cops and fall on your face and make fools of yourself, which is ridiculous, that's an overstatement of anything anyone would ever do.
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Far from that. Confidence. I want to go through these verses in order with us this morning.
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15, 14 through 16 in Romans, and the first of course is verse 14.
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I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.
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Note the strength of this word satisfied. In some translations it is persuaded.
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I myself am persuaded. It's more than I think you might possibly be able to keep from tripping over your own feet.
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It's more than that. It's more than I think that if, you know, in a gazillion years of effort you might stumble onto something good.
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He's saying I'm sure, I'm persuaded. This word was used in Romans 8 38.
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For I am sure, same word, confident. I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. In Philippians, what
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I alluded to earlier. And I am sure of this, that He, that's
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God, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
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So it's not just the Apostle saying I think there's a possibility that you might be able to not do everything wrongly.
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He is on the very positive side of things. And he's saying he is persuaded.
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He is satisfied. He is as confident that the church under this instruction and submission to his spirit and following the
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Word of God, he is as sure that the church can instruct one another, can bring one another into the image of Christ as we edify and encourage one another and follow all these other instructions.
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He's as sure of that as he is that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. He's as sure of what he says in Romans 15 14 as he is sure that God who began the work in us will bring it to completion.
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That's how confident he is. Is there confidence in you and me and anything we have in ourselves?
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Of course not. It's all about the working of God in and among and through and with us.
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And because of that, he can say to us, us humans, us fumbling, stumbling, constantly tripping over our own feet, saints, that he is confident that we are able to follow everything he's shown us in this book.
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He says we are full of goodness. Full means complete. Full means equipped.
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It means that the matter has been concluded. The matter is resolved. We are full of this.
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We'll talk about what we're full of in a moment. But I want to emphasize something else that's right there in the language for us.
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He says I myself. I, me. It's a doubling of it.
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There's two different words in the original language. He's saying I myself about you, yourselves.
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You see where the responsibility is? Paul, the inspired apostle, the author of this book of Romans, he himself about us, ourselves.
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Great responsibility here. There's a great confidence he has here in himself about us.
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Was he confident? We can go back to Jesus' words about taking up our cross daily.
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We could say that the apostle Paul would look at that and say, yes, I am confident. I myself am confident in you, yourselves, that you will, that you can, that you desire to take up your cross daily and bear it.
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That's the human side of the equation. He himself satisfied in them, themselves.
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He himself in us, ourselves, today. He's writing to you, Christian. To you,
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Frank. To you, Janice. To all of you that are full of what he says you are equipped with here.
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You're full of goodness and knowledge. You are therefore able to instruct.
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He's writing to you. If you have the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, if your faith is in him, if you are one he addresses in so many of his letters where he says to the saints at this place, if you're one of those saints, he's writing to you.
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He even says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers. And that's the generic word. That's my brothers, my sisters, that's my church, he writes to.
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You're full of goodness. We who are very careful to be humble, which we should be, we who are very careful to make sure
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God gets all the credit, all the glory for anything, which we must be, can be a little chagrined by what he says here when he says,
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I myself am satisfied about you, yourselves, that you are full of goodness. Full of goodness.
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Is he giving us an entrance into pride, into some hubris, into pumping ourselves up, lifting ourselves up above anything that we should be?
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Of course not. But he does say, be not embarrassed by this, he does say you are full of goodness.
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Goodness here means moral excellence. Don't be chagrined because it's
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Jesus Christ who gives us this quality by his Spirit. And anytime we choose goodness over badness, it's because of him.
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We know that. We understand that. And yet the apostle says, I myself am confident in you, yourselves, that you are full of moral excellence.
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Where did this moral excellence come to you from? Not by birth. Not by coming into this world naturally, because we're born into this world naturally full of sin, inheriting from Adam what he did against God in the garden.
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He's speaking to those who've been remade by God and his Spirit, whose souls have been regenerated.
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It's Christ who gives us this quality. But this is what we're full of. And we can't walk away from this any more than we walk away from those scriptures that criticize us a bit more soundly.
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We're full of positive and godly moral quality that's characterized by a godly and positive interest in others, mainly in each other.
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He does not say we have it as fully as God does. That would border on blasphemy. He says we're full of goodness to the extent necessary to do what he says here, to instruct one another.
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Full of knowledge, of which we're equally full and complete of knowledge as much as we are this moral goodness.
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It's the body of knowledge that came to us from God in his scriptures. And as Paul has explicated it to us in these first 12, 13, 14 chapters of Romans, as we've understood it and will never fully understand it, you could read this book of Romans every month of your life and never fully understand it.
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But by reading it, by understanding it, by listening to it, by studying it, you are full of that knowledge.
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And not just Romans, the whole scripture. He says you're full of knowledge. Not worldly vain philosophies, not self -help silliness, but the
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Word of God working by the sheer goodness of that Word and the power of his Spirit behind it.
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He's saying that he's confident in your moral excellence because that body of knowledge which gives us the parameters of that excellence is something that you are full of, that you have it available to you, that you've understood what he said in this book of Romans.
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And as we go through the Romans, remember how often we've gone back to the Old Testament, how many quotes of the Old Testament there were.
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So it's the whole scripture that gives us this body of knowledge that the Apostle Paul says he is fully confident, as confident as he is that we can never be separated from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus, he's that confident that you have the knowledge needed to instruct one another, to carry out this interest in each other's good that the
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Apostle would have the church exhibit. For the weapons of our warfare, he says to the
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Corinthians, are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
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That's the scripture. That's the scripture imbued with power by the Holy Spirit who gives us this scripture.
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It's not us, and yet Paul says of you yourself, he's confident that you have this knowledge.
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And so we are in the Apostles confident and inspired estimate what? We're fully equipped and able to do this task, able to take this interest in each other, able to build each other up into the image of Christ, able to instruct one another.
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Not just the pastor or in some churches as we learned this morning, the teaching elder. Not just the one who stands before you at Sunday school.
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You who are in Christ Jesus, you whose meditation is in the Word of the Lord. You yourself are able, and Paul is confident that you're able, to be this ministry of instruction to others.
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Now some of us would look and say, well I didn't go to this school, I didn't study this book, and I don't know this language.
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And I think the Apostle would look at you and say, I myself don't care about that in you yourself, because I myself did not tell you yourself that you need to have gone here, studied this, know this language in order to carry out what
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I'm saying. He says you yourself. I very much admonish us, all of us, not to hide behind a cloak of humility and say therefore
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I'm unable because the Apostle Paul's confidence is of extreme importance here.
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And he could hardly state it more strongly. It's more than a coach's pep talk. With the
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Apostle's confidence should come two determined results in us. First, let his confidence in us be ours.
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Let his confidence in us be our confidence. Second, let us not think that this mutual upbuilding is optional, or that we can hide away like a wallflower that says
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I'd love to be a part of the ongoing of mutual edification, but I'm just a broken sinner. I'm black hearted. I'm unworthy to even open my mouth, because that is at best a false humility.
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At worst, it's a denial of God's Word in Romans 15, 14. The second thing we have in verse 15,
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But on some points I've written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God.
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See Rome had its problems. Any church has its problems. All churches do. What they seemed to need though was not a crash course.
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They weren't being sent to a remedial school. Paul is not castigating them for some catastrophic failure or some dangerous direction that they've taken.
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He's giving them a reminder. Let's stay with the sports analogy. Now last
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Super Bowl I was very very happy to see the Patriots lose as they did. And I thought they were gonna lose the year before when at halftime what were they down?
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Was it 28 to 3? Yeah it was 28 to 3. Do you think that the coach called them in and said what a bunch of dunderheads.
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Can't you do anything right? My goodness how many blocks are you gonna miss over there? No. I'm sure what he said was let's get back to the game plan.
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Let's get back to Romans 1. Let's remember how sinful man is. Let's remember what God has done for man and his sin in Jesus Christ.
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Let's get back to the basics. He's reminding.
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He's just getting the church back on track a little bit. It's an incremental approach. Reminders are sort of back to the basics.
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It's sometimes said in a proverbial way that if you practice something an hour a day for a year, at the end of the year you'll be among the 10 % best in the world at that thing.
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Great golfers practice what? They just practice keeping their swing straight. Tom Brady he still works on the core skills of a quarterback.
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Cocking his arm back at the right way and flipping his wrist to get the right spiral on the ball. Things you think this guy has been doing this for all these years and he's one of the two or three best ever.
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I hate to admit it but he is. And what does he work on? Reminders on the basics.
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On just doing the things that get you to that level. So Paul reminds.
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He reminds the church about things that are basic like what? Weeping and rejoicing together in our fellowship that we have together.
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In relating to one another. In feeling each other's pain as we might say it. This is a basic thing.
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This is like the footwork of a quarterback or the swing of a golfer. Things like not thinking too highly of ourselves or more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.
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Being humble with each other. Basics like how there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. Basics like how we who are strong need to stay with those who are weak because Christ died for all of us.
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Basics like that. That Jesus Christ shed his blood for all the believers who really truly believe.
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Whatever our differences are on some matters. The basics. A reminder to look at that brother.
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To look at that sister as covered in Christ's atoning sacrifice. And we ought to be bold and confident in the
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Lord. When we tell others about the gospel we're speaking words of life. Jesus said when the spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all truth for he will not speak on his own authority but whatever he hears he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
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So we have every reason to be confident. To be bold for our Lord. But again
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Paul doesn't say you need a crash course. You need to go to continuation school.
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Just need reminders. When I was in high school I was pretty good in math.
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Not exceptionally like gifted good but above average. And one day while I was sitting at the table minding my own business and having lunch a girl was sitting at the other end of the table from me and she opened her book and then she just started crying.
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And I finally worked up the courage to ask what was wrong and it was geometry. She couldn't get her geometry.
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She was gonna flunk another test. She wasn't gonna be allowed to even take the midterm. And I said what's the problem there?
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And she says well I'm just stupid. I said well if you are in fact stupid you can't do geometry.
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I said well probably what happened is you just missed something along the ways. You misunderstood how a theorem works or how a postulate works or how you use the givens and this angle equals this and this line is related to the angle this way.
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Those things. You just missed a step here along the way. That turned out to be true. It didn't take very long as I looked through the book and I was looking at the problem she did say okay here's what you missed.
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And when I pointed it out to her and I showed her how to get back on track she goes oh I remember that now.
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So what she needed was a reminder and that's what the Apostle Paul gives the church here. Now he says he's written this reminder but he's been bold on some points and boldness is good.
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But he says here something about his boldness that we need to remember. He says
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I've written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given me by God.
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So boldness is good but let grace never be absent from our boldness. What was
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Jesus full of? He was full of grace and truth. By his grace he spoke the truth in a way that met the moment.
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That was appropriate for the person. By grace we are to be bold like him. Truthful never condescending.
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Ready to listen as much as we want to be heard. By grace truth is given gentle wings to settle slowly or sharpened arrows to pierce defenses.
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But God's grace is that which disciplines our boldness. Some of us err on one side or the other.
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We err on grace because we think if by grace we gentlify the truth sometimes we do that to the point that it doesn't get through.
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And others of us are just bold and forget to be gracious. And Paul says he's written boldly by way of reminder by the grace of God.
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Let grace never be absent from our boldness. And third there's verse 16.
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Paul was called to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the
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Gentiles may be acceptable sanctified by the Holy Spirit. His language is very striking.
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Paul's a minister and the word used here is of someone involved in the priestly service of God like the priests who prepared the sacrifices or attended to the tabernacle.
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Remember Zechariah John the Baptist father in Luke's gospel? Zechariah was such a priest.
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He was that kind of a minister. And Paul's saying he is that. He is a minister, a priestly worker for Christ Jesus.
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And he calls his work the priestly service of the gospel of God. And priestly service comes from a word that is related to temple.
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And it has temple sort of embedded in it. What he's saying is that his service to God in the gospel of Christ is like the temple service the
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Levites once performed in ancient Israel. That the offering of the
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Gentiles may be acceptable. Accommodators take this a couple of ways. Some say that the offering of the
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Gentiles is their worship, is what it says in Hebrews, a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that acknowledge
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Jesus' name. Others take it, and this is the way I think of it, that the acceptable offering that Paul speaks of is the
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Gentiles themselves. That Paul in his priestly work presents the Gentiles the way the priests did the sacrifices to God.
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Paul acts like the priest of old. He prepared the offering in accordance with every jot and tittle required by God.
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In days gone by the animal had to be killed in just this way. Then its meat had to be handled in a certain way, all specified right down to the fatty lobe on the liver.
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Birds had to be split but not cut. The meat had to be eaten by this time by the persons in this place.
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There's a point where Moses had a very serious issue with Aaron over this law.
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Leviticus chapter 10. I'll read to you 10, 16 through 20. Now Moses was diligently, excuse me, now
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Moses diligently inquired about the goat of the sin offering, and behold it was burned up. And he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the surviving sons of Aaron, saying, why have you not eaten the sin offering in the place of the sanctuary since it is a thing most holy and has been given to you that you may bear the iniquity of the congregation to make atonement for them before the
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Lord? Why did you not eat the meat that was specified for you to eat in the place that is specified for you to eat the meat at the time and that place that was specified?
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And Moses was angry. He says, behold its blood was not brought into the inner part of the sanctuary.
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You certainly ought to have eaten it in the sanctuary as I commanded. And Aaron said to Moses, behold, today they have offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the
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Lord, and yet such things as these have happened to me. If I had eaten the sin offering today, would the
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Lord have approved? And Moses heard that. He approved. I don't want to take apart the details and what the procedures were and what it was they did wrong and what they should have done and why
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Moses stopped being angry. That would take an entire lecture or sermon in itself. The point being that for an offering to be acceptable to God, it had to be done exactly the right way.
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Every jot and tittle. This happened just after Aaron's sons
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Nadab and Abihu were killed before the Lord for bringing fire in at the wrong time and with the wrong heart.
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And this was just after that. But this is the care that must be taken in order for things to be acceptable to God.
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Paul speaks of a priestly service so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, and this is exactly the kind of thing he has in mind here.
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This came right after Aaron's two sons, as I said, were killed for not following the procedures just so.
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What do we learn from this? That Paul says he as a priest of the gospel of God, the gospel of God and Christ Jesus, has prepared this offering of the
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Gentiles and that easily expands this offering of the church. All the converts, be they
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Jew or Gentile, it makes no difference. This offering is now by his priestly service acceptable to God.
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Look back on how concerned Moses was that everything wasn't done in accordance with God's command and therefore would not be acceptable to him.
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And Paul says he's done this in a priestly way so it is completely acceptable to God. What do we learn from this?
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Why is it acceptable to God? Because it's done in the gospel of God in Christ Jesus. So everything about the
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Scripture, everything about life, everything about history, everything about eternity comes to its conclusion.
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It comes together in one, in Christ Jesus. All the temple offerings, the incense, the firstfruits, the showbread, the golden lampstand, the holy place, the sacrifices, all of this is yes and amen in Christ Jesus.
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The ministry of the gospel is a priestly one because in the gospel all the types, all the precursors, all the symbols of old have fulfillment in the person and the work of our
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Lord Jesus. And that's why Paul by being a priest and serving
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God in the gospel of his son and by the gospel sanctified by the
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Spirit, those who are converted to Christ Jesus are therefore acceptable to God.
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If he lifted up and placed before him and as he had the 70 elders back in Exodus eating before him and he did not lay his hand on them so with this offering.
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If it's faith in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ sanctified by his Spirit. When you come to Christ you become this offering to God.
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When you come to Christ you are this offering to God and you're sanctified by his Spirit because his Spirit is the one who brought you to Christ in the first place.
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His Spirit is the one who gave you the new heart, who regenerated your soul, who washed you, who sanctified you, who remade you.
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As the Apostle says, behold all things are new. If someone is in Christ Jesus he's a new creation.
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New creation by what? By the working of the Holy Spirit. This is why when you come to Christ and you're this offering to God you are acceptable to him, to God Almighty in a way that the blood of bulls and goats could never have done.
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Like the Old Testament offerings were only acceptable if we are prepared and presented in exactly the right way.
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Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's sons, among the first of the designated priests died before the
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Lord because they didn't follow protocol exactly. You know there's a tradition that when the high priest went into the holy place for the annual offering, the
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Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur as we call it, that they would tie a cord to his leg because if he did anything wrong the
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Lord would kill him. He would be killed before the Lord and they wouldn't want to go in there and do anything wrong before the
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Lord and die themselves so they tie a cord so they could drag him out. I've actually never known if that's really true, if that's somewhat apocryphal, but it makes a point that you don't just walk into the presence of the
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Lord. You don't just stroll in there. You have to be acceptable to him all the old ways, all the fear that might have led to that that that proverb about the cord being tied to the foot of the high priest when he went in.
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All this is taken away because it's satisfied and it's completed by the gospel of God in his son.
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All those types and figures, each one important, each one crucial, but all fulfilled by and in him, in Jesus.
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And this is why I think this is why the laws of the offerings were so detailed and so severely enforced.
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There were more than just procedures developed by an OCD deity. They weren't just rules for rules sake.
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They meant so much more than just that because they pointed to Jesus. They told in advance of his sacrifice on the cross.
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Everything in the temple worship said something about him, about Christ. That's why violators of procedures died, because they were impugning
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God's beloved son. They were making light of his coming sacrifice. That sacrifice by which he would make this offering to God of us, we whose faith is in Jesus Christ, make it acceptable.
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And that's why in the day, in Moses's day and up to the time of Jesus, that's why the penalties were so severe.
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And because Christ is the law, nowhere more clearly than in the laws of sacrifices and offerings, because he was the sinless
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Lamb of God in whose mouth was found no deceit, because he was tempted as we are yet without sin, because he obeyed the
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Father and accomplished his will at every turn, because of all this and more, when a sinner repents and flees to Christ for forgiveness, he is covered by his sacrifice, which was done in perfect accord with the
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Father's will. And that's why Paul is so sure that the offering he makes of the
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Gentiles, of all his converts, be they Jew or Gentile, that's why he knows they're acceptable to God.
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So often we struggle to believe something like this. We catch this glimpse of God's holiness and we see ourselves so hopelessly wretched, and then we wonder, how can
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God accept me? How can God accept us? And then we wonder whether he has.
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Has God accepted me? I come to church on Sunday and I hear preaching,
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I see these slight glimpses of his holiness, and I realize how far from that I am, how miserable
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I must look in his sight, what it means that I'm covered with filth in his sight. Hopelessly wretched.
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Then we wonder that God accepts us at all. As Paul says, as this preacher is preaching to you this day, that he does in fact.
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We sing, I know not why God's wondrous grace to me he hath made known, nor why unworthy
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Christ in love redeemed me for his own. Well there is a reason why unworthy sinners were redeemed for God's own, and there's a reason why unworthy sinners redeemed for God's own are acceptable to him.
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Because, you're acceptable to God because covered in the precious blood of his
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Son which we have by faith, faith given to us by his Spirit when he remade our soul, because God sees us with this precious covering, we've been made an offering perfectly acceptable to God the
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Father. So we can enter boldly to the throne of grace and there find help in our time of need.
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And finally all this leads us back to Paul's confidence in us. I come back to you,
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I come back to us, we the people of God. Can I do this and now you're sure and you're secure that I'm not giving you or me any glory or any credit or anything at all?
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All this leads back to Paul's confidence in us. He doesn't just say we have the knowledge and the moral compass to properly use it, properly use it.
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He tells us that the aim of this effort is to instruct one another. Teaching, instructing was a priestly function.
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In Nehemiah 8, it is the Levites, is the priests who move among the people while Ezra is preaching to them, making sure that they understand the sense of the word being preached.
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Leviticus chapter 10 verse 11 says that priests were to teach the statutes of God to the people of Israel.
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This is why this priestly function that Paul hands off to the church in Rome and to the church in Sunnyvale is so important.
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I preached at the fire conference several months ago and my topic was this priesthood of believers.
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And it's perfectly in keeping with what Paul says here in 1514, I myself am satisfied about you yourselves, my brothers, that you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to in a priestly way, which is being handed off from the
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Apostle to us, instruct one another. Instruct can mean admonish, it can mean encourage, it can mean rebuke, it can mean to edify.
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All of this Paul is confident because we, as a body, are full of goodness, moral excellence.
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Don't be embarrassed by that. You're full of knowledge from the scripture, and only by the scripture can we encourage, admonish, instruct, rebuke, and edify one another, only by that body of knowledge.
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And with all those first requirements,
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Paul is confident. He rebukes the disunifying spite that the weak contents had towards the strong.
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Remember that a couple of weeks ago? And he rebukes the judgmentalism going the other way. In chapter 6, where he tells us not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies, to obey its lusts, he encourages us there that by faith and by the power of the
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Spirit, we can in fact do just that. We can resist presenting our members to unrighteousness.
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We can be slaves to Christ and His righteousness. All that by the power of God and the power of His Spirit working in us.
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And now in verse 15 -14, he expresses his holy confidence that we, having been fully accepted by God for the task, are well able to continue the
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Apostles work with each other. Amen? Heavenly Father, we give you thanks again for the day you have given us, and we thank you for this word from the
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Apostle and the responsibility that it inheres to us. And I pray, Father, that we would be those who take up this mantle and use it rightly, and we take this baton from the
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Apostle and run the race that is set before us by you, Father. And that all this will be done in a way that brings glory to your name and good to your people.