Colossians 4:7-8 - The Journey of Tychicus

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Ron greeted me a while ago. He said, my wife woke me up and said, I must have been dreaming about you because I was praying for you as I woke up.

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And I said, see, it worked. I felt better than ever this morning, so I'm counting on you now.

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Because at 71, you need a little extra prayer, a little extra prayer just to get the whole day behind you, you know what

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I mean? So good to see all of you, though. It's a great day in the Lord. And you can be turning to Colossians 4, verses 7 and 8, where we've made our way verse by verse through the book of Colossians.

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And we're almost done. And you know, it's interesting. It's such a magnificent doctrinal book.

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And you get towards this last little part, and all of a sudden, I ran in like two Sundays ago, wanted to talk about slavery.

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And I'm going, oh, that'll be awesome. Lord, could we skip that? No, David, we shall not skip that.

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So we had to preach on slavery. Not your favorite doctrinal topic, but there's some important things there.

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And I forgot to mention this when I talked about it, and I don't know why, and Dave Sr. naturally reminded me after the sermon.

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He said, I thought you were gonna talk about blah, blah, blah. But anyway, I did mean to make an application of that to the workplace, because even though it's not slavery, a lot of the principles that deal with like a boss and a worker can apply, you could apply it to that, sort of as a secondary stretch, but it could apply.

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But it's an important passage, and we talked about that. And then I thought, okay, now what's next?

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And we look, and here it starts just like from verse seven, all the way to the end of the chapter, it just starts listing these names, which were helpers of Paul.

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And I'm going, now that's gonna be fascinating. You know, should I skip that? And the Lord says, no, we're not gonna skip that.

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So we started out, let's look at chapter four of Colossians, verses seven and eight, read along to yourselves as I read it here, and this is where we are.

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It says, all my state shall Tychicus declare unto you, who is a beloved brother and a faithful minister and a fellow servant in the

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Lord, whom I have sent to you for the same purpose, that he might know your estate and comfort your heart.

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So he sends Tychicus to share with them

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Paul's estate. In other words, how's Paul doing? He's gonna tell them how Paul is doing, and then gather information about them and bring it back and tell

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Paul how they're doing. And this was his specific mission. And so it's interesting, but I got to thinking about that.

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I said, wouldn't it be interesting just to take a trip with Tychicus and see what he might have learned from Paul.

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And so that's what we did. You know what, I'm gonna put this up here again. Let me do this right quick. So you can kind of see the scope of this trip, because this was part of Paul's third missionary trip.

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And when you can actually see the scope of it, it kind of helps you relate to the amazing work that the apostle

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Paul did. Let's see here.

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I've got to minimize a whole bunch of stuff here. Pray that you don't get to see my desktop.

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Is this like my real desk? But I know where everything is, except for this

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PowerPoint. Where is it? Colossians chapter four, maybe that's it. Let me see. Ah, yes, that's it.

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Okay, let's see if we can get this thing to join us. See if it means a little more to you when you can sort of see some of this.

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That'll pop down there in a second. Lord willing, anyway. How fast

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I did that? Without Dave even up here. Sorry, Dave, you're fired.

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I don't need your help anymore. Look at that, it's perfect. Watch it go out now. Definitely gonna go out.

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Dave, help me. Okay, so to find,

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I want us just to pretend you are Tychicus and you're gonna meet up with Paul and you're gonna see some amazing things.

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And, ah, perfect, I was wanting that last time. The professor strikes again.

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Also, if your children need any help, let me know. During the service.

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Because we preached on that, by the way, about three Sundays ago. There's two Sundays. I mean, it came right from Colossians.

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Verse by verse, right? And we hit this thing about your father's, you know, well, children, obey your parents and the

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Lord for this is right. And then the next one, for the father is not to, provoke is the word

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I look for. Not to provoke your children to wrath. So we talked about that. So there's two sermons on child rearing.

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You should check that out. It's life -changing, especially for the child. Okay, where are we?

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Let's see. Okay, so let's go into the book of Acts, chapter 19.

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And we'll pick this up about where Tychicus met Paul. And notice it says in Acts 19, one, and it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth.

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Okay, let's look up here. This is, Apollos was over here. Now this is the known world in that day, the

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Roman empire. Apollos was here. And now look where it says Paul was.

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It says Apollos was at Corinth. Paul, having passed through the upper coasts of Ephesus and finding certain disciples.

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So Paul had traveled from Antioch up through the upper part of what they called

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Ephesus, but it's just an area here. This is Asia Minor. And he had traveled up through here and landed here.

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So he's here. And Apollos, the other great, one of the other great preachers was over there. Now they had two ways they could travel.

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Basically three, really on a camel's back or in a ship or walking. And Paul, I don't think liked camels very much because he was either on a ship or walking most of his time.

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So let's review just a little bit and we'll get into something new that Tychicus is gonna learn about the apostle

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Paul or by watching him and traveling with him. So as they began to talk to people,

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Paul was an evangelist and he wore a lot of hats. He was an apostle, first of all, but also an evangelist and eventually did the work of mostly of an evangelist.

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And an evangelist is not someone who comes into a church and preaches for two weeks necessarily. That would be a revivalist.

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A true evangelist is someone that's doing what Paul is doing here exactly, where they just go off into areas where no one has preached the gospel before and they preach the gospel and they see souls saved and then they disciple them for a short amount of time, sometimes up to a couple of years, but not forever and then they move on to the next new area.

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And this was the apostles Paul's great ministry other than being an apostle by office.

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So he runs into certain disciples and we know from last

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Sunday, if you were here, that these were disciples of John the Baptist. And John the

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Baptist preached a slightly part of the gospel, but we call it the gospel of repentance.

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And he was the forerunner of Jesus. So it was a little bit, it wasn't the whole gospel, but he did tell people that he that's coming after me is greater than me.

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And he said, hear him. So he pointed people to Jesus Christ and he called him the

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Lamb of God. And any Jew would know what that meant. Any Jew who had ever heard anything from the

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Old Testament would know that meant all of the Old Testament sacrifices, animal sacrifices were a picture of the true

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Messiah who would be the Lamb of God. And that's all he had to say for them to know who he's talking about.

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And he said, this is him right here. So these were John the Baptist disciples who heard him say that and believed in the

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Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And now Paul runs into them. So let's see what happens.

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He said unto them, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believe? Now you have to remember, and this is what we talked about last

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Sunday, maybe the most important thing we said last Sunday was that the book of Acts is a transitional book.

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It is probably the worst book you could pick in the whole Bible to base your doctrine and your practice of a

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New Testament church upon, because if you don't understand that it's a transitional book, you'll get it wrong.

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And if you don't know the 10 rules of proper Bible interpretation, which you can grab that out on our website, if you don't have it.

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And if you don't know those and use them and not cheat, but be true to those rules, you'll get it wrong in the book of Acts.

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And the whole Pentecostal movement, by the way, and we have many friends, especially in Tradeway, who are

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Pentecostal and charismatic. And where they get it wrong is they will, sometimes they'll use the phrase, we're full gospel.

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And what that means, it's kind of like a rebuke to us, because what they mean by that is that we don't believe the whole

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Bible because certain of these parts in Acts, we don't practice. And they think that means we don't believe it, but actually we do believe it.

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And we study it as much as they do, maybe more. It's just that we apply the proper rules of Bible interpretation to these passages.

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And so what we learn when we do that is this is a transitional book going from Old Testament to New Testament, going from Judaism to Christianity, and then going from a predominantly

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Jewish church. Most of the first people saved, the first probably 8 ,000 people that were saved were

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Jews and came from Judaism and were born again. And then after that, as you progress through the book of Acts, by the time you get to about chapter 10, it's very quickly becoming a predominantly

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Gentile church. Because God said through the apostle Paul that God had blinded the

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Jews so that the age of the Gentiles could come in. And so they're partially blinded.

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And there are some Jewish people, my mentor was a Jewish believer with four earned doctorates in theology.

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Two of them in counseling, actually, and two in theology. But that was unusual.

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He was one of only three Jewish believers who were preachers at the time, back in the, what,

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I guess, 60s, 70s, on into the 80s, Dr. Rocky Freeman. His sermons are on our website.

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You should hear them. They're fantastic. But anyway, that's unusual. It's a predominantly

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Gentile church. So you've got all these transitions from Jew to Gentile, from Old Testament to New Testament, in other words, law to grace, and then from, what'd

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I say? I said Judaism to Christianity. That's the other one. So it's a transitional book.

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So you don't want to try to hit part of that and say, well, we can apply that today.

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So we'll just apply all of this work today in the mature church age. It doesn't all work today. And my new book got postponed again.

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Already told you about it last Sunday. It was supposed to go live on Amazon Tuesday, wasn't it?

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And all of a sudden, my main man with the publishing company and his wife went for a baby checkup and they had an emergency.

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And so now he's home for paternity leave. But he said, I'm gonna get with you in seven days and we'll get it live because he wants me to be with him when he does it.

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But anyway, that's coming out. There is a lot in that book about this transitional period.

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In fact, there were about 400 pages just on that and I got rid of 200 just because it was too long.

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So there's still 200 pages on that in the book. And it's so important. And we talked about some of this last

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Sunday. But look at this. Don't you think it would be odd nowadays if you walked up to a group of believers in the modern church, the mature church age, and you were convinced they were believers, and you said, but have you received the

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Holy Ghost? Now, the reason that would be odd is because by the time you get to Acts chapter 10, when

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Gentiles heard the word of God preached, when they heard it, if they believed, they were indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit right there. No one laid hands on them. They just were indwelt the moment they were saved.

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And that has become the modus operandi all through the entire mature church age. That's how it works now.

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Everyone in here is a testimony to that. When you were born again, the Holy Spirit came to dwell in your body and was sealed there by God himself the moment you were saved.

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And that is how it works. However, here it didn't work that way. Can you see how that could be confusing to a person who goes to a church where they don't understand that it's transitional and they say, well, we have to do everything that we read here in the book of Acts.

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And so now they have people saved and maybe they forget the verses in Ephesians and all through the epistles of Paul in particular.

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And even when Jesus talked about, I will send the comforter and at the day of Pentecost, he has been with you but he shall be in you.

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Remember that? That's the indwelling and they forget that. And so now they tell these people, well, you need a second blessing.

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You need to have a time later when you get the Holy Ghost. Well, they already have the

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Holy Ghost. So it's bad doctrine and it's bad practice. It doesn't even work that way.

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And so guess who would come in and counterfeit and pretend he's the Holy Spirit in these events? That would be

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Satan and his demons. And it happens all the time all around us. Now, don't get me wrong. I got some great friends in those denominations and they're always sweet people.

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We have some in this group right here that grew up that way and they don't believe that way anymore, but they grew up that way.

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And they can testify to how they do strange things like try to teach you how to do a spiritual gift. They're not teachable.

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You either get it from God or you don't have it, but they'll teach you to speak in tongues, for example. You can't teach that.

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I mean, they do, but they're not teaching the real thing. They're teaching gibberish and the true tongues were languages.

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We know that because the scripture says so. So all of that is counterfeit. I call it the counterfeit modern tongues and faith healing movement.

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It started in 1901. And the history of that's in the book too, although I took out 200 pages of this stuff.

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I'm gonna write a book that's only about that whole thing eventually and put that in it. But there's enough in there for you to see the history.

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Now, here's why it happens. They get into these transitional passages and they don't understand they're transitional.

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And really it's your job to give them some help in that area if the Holy Spirit leads you to do it.

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But if he doesn't, don't do it. Don't ever get into a Bible debate unless the

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Holy Spirit leads you to do it. But if he does, don't be afraid. Okay, so here what we learned last

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Sunday is that these people were John the Baptist disciples and they didn't know about Pentecost.

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They didn't know that had happened. And also they're Jews. They wouldn't be following John the

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Baptist if they weren't Jewish. They were Jews. And what you'll find in this transitional period is that the

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Jews brought a practice from the Old Testament of laying on of hands, such as the prophets and the sons of the prophets did when they were gonna have a new prophet like Elisha and Elijah, then the older prophet would lay hands on the new and impart that unction from God so that they had the ability to prophesy and so forth.

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They brought that into the New Testament during the early portions of the church when it was

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Jewish. And then by chapter 10, when it was predominantly Gentiles being saved, you see that when

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Gentiles got saved, they did not lay hands on them. And even after chapter 10, there's a place somewhere around, well, here's an example in chapter 19 where Jews were saved and they did lay hands on them, right?

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But it's because they were Jewish and Jews require a sign. The apostle Paul taught us that too.

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So we see all these transitional things. And another thing we discussed here is that after he told them about the

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Holy Spirit, he said, well, how were you baptized? And they said, we were baptized by John's baptism. And so Paul rebaptized them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Isn't that interesting? And that's the proper way. That is not a sign from heaven.

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It might be. Let us know if it is. All right, so we talked about that a little bit last time.

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And so then the Holy Ghost came upon them and they spoke in tongues and they prophesied.

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Now, at the moment that the Holy Spirit indwelt them, they spoke in tongues.

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These are called sign gifts. They passed away as the apostle Paul said they would. He said they would cease, and they did.

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So this doesn't happen anymore, but I will tell you this. It is gonna start again the second three and a half years of the tribulation period, because the

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Bible says it will. So it can't start again if it didn't stop. Does that make sense logically? It had to cease in order to be reestablished.

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So all of this is clear. It's just if you go to a church with a creature that gets it wrong, maybe on purpose, maybe because he doesn't know better, then you get taught the wrong way.

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And then it's hard for you to see the scriptures pretty clear on all this. So anyway, you don't want that to happen in your family if possible.

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So here we see now they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but the sign of the indwelling was that they spoke in tongues at that time.

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And so that came with the indwelling. So this idea of a second blessing where they get saved and then three years later, someone teaches them, oh, well, you need to learn to speak in tongues.

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And then they try to get them to do that. And they say, now you've got the Holy Spirit. Well, they've had the Holy Spirit since the day they were saved.

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It's just bad doctrine. And so Satan knows that. And anytime you delve outside the truth in spiritual matters and you try to do it the humanistic way, in other words, the way men make it up and figure it out, rather than the way the

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Bible says to do it, demons have permission somehow to come in and get involved and begin to deceive people and to mimic the

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Holy Spirit. And that's what's happening in these churches. It's very frightening. It gets people off of the real mission.

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What is the real mission, by the way? Is it for us to come in here together and speak in tongues and act spiritual and just have a high?

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What is the real mission of the church right now? It's to take the gospel, to be salt and light, to go out there and witness.

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Now, I'm gonna tell you, even Paul says this. If a stranger were to come in today, and we don't have any strangers today.

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Everybody's home folks. You've all been here before, some of you forever. All right, but so if someone came in off the street new and Sharon stood up and started speaking in tongues, that person would think that either

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Sharon was crazy or all of us were crazy. And the apostle Paul says that in scripture.

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He said, they will think that you've gone nuts. So the first thing that happens when churches practice this is it runs people away from the gospel.

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They don't wanna come in there. I think, you know, we've had some examples of folks in this congregation that went into a church like that and that stuff started happening and they ran out the back as quick as they could.

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So Paul says that. So it's very important to get this right. It is hugely important.

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It's one of the greatest heresies in my lifetime. And what preachers will do, if you go back and study preachers for the last thousand years at least, whatever the big heresy is, they'll preach a lot about that.

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So I've written extensively on this subject for 45 years now, and it's a major problem.

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Well, let's keep going. Look at verse 10. And this continued for the space of two years so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the

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Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. So Paul did a good work, didn't he? Everyone, Jew and Gentile, had access to the gospel in this area where Paul was.

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And then look at verse 11. Now here's some of this transitional material. And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul and they took handkerchiefs and aprons or anything that had touched

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Paul and they would give it to people and all of a sudden they'd be healed. Now you've seen

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TV evangelists fake that for money though. Paul didn't ask for money, but they always asked for money for the handkerchief.

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Send me 250 bucks, I'll send you a prayer cloth, right? It's mimicry, it's fakery. But in this case, the scripture makes it clear because look at the word special, special miracles.

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If you, and I'm not gonna do it again because we did it last Sunday, but if you look at the Greek on that, it means a miracle that other men couldn't do, just Paul could do it.

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So obviously that's not one we're supposed to copy and make it part of our church method.

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And yet people do it in the charismatic movement all the time because they don't look at the word special or they don't care about what the word says.

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They wanna do it anyway. All right, and then it goes on down. Let's go into verse 24.

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And this is a sort of new material at this point.

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So now Paul in verse 24, he runs into this particular problem.

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You have a silversmith named Demetrius, which made silver shrines for a false goddess,

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Diana, and brought no small gain unto craftsmen. In other words, not only was he wealthy, but he was making craftsmen wealthy too.

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So he gathers together all of these craftsmen. I mean, this is almost like the Teamsters mob in the

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United States, right? The Teamsters, often the leaders of those things are almost like mafia.

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My dad was in the FBI for 17 years and he had to deal with that. And he told me stories about it, how the leaders of the union sometimes would be mafia people.

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Really tough, like people would die around them and stuff like that. Sometimes they would be killed. If they didn't do what everybody wanted, they'd kill the leader.

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Remember Jimmy Hoffa? Remember that name? If you're my age, you'll know it. My dad said the

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FBI looked for his body and never found it. Then he thinks it's inside some cement under a freeway, is what the theory was that they had.

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Well, look at this guy. Here's the leader of this mob of people who make money off of making silver objects to worship

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Diana with. And here the apostle Paul is preaching about the true

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God, the one true God and his son, Jesus Christ, and saying that the others are false gods.

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Now look what kind of trouble this could have gotten Paul into, although in this case, it didn't yet anyway.

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So Demetrius calls all these people together in verse 25 with the workmen of like occupation and said, sirs, you know that by this craft, we have our wealth.

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So now we see the love of money, which the Lord taught is the root of all evil. So you can have a problem at this point.

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Moreover, you see in here that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all of Asia, this man

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Demetrius says that this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people saying that they are not true gods, that Diana is not a true

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God, which anything you make with hands are not true gods. And he's blaming Paul for ruining their business and their religion, and the business end is the more important to this guy, you can be sure.

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So Paul is attacking two things, their money, their wealth and their gods, their false gods.

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So when you do that, you will be attacked by them because they are servants of Satan and Satan hates all of God's children and certainly anyone that speaks out for the

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Lord. And so here they come, here they come now. They've risen up, they're angry.

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And verse 27, so that not only this, our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also the temple of the great goddess

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Diana should be despised by the people because of apostle Paul and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all

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Asia and the world worship. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath and cried out.

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Can you imagine a mob? We've seen a few mobs in our country during this last year, haven't we? Last year and a half from Antifa to everything else, defund the police, yeah, that's a brilliant idea, straight from Satan.

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And all of this stuff is going on and they're full of wrath and they cried out saying, great is

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Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion. Now there's a sign of Satan right there.

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He is the author of confusion. And having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, who were some of Paul's friends that were with him and they were from Macedonia, which is basically right above where modern day

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Greece is. And they were Paul's companions in travel and they grabbed these two and they rushed with one accord into the theater, dragging these men and probably pretty brutally with them.

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And Paul wanted to go in there because those were his men.

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He wanted to go in there and the other disciples held him back and would not allow

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Paul to go in there. And some therefore cried one thing and some, this is the mob, some another for the assembly was confused.

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There is a sign of Satan, right? And more part knew, the huge part of these people did not even know why they had come together.

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They just knew they were a mad, angry mob, didn't even know what they were angry at yet. Isn't that like what's going on in our country nowadays?

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And they drew Alexander out of the multitude and the Jews putting him forward and Alexander beckoned with the hand and would have made his defense into the people.

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So he was going to say, look, you got it wrong. You know, I'm not trying to just ruin your religion. I'm just talking about the true religion.

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And he put his hand up and tried to give his own defense. But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours shouted greatest

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Diana of the Ephesians. Now, how many of you have seen on TV, these Trump haters start shouting these little slogans and they'll go down that street for hours shouting three or four words again and again.

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Same thing, nothing's changed. It's the same enemy. We battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places.

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And it's the same. Now here, their hatred was not based on any fact at all.

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Cause they were confused. They didn't even know why they were there, but it was based on rumor and propaganda and emotion.

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And it's the same today. But then it ends with something that has risen up in the last year and a half, more than I've seen it in my lifetime in this country ever, and it's antisemitism.

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So now they find out one of them's a Jew. And now for two hours, they chant these words over and over again because they want to kill the

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Jew. But unfortunately we see here in verse 35, the town clerk shows up and you can be sure he's got a bunch of men with swords and spears with him.

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The town clerk, it's like the mayor, shows up and he appeased the people. And he said a few words to appease the people.

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And he says, for you have brought hither these men, which are neither robbers of churches.

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That means the false church of Diana. Some people would go in there and steal the silver. They're not robbers of the silver and they're not blasphemers of your goddess.

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And so he dismissed the assembly and forced them to leave lest he start harming some of them. So they left.

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And that's kind of what you have to do with an angry mob. Is you gotta let them know you mean business, which we're not that good at anymore.

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Our government's not, but Nixon was pretty good at it. All right, so now that mob disassembles and no one was,

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I think the two they drug in there were probably beaten up pretty badly, but not killed. So now all the disciples are back together.

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So look at Acts 21, it's just the same story continuing. And after the uproar was ceased,

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Paul called unto him the disciples and embraced them and departed for to go to Macedonia.

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So now he's going to move. Did I get that wrong? Chapter 20, verse one.

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Oh, did I say chapter 21? Ah, going too fast. We have so little time, which will be funny when you read this part with me.

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So Acts chapter 20, verse one. Thank you, Ms. Mitchell. And after the uproar ceased, he called them together and he embraced them and he departed.

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So they got all beaten up and Paul leaves. Says, y 'all, you know, you're speaking the truth, so watch your back.

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And he leaves. And so Tychicus is one of the people that goes with him into Macedonia, which is back up north or over, well, back up north.

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No, I'm sorry. They were in Ephesus, weren't they? So they head east across toward, no,

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I'm wrong. Yeah, I got it right in the first place. They go northwest. In fact,

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I want to change this to the next one so you can see better. Oops, it didn't change it up there, did it?

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Okay, this is the third missionary journey. So they had come across this way and they were in Ephesus.

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And now they're gonna head over that way above Greece. So that's a long way.

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And you can see here it takes some time. And when Paul had gone over those parts, now, am

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I still in chapter 20, verse two, right? Does that look right? When they had gone over those parts and had given them much exhortation.

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So everywhere he went, he preached the gospel and preached doctrine to the new believers. He came to Greece.

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So he's gone from here up this way and around this way and over to Greece and Tychicus is with him at this point.

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And there they abode for three months. So Paul didn't just lead people to Christ. He would disciple them for a while, anywhere from three months to a couple of years.

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And then he would go to the next place. And when the Jews laid wait for him, so he was supposed to take a ship, but he found out that they were gonna try to kill him.

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And so he was about to sail to Syria, but he purposed to return through Macedonia.

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So rather than sailing, he went up north and went back. And you see that arrow at the top that heads back up, like number seven and heads back down this way.

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So instead of sailing straight across, which would have been faster, he goes by land to avoid being killed by these guys that were waiting for him at the shipyard.

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And someone warned him about it because the Lord told them to probably. And so there he heads up in a different direction.

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So there came in verse four and there accompanied him into Asia, Sopater of Berea and of Thessalonians, Aristarchus, he was one of the ones dragged into the mob,

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I think, and Secundus and Gaius of Derbe, Timotheus, who Ben's been teaching about in Sunday school,

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Timothy of Asia, and here's our friend Tychicus who we're following along on this trip, and Tophemus.

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So these all went with him towards Macedonia. And we kind of know that Tychicus was from Asia and he met

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Paul in Macedonia and traveled with him back towards Asia. Now these going before, so some disciples did go on the ship, went ahead of them, but then

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Paul went by land. The ones that went before went up to Troas and you can follow it on that map up there.

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And they sailed away from Philippi. And you see all of these Bible locations that you read about on this map.

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After the days of unleavened bread, now that's the week of Passover, right? Very special time for these

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Jewish believers. And came unto them, and they weren't all Jewish, Timothy was with them, so he was

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Gentile, and came unto them to Troas in five days and then they stayed there seven days probably to rest.

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That was a long trip. And upon, now look at this, upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread.

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There's a lot out there today. Judaism always tries to rise up in legalism and there's a lot out there about you should worship on Saturday because that's the true

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Sabbath. It is true that the old test, the Sabbath in 10 Commandments was

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Saturday, not Sunday. But when do we see that the early church met?

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It says very clearly here that they met on the first day of the week, which is Sunday, and they met to break bread, that is to have fellowship like we will after this message, and Paul preached.

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So they met together for fellowship and other places, for prayer, for preaching, and for doctrine.

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So they met on the first day of the week, not on Saturday. Now if you look at history, you'll find that some of the Jewish believers met on Saturday and Sunday.

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But there is no precedence for us to have church on Saturday. And, but there's a lot of false teaching about that out there.

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You'll hear it on YouTube. People say, well, why we should be meeting on Saturday? Well, you can listen to it if you want to, but you need to read the scripture.

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They met on the Lord's day, which is Sunday. And this is the method for the church right here in scripture.

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So they met on the first day of the week and Paul began to preach. Now look at this, I love this part.

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Paul preaching to them, ready to depart the next day. So he's going to head out on a long trip the next day.

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So you'd think he would get to bed around eight o 'clock and get a good night's sleep. But it says he continued his speech until midnight.

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So I think we should use Bible methodology. What'd y 'all bring for supper?

35:44

Ladies, I love this part. People have accused me of preaching too long. And I just think, well,

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I think biblically I preach too short, actually. And it goes on, it said in verse eight, and there were many lights in the upper chamber.

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Why does the Bible say that? Well, let me ask you what, if you're in an enclosed room with quite a few people, congregated, you didn't have electricity and you had candles and oil lamps.

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What does that do to the oxygen in the room? It burns it up, it gets thinner and thinner.

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People start getting sleepy. See, that's what happens when you're in a room that burns here. These lights, they eat all the oxygen.

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It's not my preaching. And it wasn't Paul's preaching that made him sleepy. It was these lights where they were gathered together.

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That is the Bible, I'm telling you. I'm gonna write a book about verse eight. All right, number nine, verse nine.

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And there sat in the window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep during Paul's preaching.

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And Paul was long preaching. Now, I looked that word up thinking that probably doesn't mean long, but it did.

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And this young man sunk down with asleep sitting in the window of a third story building, where were his parents, you know, and fell down from the third loft and was taken up dead.

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It killed him. And Paul went down. Now here, we're in a transitional book.

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So let me explain something. God gave things called sign gifts to the apostles and to Jesus.

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And the purpose is given clearly in the Bible. I mean, in the last few verses of the book of Mark, it specifically tells the purpose of these sign gifts.

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And they were to authenticate messengers of a message that was so unbelievable to the

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Jews that they never would have believed it if the messengers couldn't do miracles in front of their eyes, because the

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Jew requires a sign, the Bible says. So here, they're saying, no, you don't get saved by keeping the law of Moses.

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No, it's by grace through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast. And the

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Jews are not gonna believe that message. And Jesus is the Messiah. Well, then why didn't he destroy

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Rome like we think he's supposed to? He didn't do that. See, they would never have believed that message without sign gifts.

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So God gave them sign gifts for a season to authenticate the messengers and the message. That's the purpose.

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And Paul said that those would cease once that authentication had taken place. And once you had the entire

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New Testament canonized, all that's in my book, if you wanna get it and read it. And it came straight from the

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Bible. It's just make it easier for you to find it in the Bible if you get the book. And everybody in here can get a free one, by the way.

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I'm not trying to sell books. If you're here and out there, you'll get a free one.

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I know if you get it free, you won't read it, but I'm still gonna give it to you free. All right. It won't be any problem.

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It's only 1 ,050 pages. You'll enjoy it. Take it on a vacation and take a long vacation.

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So Paul, with the power, I just lost your pointer.

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With the power and sign gift ability of an apostle. Now in my book,

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I'll also give you all of the requirements of an apostle. But you don't need to know them all because one of them was you had to have physically walked with Jesus on the earth and seen him after his resurrection to be an apostle.

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So if you have an apostle today, he is 2 ,000 years old, as my friend Brother Raj said.

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It's not possible. There are no apostles. And you don't have the sign gifts of the apostles or the

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New Testament writers or any of that because that was transitional and it's gone. It has ceased.

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There still are gifts that we do have, but not those gifts. But look what Paul did.

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Because here's what you should be able to do if you really do have those gifts and they're real. All right? And so where was

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I? So verse nine, there sat in the window this boy, he was long preaching, he was taken up dead. Look at verse 10. And Paul went down and fell on this boy.

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He laid his body on top of the boy's body, embracing him and said, trouble not yourselves for his life is in him.

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And so while Paul laid on this young dead boy, Paul felt him start to breathe underneath him.

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And he said, don't trouble yourselves, he's alive. And when he therefore was come up again and had broken bread and eaten and talked a long while, now this was after midnight, talked a long while, even till daybreak after preaching a six hour sermon or whatever.

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And then they talk all night and eat some food. Then he departed for the trip. Wow, he had some stamina.

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I guess that's what happens if you walk thousands of miles, you're strong, right? And they brought the young man alive and were not a little comforted.

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Now in my book, I kind of make fun of that phrase because I give a lot of examples of how the

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King James is written in Texan. Like instead of saying they were so happy he was alive, they said they were not a little comforted.

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It kind of underemphasizes it. Or you could talk about wearing britches or eating vittles, all these

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Texas words are in the King James. Anyway, that's just, that makes the book valuable. That information is in there too.

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Verse 13, and we went before and got on a ship and we sailed to Assos, there intending to take in Paul, because he decided to walk, remember that?

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And so he appointed, minding himself to go afoot. And when he met us at Assos, we took him in and came to Metellin.

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And we sailed thence and came the next day over against Chios and Samos and Trogillium and Miletus.

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For Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus because he would not spend the time in Asia for he hasted if it were possible for him to be in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.

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Now they just had Passover, we read that a minute ago. And Pentecost is 50 days after that.

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So within 50 days, he probably makes it there. But this is the direction he's headed.

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And from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church together. And when they were come to him, he said unto them, you know from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner

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I have been with you in all seasons, testifying both to the Jews and also the Greeks.

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Now look at this, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. So when you wanna look at what

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Paul was preaching, it was probably a little different than what you think of as the gospel.

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I mean, Paul names the gospel in Corinthians, doesn't he? He said it's that the Lord Jesus died for the sins of his people, he was buried and rose again, right?

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That's the basic gospel. And he did that to take away the sins of his people.

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That's the basic gospel. But Paul preached an expanded version of that because look at this little phrase right here.

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He preached to Jews and Greeks, Gentiles, and it mentions two things. Now later on next

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Sunday, we'll probably get to it where it gives the full expanded version of what he was preaching. But here it says he preached repentance toward God and faith toward our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Now, it's funny, a lot of this found its way into my book, but I asked,

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I had a whole chapter on what's the difference between faith toward Jesus, faith in Jesus and faith of Jesus because the

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Bible says it three ways. Is there a difference? Gotta pick up the book to figure that one out.

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So it's in there though. But this is interesting, that he preached repentance toward God and faith toward God.

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And the little Greek word is epis, which does mean toward, it can mean to or into or toward.

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But repentance and faith, don't you find that interesting? Because we don't, the gospel today in a lot of churches, you don't hear the word repent too much.

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It's believe, just believe. And what's interesting is that by the time a person receives repentance, which the

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Bible teaches is a gift from God and faith, which the Bible teaches is the faith of Christ, not even your own belief worked up, but the

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Holy Spirit giving you Jesus's faith. So God gives you the repentance and what does that mean?

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A change of the mind. Changing the mind about who God is.

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God is God and I'm not. That's what it means. You figure out the Holy Spirit awakens you and lets you know you are not

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God. Jesus is a better Lord of your life than you could ever be. And you see that for the first time.

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That's what repentance actually is. And that is a gift from God. You could never have worked it up with your natural body and mind.

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You never would have. No man seeketh after the Lord, the Bible says. So the Holy Spirit does this work, but does that mean we shouldn't preach it to everyone that the

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Lord leads us to? Shouldn't we? So what's interesting about this little passage, and I know that's all the time we have, so I'm stopping here, but what's important about this is that there's a lot of talk out there about Calvinism.

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People call me a Calvinist. Some people call me a heretic over at Pensacola College.

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They call me a heretic there. But true Calvinism is not really from Calvin because Calvin didn't invent anything.

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He was just a good teacher. He was a Bible teacher. You should read Calvin's Institutes and then you'll see what I mean.

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It's like reading the Bible, it's beautiful. But what we're really talking about is the sovereignty of God versus the responsibility of man.

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The Bible teaches both. And any group that leans totally toward one side and leaves the other out is a false group.

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And the move among Baptists, and we really are Baptists, we took it off the sign because we're not like modern

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Baptists, we're not like the other Baptist churches in this town today, but we are like the

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Baptist church that Charles Spurgeon pastored 150 years ago. And if you read his sermons, we believe very closely, if not identical, to Charles Spurgeon, who was known as the

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Prince of Preachers by almost every denomination, and we believe like him. And yet Baptist churches today will claim him as the greatest preacher, but they don't read his sermons because they don't believe like that anymore.

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So it's all become more about man doing stuff. Well, if you really boil that down, you're left with salvation by works.

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Like if you ever heard the phrase, what do you have to do to get saved? Do you realize that the word do is a work word?

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What do you have to do to be saved? It's like you don't do anything to be saved. You receive it as a gift.

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It's not something you do. It's something God did. That's why it's called the operation of God. So it's not something you do.

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It's something you receive. It's interesting. I hate to admit it, Ben, but sometimes when you're teaching,

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I run across a verse that you usually point out, and I'll start reading that verse for a second.

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I know everybody does that to me too while I'm preaching, if you have a phone. And it was the one in,

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I think you went to 2 Timothy. Can you paraphrase that for me? Oh, you know what?

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He gave his salvation. I lost my, there it is.

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We don't need the map. So let me turn that off. I'm just going to read you that verse. I realized today while I was preaching,

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I'm supposed to preach longer than I have been doing it. So I'm going to add a little to this.

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So I really, you know what? I'm going to turn the TV back on as soon as I find this. Let's see, find it.

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So it's 2 Timothy. It starts with verse eight, and it's eight and nine together.

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Chapter? Chapter one. Okay, all right. So, be not therefore ashamed, is that it?

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Probably going to need Dave this time. It's interesting because this is not, you know,

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I like to go into Romans chapter eight, where the Bible gives the sequence of salvation.

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And of course, what's interesting about it is it starts out, it's not even in time, it's before times began.

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So it's not a sequence, it all just happened at once. And then it comes into the timeline where you and I walk, and that is a sequence.

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And in Romans eight, I will paraphrase that one, it says, those whom he hath foreknown,

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I'm sorry, it starts with foreknown, yeah. And those whom he hath foreknown, he also predestinated.

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Both of those happened before time began. So they're not one in front of the other, one didn't cause the other, they just both are.

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In fact, it's in the aorist, it means, boom, it just is true. So you were foreknown and predestinated, you were predestinated and foreknown before God made anything as his child.

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He knew you as his child and predestinated you as his child before he made the earth, before Genesis 1 .1.

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The next phrase, it says, in whom he predestinated, he called, and that is a doctrine the churches are not teaching today, that you have to be called in order to be saved.

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Why is that? Because Paul quoted the Old Testament and said, there's none that seeketh

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God, not one. The natural man doesn't seek God, he runs from him like Adam and Eve did, that's what the natural man does.

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So unless the Holy Spirit awakens you, you're not gonna see it. And that's the calling, it's called the effectual calling, doctrinally.

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When the Holy Spirit awakens you and says, there's Jesus, now you can see him for who he is, what are you gonna do with him?

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And then you make the choice, but all of a sudden your desires have changed because you see him as he truly is and he's irresistible at that point.

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So you receive him as your Lord and Savior, like I did in my car driving to work when I was 24 years old on a highway by myself, except I wasn't by myself, the

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Holy Spirit came in that car, somehow he caught me, because you know I drive fast, but he got in that car and he awakened me.

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And so whom he called, then he also justified, that's the salvation experience.

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When you get regenerated, you're justified. God takes your sins away and he makes you right with God.

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And that's all of everything you just read, or I just quoted, is something God did to you, you hadn't done anything yet.

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All right, now at that point when you do see him, you desire him, so you receive him as your

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Lord and Savior, there you did something, you responded to him, like the bride does to the bridegroom.

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But I'll promise you one thing, the groom showed up first, not the bride. The groom did all the wooing, and that's the

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Holy Spirit calling you to the Son of God, and that's how salvation works. And so what's interesting about it, wouldn't you agree most of that sounds like the sovereignty side of things?

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You think so? That's God's work, right? You remember how the scripture says, while we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us?

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That means brought us to life. So he did the saving while we were dead. He brought us to life and now we're alive.

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So we did not save ourselves. We didn't contribute to it at all. However, once we were alive, he also gave us 33 things in a nanosecond.

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He gave us God's love for God and for each other. He gave us the Holy Spirit who was sealed within us.

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He gave us Jesus's faith, the faith of Christ. That's only in your King James and in the Greek. You won't find it in modern versions, but it's in the

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Greek. And 33 other things such as justification and all these things.

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You were just changed. Like all of a sudden you were a new creature. Old things passed away and behold, all things became new.

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So now you repent, which means now that you're saved, you're regenerated, you're in a regenerated state.

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You change your mind about who God is, obviously. And you have Jesus's faith, so your faith comes along with it.

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And like I've said so many times, like two tuning forks, this is Jesus's faith. You strike it, your faith comes in here and they resonate at the same frequency.

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So yeah, there's a part we play. We receive it as a gift. We respond as the bride to the bridegroom, but it's totally different than the way churches preach it today.

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But you go back and you read Charles Spurgeon's sermons 150 years ago, it's exactly how 90 % of all

53:30

Baptist preachers preached it that way back then. Now only 5 % do. So you see the sovereignty side, but if you look at us as evangelists, how should we present it to men?

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Here's how you present it to men. You tell them about what Jesus did for them.

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And you say, you know, so because he loved you enough to die for you and take your sins away, and he rose again and he's alive and he can change your life, maybe you should consider changing your mind about who

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God is. It's not you, it's him and receive him as your Lord. That's preaching repentance toward God.

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You see that? Change your mind toward God. And then you tell them all that Jesus did for you and you say you should have faith in him, not yourself.

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So that's preaching faith toward Christ rather than toward yourself. And that's the same gospel

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Paul preached. It's what we should be preaching. It's a little bit expanded. You're not just saying what Jesus died was buried and rose again.

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You're showing them what to do with it. And that's how Paul preached all across the world of his day.

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And we are long out of time, so let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you so much for your word.

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We ask you to keep it in our hearts and minds as we go out into the world as salt and light this week and help us to know when you want us to speak to people about how salvation works, about how your

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Holy Spirit must be working in it together with the word of God and help us to give the word of God.

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And then we pray that your Holy Spirit would move in people's hearts and lives and draw them to Jesus. And thank you for giving us the word of God that is our salt and light.

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It is your words are life. And thank you that you've given us your word, which gives us life and light, and we couldn't live without it.

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We ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship now. Bless the meal in Jesus' name, amen.