Sunday Morning Sermon Series - Pastor Josiah Shipley (Date: 03/28/2021)

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Sunday Morning Sermon Series - Pastor Josiah Shipley (Date: 03/28/2021)

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But you trusted your beauty and you played the whore because of your renown
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And you lavish your whorings on any passerby your beauty became his That is the book of Ezekiel Chapter 16.
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I know we have a lot of new Christians in here Please do not be ashamed if you don't know where Ezekiel is ask somebody
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Go to the middle of your Bible and keep going to the right. It's past halfway Ezekiel chapter 16 is where we're going to be today
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Today we are going to talk about the covenant of God the Bible speaks of many
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Covenants today. We're going to be speaking of the unconditional covenant of God a
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Covenant is an agreement between two or more parties. That is legally binding
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Okay, two types of covenants Conditional and unconditional a conditional covenant is where God will keep his into the bargain
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So long as the other party keeps their end of the bargain So think of 2nd
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Chronicles if my people right who are called by my name humble themselves Pray seek my face turn away, then
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I will turn hear them and heal their land, right? But there is another even more beautiful covenant of God and that is the unconditional covenant and the unconditional covenant of God says this
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No matter what you Satan Demons or anyone else on this planet or in this universe do
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I will be keeping my covenant? That is the unconditional covenant of God in a few moments
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We will be performing a symbol of that covenant through the Lord's Communion and hopefully today through this chapter in Ezekiel You will have a better understanding of what that truly represents marriage is a covenant between a man and Woman and God as the arbiter of that covenant.
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That's what it is It is a vow a promise that is legally binding between two people but marriage is not and Was not upheld
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By any government by the state of Tennessee or anyone else? It was created and ordained by God and he is the arbiter of that covenant
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Ezekiel chapter 16 is a symbolic Representation of the marriage covenant of the people of God with God In Ezekiel 16, we are specifically referring to his people
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Israel of which Paul makes clear in Ephesians and Galatians refers to us as well Here we're going to see how we have dealt
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Unfaithfully with God with our end of the bargain and we will see God's response to that in his unconditional covenant
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If you will Ezekiel chapter 16 starting in verse 4 Dalton, am
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I doing this, right? Sweet thank you, sir Read with me.
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I am reading out of the ESV if you care As for your birth on the day you were born your cord was not cut
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Nor were you washed with water to cleanse you or rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling clothes
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No, I pitted you to do any of these things out of compassion for you, but you were cast out in the open field
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You were abhorred on the day you were born Then I passed by you. I saw you wallowing in your blood and I said to you in your blood live
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To you and your blood I said live Sometimes And you may be in this room
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We have Christians who are insecure about the covenant of God Because they think that God entered that covenant with you because you had something to offer him
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That he needed something from you so we enter that covenant with you Ladies and gentlemen read again
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We had nor have nothing to offer God He is not made by human hands nor nor needs anything that we make for he gives life and breath to every creature on this planet
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He saw us dead spiritually dead
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Wallowing in our blood and he said live That is how you entered the covenant with God That's how parents
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When did you start loving your children Did you wait until they started loving you
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Today my second daughter Rachel my second daughter Naomi there She is is a month old and I make you a promise in the grand scheme of things in reality.
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She does not love me That's just a reality She doesn't Do you think that keeps me from loving her or do you think
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I loved her even before she was born? God did not await
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For you to start loving him before he set his love towards you For if he had that day would have never come but we only love him because he first loved us
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That's how you enter the covenant with God. We read on in verse 8
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When I passed by you again and saw you behold you were at the age for love I spread the corner of my garden over you and covered your nakedness.
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I made my vow to you and Entered a covenant with you declares the
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Lord and you became mine Then I bathed you with water and washed you off your blood from you and anointed you with oil
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I clothed you with embroidered cloth and I provided you with fine leather and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk
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But God's love and grace in his covenant doesn't simply stop By resurrecting you by raising you from the dead.
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No guys grace continues on You need grace to serve
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God we've said here before and it is by grace that you are being matured into the image of Christ but sometimes
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We Use and abuse that grace as a license to go back into the blood that we were once wallowing in Look at what he says.
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Oh And please notice as you entered this marriage covenant with God that we here are pictured as the bride of God and The rest of the
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Bible speaks of us as the bride of Christ and that is not a typo That is not a mistake because we have always recognized and yes, we will do a side note here
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Once again that Jesus has eternally existed as God and if you don't understand that you will not be able to make heads or tails of the
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New Testament you can be called the bride Of God and the bride of Christ and that be synonymous and that's not a mistake continuing on though Look at what sometimes we do with this grace and this is a long chapter.
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This is why I'm trying to move fast Here we are in verse 15 But you trusted your beauty and you played the whore because of your renown and you lavished your whorings on any passerby
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Your beauty became his You took some of your garments. Remember the ones he clothed you with You took some of your garments and made for yourselves colorful shrines
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You played the whore you took the beautiful jewels the ones he gave you
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Of my gold and my silver which I had given you and you made for yourselves images of men
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And with them you played the whore We have broken our end of the covenant ladies and gentlemen
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We have broken our end of the covenant We have gone back into the very pile of blood that he raised us from That's what we've done
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We've broken that covenant We do not keep our end of the bargain and yet we still don't
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And sometimes we use the very gifts of grace. He has given us here the jewels and the garments
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With which to use sin In other words, we take that grace as a license for liberty to do that, which we will
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And it doesn't stop there because then in our arrogance we'll think something like this
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Well, the sin only affects me Look at what israel started doing
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As they whored themselves out to the nations. It says this You took your sons and daughters
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Whom you unborn to me and these you sacrificed for them to be devoured Well, you're whoring so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them
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And in all your abominations and your whorings You do not remember the days of your youth when you were naked and bare wallowing in your blood
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Be not deceived church Your sin will always affect more than just you
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It always will It always will And the beautiful thing about it is so will your obedience
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And we've said it here before if we're sin abounds grace abounds even more How much more can god spend the blessings of your obedience to others including to our children
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We don't remember where we came from sometimes We don't and then we go one step further
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We're different from other women verse 34 in our whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore and you gave payment
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No payment was given to you. Do you hear what god's saying? And Not only have we whored ourselves out.
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We didn't even get paid for it And i'm not trying to be vulgar on purpose. I'm trying to show you the image that god is using here
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We didn't even receive payment for it instead it cost us something
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It cost us something. We didn't get a return on our investment instead.
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It took us further than we wanted to go And it cost us The almost irony is this
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That the lord will discipline those he loves And punish every sin he receives here
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Is with israel and you can go back and read in verse 26 God lays it out for him.
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You played the whore with egypt. You played the whore with assyria You played the whore with babylon verse 29 And guess what god used to discipline his people
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The very things that they were doing in their sin He used that sin to discipline them to bring them back to repentance
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He used assyria and babylon to bring them back to repentance ladies and gentlemen
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Sometimes the things the sin that you hold so dear That will be the tool god will use to discipline and bring his child back to a state of repentance
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So he gathered all the lovers with whom they took pleasure And all those you loved and those you hated and I gathered them against you from every side and they won't cover your nakedness before them
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And they may all see your nakedness So, what is god's response
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We have broken the covenant time and time again He has disciplined us and this is his response
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Verse 60 if you will Yet But nevertheless
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I will remember the covenant with you in the days of your youth And listen here
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And I will establish for you an everlasting covenant now listen
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What does everlasting mean? If it lasted for 20 years, was it everlasting?
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And a thousand it would still not be everlasting in a billion It would still not be everlasting in a trillion years.
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That would still not be everlasting, but he establishes an everlasting an unconditional covenant with us
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And I will establish my covenant with you And you will know that I am yahweh That you may remember and be confounded and never open your mouth again because of your shame
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When I atone for you for all that you have done declares the lord god
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God When I atone for all that you have done
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Remember atonement Is a blood sacrifice covering sin.
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It's a blood payment for sin Hebrews chapter 9 says without the shedding of blood. There is no forgiveness
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There is none What we're about to do here is representative of that covenant that you're reading right there the one we opened with That he establishes a new covenant in his blood
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When he atoned for the sin of all of us that we have ever done
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Blessed is the man whom the lord does not charge with sin Ladies and gentlemen
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The unconditional covenant of god is this that we're when we are faithless. He is still faithful Remember You did nothing you had nothing to offer to enter the covenant in the first place
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Ergo, nothing you can do Can revoke the promises of god for the promises and callings of god romans 11 are irrevocable
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They're irrevocable He has made a covenant with his people and that's us and there will be consequences for sin
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And prolonged sin will extend past just us And will affect those around us
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That is why part of his covenant is this That not only does he atone for all we have done
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But he justifies us now listen to me here In a u .s.
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Court of law The best the judge can do is declare you not guilty
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Not guilty not guilty does not mean innocent It means I can't prove that you committed the crime that i'm saying you prove you committed
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Innocent is a different category And no court can say that but when we say we are justified that means we have been declared innocent before god
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We've been declared innocent before god Brother christian is teaching on revelation 19 tonight.
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I don't want to steal any of his thunder But I want you to hear this one thing When god presents his bride to jesus christ
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The bride in revelation 19 at the end of all things is presented spotless and blameless
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In marriage counseling when we have a couple who maybe Has not always stayed faithful or Maybe has messed up sexually
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We rightly tell them that they can be a virgin on their wedding day And of course we don't mean that in the biological sense but in the spiritual sense absolutely when god
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When god atones for your sin, he didn't forget it happened He doesn't charge it to your account because he already charged it to jesus's account
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And he will have his bride spotless without blemish in pure white clothing
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With no mark of sin and no stain Because that all has been removed That is god's unconditional covenant that yet nevertheless
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When we are faithless, he is always still faithful and finally here Jeremiah chapter 3 i'll just turn here jeremiah chapter 3 verse 22
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Returned oh faithless sons, and I will hear heal your faithlessness. Let me read that again
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Return oh faithless sons. I will heal your faithlessness If this describes
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You in this room. I want you to listen again And i'm not referring to the lost i'm referring to the children of god
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Who feel and maybe rightly so that they have been faithless to god That maybe they
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Like the rest of us have whored ourselves out to the world and we have been faithless
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Faithless, excuse me To the one in the marriage covenant Return oh faithless sons and I will heal your faithlessness