John 3:17-21 (This Present Judgment)

The Shepherd's Church

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All right. Sometimes a conversation can switch very abruptly.

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You're talking to someone, and things are going really well, and then all of a sudden it heads in a pretty dark direction.

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And you're like, where did that come from? Well, this is kind of what's going on in John chapter 3, verse 17 through 21.

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Jesus has just been talking about the glory of salvation. He's been talking about the fact that you must be born again, and then you need to look to Christ, because he's the only one who can give you healing.

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You need to believe in Christ, because he'll give you everlasting life. And then because of that, you'll never perish.

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You know that you're going to be loved because you've been loved by the God who gave his one and only son. All those are really good things.

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And yet John 3, 17 through 21 is where the conversation shifts. If you'll remember, the four -part doctrine of salvation that John chapter 3 has been putting forward is that you must be born again.

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If you're not born again, you won't look to Christ. If you're not born again, you won't believe in Christ.

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And if you're not born again, you will not receive new life. So you must be born again in order to live with that assurance.

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So all who are born again will look to Christ, and all who look to Christ will believe, and all who believe will be saved.

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That is what John has been teaching us. But what about Nicodemus? Because Nicodemus was not born again in this conversation.

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Nicodemus can't look to the crucified Christ because that's still two years away.

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Nicodemus can't receive the new life because Jesus hasn't died for his sins yet, and the Holy Spirit hasn't come. So what about Nicodemus?

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What is Jesus going to say to him? That's why this conversation ends the way that it does.

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Jesus turns to Nicodemus, and he teaches him, what happens if you are not born again?

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What happens if you don't look to Christ? What happens if you don't believe? And what

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Jesus describes is a picture of judgment. Now, for us today, we're going to get to see that play out in three different spheres.

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We're going to see how the judgment is not just a future reality for all those who don't believe and who go and die in hell.

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We're going to see that judgment is actually a present reality and affects us in three different ways.

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Judgment that affects the head, judgment that affects the heart, and judgment that affects the hands.

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That's my Baptist alliteration. If you want it better said, it would be judgment that affects your mind, your heart, and your body.

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And if you want it better said, There's a present judgment that is on people today who do not believe in God.

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Now, Jesus begins this teaching in verse 17 of John, right after the glorious John 3, 16.

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This is what he says. For God did not send his son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

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And he who believes this verse 18, he who believes in him is not judged, but he who does not believe has been judged already.

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We see here in this passage that Jesus has just described the purpose of his coming. The purpose of his coming is that people would be saved.

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The purpose of his coming was not to bring judgment because judgment was already there.

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Jesus doesn't bring judgment because the people were already under the judgment of God, because no one believed when

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Jesus came. For millennia of time, people had not believed in God.

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People had, had no faith. And if the Holy Spirit of God did not assist them in the old

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Testament, they did not believe at all. And we'll talk a little bit more about how the Holy Spirit helped in the old

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Testament. But the purpose of Jesus's coming was not to invoke a new judgment. The purpose was to save people from the current judgment that they were already under.

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Now, for Christians, it's hard for us to understand this because we live after the cross. We live in a time where we have placed our faith in Jesus, and Jesus is the one who took our judgment.

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Jesus bore the curse that we deserved on the cross. He was cursed for us. He took our transgressions.

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It's hard to understand living with a curse. It's hard to understand living with a judgment. You wake up in the morning under the condemnation of God.

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You go to sleep at night under the condemnation of God. It's hard for us to understand that. But Jesus says, for those who did not believe, they are judged already.

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It's almost as if the four part formula in John has been reversed. Remember, you must be born again.

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Look to Jesus, believe and receive life. For those who do not believe they're not born again, they won't look to Christ.

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They will not believe they will not receive the life that Jesus has promised. Now, this is both a future and a present judgment, but it's more present than future in this passage, and I just want to affirm that I do believe in the reality of hell.

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I believe that if you do not believe in Jesus and you do not place your hope and your faith and your trust in Jesus at the end of your life.

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You will go to hell. But this passage is talking about a present tense judgment, judgment, this passage is talking about a judgment that affects your mind, that leaves you incapable of knowing

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God. This is a judgment that affects your heart, that renders you incapable of loving God.

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This is a judgment that affects your hands and your body that renders you incapable of serving

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God in your own strength and in your own power. Again, let's read 18 says he who believes in him is not judged.

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That's for us, the believer. But he who does not believe has been judged already. Now, it's important here that we understand some of the rules of grammar.

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I know that you thought you would never hear that statement, and maybe in high school you laughed at that, but I'm going to say it again.

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We need to know the rules of grammar. Past tense verbs come before present tense verbs.

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So when john says he who has not believed has been judged already, that's a present tense verb and a past tense verb.

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One is describing an action that happened in the past. One is describing an action that's happening in the present. Now, if we understand which one of those that is, this is the way that the passage reads.

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Those who are not currently believing were judged already.

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Does that make sense? There was a judgment that happened before this decision, before this conversation that was happening with Nicodemus, that the unbeliever was under a judgment so that their mind could not understand the things of God.

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No human being in their own ability and strength can figure out who

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God is. They'll find multiple different paths. They'll go with Buddhism, they'll go with hedonism, they'll go with legalism, but they won't go with Christianity as it is truly communicated in the

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Bible because Christianity is a gift. It's a gift that's given to us by God, from God, for God, and it's nothing that we can do to earn.

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And if we don't believe it is not because we weren't spiritual enough, and if we don't believe it is not because we weren't faithful enough, and if we don't believe it wasn't because we weren't smarter than the person next to us who conjured up belief, it means that our minds were under the judgment of God so that we could not understand truth.

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This passage communicates a totality of judgment that affects the mind, the heart, and the will, and it's sobering and it's striking.

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Let's start with the mind in verse 18b, those who do not believe have been judged already.

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That word right there for believe is pistouo. I didn't say a bad word. It's pistouo.

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You'll get used to, I'm very nerdy at times and also very corny. I don't write these things down, they just happen.

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Pistouo is a word, it's a thinking word, it's a word about belief. It comes out of the

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Greek culture. See, faith is not a feeling in the

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Bible. Faith is not a decision that's based on emotions. Faith is a decision that is based on evidence.

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Pistouo actually means, this is from a lexicon that I have on my shelf, the process of hearing evidence, evaluating the evidence, and then once you understand that the evidence is reliable, accepting it, believing it, and living differently because of it.

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That's what faith is defined as. It's the faith that evaluates the evidence and then brings that evidence down into your life so that it changes you.

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Now, this is the word that John uses when he talks about belief every single time. Ninety times

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John uses this word for belief in his gospel and in 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. Ninety different times.

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He uses it more than any author because he wants us to understand what it means to believe. That's the purpose statement for the gospel,

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John 20, 31. These things have been written so that you will believe. Evidence, these things that I have shared with you have been written so that you would evaluate them and so that you would understand them and so that you would believe that Jesus is the

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Christ and you would receive life in his name. Belief is about understanding the fact of Jesus's resurrection.

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Faith is about understanding who Christ is, and faith is a gift, as we've already shared, for those who were born again.

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For those who are not, their minds are under a judgment. This same

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John who shares these things says that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.

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That word did not, more likely, is cannot. The darkness cannot comprehend the light.

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It says that the darkness flees from the light because the darkness never wants the light to shine on it because their deeds would be exposed.

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If you are under a mind that is filled with darkness, you cannot understand the light. Verse 10 in John chapter 1, he says, he was in the world, it's

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Jesus, and the world was made through him and yet the world did not know him.

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In this passage, Nicodemus, the guy who served God his whole life, sitting right across the table from God in the flesh, and he has no idea who he is.

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This same John is the one who said, you must be born again, that you cannot ascend to God. There's an inability that we're speaking about here.

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Our minds, because of sin, have been put under a judgment to where they're incapable of fully and perfectly knowing

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God. Now, to the Christian, praise

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God, this power of judgment has been overthrown in your life.

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Jesus took the curse on the cross so that when you were born again, you looked to Jesus, and you believed in Jesus, and you saw the reality of who

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Jesus was, and you ran to him, and you worshiped him. Please don't believe that that act was of your own doing.

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It was a gift of God. The reason you see who God is, the reason you worship God for who he is, the reason you love

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God is totally a gift from God. All of that's possible for you, the believer, if you're a

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Christian, because you've been given a new mind. Your old mind is gone, the cursed and judged mind.

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But if you're not a Christian, no matter how hard you try, you cannot understand who God is.

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You can't. You may be able to quote facts. Again, I've mentioned this several times.

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I had a book in seminary that was written by an atheist, and he described the gospel better than I can. He understood the formula.

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He understood the words. He didn't know God, because knowing

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God is a gift of faith. You may say, well, what about the gospel?

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The gospel is the power of God for salvation for all who believe. That's right. But you can preach the gospel to someone who is lost until you're blue in the face.

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And unless God provides the Holy Spirit to awaken them and open their eyes, they will not hear it.

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You can preach it 1 ,000 times. They may hear the sound waves that are coming out of your mouth. They may hear the verbs and the nouns that you're using.

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But they won't know God unless God awakens them. Paul says it like this in Ephesians 4, 17 through 19.

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So this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the

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Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts, and they having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

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What Paul is saying is that these people, because they do not believe, they've been given over to a debased mind, a mind that exists in pitch black, impenetrable darkness that they cannot will themselves out of.

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They're spiritually dead. They're dead like in a casket. They're hard and cold as stone instead of soft like clay.

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And in order to believe, they must be given the gift of faith.

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They must be born again. Just like John says, or Jesus says, who among you have birthed yourself?

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Well, who among you have reborn yourself spiritually either? It's a gift.

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Now, the question I want us to wrestle with is, does the unbeliever have no hope?

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Do they pursue no joy? Do they pursue no faith? Do they pursue no religious activity?

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No, they do all those things. Every single one of us want peace, and hope, and joy, and love. Every single one of us want to feel justified.

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Every single one of us want to know that we are significant, and that we're loved, and they want all the same things, but they don't find them in Jesus Christ.

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Unless God awakens the sinful mind, we do not seek Jesus Christ. We may seek our hope, and our joy, and sex, or in an election, and social justice movements, and our family, and false gods, and no gods, and moral obedience, or in hedonism, but we don't seek that in Christ.

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That is the gift. Without the power of God, the sinfully depraved mind continues to exist in its depravity.

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Romans 8, 7 says, For the mind that is set upon the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.

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Indeed, it cannot. It's incapable. He says in 1

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Corinthians 2, 14, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand because they are spiritually discerned.

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What Paul is saying is that with an earthly mind, you cannot discern the things of the Spirit of God.

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Jesus says the same thing to Nicodemus. He chides him, and he says, He said, Nicodemus, you should be a teacher of the people of Israel, and yet you can't understand the things of earth that I'm trying to describe to you.

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How much more are you going to discern the things of heaven? Jesus says it in John 6,

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I think most clearly. Jesus said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the

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Father grants it. Now, in Greek, no one is a really technical word.

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It means no one. I thought I'd give you that little help there so that when we understand that no one can come to Jesus unless the

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Father grants it, that means no one. The reason that no one can come to Christ without the

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Father's help is because they live under the judgment of God. Their minds exist under the judgment of God, and this is serious.

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And this is serious for several different reasons, but I'll describe to you one. It begins with a depraved mind.

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It begins with a lack of belief in God, but it doesn't end there. It's like the example of yeast.

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If you throw yeast into a loaf, it leavens the entire loaf. Well, if a mind exists in darkness, it grows darker as it goes.

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That's why most people give their life to Christ when they're young because they grow cold, and they grow hard, and they grow darker as they get older.

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The same is true for human societies. As more people refuse to believe in God and live together, societies actually go in a darker direction.

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And every generation, it seems, that unless God intervenes and brings revival to that land, that the nation, every generation, goes incrementally more and more and more wicked.

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That's what's happened in America. Because God has not breathed life into the society at this point yet in a total way,

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America has continued to slide down into moral insanity. You and I are living at the darkest time,

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I believe, in American history. We're living 200 years since the last revival when

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God blew life into this country, and every generation, it has slipped further and further away from God.

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Paul says in Romans 1, 21 through 24, For even though they knew

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God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. But they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

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Professing to be wise, they became fools. They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, and of the birds, and of four -footed animals, and of crawling creatures.

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Therefore, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

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What he's saying here is that the judgment of God on a nation does not ultimately or finally, it does finally happen when they're destroyed or when a nation conquers them, yes, but it begins with God giving them over to depravity.

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In a sense, I want you to understand that the country of America is already under judgment.

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We're under judgment because we have been given over to a depraved mind. If you read the rest of Romans 1, you'll see that that starts with a lack of belief.

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That starts with an increase in atheism or an increase in agnosticism or an increase in pluralism and everything else that happened to us several generations ago, and then it morphs into a homosexual,

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I mean, a sexual revolution, which we saw in the 60s. You see as Romans 1 progresses that the darkness gets thicker and deeper, and then there's a homosexual revolution, and then there's a gender revolution, and then it ends in a kind of depravity where people laugh, and they mock, and they say that, and they stand up and cheer for other people who are doing the same wickedness as they are doing, and I remember a picture in the

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New York State House Senate where they approved partial birth abortion, I believe is what it was, and everyone stood, and they clapped, and they cheered, and they had these demonic smiles on their faces, and I thought, we're there.

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Cultures get darker as they go unless the Lord breathes life into them.

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Think about what we have going on here in America. 3 ,000 babies a year or a day are killed in abortion.

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Every six years, we kill more children here than the Nazi Holocaust. Every six years.

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For the thousands and many thousands of children who are born, some are abducted into sex slavery in this country.

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It is an epidemic, and yet it's not being spoken about. You can talk to law enforcement officials.

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You can talk to people who are in agencies. I'm not talking about conspiracy theories. Sex trafficking and underground trade of human lives is an epidemic in this country.

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This country is dark at the foundations. Pornography, the proliferation of pornographic material easily accessible to anyone and everyone on the internet is depraved, and the

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Supreme Court and the government care more about shutting down a church in California than actually dealing with these awful problems that we're facing.

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No one in the government seems to be doing anything about abortion. No one in the government seems to be doing anything about the sex trafficking and slavery, but yet we want to shut down churches.

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In America, churches like Grace Community Church in California, whether you agree with what they did or not, they're standing up for their religious freedom.

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That is guaranteed to us by the Constitution, and yet the government has turned against them.

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But yet, they allow casinos, strip clubs, bars, and other godless institutions to continue to practice their business.

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We're a country, 200 and something years old, still struggles with racism, still struggles with police brutality, and yet the solutions are far worse than the disease.

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Black Lives Matter is an organization, is a Marxist organization, that has caused riots in the streets, that has caused cities to be burned to the ground.

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Black lives do matter, but when groups of people gather together and cheer, pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon, what do we want now?

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Dead cops. When do we want them? Right now. There's a godlessness to this culture.

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The lawlessness of this age points to a judgment upon this culture. It begins in the hearts of individual people, but when individual people gather together as a society, and their sin is magnified, you have what we have in front of us.

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America. But yet, what

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I found actually more troubling than that was the fact that Jesus is talking to a religious person.

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Jesus was talking to a person who went to church every single week. Jesus was talking to a person who read his

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Bible and who knew it, probably memorized the entire Old Testament. Jesus was talking to someone who was a fairly good guy in his culture, and yet Jesus is saying that he, too, is under the judgment of God.

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And that is where, as Christians, we must never be prideful. We must never look out and say, ah, the sinners of the world.

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We must never, ever try to pull the sawdust out of someone else's eye when a tree branch or a tree trunk is sticking out of our own.

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Jesus is saying that both hedonism and legalism are equally damnable, and both equally evident of the fact that judgment is upon the mind of the human being who cannot know

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God. You see, the point is that you can miss

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God by being stereotypically wicked, and you can miss God by being really, really good and really, really moral and really, really kind.

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Because if you're not born again, then it's just like spraying perfume on a pig. See, I actually think religion is more dangerous than the things that we are facing in this world right now, because religion actually purports that if you do these things, then you will live.

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If you do these things, then you'll have a relationship with God. All of the depravity that we see in the world that's typical, the murder, the lying, the adultery, all that stuff, they're not claiming that these things will help you know

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God. Religion does, and religion is sneaky. And the pride that swells up in your heart will grip you and choke out the gospel.

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And before you know it, you're living in so much pride and arrogance that you can't even see

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God. There's a striking and frightening verse in the

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New Testament, Matthew 7, 22. It says, many, doesn't say a few, doesn't say the minority.

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It says, many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

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And in your name, didn't we cast out demons? And in your name, didn't we perform many miracles?

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And Jesus will look at them and he will say, depart from me, I never knew you. It's a frightening verse for anyone who's a religious and moral person who grew up in church.

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And it's not because they did wrong things. They were actually doing good things. They were doing miracles.

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They were doing signs and wonders. They were serving. They were probably the worship leaders and the pastors. The reason that they were doomed in this passage and the reason why this will happen is because they knew

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Jesus, but Jesus did not know them. And of course, in Jesus's infinite knowledge, he knows all people, but this is a relational knowledge.

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Jesus did not entrust himself to those people because they were more interested in their pride and in their religion than in loving

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Christ. They were getting something out of Jesus. They were getting status or notoriety or they were getting the experience of going to a church where they could raise their hands and sing.

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They were getting friendships. I've met many people who go to church and who have no concept of the gospel, but they have relationships and community and they're getting what they want out of Jesus, but they're not getting

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Jesus. All of this stuff adds up to the fact that in our own effort, in our own power, and in our own ability, we cannot know

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God. We need God to awaken us to right knowledge of who he is.

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I'm saying all of this because that word many haunts me. We're a group of probably about 20 people right now, and I pray to God that every single one of us is known by Christ.

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I would say all of us know Jesus in this room. I'm praying that Jesus knows every single one of us. Many is striking.

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Many is frightening when the many are the ones who are thrown away, when it's the many are the ones who are lost.

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I pray for you. I pray for me. I pray at the end of my life I haven't deceived myself and I stand before my

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Lord angry because I thought that I did enough. I pray that I'm known by him and that you're known by him, and we can have assurance in those things, but all

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I'm trying to say is we should not have pride. As Christians, we should not be beating our chest and pumping our fist and saying, we're the ones who know

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God. We should be the most humble people on earth because we didn't do anything to procure the love of God.

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It was grace and grace alone that God loves us, not from our goodness, not from our smarts, intelligence, and all that stuff.

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It's a gift. And if it's a gift, we ought to be the most humble people on earth. I've known many people who live a head -only

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Christianity. When I say head -only, I mean that they love doctrine, but they don't love God.

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They love doctrine, and they don't love people. They love their theology, but they're difficult to even speak to.

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I believe that's disintegrated Christianity. I've known people who are heart -only

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Christians, who love the experience, but they don't care about knowing who God is. That's disintegrated

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Christianity. I've known people who are hands -only Christian, which means that they don't care about doctrine, and they don't care about emotions or feelings.

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They just want to serve, and they want to make the world a better place. And if they serve God, and if they do a good job, then at the end of their life, they're going to report before Jesus, and He's going to say, well done, my good and faithful servant.

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But if that's all they've got, no head, no heart, just hands, vice versa, if it's one out of the three, it's not the kind of relationship that Jesus died to give you.

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He died to redeem all of you, head, heart, and hands. Again, I think the point that we need to reiterate again and again and again is you can be lost through hedonism or legalism, and the only way you can be found is if God gives you new birth and gives you a new mind.

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The second thing that Jesus tells us is that this judgment has also affected the heart.

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Let's continue on with verse 19. Jesus says, this is the judgment.

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We're not waiting on judgment. This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.

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The second level of judgment comes upon the heart because human beings without Holy Spirit help cannot love

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God. They will only love darkness. They will never love the light. John says, this is the judgment, meaning that we're not waiting on a future judgment.

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It's here. It's here on the hearts of any person who has not been born again because they cannot in their own power and ability love

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God. It's manifest by the fact that the darkness, or the light's coming to the world, and they love darkness instead of the light.

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It's been ever since Adam, Ada the fruit, that the mind and the heart of man have been brought under this condemnation.

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We have evidence from ancient China of ancestor worship. We have evidence from India of a pantheon of gods.

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We have evidence from Canaan of fertility cults, and we have evidence from Jerusalem here in Nicodemus that you can love your religion more than Christ.

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The human heart is deceitful above all things, and you'll find something other than God to satisfy you unless you're born again.

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Now, as we said earlier, there's evidence in the Old Testament of people knowing God, but I challenge you to find an example of someone who knew

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God without God's help. God's the one who first comes to Abraham. God is the one who first comes to Moses and lights up a bush in the middle of the desert.

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God is the one who first appears to the people of Israel and lights up an entire mountain. God is the one who brings his light and his illumination to sinful people, and without God's help, they cannot know

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God. I challenge you to find an example of anyone in the Old Testament stumbling upon the knowledge of God without God's intervention or help.

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Men love the darkness rather than they do the light. And again, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus here.

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And I think it's a fascinating point that as people who are, by the definition of it, religious, we are at a religious service right now, and though we live in the modern 21st century, and we say,

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I don't believe in religion, I believe in a relationship, of course, I'm using the word in its technical sense, we have to be careful.

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Satan attacks most fiercely religious people and twists their motivations to where, before long, you're filled with pride.

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Remember the Pharisee? The Pharisee said, Lord, thank you so much, and I'm not like that guy. And he meant that.

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Jesus said, he's the one who's lost, not the one who's beating his chest and saying,

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Lord, how could you possibly forgive me? His heart is deceitful. We need a new heart.

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See, that's kind of the point of what Christianity is. Christianity is not about mustering up faith in order to impress or please

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Jesus. Christianity is about, you had a heart of stone and now you've been given a heart of flesh. You had a heart transplant.

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And that new heart now produces new affections in you. And that new mind produces new thoughts in you.

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And it's not because of you, it's because of the gift of God. Before God came into our life, we were addicted to our sin.

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I'll share it with you like this. I don't know if you've ever dealt with drug addictions before. I used to work in a prison.

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Some of you didn't know me when I used this joke, so I'll use it again. I met my wife in jail. We were both jailers.

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But if you watch someone who's addicted to substances, they can't even be human without giving in to the addiction.

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It quakes their body in such an awful, tragic way that they're dragged by their addiction.

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They're held captive by their addiction. They'll do anything and everything to satisfy their addiction. And if you starve the addiction, it makes it worse.

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You and I may have never struggled with addiction, but I will say addictions can be cured.

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People are healed from addictions all the time. I used to smoke cigarettes when I was in the army. I hated quitting cigarettes.

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I was grouchy for about two weeks, but I did it. People quit alcohol, people quit drugs, all the way up to meth and cocaine.

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But the disease of sin is something you can't quit. Not in your own power and not in your own effort.

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It's too powerful. You can starve out your addiction to lust, and then the very next moment, you're self -righteous.

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You can starve out your lack of hospitality so that you can welcome people over, and you can put on a smile, and then by the end of it, you're biting the head off of your wife because sin cannot be permanently squashed by us.

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It's too pervasive within us. Whether it's illicit sexual sin or human approval, whether it's violence or prideful kindness, without the help of Jesus Christ and the power of His Holy Spirit, we are slaves to sin.

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The root of sin is not bad behavior. The root of sin is false love. I'll say that again.

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The root of sin is not bad behavior. The root of sin is false love, false worship, false affections. It's a poisoned heart.

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It's a heart that craves anything and everything other than Jesus. So therefore, the most obvious solution is that we need a new heart.

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Now, the third thing, let me just recap for a second.

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It says that light's coming to the world, and we love darkness. Who's the light? Jesus is the light.

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In the Epistle of John, John calls God the light. In Paul, we hear that the

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Holy Spirit is the light. So I just want to reiterate the fact that we cannot know any member of the Trinity apart from the triune work of God in our life.

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The final element is that we have a judgment upon our hands or upon our wills or upon our behavior or upon our actions.

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We have a judgment upon our minds that we cannot know God, a judgment on our hearts that we cannot love God, and a judgment upon our hands so that we cannot serve

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God. Verse 20 says, For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

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I don't want to go into this because we went into it a little bit already. The totality of the human condition is under the curse of God.

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Does that make sense? Now let's talk about the cure. Verse 21.

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It's a fascinating verse. It says, But he who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds may be manifest as having been wrought by God.

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Two things I want to point out to you here. The first is having been wrought is the past tense verb.

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So God is the one who has to do the work in order for you to come to the light. But the second thing that I want to point out is what in the world does wrought mean?

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That sounds like an old timey word. I grew up in North Carolina where my grandma had a wrought iron railing on the steps.

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I broke it. That was just me as a child. Wrought, if you think about wrought iron, is metal that needs to be heated in order to be formed.

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It's metal that needs to be put into the fire until the fire gets into it. It's no good trying to bend iron until it's heated.

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Until the fire has gotten into it. And then the metal worker beats it and he pounds it and he shapes it and he bends it and he turns it into whatever purpose that he wants it to be.

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What this passage is saying, and this is where we're going to close, is that we are just like that piece of iron.

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We can't save ourselves, we can't bend ourselves, we can't shape ourselves, we can't move ourselves. We're as dead as a piece of iron laying on the ground.

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But when the master grabs it, and when the master baptizes it in the fire of the Holy Spirit, and when that fire gets down into us, then the master can shape us.

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Then the master can move us according to his purposes. Then the master can sometimes beat us.

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Have you ever been beaten up by life? Praise the Lord. He's shaping you. Have you ever been stretched to where you thought you were going to break?

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Praise the Lord. He's moving you out of an ugly iron frame into the frame of your glorious Savior, Jesus Christ.

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What this passage is saying is that Nicodemus, nor you and I, can do anything whatsoever to save ourselves.

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Our minds are corrupt, our hearts are corrupt, and our hands are corrupt. But if God does the work, then he will be the one who changes us, and shapes us, and molds us into the image of Jesus.

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And he therefore is the one who gets all the glory. Now, if you're not in Christ, if you're listening to this on the podcast, or if you're even here today, and the

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Holy Spirit's moving in your heart, do not resist the Holy Spirit. You can't do this on your own. You can't save yourself.

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You can't sanctify yourself. You can't glorify yourself. Surrender to the work of what

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God is doing. He's the one who's doing the work. And then everything we've learned will be true.

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You'll be born again. You'll look to Jesus and you'll be healed. You'll believe and you'll have eternal life and you'll never perish.

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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for the fact that salvation is not my work, it's your work.

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I pray, or I thank you, Lord, that you're the author and the perfecter of our faith. I thank you, Lord, that you're the one who moved inside of us because,

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Lord, if I was just so smart that I could figure out what to do on my own, then, Lord, I would be filled with so much pride.

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But an honest assessment of my life, Lord, I pray an honest assessment of all of our lives would render the verdict that we cannot do that on our own, that we must be born again, that we need you.

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We need you every single hour, every minute. And, Lord, I also pray that there would be a joy that springs up in the life of the believer here who loves you, who goes home and wants to read your word.

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Those are alien actions by people who were born in sin. Those are gifts of God. Lord, as we stand and as we sing as the people of God, I pray that we would recognize that God is working right now, currently, in our hearts and our minds and in our hands to produce affections and to produce love for you inside of us,

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Lord, that we could never manufacture on our own. I pray that we'd be filled with gratitude. I pray that we would be joyful over all that you have done, and you did it on the cross.

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You took our guilt, you took our curse, and you gave us your blessing.