The Last Adam

Providence Baptist Church

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We occasionally run into someone when we're ministering on the street that you get into a conversation and you say something like the scripture says that all liars will have their part in the lake of fire and the person will say, oh, the

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Bible was written by men. And it was written by 40 men over 1 ,500 years and three continents and three languages.

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But that isn't what this person means. That is what this person means is it was written by some guys who got together.

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They wrote down some stuff and it's like any other book that I take out of the library and it really has no authority over my life and has no bearing on my life.

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But when we look at scripture, when we look at Genesis chapter six, every inclination of man's heart's evil from his youth,

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Genesis eight, the flood didn't do anything. Every inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Our hearts are deceitfully wicked above all things.

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All our deeds are all our righteous deeds are filthy rags on and on. The testimony of scripture is not a book written by men that would want those testimonies written about themselves.

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And so and the passage that I'm looking at tonight, it is in it is in the book of Ephesians.

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Was that a rule that I'm just. But the the testimony of Ephesians chapter two is one of these passages that that goes along with with these other passages that men would not write about themselves if they were to write a book about men.

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And so we're looking at Ephesians chapter two, verses one to 10. And I'm going to read

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I'm going to read from my computer because it's in the New American Standard 1995 and I don't have one with me, but I prefer that.

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And so maybe please stand for the reading of God's word. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

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Among them, we, too, all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

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And we're by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us so that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

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For by grace, you have been saved through faith in that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast.

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For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Let's pray.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the testimony of scripture. Lord, we thank you, Lord, that's

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Lord, the Bible was written by men, but men carried along by your spirit. Lord, you are the author of your word and we praise you tonight.

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I pray, Lord, I'm a weak man and I need your strength. I need your direction.

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I need to be carried along by you just as our brothers of old were carried along,

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Lord, to to expound your word and to bring to us, Lord, the food that you want each of us to to hear tonight and receive into our hearts,

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Lord, both the audience or the brothers and sisters, the sheep among us here and this preacher,

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Lord, that you would speak to us and that each of us would leave this place changed by you.

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And we pray this in Jesus' precious name. You can be seated.

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This is this is an amazing passage of scripture. It it really is the gospel in 10 verses.

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It it begins. It tells us where we came from, where what where we started out.

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It tells us God's saving motivation, what motivated him to save us. It tells us about God's clarity or about God's saving work.

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And then then Paul tells us with clarity the what the Christian life is all in Christ.

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We see this throughout Paul's letters in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. It is all in Christ. Our salvation is not that we are made little

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Christians, that we go off and do things on our own. We are united with him.

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And as he says in John 15, apart from me, you can do nothing unless you abide in me.

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And we see a stark comparison from between our state as a result of the first Adam, what he has given his offspring as compared to the glory and sufficiency of our savior.

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We see a comparison of these two Adams in this in this passage.

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And that that's that's what I've been wrestling with is is not wrestling with in that having trouble with it.

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But I want to make that clear. I want to bring that out, the the greatness of our

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God, that how much more, how much greater our is, our savior is, how much more glorious he is than the one, the federal head in which we are born into this world under.

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Paul Paul starts off many of his letters, not necessarily starts off, but in his letters, he he tells

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Christians where they have been, where where they once were.

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And he puts this in such a way that when an unbeliever reads the same thing, it tells him where he still is.

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We see that in Colossians. He says you must be qualified by the father rescued out of the dominion of darkness.

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But if you're not, if you haven't been transferred to the kingdom of Christ, then you're still there. You're still in that dominion.

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And the same here. You're still dead in your trespasses and sins. And he's saying what we once were.

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And I think it's important to point out here that that Paul is making it clear no one escapes, just like in Romans three.

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There's not even one. There's none good, not even one. He says here, just like the rest, we he says in that this is all of us.

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This is all of us. There isn't a caste system in in depravity.

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There is, you know, a level of tears of of wickedness. And there is there are two kingdoms.

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There's the kingdom of of evil, the kingdom of Satan, the kingdom of of of depravity, the kingdom of darkness.

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And there is the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of heaven. And it is only in that kingdom of heaven where there is forgiveness of sins.

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It is only in Christ that there is forgiveness of sins. Now, we read some condemning passages here in the first three verses.

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And I want to go back a few minutes and go back to Genesis and look where where does this all come from?

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So we know our parents and most people know this, but I'm going to go into it anyway that that we are our parents were made.

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And it's an interesting thing that Adam was given. He was given one command.

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He was given a command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was given a thousand trees, probably.

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And God makes it clear that all of them are good to the pleasing to the eye. All of them are pleasing to the taste.

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But you can't eat of that one. There's two other trees. There's a tree of life and there's a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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And you must stay away from that. And God makes it clear in Genesis 322 that God knows good and evil.

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God knows good and evil. But he says in Genesis 22 that now that man and we know that man has fallen, he's eaten from that tree.

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But now that man knows good and evil, we can't have him eat of the tree of life that man has chosen evil.

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And this is the scene is is that God gives a command to this and along God makes the man, he makes him out of dust.

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He breathes life into him and he makes him man. And then he makes puts him to sleep, takes out a part of his rib, make fashions a woman, presents her to him.

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And he says, this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. And so the two become one and God makes them male and female.

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But God says in Genesis 126 that that they are made in the image and the likeness of God.

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They are created in the image of likeness of God. And God says it is very good. It is very good.

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But along comes the tempter in Genesis chapter three, we only get two chapters into the book and there's trouble.

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The tempter comes and he says to Eve, you know, is God starving you? Is he not?

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Can't you eat from any tree in this garden? And she says, no, no, we can eat from the tree of the garden.

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But we but it's that tree in the middle of garden, that one over there. We're not to eat of it.

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We're not even supposed to. They weren't supposed to eat of it.

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And he said that they and and Satan. He corrupts God's words, he contradicts

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God and says, you will not surely die. You will not surely die because God knows

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God's he's he's he's giving here's God's motive. You see, God's holding out on you,

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Eve, because God knows if you eat of it, you'll be like him. You'll know good and evil. That's why he's keeping you from the tree.

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It's not about this whole death thing. He's just trying to scare you. And it's interesting because, I mean, they don't know death.

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They don't know what death is. Nothing has died that we're aware of at that time. So they're talking about death, but they're not really sure what that means, at least as far as scripture goes.

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But but she is is this thing that she sees. It's it looks pleasing to the eye.

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It looks pleasing to the taste. But there's something else about this. This is a boastful pride of life. There is something about this tree that can give me wisdom.

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And she believes the devil and she eats of the tree and she gives some to her husband and he eats and their eyes are open.

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They see that they're naked. They hide themselves. They try to cover themselves. And, you know, the story and God comes and he brings some judgment upon them.

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But we see an interesting thing happen almost right away. We see the blame game happening.

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We hear God says to the to the man, have you eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? He says, well, this woman you gave me, she she gave me the fruit.

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In other words, it's your fault, God. This woman you gave me. It says, woman, what have you done?

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Well, this this this beast that he deceived me, the serpent deceived me into eating.

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And so we see this blame. And it always strikes me that the blame game is is really the basis of God's gospel.

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It is putting the blame of our sin upon another. But it's not up to us as to who we put that blame upon.

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We are not the ones who put the blame on another. We are not the ones who choose to put the blame on another.

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They're trying to get rid of their guilt by putting their blame on another. But only

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God can take our guilt away and put the blame on himself as our substitute.

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But but it's interesting. And we see this a lot in Belize is that people, people will will pretty much absolve themselves of all their sin that they've they've farmed it all out to other people.

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Well, I'm you know, my marriage broke up because of this person. And, you know, I'm out of work because that person, everything that they've done wrong has been farmed out to someone else.

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So they're they're free from from guilt. And I often say to them, you've got to get that back.

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You've got to get those sins back from those people. Because you need to repent, you need to own them, that you can come to the savior.

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And put the blame upon the one who will and can bear that blame.

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And so it's just interesting that in God's providence that he we see this happen.

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At the same time, we see this this promise of of a of the gospel where he says that the seed of the woman will one day crush the head of the seed of the serpent and the seed of the serpent will bruise his heel.

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So we look forward to 2000 years ago where Christ went to the cross and defeated the works of the devil.

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But we see here that that death came to our parents, death came to our parents and and they their eyes were open, they were cast out of the garden because they were kept from the tree of the of life that God did not want them eating of the tree of life.

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Otherwise they would live forever. And so they are cast out of the garden and they are they have brought death to their prodigy.

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They have they were given life, the breath of life from God went in them and they brought death to their offspring.

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And we see in Genesis chapter five, Moses acknowledges in verse one that God created man in his image and likeness.

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But in chapters in verse three, he says that Adam gave birth to Seth.

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In his in Adam's likeness and image, so the image that is given to the son is the image of Adam, the image of Adam is not the image and likeness that God.

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Put in him in Genesis chapter chapter one, verse 26, he has things have happened since then, he has betrayed

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God, he has he has chosen. Satan over God, because they don't eat of the tree and then their eyes are open and they say,

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OK, so that's good and that's evil, which one should we choose? No, he has chosen evil by eating the fruit he is because the choice he has is not between good and evil.

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The choice he had in essence is all he knows is good and he doesn't know good in terms in comparison to evil because he doesn't know evil yet, but he knows

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God is good. He has walked with God. That's all he knows. But he decides to betray

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God, he decides to listen to the devil and eat of of the fruit that God commanded him not to.

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So we see a reversal of the created order here. We see the fruit, the creature, the woman, the man and God at the bottom that that the fruit is the prized possession, the knowledge, the wisdom that comes from the fruit.

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It's given to through a deception of the serpent to the woman. The woman gives it to the to the husband who is supposed to be the authority of the family who was given the command.

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She is the helpmate to him, but she guides him and he betrays God. And so the created order is reversed.

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And and we see that that's. That man has betrayed

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God, man has betrayed God, and so his eyes are open, and so we see this, we talk to many people in evangelism and they say,

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I believe in God. But that's not the point, we all believe in God, Romans tells us that God has put it in us to know that he is true.

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We all believe in God, but the issue is we don't believe God, Adam believed in God, he walked with him in the cool of the day, but he didn't believe

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God, he didn't believe he believed Satan, he didn't believe God. When God says, if you eat of it, you will die.

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He believes Satan. There's there's some treasure in this in this fruit. And it's the same with us.

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If we don't believe in the way that Abraham believed. When it will be it'll be credit to us as righteousness, if we believe according to Abraham's belief,

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Abraham's faith. But if we believing in God, believing in the existence of a higher being is is of no value to us.

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Jonathan Edwards said that that we can believe in the in the majesty of God and the power and and the amazing things that go on in the sky.

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But if we don't have a an awe of his holiness and awe of his beauty and awe of his righteousness, then we don't know him in a saving way.

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We just we don't know him in a saving way. And and I think that's very important.

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And so we we move on from here where we see basically Adam is dead in his sins and trespasses.

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He has sinned against God. And he has the penalty of death. He has the penalty of death.

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He is a child of wrath because wrath will come. Wrath that is promised of God for disobedience, for for judgment is a certainty.

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It is not might come. See how you do in the judgment. It's not like that with God.

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God promises we are all what Paul is saying here. All of us are children of wrath. All of us are.

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We're not children of God. Many people will say the Jehovah's Witnesses will say, you were all children of God.

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And they'll say, well, God did not enter his mind that the children of Moloch or the children of Israel would offer their children to Moloch through the fire.

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And therefore, God doesn't send his children to hell. And you're right, Mr. J .W.,

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but you're not a child of God. We're a child of the devil. We are we are a child of of this.

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We are son of disobedience. We are a child of wrath. We are not a child of God because God tells us later, you know, those who receive him in John one, he gives them the right to become a child of God.

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You don't need to become a child of God if you are a child of God. We don't need to be adopted as sons if we're already sons.

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If Trey was your son already, you didn't need you wouldn't need to adopt him. And so we know we are not sons, but we become sons.

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We become sons. But Adam is called a son of God. But he is in the genealogies of Jesus, you know, son of Adam, son of God.

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But he has he has lost his sonship, I believe.

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And so we see what brings us to this place. We see the the depravity, the the the rejection of God by Adam.

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And he is cast out of the garden. He is kept from the tree of life. And I think there is there is one more thing before we leave the garden is that I believe that, yes, that death is a penalty for the disobedience because Scripture is clear about that.

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But I think also if you read Genesis 322, it seems that it's also man knowing good and evil in the flesh is not able to do good.

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And so he if he lives a life eternally, we know that sin continues to get worse, that that, you know, he will go off into unbelievable evil.

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And we see it right away in in the generations before the flood, that people living 800, 900 years, the wickedness is almost unbearable.

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And so the flood comes and we see right away that the the duration of people's lives is reduced considerably because as people go through life, they get more and more wicked.

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I mean, we see it today, even in our we see these old rich people like Klaus Schwab and Soros and like the evil that they've done in their lives.

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And you can imagine if these people had lived seven, eight hundred years, you know, how how wicked and I'm clearly our hearts are just the same as theirs.

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Our hearts are just the same as theirs. So just some some insights into this that that I think death was necessary because now man knew evil because God kept

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Adam from evil, from the knowledge of good and evil for a reason like he obviously didn't.

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That wasn't an attribute of God that he shared with him. So we we we we now have some background to Ephesians two.

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And and so we're dead in our trespasses, we're all the offspring of Adam, we're all children in the likeness and image of Adam.

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And so we all die. We all have the penalty of death through one man's sin.

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Death came into the world. And so we all walk according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air.

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Of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. So we see here.

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That we are we are sons of disobedience, Adam is disobedient and we are his sons, we are his offspring, and we see that Satan is at work in people.

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So we have our our sin nature, our own flesh that that drives us to to do wickedness.

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But we also have an outside attempter that works in us.

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And we see this very clearly here. And I give an example.

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I watched a movie a couple of years ago called The Bridge of Spies, and it was about a man who was a

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Russian spy and he lived in the United States and he was a painter. He sat in the park and paint and and and was a nice neighbor and talk, you know, said hi to people and that.

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But when his master called him to duty, when they wanted him to take some secret from the

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American government, then he was called to duty and he would go and do that task for his government.

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And I believe that that is the way that Satan operates in in people.

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I think we've seen that over the course of of the last three or four years, this this this unified story that people are walking according to.

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It's not like everyone got the memo. It's just that all the people are walking according to the prince of the power of the air.

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And so he is in their grasp where Satan is at right now, where he whether he has been released.

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We don't know and it doesn't matter, but it there is an influence upon evil.

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And also, I believe that we've seen a withdrawal of the grace of God. So we see this and now

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I want to move on to verse three, that among them, we too, all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of our flesh and of our mind.

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And I think what this is saying is that our that our flesh is the ruler, our our bodies is the ruler of unregenerate man.

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We we cater to the the desires of this body. God has given us good desires, healthy desires, desires for food, desires for for sleep, desires for drink, desires for sexuality, all good gifts that God has given us.

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He's given us five senses and a plethora of things to feed those senses.

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But we become corrupt and our our body is, as an unbeliever, dictates their demands that the body is in control, that we our body demands and we're all different.

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But we take the good things like the food that feeds our body and we pervert it and it becomes for other uses to to to give us comfort or to, you know, to to satisfy it in other ways.

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We drink to excess. We see sexuality going off the rails that people their their their lust isn't satisfied or there isn't satisfied within their marriage.

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And then it goes into extramarital affairs. And then we see it degrading into homosexuality and and pedophilia.

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And all the way down the line, we see, you know, people engaging, having a few beers in teenagers.

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We worked a teen challenge for a while and almost every story is I started smoking, drinking a few beers.

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Then I started smoking pot. Then I then I was in crack cocaine, heroin off the off the edge because it just sin is a slope.

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It's a sliding slope and it just keeps getting worse. It's never satisfied and and it's not satisfied with even more of the same.

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And so it it this is our what is controlling us.

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This is what controls. We indulge them. It's like you and you indulge someone to, you know, you find boring, but you indulge them for another 10 minutes to listen to their drivel.

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Like it's that way. You're you're letting your body rule over you. And Paul's saying we we formerly lived that way.

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And in the lusts also of our mind, the the things we think about, the things that men fantasize about, you know, that what we what we set before our eyes, all of these things corrupt, all of these things feed us and get us farther and farther away from our

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God because this body is not our focus or this body is not, you know, it it is called a body of sin in Romans six and it will be done away with because it has been corrupted by sin.

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And and I, I, I found an interesting wrestle for a while. Why? Why does

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Jesus Christ his it says over and over again, his body does not undergo decay, but our body must undergo decay.

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But his body was not a body of sin. He was our sin bearer. He stood in our place, but his body was not corrupted by sin, whereas our bodies must be done away with.

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They are part of us. And when we're born again, we become we become a new man.

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We have a new controller in us. We have a new a new desires in us. But the old man is still there.

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Romans five or six says that we that that this this the old man is crucified with Christ in order that this body of sin might be done away with.

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But he is still there. As talk Jacob talked this morning about the battle that that is raging there within us.

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And we can't let sin we can't let this body reign on the throne.

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We can't let it sit on the throne of our of our lives and take rule over us. And so we must put it to death.

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We must we must put it to death. But I believe that Paul is saying in Romans seven that when he says the very the things that I want to do,

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I do not do. And the things that I don't want to do, I do. And it's like these his his members are another person that he is.

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He's got these desires that unbelievers don't have. But he is he is saying,

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I have no control to do the things I want to do. It's like it's the sin nature is no longer me sinning.

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It's like someone else is sinning. But he says that what what shall I do? And the answer is the spirit of God.

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The answer is that the power of God in us. And that is what what

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I you know, I'm I want to focus on tonight is is that it is we see through the scriptures that that it is it is

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God in us that does the good work. It is God in us that that controls our flesh.

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You know, Romans eight says we are to put to death the deeds of the flesh by the spirit. Genesis or John three twenty one, that that when we come to the light, when we do the good deeds, we show that the work is wrought in God.

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It's it's done by God. And we see the same thing in here with in Ephesians two ten where God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that he's prepared beforehand that we would walk in them.

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It's like it's it's him doing it. It's him doing it. Christ in us is the hope of glory.

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And so when we look at verses like John five twenty nine where, you know, everyone in the grave will hear my voice and the good will be raised to eternal life and the evil to to torment.

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Who are these good? These good are the ones who have God in them, the ones who can say,

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I don't you know, I love my enemies. I do good to those who persecute me.

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I walk an extra mile with someone who makes me. I invite people over that don't that won't invite me back.

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That's not this. Flesh that I've been indulging, it's not doing that, it is it is

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God in me, it is that that love in me from him, and so it's not a recipe like the rich young ruler,

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Jesus says, go sell all that you have, give to the poor and follow me. If he had gone out and done that in his own strength, pulling up his bootstraps,

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I'm going to it would do him no good. Paul says, if you haven't done it in love, it's it's worthless.

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You haven't done it with the love of God in us. And I'm not going to get through all of this, but I really want to bring out the point that that Christ is salvation.

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I come up with an analogy and it's not a very good one, but but if you have like the

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Declaration of Independence and I don't even know what it is, but or the Second Amendment or something, but someone wrote something years ago and it benefits you.

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So say the Second Amendment, you have you're able to carry guns and do things like that. So it has a benefit to you.

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But the person who wrote that is inconsequential. They don't need to be here.

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That it's the result of what they've written down. It's the law that's been put in place. But it's not like that with Christ.

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Christ didn't go and and do what he did to, you know, create a bunch of bloody tickets to give out so that we could say, you know, hey,

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Jesus, I'll see you in heaven someday. You know, maybe. No, we come to him.

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He is salvation. You know, it's not what he did. What he did is unnecessary.

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Absolutely. But we must be in him. We must come to him. He is.

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That's why Paul keeps saying in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. Like what we were saying, you were talking about sinless perfection.

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And there's a Seventh -day Adventist guy in our town. And he says, one day I'm going to be able to obey the law perfectly in my own.

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You know, like I will be a perfect man. And and, you know, basically, thanks,

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Jesus. Now I can be a good Jew. But he's it's not us.

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It's not what we're not given that. Like it's just it was it seems simple, but it was a huge revelation to me that it's not that Jesus provides salvation.

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Jesus is salvation, you know, and I think it is it is crucial that we understand that.

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And that's why we you know, we talk when we're evangelizing. It's a relationship with him. It's not it's not.

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Well, now I understand what he did. We can understand what he did and still go to hell. And so that that is a point that I wanted to make, and I excuse me, the

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I think what the one place I'll just touch on here is that is versus four and five.

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But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. Another thing that our our our flesh does is we don't really love.

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We don't really love. We we we lust. We think because what we set our affections upon are things that are lovely.

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We we look out, we see something that is lovely, and that's what we set our affections upon. There's a pretty girl.

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She can be we she could be a very advantageous addition to my life.

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I mean, we don't think those words in our in our life, but we don't have the ability as carnal men to have a sacrificial love to sacrifice, period.

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We think of ourselves. We are selfish. We Adam and Eve were selfish.

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We are selfish. And so everything that we say that we love has some benefit to us.

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Even the good things that we do, there is there is collateral benefit to us in our flesh.

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Whether we believe that or not, we cannot sacrifice sacrifice without some reward.

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I believe that. And and and it's the same way we can't put to death the deeds of the flesh are our sins, our man's porn and these things because it involves sacrifice.

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And we can't sacrifice in carnal men. We can leave one thing behind and go to another.

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We can change horses, we can have convictions or consequences in this life that that drive us to to let go of something and go to something else.

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But I want to talk for a few minutes about the love of God. So we start with the love of God is is this inter trinitarian love, this love between the father and the son and between the son and the father, that that this is a love between two beings that are are perfectly lovely.

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The love between the father and the son is is perfection, is perfection.

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And so when when people say that, no, I don't believe that Jesus is

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God, when we look at the Jehovah's Witnesses, we look at the Muslims, they have a

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God who who never loved anything but himself before before he created if if he, you know, in their view of what was created, he's all by himself.

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But we we serve a God who has eternally had perfect love within him.

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He needs nothing from us. He doesn't he didn't need to create us so that we would love him.

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That is the Armenian view is that that God demands a free love from us, that if you

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Calvinists say, you know, you you're forcing God's forcing you to set your affections upon him, then that's not love at all.

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That that you're you know, he's just forcing you to come to him. But. I ask

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I ask the people, where does this love come from, this love that you say that God is so anxious to receive from you, where did they get it from?

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Because God gave them everything that is good. The only thing they have that didn't come from God is their sin.

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Where did this where does this love that this affection that God so desperately needs from you to come freely to him, where does it come from?

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But God is is unique in that his love for us is not driven by us.

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He is his love isn't driven by things that are lovely. His love is driven by his own his own will, what he determines.

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As he talks in Deuteronomy about Israel, you know, the biggest nation, you're not the greatest nation, but I love you.

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I set my love upon you. He didn't see Jacob and say, you know, something about Jacob that caught my eye.

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And, you know, I added him to the list. It's it's not like that. You know, we see that with with Jacob in some ways.

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You know, Esau was a bit more upright of a man than than Jacob was. But God said his sovereign affection upon whomever he chooses.

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And so his love, his love is upon whom his pure, perfect will determines.

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It's totally within him. It's got nothing to do with our loveliness, because Romans five, eight says, while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us, we weren't something attractive. Christ died on the cross for the men who were mocking him.

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The men who nailed him to the to the tree. It's got nothing to do with our beauty because we are not beautiful.

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We are we're betrayers. We're we're dead in our sins and trespasses. Paul's first three verses tell you we're like, what does

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God love here? But what I want to make the connection is, is this amazing love between the father and the son tells us that the depth of the love that the father and the son have for us, that they would separate.

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And the son would come to earth and save us and leave that union, that perfect union in heaven and come down that that sacrifice that God made.

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To to come and save us and and what what Christ experienced when he says, why have you forsaken me, father?

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We can't know what that is, but if we want to see the depth of the love of God, we just need to look at the cross, what he what he did at Calvary.

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And if we want to so many people say, well, why what's like hell and and Jesus being slaughtered on the cross, it just seems so, so, you know, over the top for, you know, lying and doing something.

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But we look at our sin and our wickedness. When we get into the depths of it, we start meditating upon the things that we do.

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What drives us, the lusts of our flesh, what drives us inside is is is is carnality.

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It is a deep darkness. And and, you know, we must be our body of sin must be done away with our body of sin must be done away with.

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The gospel is clear here. God makes us alive together with Christ. We are seated in the heavenly places with Christ.

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And I think as a Christian in the Christian life, because God is at work, it is his work that that is doing in us.

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It's like we're to surrender this tent to him. Do with as you please. I'm seated in the heavenly places by faith in you.

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You know, do your work on earth. And I'm not talking at all about laying back and having we we have a participation here.

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Absolutely. But but we are his workmanship. He has created the work for us to do.

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He does it in us. And so we are. I think we he we seated us with him already in the heavenly places in Christ, and then he will show us the surpassing riches of his grace.

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And we know this this two verses chapters of verses eight and nine, by grace, we're saved through faith and that not of ourselves.

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It's a gift of God, the gift of God, not of works that no man may boast. Even our faith that we have is not of ourselves.

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And so people that say, I'm I'm not going to I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait for Jesus.

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I'm going to wait. I'm having too much fun with my sin today. I'm going to wait for another day. Faith is a gift from you if you are hearing his voice, if you're sensing that this is making sense to you, that the gospel makes sense to you, that Christ went to the cross, he came to this earth and became man, became man solely that he might represent us, that he might take our place.

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You know, we in the love of God, when we look at Abraham and Isaac and Abraham's love for his son as one and only son, but it's it's magnified with God and Jesus.

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God didn't stop the knife. He slew his son, he his son freely took our penalty for us.

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And so it's this this this amazing gospel, it eliminates all kinds of things that people say.

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We've encountered the Christ Church of Christ that say, you know, it is the waters of baptism that I'm born again.

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And and so you you have this foreknowledge, you understand, you said you can't get saved if you don't fully understand what happens in the waters of baptism.

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So a carnal man understands enough about salvation that before he goes into the waters of baptism, he understands what's going to happen in there.

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And it's just but this is it's all of God. It's not of you.

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And then they argue up and down that there is no work involved in this. And the Armenians, I chose they didn't.

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That's all I did. And if it's it's there is nothing that can be added to what

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God has done. It's a result of it's not a result of works.

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There's nothing we can boast about. We can just praise him, his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus, and then we are his workmanship.

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We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus, where he makes us in Christ Jesus.

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Our. Man is like Jesus Christ came into the world.

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I believe that perfect humanity is God united with humanity, with humanity, it is

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God united with flesh, flesh on its own, cannot I, I don't believe if God had set aside the old

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Adam and and got some more dust and made a new one and over and over it and it's not going to be one out of a hundred

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Adams would would obey God. I believe that God is showing us.

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He's leading us to what perfect humanity is in his son, and so I just want to want to close in in just anyone here who does not know the savior.

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Know this, that that this these first three verses. Are speaking about you, there's no escape that that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, there's there's none righteous, there's not even one.

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It's interesting how Paul does that. He does it twice that there's none good. And it's as if someone from the audience says, no, but me, no, not even one, not even you.

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There's none good because you look at our society today. It's people say we judge our our our goodness, that we're better than someone else.

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We say, well, you know, at least I don't do the things he does. But in our society today, that's easy.

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That's easy to be to be better than somebody else.

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We see the depravity of our society today. But you're not going to be you're not going to be compared with with your friend down the street.

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You're not going to be compared with your with your dad or or with your your wife or your children or your your neighbor, your boss.

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Nobody's going to be there. You're not going to be there with with a priest or or your pastor or, you know, your best friend.

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You're going to be there alone standing before judgment and you're going to have your sins with you because if you don't get rid of them in this life, you you will take them with you.

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And I just encourage anyone to meditate upon this, that you see that it is if it isn't true, because there is another aspect to this, that our depravity and our lusts in our flesh, but there's also a great deception.

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There's a deception that people are seeing the world and they say, you know, the world is not that bad.

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I think it's the most insidious thing that we have is the doctrine of many churches that man is basically good, that this this event happened where a whole bunch of people got boosted up and partially regenerated, and that although they believe in total depravity, it doesn't really exist anymore.

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I believe personally that that the reason that there are conspiracy theories is because people assume that nine out of 10 times people will do the right thing.

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And I think it's actually the opposite. I think we should be more skeptical about the righteous theories where people are actually doing the right thing, because why would we trust people that Paul's describing here?

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We have this view that that I went to a seminary that taught reformed theology.

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But when Covid came out, when the emergency came out, it was like it was like everybody's an

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Arminian. Everybody's pretty good. You know, we can trust them because in an emergency they'll set aside their total depravity.

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And it's just not true. People are up to no good because they're about themselves.

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And there is a deception both in ourselves. We're deceived about who we are.

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And there's a deception. People are hiding their sins or hiding what they're like. And and we see it all over the news and I don't want to get into any specific topic, but I just I think we need to have our eyes open.

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We need to we need to live our lives, keep our Bibles open when we go out the door, because we can't just say, yeah, this is what a depraved person is.

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See you next week. Like because we are trusting people that perhaps we shouldn't be trusting or at least we should have things in place.

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And I'm not saying we should live a life afraid, but I think it's important that we understand what people are like.

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And I'll just share a couple of stories with you. We were in a church in in eastern

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Canada and we had a woman, two women come to our to our church, wanting a reformed church.

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And they they came for a number of months and they came to our house for Christmas. And and it turned out that one of these women looked very strange to us.

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But, you know, we're all of our the men are sort of slapping themselves because she wasn't a particularly attractive woman.

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But it turned out she wasn't a woman. She was a man and she was, you know, it was just when when when it was divulged, we said, of course, of course.

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But but when you're deceived, you you have no idea. We had another person who was who was an evangelist, a pastor, and for 20 years he abused his family.

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And it wasn't until he threatened his wife's life and she ran down the street that we found out that this man who was being supported in ministry was actually for 20 years.

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Nobody knew because on the outside, when he was with us, he was Mr. Nice guy, joker, best guy, you know, anybody but this guy, anybody but this guy.

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And so we think we know people, we think that. But but we are we are deceived.

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Satan's a deceiver, Satan's a murderer, and he's not an upright guy.

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But we we are we have wisdom and we have, you know,

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God gives us wisdom. God gives us. Anyways, it's it's I'm not trying to preach, be fearful of people, but I'm I'm trying to say that everybody needs the gospel.

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We can see we can meet people. That guy's such a nice person. They're so close to the kingdom.

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But we Maria and I shared the gospel with a Catholic couple and and very nice.

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They she rented our house for a while and and then we're sharing the gospel with them. And eventually he just exploded and threw us out of his house because he just he couldn't get over his.

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He said, I have my way. But, you know, we when I first got saved, I thought

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I'm going to, you know, you go to little old ladies there. They're on the verge of of death.

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And, you know, they're nice little old ladies. They're going to they're going to embrace the gospel. They're some of the meanest people.

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When you start talking about truth, when you start pushing buttons. And so I just I just encourage us to to to read the scripture and make sure we believe it when we apply it to the world, because we live in a very scary world or a very dangerous world,

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I should say. I believe that in World War Two, it wasn't the good guys against the bad guys.

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It was the bad guys against the worst guys. We see it all all over today where where we're putting our hope in in people that appear good compared to other people that are really evil.

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But they're both not Christian. And if they're not Christian, they're both on the same team. We have people in Calgary.

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They're fighting for parents not having their children exposed to this teaching in schools about pornography.

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And the Muslims and Christians are arm in arm. But they're enemies. They're enemies. They're all they're not in the same kingdom.

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And we can be we can be fooled by that. And so it's important that we that we you know,

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I I don't want to push this too much, but it's just it's important that we walk with our

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Bibles open, I guess, is really the message that I want to to leave. And and I just want to reiterate that that Jesus Christ is he is salvation.

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We must come to him. Remember the parable that people come to him and saying, Lord, Lord, he says, many will come to me on that day saying,

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Lord, Lord, did we not do this and that, you know, big things, cast out demons, do miracles.

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I don't I never knew you. I never knew who you were. You did Christianity. You did good works.

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You went to church. You did stuff. You read your Bible. Great. You preach that harps.

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I'm you know, we can do stuff. We can go on the mission field all our lives and not know

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Jesus. It's true. And maybe I'll just close with this story. But I believe that that Mother Teresa, she's, you know, she she sacrificed her life.

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She went to India. She poured out her life to people. She she spent her life, you know, caring for people in their death.

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But she encouraged a Muslim in their Muslim that she encouraged a Hindu in their Hindu. And as she never shared the gospel with people that were dying in her arms.

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And she said, Jesus Christ is a tough taskmaster. Yet Jesus says, my yoke is easy.

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My burden is light. And so where was she with Christ? Did she really know him or was she working, doing her work to try to earn what what he was promising?

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I can't say. I can't say. But the fruit of her ministry was not to share Christ with everybody that came across her door.

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It was to show that boy, Mother Teresa is a very kind woman and she took care of us when we were dying.

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And, you know, so we have to we can get so easily sidetracked in in the truth by not remembering all of these things in in day to day life.

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So this is a very quick and,

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I guess, all over the place thing with with Ephesians, too, but but I hope

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I just got to put some things on my heart. And the main thing I want you to take away is is that that that Jesus is salvation and that God is the one who is working us.

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God is the one that deserves all the glory. That is why our crown crowns will go to his feet. It's because all of the good works are his.

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Yet we are not to be complacent. We are to to pursue him with all of our.

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And I just encourage those who are here that don't know Jesus Christ, pursue him, because what's waiting for those who do not know him is an eternal lake of fire.

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It's people say, don't don't you know how fire preaching is mean. But when you're telling somebody to continue driving down the road that, you know, there's a bridge out of the other way, that's not a mean person.

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The mean person is is the one who says, keep going, step on it, step on it and drive off the cliff.

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No, it's we know that's true. And it's not a maybe it's not a maybe it is a fact.

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If you die without Christ, you're going to hell. There is no qualms about it.

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The Bible is very clear. There's no doctrine in Scripture that is clearer than the doctrine of eternal torment.

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord. I I pray,

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Lord, that your spirit will use, Lord, some of the things that I said and that you said through me, hopefully,

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God, I pray that anything that I said was not of you, Lord, you would you would take it away,

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Lord. And I pray, God, that you would guide each one of us.

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To walk with open eyes, not walk in fear, Lord, walk in in love for people.

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But God, that we we see that fruit in us, not pursue to make us look like we have that fruit,

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Lord, but to see that that fruit is is something that comes from you, Lord. We pray,

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Lord, that you work in this church and and beyond. We pray for the thing,

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I think, an outreach this coming weekend. We pray, Lord, that you would save souls in this town.

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I pray for souls in this congregation that are here tonight, Lord, that perhaps don't know you, Lord, that when they're in on their bed tonight, that they would remember some of these words and Lord, that they would surrender their life to Jesus Christ.