02-21-2021

Park Meadows Church iconPark Meadows Church

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Pastor David Mitchell

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08-30-2020

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All right, here we go. You remember back in January, after the
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January 6th episode at the Capitol building, we spent quite a number of weeks talking about Bible prophecy being fulfilled, and I mentioned under the area where Jesus mentioned wars and rumors of war,
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I mentioned this little war going on that nobody knew about in Africa, and it's in Ethiopia.
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There's a region there kind of like the state of Texas, just one of the regions of Ethiopia called the
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Tigray region, and there was a war going on there because of voting irregularities, and I thought, well, that's interesting, and thousands of people have been killed in this war, but I found a new article on it.
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Actually, just this morning, I wanted you to see it. It's kind of interesting. So now, just now, yesterday, it's starting to really hit the press, and this happened back in November, so it's just now starting to get the stories out, and so here is a story.
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Let me go ahead and pop this up where you can see the footnote. There's the article down in the lower right corner.
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You can see that if you want to look it up, but it says bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia's holiest city.
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Now, holiest city, that's talking about Christianity, but most of Ethiopia is Islamic, but this is one little quarter in that country where there are
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Christians. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew, but they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading
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Eritrean soldiers. That's the Ethiopian government soldiers. Those memories haunt a deacon at the country's most sacred
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Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, and I mentioned that church when I taught on this back in January, because there were about 800 people inside that church worshiping and seeking safe haven, and the soldiers came in and slaughtered them all.
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It went on and says where in this Ethiopian Orthodox church, where local faithful believe the ancient
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Ark of the Covenant is housed. I don't know if you knew that, but the believers, 800 -some -odd
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Christians who were killed by the most likely Islamic Ethiopian army that day, they believe that the actual
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Ark of the Covenant that was in the wilderness tabernacle is hidden, I assume, below ground underneath this church, and all of the believers of this church believe that is where the
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Ark of the Covenant is. Isn't that interesting? As Ethiopia's Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months, so the government cut off access to media, to the
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Internet, and to telephone to these people they were killing. Keep paying attention.
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This gets even more interesting. Finally, some telephone service is resumed after three months, and the deacon of this church and other witnesses gave the
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Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.
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For weeks, rumors circulated that something ghastly had occurred at this particular church, but with Tigray cut off from the world by the government, and journalists blocked from entering by the government, little could be verified as Ethiopian and allied fighters pursued the
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Tigray region's fugitive leaders. The deacon believes some 800 people were killed that weekend at the church and around the city, and that thousands in Aksum have died in all.
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The killing continues. He just buried three people the day that he spoke to the
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AP last week. The atrocities at the Tigray conflict have occurred in the shadows because the government shut off all access to media to the
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Tigray people, which is like Texas or some other state as a part of the nation there.
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Get this. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the
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Nobel Prize in 2019, see, this is the point that I want to make.
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The people in this world that the world system says are good are actually the evil people, and the people that are evil are actually the good people, and this in itself is fulfilled prophecy, of course.
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So this Ethiopian Prime Minister who had his army go in and kill these 800 worshipers in this church won the
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Nobel Peace Prize a couple of years ago, a little over a year and a half ago, for making peace with neighboring
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Eritrea. Well, Eritrea is the country that helped him go in and kill the
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Tigray people, right? So he wins the Nobel Peace Prize and goes and slaughters Christians, and then the world doesn't know about it for three months.
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Now, this still gets better as you keep reading here, if you find fulfilled prophecy to be interesting, and you see parallels here in our country as the news media totally becomes just a propaganda arm of the
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Democratic Party in our country, totally blocks out any kind of conservative viewpoints or Christian viewpoints, and it's very similar.
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So he announced that the fighting as the world focused on the
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U .S. election. He accused Tigray's regional forces, who he was killing, whose leaders dominated
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Ethiopia for nearly three decades before he took office, and he accused them of attacking his military.
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Tigray's leader called it self -defense after months of tensions. While the world clamors for access to Tigray to investigate suspected atrocities on all sides and deliver aid to millions of hungry people, the prime minister who won the
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Nobel Peace Prize has rejected outside interference. He declared victory in late
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November and said no civilians had been killed. His government denies the presence of thousands of soldiers from Eritrea, long an enemy of the
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Tigray leaders who he made peace with and allowed them just to go in and slaughter. Ethiopia's narrative, however, has crumbled as witnesses like the deacon in this article have emerged.
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Now, watch this. The foreign ministry on Thursday acknowledged. Now, this is the
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Ethiopian government, the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Once he could no longer hide it, he acknowledged it.
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But look what he said. Look what he how he frames it. He acknowledged that rape, plunder, callous and intentional mass killings could occur in a conflict where many are illegally armed.
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So what he does is he justifies the killing of these people because they had guns of their own to protect themselves.
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Similar to United States. Does that does that bring any goosebumps on anybody?
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Its statement blamed Tigray forces for leaving the region vulnerable by possessing weapons.
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Isn't that interesting? And said any serious offense will be investigated. It did not mention
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Eritrean soldiers who were armed to the teeth. Axum with it. So so here's the deal.
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It's illegal for the Christians to arm themselves, but it's OK for all the
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Islamic people to. And since they were illegally armed, it was not a slaughter. It was legal for them to go and kill them.
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See, that's the argument. Axum with its ancient ruins and churches holds major significance for the
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Ethiopian Orthodox faithful who believe that the Ark of the Covenant built to hold the tablets inscribed with the
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Ten Commandments is located there. If now this is from a scholar, a scholar listed below says this.
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If you attack Axum, you attack, first of all, the identity of the Orthodox Christian Tigrayans, but also of all
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Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. You're attacking them all when you attack this city. And so there you have it.
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That's amazing. In a normal year, thousands of people, Christians would have gathered at the
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Zion Church, which was attacked where the 800 people were killed in late November to celebrate the day Ethiopians believe that the
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Ark of the Covenant was brought there after it disappeared from Jerusalem in ancient times.
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Well, ladies and gentlemen, how about that? All right. So let's get into today's lesson. I just thought
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I'd give you a little bit of practical, everyday fulfilled prophecy to start your day out with this morning.
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Okay, let me see if I can get this screen a little bit larger. I guess not.
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It's all right. I don't need it larger. Okay, so let's review just a little bit where we are in the
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Book of Romans going verse by verse. Last Sunday, we talked about Romans 9, 18.
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Therefore, hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
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Now, this is speaking of God, of course, and humanists and Arminians, which is humanism in the church, they hate this verse.
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They hate this whole chapter because it puts God squarely in control. In fact, fallen man is continually questioning
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God's goodness. This is part of the fallen nature. All right, now, yet the
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Bible says about God in Psalm 34, 8, Oh, taste and see that the
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Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
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Oh, fear the Lord, ye his saints, for there is no want to them that fear him. In other words, any person in this world who loves the
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Lord and fears him will never lack. He will have all of his needs met because God is good.
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And yet mankind always questions the goodness of God, especially when they deal with Romans chapter 9.
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So maybe God, so the next thing they would say is, well, maybe God didn't really mean what he says here in Romans chapter 9.
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Maybe when God says that he loves Isaac and hates
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Ishmael, he doesn't really mean that it really means hate. Of course, we already looked at that last week. The word literally means hate or detest.
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Maybe he didn't really mean that. And yet every time the apostle Paul writes about these things, he comes right back and acts as if the listeners that he's writing his letter to are asking the same questions people would today.
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Like, really, does God really do that? And Paul addresses that. Now he's going to in this passage, too, which shows that Paul believes
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God really does mean this. When he says he has mercy on who he wants to and who he wants to harden, he hardens their heart.
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Now, when we go on into verse 19, that will say to me. Now, here's where here's where those who say, well, maybe
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God didn't really mean that in verse 18. Maybe we could read, you know, why don't we kind of take a look at our understanding of that verse a little bit there and reinterpret the verse to make
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God look a little nicer. And if that were true, if you need to do that, why does Paul feel that he needs to say what he's about to say here in verse 19 and following?
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Why does Paul need to continue if God doesn't really mean it? Like verse 18 sounds like it means that God has mercy on those human beings that he wants to have mercy on and the ones he does not want to have mercy on, he doesn't have mercy on them.
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He actually hardens their heart and pushes them farther away from him. Now, surely
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God didn't mean that. Well, if he didn't, why does Paul say this? Thou wilt say then to me, why doth he yet find fault?
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For who has resisted God's will? Now, why would Paul say that if he didn't believe verse 18 meant what it says?
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He wouldn't. So the liberal scholar who tries to change verse 18 hopes that you don't read verse 19.
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And most people don't, so they do just fine. All right. And it goes on and says,
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Nay, but, O man, who art thou that replyest against God? Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it,
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Why hast thou made me this way? Now, you can see clearly that Paul is arguing. He's using logical argument to say, hey, it's
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OK for God to have mercy on who he wants to and love those people and to harden those he doesn't want to and hate those people.
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That's OK because he's God and he created everything that exists. He created all human beings and he created some human beings for one purpose and another human for another purpose, but all to bring glory to him.
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In fact, clearly we saw last week that God himself said he created Pharaoh to bring glory to him, but he didn't save Pharaoh.
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Pharaoh was lost, but he still brought glory to God. So he fulfilled the purpose that God created him for.
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But he never was one of God's children. He never belonged to the Lord. Jesus said he didn't put the tares here, that Satan put him here.
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And God loves his children. He doesn't promise anywhere that he loves Satan's children. And so the world hates this.
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Paul knows it. And that's why Paul's defending it using excellent logic when he says, nay, but oh, man, who are you to question the creator who created you?
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Doesn't the potter have the power over the clay of the same lump of clay to make one vessel to honor and one dishonor?
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Well, I mean, logically, the answer is clearly yes to that. But liberal theologians hate this.
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In fact, they don't talk about this. They just want to say verse 18 doesn't really mean what it says. But if so, why do we have 19 through 21?
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That's my question. So Paul reminds us of what one would think is a core understanding.
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That is, God is God and we're not right. He is the creator of all things and creates according to his good pleasure and humans are part of his creation.
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One would think that all theologians would understand that, but they certainly don't. All right.
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Now, do you think men prefer to focus on this verse right here?
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What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath who were fitted for destruction?
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We discussed it last week. Look over there to your left. The phrase fitted for destruction is a predestination term indicating that God predestined that these particular individuals would be lost forever, would spend eternity in the darkness of hell forever, and that God created them for such destruction.
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Now, do you think people want to focus on that? And my problem with people want to focus on this is the reason they like to focus on this is because of their nature.
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They want God to look mean. They want God to look bad as if God is not fair and good.
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Correct. That's you think they like to focus on that and talk about it? Or do they rather focus on this positive part right here where it says
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God also does this. And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy.
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Now, see, people don't want to look at that side because that's the positive side. They don't want to look at the fact that the entire race rejected
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God and was fallen. The race was lost and hellbound. All human beings from Adam on were lost and hellbound.
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And God, in his mercy and grace, decided he would save a remnant of the human race so that the human race could continue and move on in and populate the earth again after the flood, but also again after Armageddon.
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There will still be a remnant of human beings saved so that they can repopulate the world in the thousand year millennial kingdom because of God's mercy.
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So he decided to save some out of a group of human beings that none of which deserve to be saved.
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No one wants to look at that as goodness because many of them want God to save everybody.
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And then there's another group of people just would have killed everyone and started over if they were God. But nobody likes it the way
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God chose to do it, which is to save some out of a completely fallen race.
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So we would prefer to focus on 22 and talk about how mean God is and how bad and unfair he is rather than verse 23, about how blessed it is for those who he does save and who he has known from before the foundation of the world, how special they are and how they don't deserve to be saved any more than anyone else in the race.
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But they're saved by grace, which means undeserved favor. And then we find in Ephesians one that that's the whole reason
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God created the human race in the first place was to show off. In other words, to the glory of his grace, which means he wanted to glorify that one aspect of his character more than any other.
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And that is the fact that he can love people who are unlovable and who don't deserve it and who hated him.
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He can love them and draw them to him and cause them to learn to love him even when they don't deserve it.
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He wanted to focus on that reason, created humans. He already had the angels, right?
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So verse 24 says, even us whom he calls. So the us there are the people that God loves, the people that God is going to show the riches of his glory to.
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These vessels of mercy, that's the us there. And we got that way because God called us, not because we deserved it or would have ever sought
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God because we wouldn't. The Bible says none seek after God, not one. So had the Holy Spirit not come to us and tapped us on the shoulder and said, look up, there's
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Jesus. He's your shepherd. You're the sheep and you're hungry and he's got the food. We never would have received him. But God did call us and we find ourselves saved.
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And we find ourselves in a world of human beings who are not saved, many of whom are goats and will never be saved.
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Some of whom are lost sheep who look just like a goat, just like we did before our salvation.
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But they will be saved in the future. And yet we're called to be salt light to all humans and to give the gospel to the whole world, which that's the job of the church.
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And we do that because that's according to God's purposes. And he's commanded us to do it doesn't mean we think everyone's going to be saved.
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There is a group of Christians that think, you know, if you just get your presentation in order, you can win anyone to the
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Lord. Just get them to pray this little prayer. But God said it doesn't work that way. They have to be called.
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And the only ones that will be called are the ones that God knew before the foundation of the world and loved them before he made anything.
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And long before they were born. And yet when it's their spiritual birthday, God sends his
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Holy Spirit to awaken them. And while we're yet in our sins, hath he quickened us?
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God did that to us. So salvation is not something man does for God. It's something God does to man, to the elect, when he awakens them one by one to bring the church to life.
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And this is just an act of mercy on a completely lost fallen race. That's the true gospel. The world hates it.
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So which do you think they would rather pay attention to? Verse 22 or verses 23 and 24?
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And sadly enough, even Christians that I talked to across this nation when COVID is over and before it happened anyway.
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Even Christian people would rather focus on 22 and make God look mean and bad and unfair than focus on 23 and 24 and recognize how special God says they are.
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Because you're my children that I've always loved. And these other people are tares or goats that I didn't even,
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Jesus said, I didn't even put them in the world. Satan put them here and God will never love them. And, you know,
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I agree. Lost sheep look just like lost goats to us. Sometimes I think sometimes we might tell the difference if the
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Holy Spirit lets us, because he doesn't want us to witness to, you know, to cast our pearls before the swine unless they turn and rend us.
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He told us not to witness to them. So we have to have some sense of it. But that sense only comes from the
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Holy Spirit within us. And we should witness only to people that the Holy Spirit witnesses or moves us to witness to.
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And that's how it works. If you want to be careful in your life and safe, you should teach your children that.
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Don't witness to anybody that the Holy Spirit does not lead you to witness to. And he will work together with the church and he will use the water of the word and the spirit himself to draw all elect sheep to him at their spiritual birthday.
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And that's just how God works. It's how his plan works. It's never been any different. It's just that theologians try to change it based on people not having studied the word of God.
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It's very sad to me. All right, now let's move on in to some new material here.
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As he hath also said in Isaiah, I will call them my people, which were not my people.
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And I will call her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, you are not my people.
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There shall they be called the children of the living God. Isaiah also cried concerning Israel, though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved.
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For he will finish the work. Now listen to this and cut short in righteousness because a short work will the
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Lord make on the earth. And as Isaiah said before, except the Lord of Sabbath had left us a seed, listen to this.
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We had been as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah.
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Now, let's just take this little passage for new information today. Now, this is amazing information.
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Basically, we have these points. Number one, Paul now argues the positive side of this that humans don't like to talk about.
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And that is the love of God and his grace and how he shows that to the elect and rains that love and that grace and glory on to them.
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And then secondly, down in starting with verse 27, he calls upon Isaiah, the prophet of old, to support his logical claim that just because a person is
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Abraham's seed does not mean he is saved. And you see that clearly in verse 27, where he says only a remnant of Israel will be saved.
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And then the third thing he argues here is the second coming is coming sooner than you think it is.
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All right. Look at that. In verse 28, Paul points out that the Lord will make a short work on the earth.
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And some people want to think the earth is several millions of years old. We think it's six to eight thousand years old and it's going to it's going to be this age will be over soon.
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So it's never going to be ancient in this age. It'll have to be remade, destroyed and remade before it becomes ancient.
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And then it starts over like a new baby again. So it's not going to be here long because of man's sin.
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Man's sin has put everything out of sorts. And John 3, 16, where it says
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God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only begotten son. Jesus died not only to save the elect, according to this plan that we're talking about today, the only plan that exists of salvation for a remnant of people from a fallen race, but also to put back in order everything that man's sin put out of order.
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And that's going to be done quickly. God is going to make a quick work on the earth. We need to be preparing now for Armageddon and the second coming and all that.
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Fortunately for us, the second coming comes before Armageddon. And so does the rapture. And we'll be with the
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Lord in the air on white horses, helping him in that particular battle.
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But that's not that far in the distance, according to verse 27. And then the next thing, the point that he makes is he talks about the depravity of man.
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Now, why would he do that? Paul knows this, that if you're going to have a logical argument that also matches clear scripture about God's plan of salvation, you have to start with the fall of man and the depravity of man, because God's plan of salvation makes no sense if you think all humans are basically good, because then
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God does look mean and evil and unjust when he doesn't save everybody, if all humans are good. But when you look at the truth and facts of scripture and you go back to Genesis 1 .1
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and read the first three chapters in particular, you find out that man is not good.
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Man is a sinner. Man rejected God and hid himself in the garden from God.
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And the entire race fell at that point, according to God's law. The day that you eat the fruit thereof, you shall surely die, which means be separated from me spiritually.
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And they died physically later as a result of it as well. And we know the story.
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But sin entered into the world, and man's nature at that point was depraved, and Satan took away the dominion that God had given humans, and he took that dominion over the world.
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That's why he's the little g God of the world even until today. And that's the state that we find ourselves in.
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The world, the flesh, and the devil are our three enemies, and they hate us with cruel hatred. As David said, his enemies hated him.
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And so he's very look at you couldn't have a stronger statement of the depravity of man in verse 29.
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Let's read it again together. And as Isaiah said before, unless the Lord of Sabbath had left us a seed.
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Now, see, that's election. That is the choosing. That is the sovereignty of God.
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And those are the very seeds that Jesus said when they asked him, did you plant bad seed because you got weeds coming up with your wheat?
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And he said, I don't plant bad seeds. I only plant wheat. He said the enemy came in by night.
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His name is the devil, and he planted the tears. That's the seeds we're talking about.
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There's two kinds of seeds. There's Jesus seed, and there's Satan seed. There's the tears, and there's the wheat.
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That's all we've got. And Isaiah said, unless the Lord had given us a seed, then all of Israel, and obviously, by extension, the entire world, the human race would have been lost because they are like Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Now, listen, that is the depravity of man. That's talking about even us as Christians. Our old man, our old nature is no different than Sodom and Gomorrah.
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That has not been fixed yet. So the best we can do is to walk in the Spirit and ask the
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Lord to hold our hand and walk with us today lest we stumble. Now, the
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Lord said, Though you may fall, you shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds you in his hand.
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You can't lose your salvation, but you can sure mess up in this world and hurt people when you walk in the flesh and soak in iron.
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We have to be so careful because look at verse 29. The flesh is condemned here. Human nature is condemned here.
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The natural man is condemned here. And if God had not saved a remnant, a seed, there would be no one left in the human race.
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The entire race was almost destroyed with the flood, but God gave grace to Noah.
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And in the end times, you know, all the human race, Jesus said if he hadn't cut it short, all flesh would have been destroyed in the end times, in the tribulation period.
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So here's where we start. We start by understanding the depravity of man.
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Once again, God didn't start the gospel with John 3 .16. You've heard me say it a million times. He started it in Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3, and man fell.
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And then when you understand that and the depth of the fall and that there are no good people, not one, the
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Bible says, there's none that seeketh after God. We've all gone our own way. We've all made ourselves to be God and acted as if God's not there.
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And that's the state we're in at the very moment that the Holy Spirit quickens us, gives us life, and regenerates us, and then opens our eyes so that we can see with our new man.
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We can see the Lord and love him. The old man still hates him. So we have to walk in the new man.
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That's called a spirit -filled walk. So here we have this little amazing passage, and we start with that last verse, verse 29, and move forward from there, and then it begins to make a lot of sense.
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The fact that God had to choose a remnant, or none of the human race would have been saved.
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Not one would have been saved. And even with Israel, verse 27 says, only a small remnant of the children of Abraham will be saved, and they will be pictured.
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They're pictured by the line of Isaac, the chosen line, but that's a physical picture of a spiritual truth that you're not saved just because your dad was
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Abraham or your grandpa was a preacher. You're saved spiritually by being born again. Now, verse 25.
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So I want to go back and spend the rest of the morning, the time we have talking about how
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Paul argues from the positive at this point. He argues the positive love of God and the positive grace of God and wants us to focus on that rather than the fact that God doesn't save everybody.
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Paul doesn't want us looking at God as if he's mean or unfair or unjust, but as God is love, he saved a remnant.
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And that is the truth of how the history of the world has happened. It's the truth of what happened in the very beginning, and it's been the truth ever since that time.
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And as he said to Osi, I will call them my people, which were not my people.
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So here's, I want to focus on these two verses for a minute on the positive side. So look what
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God says he does. You have a people which are not his people. That's the Gentiles. That's us, most of us.
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And he says, I will call them my people, which were not my people. And no Jew believed that God would even save the
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Gentiles. That's why Paul so often told them, no, he died for all men. He didn't mean every individual.
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He meant all kinds of men. He didn't just die for the Jews. Jesus died for all kinds of men, Jews and Gentiles.
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And some people will be saved from every race. And that's what the word all mean, pos in the
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Greek. Normally in the context, that's what it means in the New Testament. So we see here that those who were not his people, he's going to call them my people.
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And God is going to call her who is not loved. He's going to call her my beloved.
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That's us, ladies and gentlemen. That's Gentile believers. We were not even supposed to be saved, according to the
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Jews of the first century. They didn't believe we could be. If they read their prophets, Isaiah said we would be.
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In fact, the prophets said the Messiah would come to save the Gentiles and the remnant from the
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Jews. But they didn't remember those passages. They didn't like those, so they didn't focus on them. Look at verse 26.
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And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, you are not my people, there shall they be called the children of the living
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God. Now, I want you to think about this. We were part of a lost race of human beings.
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Then there came a time when the human race was divided into two groups, Jews and Gentiles, and the Jews were called
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God's people. But Isaiah and Paul both point out, both Jews, by the way, point out that just because you're a
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Jew doesn't mean you're saved, because only a remnant from the Jewish race will be saved. And then some
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Gentiles will be saved as part of the elect, chosen ones of God who will be adopted into God's family.
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You may not have known this, but the Jews and the Gentiles both have to be adopted into God's family. I grew up thinking it was just the
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Gentiles that were adopted. But all of us, except for Jesus, are adopted. Jesus is the only begotten
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Son of God. All right, so this little passage is Paul arguing from the positive, in other words, from the goodness of God.
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We cannot possibly see the positive if we do not understand our original state.
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John 9, 29, again, where it talks about we would have been as Sodom and Gomorrah if God had not left us a seed, the good seed that Jesus planted in this world.
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Let's talk about this a little bit. 2 Corinthians 4, 6, in the last couple of years, has become one of my favorite verses.
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It says, For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness. Now, I want you to think about this for a minute.
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Most people think God is evil and bad and unfair because he didn't save every human, right?
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Because humans are basically good, they say. That's the message of the humanist. That's the message of the
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Arminian. The Bible message is there's none good, not one. That's what the
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Bible says. Not one human is good. And the Bible says that if you look at the human race, you simply see a world of darkness when
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Jesus came into the world. He was the light, but the darkness understood him not, comprehended him not.
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The darkness could not even see him when he was even present. Not in and of themselves, not the natural man.
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Only by the Holy Spirit calling a person and awakening the person can they even see the light.
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Because you can have light, but if the eyes are blind, you don't see the light. So the Holy Spirit has to give life to the eyes, the spiritual eyes.
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He has to open them. It's a miracle. It's a healing. By his stripes we're healed is the best interpretation of what that verse means.
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And so our eyes are open. And I do believe it, by the way,
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I do believe it refers to physical healing too, but only at the rapture does that take place, where our physical body is healed from death and sickness at the rapture, not now.
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So it does, it did purchase all of that for us, but some of it is postponed slightly.
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So the people that teach that that applies today, I don't know how they teach it because their grandmothers are all in their graves.
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So if their theory of scripture were true, that wouldn't be the case because they would just touch them and raise them.
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And I don't mean to be unkind to say it that way. It's just a fact. Just look at it. I don't see how they believe what they believe there.
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And it's sad because every time someone does die, to me, it would bring doubt to their minds because their theological system failed.
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But God never promised that. What God promised is this. I will heal your eyes first, and I will give you a new spirit and a new heart and allow you to know me even in this body.
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So look at this. God is the one who commanded the light to shine. That is not something humans can do.
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Humans can only receive the benefit of it. A person who is dead and lost cannot save himself.
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A person who is blind and deaf cannot make himself see and hear. It requires the great physician to do this.
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He is the cause of it. We're the benefactor or the beneficiary.
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He is the one who touches us and heals us. He commanded. It's the power of God that salvation comes from.
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It comes from God to us, not something we do to cause God to do it. It doesn't work that way.
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It never has, never will. All the great religions of the world that are false are based on God building a stairway to heaven.
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Even many Christian sects teach its works that get us there. Never been true, never will be true because it says
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God had to command the light to shine in the darkness of the hearts of human beings. And he shined in our hearts.
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Our heart, we, that's the elect. Those of us who are saved and this is who he's writing it to.
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He shined in our hearts to give the light. See, it's a gift. It's not something we can earn.
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He gave us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as the
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Holy Spirit called us, caused us to look up and see that face for the first time.
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And at that point he became irresistible to us and we received him because we wanted to. And that's how it works.
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It was not against our desires of our hearts. The Holy Spirit put new desires in our hearts against our will.
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But once he put that desire, it was our will. That became our will. The real you now is the new man, not the old man.
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The old man is crucified. He's dead. He's still active, but he's dead from God's viewpoint.
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But we have this treasure. What treasure? You have the born -again person, the new you, the spiritual man or woman.
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The born -again person is the real you, but it lives in an earthen vessel, this body of flesh that hates
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God still, that will move against God. It won't work with God. It goes against God if it gets in control.
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And it will sin when your body's in control. Your brain is part of your body.
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You've got to monitor. The real you lives in there, too. The spiritual you, holding hands with Christ, the new man lives in there and must monitor what the brain is thinking.
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And when the bad thoughts come, you simply say, Lord, give me the mind of Christ. And Jesus will always answer that prayer, yes.
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And the bad thoughts will flee. And that is a great practical lesson. So we have this treasure, this new born -again me, living in this old body that's still sinful, that earthen vessel.
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Why? So that the excellency of the power may be of God, not us. So it's on purpose. You see, on the one hand, we have to, 1
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John 1, 9, we have to acknowledge that the act that we just did, if it's sinful, we have to acknowledge it as sinful.
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I agree with you. Confess means to agree with God. I agree with you that what I just did or thought was sinful.
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And it says that the moment that we do that, that he is faithful, which means every time he'll do it, and just, which means it is right for him to do it because he died for us and bought us from the slave market of sin, to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, which includes the ones you didn't remember to confess.
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All of it. You're cleansed. You have to believe that, ladies and gentlemen, or you'll never do anything for God because the devil will just tell you, no, you're not saved, you're worthless.
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Look what you just did. Well, our body's always going to do that. But guess what? God did this on purpose.
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This is his will that we live this way. God, it is God's will that we be schizophrenics, if you want to put it that way.
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We have an old man that pulls against God, and we have the new man who loves the Lord and him only, and will follow him all the time when he's in control of this body.
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And we have to make the choice, which will we live in in this moment? And that's the key to living a successful Christian life, is to structure together more and more of those moments of spirit -filledness.
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Right? You've got to be spirit -filled or else you're going to sin. But listen, when you do sin, acknowledge the sin and get up and go again.
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But at the same time, don't beat up on yourself. Don't say, oh, well, man, the
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Christians of old, you know, Spurgeon must have been amazing, you know, and Paul was the best
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Christian ever. Well, he was, but Paul is the one that said, I find myself doing that which I don't even agree with, and I find myself not doing that which
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I want to do. That was Paul. So we live in these earthen vessels, and it's important to remember that.
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But at the same time, it is our duty and our responsibility to hold Jesus' hand and walk that way and remain spirit -filled so that we don't sin against the
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Lord and hurt him and other people. That's our responsibility. We won't be perfect at that, by the way, until the rapture.
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So why is it true that salvation is not something that we do good or do good works to achieve it and get
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God to save us? It's actually, salvation is actually something that is done to us. Why is that true?
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Well, it has to be true. But let's start by looking at Ephesians 2, verse 5.
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If you have an old -fashioned Bible, turn to it. If you're using the
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Bible in your phone, find it. But look what it says. Even when we were dead in sins, hath he quickened us?
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And he quickened us when he raised Jesus from the dead 2 ,000 years ago. So what role did you play in that?
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Nothing. So you didn't play any role in your salvation. You received it as a gift, but God did all the work to save you, and he did most of that work 2 ,000 years ago when he was on the cross.
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And so by grace, you're saved. Now, it's interesting when you look at the words in verse 5 of Ephesians 2 because the first word, quickened, where it says while we were still sinning, we were still part of a fallen race not deserving to be saved, when we were in that state, running from God, not loving
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Jesus, not seeking the Lord, while we were in that state, he quickened us.
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In the Greek language, that is aorist, active, indicative. And what that means is aorist simply means without regard to time.
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So this is part of God's eternal plan. From our viewpoint, it happened on a particular day when our birthday was, a spiritual birthday.
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But from God's viewpoint, this is without regard to time. Active means God did the acting because he's the subject there where it says that when we were dead, he quickened us.
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So God is the one who did the work. And indicative means it's just flat a fact.
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You can't debate it. It's just flat the way it is. That's what indicative means. Now, when you drop down to the next word where it says, for by grace are you saved, what's interesting is that particular verse is passive, which means someone greater than you did the saving.
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Well, that's God. So you didn't save yourself, so you can't lose your salvation because you didn't cause your salvation.
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You received it as a gift. And it's in the grammar, and the grammar is like math. You can't change it.
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The Holy Spirit wrote it exactly as he wanted it. So we must – salvation must be something that's done to us, not something we do for God, because we are helpless when we come into this world.
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We're part of a fallen race that hates God. You didn't think you hated God, but the Bible says you did because you loved yourself and therefore made yourself to be
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God, and so did I. And that's the state we were in when the Holy Spirit awakened us. And also look at the state we were in as a natural man.
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We had no hope. We were without God in the world and had no hope, the Bible says. Now let's go back up to verse 1 in the same passage in chapter 2 of Ephesians.
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And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.
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So our spirits were dead. We had deaf ears. This is what Paul meant when he said in Romans 9, verse 29, if God had not provided a seed, if he had not awakened our spirit and quickened us and made that seed come to life within us, we are like Sodom and Gomorrah.
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And we would have remained like that if he hadn't put that seed in us and watered it and brought it to life, and that's what the
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Holy Spirit did when he called us. So our seeds were dead. I mean, our spirits were dead.
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Our ears were deaf. We had no receiver. God was transmitting his love through the word of God and through the
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Holy Spirit all throughout time, from the Garden of Eden until now, and it was being transmitted all throughout the world.
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But if you don't have a receiver, you don't get the message, and our receiver was turned off. We were born in that state.
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The receiver couldn't hear it until the Holy Spirit turned on our receiver. Now we can hear the message, and that's why we got saved, because as soon as we heard the message, it's called the gospel for a reason.
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It means good news, and we saw it as good news because the Holy Spirit had changed our hearts where we would see it that way, and we received
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Jesus. And the second thing we see in verse 2 is we have no free will.
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Now people debate all the time about that, but look at it. Look at verse 2, Ephesians 2, verse 2. First it says you were dead in trespasses and sins, but look what else it says about how you were before your salvation.
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Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of the world. So you got three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil.
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So you didn't walk according to a free sovereign will. You walked according to a will that was influenced by the world, number one.
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Secondly, you walked according to the prince of the power of the air. That's Satan. So secondly, you're influenced by Satan, so you didn't have a free will.
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Every thought you had was influenced by him. If you don't believe it, I'm going to put up another verse that will prove it. But this one proves it.
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Every thought that you had was influenced by Satan, so you weren't having free will thoughts. You were thought you were.
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You had a will, and it's important in your decisions. Count and you're judged according to them. But they were influenced.
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They weren't free. And then the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience was working on your will and moving you to do things against God, and that's
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Satan again. So Satan is mentioned twice in verse two. So we had no free will. So this is the state that we found ourselves in when we came into the world.
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We were dead, we were deaf, we were blind, and we were influenced by Satan to go against God all the time and by the world system too.
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It mentions both. And therefore, we had no free will. We just thought we did. Everything that we thought were decisions that we were making in and of ourselves were decisions
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Satan wanted us to make against God because he hates God and against God's people.
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We just didn't know it. Look at this passage.
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We'll certainly back this up. Parallel passage in some way of speaking. 2 Timothy 2 .25.
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All right. If God for adventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
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Now look at this. And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will.
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So you didn't have free will. You were acting according to the will of Satan. The Bible says so.
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It may not feel that way. It's what the truth is of the matter. So people that want to be an
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Arminian or a humanist, they don't understand these things, and so they cannot understand how good the gospel actually is.
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The fact that God could and would save a remnant of a race like this, it's remarkable.
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It's the ultimate definition of good. And when Jesus spread his arms on that cross, it's the ultimate definition of love.
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And yet the world says God's not fair, and how could a God of love let these people go to hell? Well, these people sent themselves to hell.
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These people determined in their own heart they did not love Jesus. There is none righteous, not one.
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There's none that seeketh after God, and they were all going their own way according to their own plan because they thought they were
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God. And the whole time they were thinking that, Satan was putting that thought in their mind because they didn't have a free will.
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They had an influenced will, and the world system was built to make them think they're God, too. And so they were never going anywhere but hell if the
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Holy Spirit had not awakened some of them. And if you find yourself today as one of those who's been awakened, you can rejoice in the goodness of God because you were not deserving of it either, and neither was
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I. And if you're listening to me today and you say, well, I'm not sure I'm saved, so it doesn't seem I have any control, kind of like Paul said, well, who can argue with God?
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I mean, if he didn't choose me, I'm not going to be saved. Hey, I understand
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God's viewpoint on this thing, but I also understand this viewpoint, is that any person who has any kind of desire to know what's going to happen to their soul, any person who has a conscience that knows every time they sin that God is watching them and they feel weird about it, that's not a goat.
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That's not a tare. You're a lost sheep if you're that way. So if you're a lost sheep, Jesus said,
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I will lose nothing. They will all be raised in the end. So there's going to be an appointment where the Holy Spirit awakens you and all you need to do when that happens is respond like a bride does to the bridegroom.
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Just say yes. And when your heart wants to do it, just say yes. It doesn't require some formula, prayer formula that some preacher gives you.
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You don't need an alter at church. Right there where you're sitting today is a great place to be saved. And that's where everybody gets saved is at the moment the
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Holy Spirit meets them and opens their eyes, they're saved. He does the regenerating. Everything that the church is telling you to save you, those are just effects of the fact that you're already saved.
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The fact that you want to repent is because you're already saved. The fact that you can believe is because you've already been given Jesus' belief.
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The fact that you want to walk with him is because you have a new nature now that he's already given you. None of that stuff caused your salvation.
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It was a free gift. It all fits together once you understand it and see it. Every scripture in the
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Bible points towards it, both Old Testament and new. So it's amazing.
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It's amazing that we have this information about our will and about our state. And when you look at the goodness of God in saving us out of that state, it's quite amazing.
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Look at verse three. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past.
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So what were we like before the Holy Spirit quickened us? Well, we had the lust of our flesh.
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We fulfilled the desires of our flesh and all the evil things and thoughts that Satan and the world system and our own flesh put in our mind.
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We just tried to live that out. And that's how we were living. And we were by nature children of wrath, just like the goats are.
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Now think about that for a minute. So now we've got these two things we just mentioned. Our spirit was dead.
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We had no free will. We can add a third one. We were children of wrath. So we were part of a race called human beings, the human race that is lost and headed for hell.
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This is a state we were in. And had it not been for this seed that Paul talked about in Romans 9, 29, we would have been as Sodom and Gomorrah because we already were like that.
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Verse 12 says that at the time you were without Christ, you were aliens from the
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Commonwealth of Israel and being a Gentile, you certainly weren't part of Israel. Not even all of them are saved, only a remnant, but you weren't even part of that.
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You were strangers from the covenants that God gave the world through Israel. You didn't know anything about that. You didn't know about the
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Abrahamic promise, which came even before the law of Moses. In fact, the Bible says you had no hope of being saved.
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Now, how much is no? From a human viewpoint, from a natural viewpoint as a natural man, if you take away the calling of the
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Holy Spirit, you had no hope of ever being saved because of your nature. This is what the scripture says.
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And not only were you without hope, you were without God in the world. Now, let me ask you this. How can a fallen human be saved if God doesn't enter the picture and perform a miracle and make the blind eyes see and the deaf ears hear and the spirit that's dead come alive?
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If you don't have God, you're without God, you certainly are without hope. That's the state we were in.
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Then it goes on and says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were sometime afar off, and I'm going to stop right there because it's about to start the good news right after that, but I'm trying to show you all the bad news.
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So just in those two verses, we can add to these three points. Not only were we dead, not only did we not have free will to choose
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God because we had influence will to hate God by Satan and the world system in our own flesh, not only were we children of wrath, we were without Christ.
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We were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel. We were strangers from the covenant,
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Abrahamic covenant, which is the only way the book of Galatians in the New Testament says we can be saved is through that unconditional covenant.
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We were strangers to it and we were without hope and we were without God in the world.
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That's the state we were in when the Holy Spirit awakened us. Now, if you don't think that's good news that you find yourself awakened, and if you don't think that is a good
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God who reached down in the darkness of this world that comprehended not the light and hated the light and rejected the light when it came, even the
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Jews rejected their own Messiah and he reached down and he opened your eyes to see
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God. He opened your ears to hear the word of God. You can't be saved without the water and the spirit.
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The water is the word of God. You could never have been saved if he hadn't opened your ears to hear the word of God and the Holy Spirit had to do that.
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So it takes the water of the word and it takes the spirit to create salvation because it's God that does it.
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And that's how he does it based on the finished work of Jesus Christ and all the work that God did.
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And yet man chooses to look at the fact that God didn't save everybody so he must be mean and cruel.
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It also says we were far off. So you think about it, you're in a state where you're without God, without hope and you're far off from God.
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You can't get any more lost than we were before the Holy Spirit entered our lifetime and awakened us.
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So how blessed are we then? Those of us who were part of this fallen, dark, dead race of human beings that deserved hell and even admits today that they deserve hell.
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How blessed are we who find ourselves saved? Well, first of all, we have all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, not just some, but all.
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So we've inherited everything that Jesus has inherited from God the Father. So we are joint heirs, not co -heirs, we're joint heirs.
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Jesus has 100 % of everything that's God's and we have 100 % of everything that's God's. So how blessed are you?
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Ephesians 1, 3 says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.
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Then I might ask, how loved are you? Verse 4 says, according as he had chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.
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How loved are you? You're so loved that the Lord took you out of a fallen, lost race, woke you up and gave you the righteousness of Christ and put his robes of cleanness and righteousness on you so that when he looks at you, he finds no blame in you.
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That's how much he loved you. But he loved you before the foundation of the world or he never would have put those robes on you.
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That's how special you are. I'll get to that in a minute, right? Having predestined us unto the adoption of children,
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Jew and Gentile. He predestined, that means before he made the world, according to Ephesians 1, before he made the world, he predestined that we would be brought into his family by Jesus Christ to himself, according to good pleasure of his will.
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And Jesus said, no man comes to me unless the father draws him. And he says, of them, I will lose nothing.
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I will raise it all up in the end of the age. So this is all according to the good pleasure of God's will.
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So you ask, why does God save who he saves? The answer is because he wants to. Why did he choose
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Israel, not some of the more powerful nations like Babylon, maybe, or Persia? Why? Because he said, well,
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I didn't choose you because you're the most powerful. I chose you because you're the weakest and just because I wanted you. I already knew
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I wanted you. It's not based on you. It's based on me. That's what grace means. It has nothing to do with the object of the love.
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It comes from the heart of the lover. And we're saved because God loved us before the foundation of the world.
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It all comes from his heart to us, and we receive that as a wonderful gift. So we've been chosen to be his child from before time began.
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So how blessed are we, and how loved do we find ourselves? So how special are we?
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Well, verse 13 says, but now we were afar off, is what the first part of the verse says, but now.
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So there's been a change, hasn't there? The quickening of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of our spirit nature, which was dead, and it's brought to life, and the openings of our ears and our eyes, now we're made nigh because the
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Holy Spirit regenerated us and applied the blood of Jesus, which had already been applied to the mercy seat 2 ,000 years ago after he died, went to visit the heavenlies before he went down and took the
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Jews to heaven. He sprinkled his blood on the mercy seat in heaven, and now on the day of your spiritual birthday, the
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Holy Spirit comes and he dips the blood, the hyssop weed, which is the faith that he's going to give you as a gift.
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You don't have enough faith to save yourself. He gives you Jesus' faith, and it's dipped in Jesus' blood, and he sprinkles it on you, and he applies that to your life, and at that moment, you're made nigh.
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Those who were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Jesus, for he is our peace with God.
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That's propitiation. God is satisfied that his law has been kept and that we've been redeemed and bought away from the slavery of sin and the flesh and the devil, and we're his now, and he is totally propitiated, and we're made nigh to a perfect, righteous, holy
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God. Even in the state we are in, in these earthen vessels, we've been sprinkled by the blood, and we're made nigh to a holy
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God, even though you and I know we are not holy in the flesh yet, but our new man is.
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Our new man can't get more saved than he is, and our body is the only part remaining, and that's why the
01:00:02
Bible has the scriptures that talk about the redemption of the body. That happens at the rapture. It's already been paid for, and the earnest of that agreement is already in us.
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That's the Holy Spirit indwelling us. That's the earnest that shows Jesus has bought us. The earnest money has already been given to us, but the whole house will be his at the rapture when we're all his, and we won't have any part of us that pulls against God at that point.
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Verse 18 says, For through him we both have access by one spirit unto the
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Father. So we who were afar off are now made nigh.
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We have access to the Father. Ephesians 2 .19 says,
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Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints in the household of God.
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So we who were aliens are now part of the household of God. How special are we?
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And then verse 22 in Ephesians 2 says, In whom you also are built together for a habitation of God through the
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Spirit. Those of us who were without God and without hope in the world are now the house that God lives in.
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The Holy Spirit indwells our body, and our bodies are the habitation of the
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Spirit of God. What a change we've gone through from our lost state to our saved state that we find ourselves in.
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So to sum it up, we're very special because we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.
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We are beloved, chosen to be his own adopted children. We have been given his life.
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We had no life. Now we have the life of Christ living in us. We're special because we're seated in the heavenlies with Christ, even now, and from God's viewpoint.
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And we're created and placed in these earthen vessels to show off the glory of God when we do get something right.
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It's because he did it with us, and that gives glory to his grace, and that he would save something that didn't love him and cause us to be part of his family.
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And we're nigh, for he is our peace, and God has been propitiated.
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We also have access to the Father, and we're part of the household of God. That's how special we are.
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And to sum it up, God lives in us now, even in this earthen vessel.
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He lives in where our new man lives. I assume somewhere in our brain, but I don't know where, but in our body, he lives there with our new man, and the two are one, and that is the new man.
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As long as we walk in that format, we don't sin. We can't sin in that format, so that's the desire of us, is to live more moments like that, right?
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So now we go to chapter 9, verse 30. What shall we say, then, that the
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Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to the righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith?
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But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness? Wow. Now, speaking to his
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Jewish friends, he says, well, wow, look at this. So now we see that the Gentiles, who didn't even understand the laws of Moses, have attained the righteousness of God by God's plan of salvation and by what
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Jesus did for us on the cross and how he awakened us and how he's made us nigh unto
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God and propitiated God. And yet we look at Israel, who's still trying to live according to the law, and they're not attaining righteousness.
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And Paul's saying, so is this fair? And then Paul goes on and answers. He says, why is it this way? Because the
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Jews sought it not by faith. How did they seek it? But they sought it by works of the law because they stumbled at the stumbling stone.
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You see, the stumbling stone was Jesus. They didn't want Jesus. They wanted to keep a set of rules. And so they lost.
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They fell from grace. They fell from righteousness by trying to keep it because they couldn't keep it.
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And as it is written, even in their Old Testament prophets, behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone, a rock of offense, and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
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Wow. Paul lays it out for the Jew there. He says you can't be saved by works. I wish our Church Christ buddies down here in the
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South would hear this. Maybe the Holy Spirit would allow you, if you are one and you're listening to hear it for the first time today, that you're not going to be saved by your works, nor are you going to be saved by a combination of believing in Jesus plus works.
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In fact, if you try that, then Jesus availeth you nothing, Paul said. That puts you in square hell.
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All right? So it doesn't work that way. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything but faith, which worketh by love, which the
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Holy Spirit puts in your heart. That's what saves us. So whosoever believes on him shall not be ashamed.
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Now, I know we're about out of time here, but since we're all comfortably sitting at home, I can go a little bit longer than if you're sitting on that hard church pew.
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So listen to this because what I'm about to show you was like one of the brightest lights that ever hit me of understanding of the
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Scripture when this hit me maybe a couple, three, four years ago. Time flies. I don't know. It hadn't been that long ago.
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And I want to tie it in with this last verse in Romans 933 because it says, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
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That is an amazing statement from God that once you become his, he won't let anything in life happen where the lost people can look at you and say, where is your
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God? You know, you should be ashamed. God's not blessing you. That won't happen. You won't be ashamed.
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All right? Now, so what makes the gospel actually be good news? I'll discuss this and we'll be done today.
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But I want to tie that in because here's a parallel passage of this concept of ashamed, of whoever believes in him not being ashamed,
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Romans 1011. For the Scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
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Same thing he said in Chapter 9, right? But he expands a little bit. He says, for there is no difference between the law,
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I mean, the Jew and the Greek. You see, now he's talking to Jews and Gentiles. And we'll get to this when we get to Chapter 10.
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But he's making a point here that it doesn't matter if you're a Jew or Gentile, you don't get saved by being circumcised or not being circumcised.
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You get saved by faith. And only the Holy Spirit can put that faith in your heart because you can't naturally have it because you're full of doubt.
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And so it's a gift. It's the Holy Spirit calling you. It's a regeneration. And everything else is an effect of that, not the cause of it.
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And he says, there's no difference between the Jew and the Gentile, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
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But who will call upon him? The Bible says there's none righteous, not one. None seeks after God.
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So no one in their natural state will call on him. But if they did, they would be saved, but they won't. So the
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Holy Spirit has to call each individual and apply the blood to their individual heart and life so that God is then propitiated and satisfied that their sins are gone.
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And they draw nigh to God at that point. And all of a sudden they love the Lord and all those things are happening. So there's no difference between Jew or Gentile on that.
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It's just how God saves human beings. And then he says this famous verse.
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We usually don't read 11, 12. We just read verse 13. We used to use this as a soul winning verse. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved. We would teach people how they sin, how they deserve hell, and how
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Jesus died for them. And now if you'll just call on him and pray this little prayer, you'll be saved. Dear Jesus, come to my heart and save me.
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Amen. And even I did that. I didn't know better. And the cool thing is I can't mess up God's plan.
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So there were people actually saved with that unbiblical presentation because the Holy Spirit called them.
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That's why they got saved. Not because of my flawed presentation of the gospel.
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So I couldn't mess it up. Thanks be to God to that, right? But it is true that whosoever calls upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved. But what's interesting is when you look at that verse in the Greek, it actually is more amazing than it sounds.
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So let's just look at that little phrase, shall call upon the name of the Lord. Whosoever shall call.
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In the Greek, it's kind of interesting because those words in the Greek, those are verbs.
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And they are aorist, middle, subjunctive. Now, I know that you know what aorist means. It just means without regard to time.
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Middle normally means that it's kind of something that the subject is doing to themselves.
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So you're the one that's calling on the name of the Lord. I'm hearing a puppy. Somebody needs to mute that.
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Probably Dave or Ben. Mute the mic.
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It's got to be Dave. Ben doesn't have a puppy. All right. So. I think it's
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Henry. No, it's not. No. It's not me.
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Weird. All right. Keep going. All right. Could be Bill. I just didn't want the puppy to mess up my clothes here.
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That's weird, isn't it? I don't know how that maybe we accidentally unmuted one of our listeners.
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Might look around for that day. Anyway. All right. Let's focus. Refocus. We got the puppy.
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The devil is using someone's adorable puppy to bother us here. But we'll rebuke that.
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All right. Lord, rebuke it. We won't do it. We'll let the Lord do it. So now look here. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved. Let me just stop. Do you think Satan likes what I'm teaching here?
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Don't you find it interesting that with all this wonderful technology, we don't have a clue how that dog just barked.
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See, Satan did that. No doubt in my mind. I don't want to give him any glory because it doesn't matter if he does it or not.
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This message is in the word. It's not going anywhere. So whosoever shall call.
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What does shall call mean? Middle means the subject did the acting. So we're the person who called on the name of the
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Lord. But what does subjunctive mean? And that's something that if you hadn't studied Greek, you're going to miss that.
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And even the English translators missed it. So let's look into it just briefly.
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All right. We know what aorist is in middle. So let's look at subjunctive. When you find a verb in the subjunctive case, it usually means that there is a desire being expressed.
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The subject in the sentence, the person who is doing the acting, desires to do the acting.
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It doesn't mean it's actually happened yet. OK, so follow me. Now, if we actually look into some of the bigger
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Greek dictionaries, here's an easy one. If you've got the Blue Letter Bible, you can look at it. It's very easy. It just says simply the subjective mood is the mood of possibility and potentiality.
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The action may or may not occur. All right. So that's a good start.
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But you get a little bit bigger dictionary and look into it. You'll find things like this.
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The subjunctive mood presents the action or the event as something wanted, not something that's actually happened yet, but something that's desired, that's wanted.
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The action is not considered as an objective fact by the speaker. In other words, the subject indicates what the subject of the verb wants to have happen or wants to do.
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So this particular dictionary gives an example of a Greek sentence just used in Greek literature, where it says
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Helen wants to speak Greek. That word wants is in the subjective.
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It means she desires to do it. It doesn't mean she's learned Greek yet, but she desires to do it. So this was where I found this in this particular.
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Where's your footnote? It is the subjective mood itself, which indicates speaker attitude, his desire.
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So remember the word desire, his desire, intention, or belief about what should happen. The most usual environments in which it is used refer to necessity, ability, or volition, which means the same thing as desire.
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So when you find that the verb is in this subjunctive case, it means that the actor in the sentence is desiring this to happen.
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The subjunctive may be a statement about future time. It may express a supposition, a wish, a command, or a desire.
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All of this is found in these particular Greek dictionaries that I just footnoted.
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But think about that as we read this verse again. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved. And the phrase shall call is in the subjunctive. So what does that mean?
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It means we could better translate it into English this way. For whosoever desires to call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved. Now that changes everything. That changes everything.
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Whosoever desires. Let me ask you this. Who puts the desire in the heart of a lost human being who is not seeking
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God, who's never done anything good, there's nothing righteous in that person, he's a total part of a fallen race.
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His heart loves himself more than God. He's going after his own ways. He's not seeking
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Christ. In the next second, he finds himself saved. Who put that desire in his heart?
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You've heard me say a million times, the Holy Spirit changes our want to. And that's called regeneration.
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And then the stuff we want to do is not what saved us. It's the effect of it. It's not the cause of it. God is the cause of it.
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God reaches down and saves us. The modern gospel is you do all these effects and then God will save you.
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Like you repent, you believe, you do all this stuff, do good works, then God will save you. It's the other way around. He saves you and then you can do those things.
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God has to even put the desire in a person's heart to want Jesus or you'll never receive him. So doesn't it make sense that the
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Holy Spirit, as he wrote this, would put it in the subjunctive, meaning that whosoever desires to call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved, because you could not possibly desire that in a fallen natural state.
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Isn't that beautiful to think about? So the person who comes down the aisle and is told the wrong way to be saved, this little prayer formula, has already been saved before he left the aisle because the desire was there.
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He wouldn't have gone down there and been told the wrong thing by the ignorant preacher, myself being one of them in the past, right?
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The person was already regenerated or the desire wouldn't be there. Think about that.
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So I could tell you a wonderful story about Charlotte's dad, but I won't because we don't have time, maybe some other time.
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But when I saw this truth just a few years ago, I went in there pretty quickly and showed it to Charlotte.
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And we both realized that her dad, who had died of a heart attack, might well be saved.
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And I'll tell you the story some other time. I already told it. Some of you have already heard it. But when that desire is there, the salvation is already there.
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It is interesting to note that saved is passive. So when you look at this, whosoever shall call, that's in subjunctive, which means
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God puts the desire in your heart. And at that moment, you're saved. But the word saved is in the passive, which means someone bigger than you had to do it to you.
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It all fits together. Even the Greek, it's just, it's like math. So it's interesting to note that the word saved here is passive, which means that someone bigger and greater than you had to save you.
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It's not something you can do for God or do to yourself. Do you see the difference?
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This makes it clear that salvation is a thing of the heart between God and his newborn child.
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Long before the person arrives at the church altar to be told by the preacher exactly what he must do and pray and say, which is nonsense anyway, because we're not saved by doing according to Ephesians 2, 8, 9.
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But long before that, he or she has already been saved right there in the pew or in the car or in the field or in the shower or in the bed, wherever that person was, when that desire came into their heart for Jesus, that desire to call upon the name of Jesus for salvation took place in their heart at the very moment that the
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Holy Spirit called them. That is a beautiful truth. So there's one more example
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I'll give you. Everyone knows the example of the woman at the well. In John 4, 13,
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Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh this water shall thirst again.
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But whosoever drinketh the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I will give him shall be in him a well of water springing up and to everlasting life.
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The verb drinketh in this verse where Jesus said whosoever drinks the water is in this subject subjunctive.
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Wouldn't you know it? The Holy Spirit calls the Lord Jesus to say it in agreement with him and in agreement with the
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Father. Exactly in this mathematical formula, whosoever drinketh the water.
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So what does it mean? Jesus said whosoever desires to drink of the water that I will give him will never thirst.
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Springing up just as shall be saved is passive. So the water springs up in the heart of a person that God makes it spring up in.
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Isn't that something? Once again, salvation is something someone bigger and stronger than you has to do to you, not something you do to yourself.
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And look what the response was. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water.
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But she was already saved before she prayed the prayer formula. Isn't that amazing? Sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw any longer.
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Wow. You know, you want to think about the gospel. The true gospel is a positive gospel.
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It is truly good news. It is a grace gospel. It is a saved by faith, not by works gospel.
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And so it doesn't get better than that. But so few of our friends understand it, even our friends in church.
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So it's our job to go out and spread this gospel, I think. And I appreciate the extra time you gave me today.
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Wanted to finish that up. And we love all of you guys. Thanks for being on, Dave. I'll turn it back over to you.
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And I pray the Lord will not let a dog interrupt you. All right.
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Thanks. Well, thank you very much for that.
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It's I almost shouted at one point that was like, yes. You know, how special are we that God lives within us?
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It's pretty awesome. That's a pump you up like game time type of message.
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So I'm excited. Hope you guys are too. I guess we will end in a word of prayer.
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Heavenly father, thank you so much. For living in us. Thank you for making us special.
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Thank you for making us in your own image. And then bringing that image to life.
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Through the power of your son, Lord, we just ask that you. Help us to rest in that.
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Help us to work in that. Help us to just fully operate within the zone of your power.
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And Lord help us to recognize where that power comes from. And help others. To see it in us.
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Like David said, we will not be ashamed. And father, we just ask that you.
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Help us to be a salt and light to the world as we go out our daily lives. We just ask that you bless us and keep us this week.
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It's in Jesus name. We pray. Amen. Thank you very much. Have a fantastic day.