Colossians - What Freedom In Christ Looks Like - Andy Cain

God Centered Theology

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Charles Spurgeon, who is one of my more favorite preachers in history,

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I have some books in my office with some of his more famous sermons transcripted in there.

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One of his quotes, he says, and this is a quote of him speaking to a Christian, he says,

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Christian what hast thou to do with sin? Hath it not cost thee enough already, but inasmuch as sin did never give thee what it promised to bestow, but deluded thee with lies?

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Be not a second time snared by the old fowler. Be free, and let the remembrance of thy ancient bondage forbid thee to enter the net again.

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Sin confuses and distorts the mind. It deceives you into trusting the false security and false harmony of a fleshly desire, rather than walking in the freedom that results from trusting in the very real and eternal security that true unity in Christ that only

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He can produce as we seek righteousness and seek righteous desires and actions.

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The beginning of chapter three had the word, therefore, meaning that in light of everything that has come, now

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I'm going to say this. And in the beginning of our text today, which we will pick up in verse five, he says, therefore, once again, and since this therefore follows another paragraph that began with therefore, he's not necessarily looking at the entire books per se at this particular moment in the book, but he's looking specifically at verses one through four.

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So in light of what Paul's saying, in light of what I said in verses one through four, therefore, thus and so.

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When three, one through four, as we looked at last week, it says that as we look above, and then this is a summary notion of what the verses said on my part, as we look above or as we direct our mind towards the things above, now such will result.

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So as we look above, we will kill sin. He says in verse five, therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead.

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He's saying, therefore, the sin that is the result of your fleshly or earthly members.

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So as we look above, we will kill sin. As we direct our mind toward things above, we will come into greater submission to Christ in all areas.

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Now next week, we're going to focus more on what the renewal looks like, and ultimately it is a transformation, it is a renovation, and we're going to see some verses next week where it talks about the fact that we are being renewed.

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This is preview verse ten, which we'll look at next week. Renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the

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One who created that new self. Our new life, our being raised to spiritual life, the new self, the new creature that we are in Christ, we owe it to the

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One that created us in Christ to be renewed. And we're going to look at that next week. And this week we're going to look at the understanding of putting to death sin in our life.

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You see, sound theology, starting with the fundamentals of the faith, deity of Christ, justification by faith, authority of Scripture, the

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Trinity, those things that are most clearly taught in Scripture, the foundational building blocks of Scripture upon which everything else finds its rest.

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It is that sound theology, and then including all the other things that go with it, having sound theology in all areas in your life, your job, in the church, so on and so forth.

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Sound theology is not only foundational to spiritual growth in the life of a Christian, but it is also foundational to the comeback church.

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Every church that has ever had or suffered from a period of plateauing or decline, or being in a place where they don't feel like they're quite where they want to be, usually there's some period where there was a lack of sound theology.

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I was talking with someone before the service today, you look at America right now, and you look at New York, and the promotion, and the celebration of murder.

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And someone I heard not here, but someone, a personal friend I have on Facebook, was posting about it and saying, well, you know, we better do something or God's going to send

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His judgment. And I had to correct him and said, no, this is God's judgment.

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This is God's judgment. Now, to a far lesser degree, when a church either is in a period where they're in decline or a period where they're trying to re -look at their vision or re -craft a new future and trying to understand, okay, where is it we're going?

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And that's part of what I want for us in 2019 is to look back and appreciate where we've been, understand where we're at, and then look forward to the blessings of the future.

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As you're doing that process and moving forward, understand that God will bless obedience.

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But when you look at our country, you see that He does not bless disobedience.

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And it is His judgment on us that He's allowing these things to come to pass. And what does the solution sound?

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Theology. Repentance! Turning away from sin and turning to God.

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No. At least in our world, Satan's world system that infects all levels of government in every country in the world, we double down on sin.

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We double down on turning away. Now, that's a big picture in terms of government.

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Let's put them to the side for the rest of the sermon. Look at your own life. Look at our church.

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Look at those two things as being separate, but also as a unified thing, because we're a group of individuals that comprise our church.

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As individual Christians, we need to be turning from sin to God, not the other way around. And we're going to get into that a little bit in a few minutes.

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But it is sound theology that is this foundational building block. John MacArthur has said, there can be no holiness or maturity in a life where sin runs unchecked.

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Putting sin to death, then, is not optional in the Christian life. We can't judge anyone's heart, but if someone has not been transformed to a resurrected life in their world before, we should be living a resurrected life.

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Now, we're going to look at this in more earnest next week, but suffice it for today to say that we commonly say as Christians, you know, we have the sin nature and our new nature.

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It's not biblical. You need to change our vocabulary. I struggle with this, too, because it's an old cliché.

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It's what the Bible teaches. The old self, the unregenerate, condemned and going to hell self that we were, was crucified on the cross with Christ.

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And we're going to see this next week. It assumes you've put off the old self, and it assumes you've put on the new self as a

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Christian. So the question is common, well, why would Christians still struggle with sin? We're still in old bodies.

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We're still in sinful bodies. That's why He says, consider the members of your...it comes from the earth...members

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of our body that we still struggle with and still sometimes produce sin in our life. It is that that we put to death.

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Notice He didn't say anything about our nature. But what does freedom in Christ look like?

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Well, freedom in Christ, first of all, means sin no longer has any power over us.

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You can turn with me if you choose to, but in Romans chapter 6, which is...I've just about committed the entire chapter to memory.

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It's probably one of my more favorite chapters in the entire Bible. But in Romans chapter 6 and verse 15, it says, what then shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?

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May it never be. Old King James translates it.

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Paul's saying, under no circumstances can that be. Why? Well, verse 16, do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

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But thanks be to God to which you were committed, and having been free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

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There's only two types of people in the world, slaves of sin, slaves of righteousness. So only two people exist, unregenerate, regenerate, lost, saved.

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That's what he's picking up on here. I want to say it's Martin Lloyd -Jones that has the illustration of the two fields.

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There's two fields adjacent to one another. One is the one that is in bondage to sin, you know it's high walls, you can't get out.

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And the other field next to them is the one of righteousness, and God when He saves you, picks you up out of one and puts you on the other one.

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Completely different circumstances, completely different life, but you can steal here Satan calling to you from over the wall.

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Hey, remember the good old times? Come on back, let's do some of that old sin we used to do. Good understanding of our situation.

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But we know love by sin. Commentary when

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I was studying, he kind of put it in the understanding of sort of like a deposed monarch. He's off the scene, he no longer reigns, but he's going to do everything he can to devastate his former subjects.

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That's what sin wants to do when you're lying to sin, devastate your walk with Christ.

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Colossians 2, 6 tells us to do, therefore since you've been raised with Christ, so walk in Him.

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The conversation of your life, the totality of Christ, the market of sin.

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We're to be slaves of righteousness and putting to death the sin that so easily besets us, and pursuing and walking in righteousness.

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And that is why in other places, Mark 8, 34, Luke 9, 23, and other places in the

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Gospels, you see a repeat of the count where Jesus tells them, you want to do the cost, or count the cost, understand what being a disciple of Christ is?

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Here it is. Eternal security in terms of our standing before God, it's settled, it's eternal, but in terms of this understanding in Colossians of putting to death the sin that our flesh wages war with our spirit, it's a daily taking up of the cross.

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You can never, so he tells us

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Colossians 3, 5, therefore consider the members refuted earlier in the chapter.

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This Colossian heresy about asceticism, this harming of the body, and this humbling of the body through physical torture, it's not what he's talking about.

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Spiritual understanding, it's not physically harming your body, it's considering the members of your body in reference to performing sin is inoperative, lacking, not able to function in reference to sin.

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We hear a lot of these, we probably shouldn't say this to people, but you hear a lot of people say, well yeah, you're dead to me.

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You hear that a lot, but I'm just going to brothers and sisters, I may or may not have done this when

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I was growing up. It pretty much means I did it. But you tell your brother, you're dead to me.

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You're invisible. So you're walking down the hallway and he's walking towards you, you just run right into him. Well, I'm sorry, you're dead to me.

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Sort of the same understanding. It's not that you're aware of it and say, well I'm just going to choose to ignore it. No, sin is supposed to be dead to you, because it's not who you are.

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And he gives two lists here. Now, these lists are not exhaustive, but Paul has a way of picking out and putting his finger on the sins when he makes his list, the ones that we most struggle with as Christians.

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So let's look very quickly through this first list. This is still in verse 5, he says, consider your earthly bodies dead to, number one, immorality.

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This is the word meaning fornication. Any form of sexual activity outside of the marriage bond between one man and one woman.

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Now we, in our American government, in the news, we tend to focus on certain types.

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And yes, it's true that these things are sin, but we don't need to limit it. It's very simple.

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Any sexual activity outside of the marriage union between one man and one woman in marriage is sin.

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It's immorality. The Greek word, I think, is porneia, where we get the English word pornography.

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We don't have that as damaged homes. There's another pastor somewhere out in the

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West, I don't remember the state off the top of my head, I won't mention his name, but another one's been caught in adultery and pornography and all this sexual immorality.

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And he's done. You've got to be on guard.

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It's not just pastors, it's Christians. Anything you can do to get into your life, to ruin your testimony, Satan will do it.

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The whole spiritual warfare series, we're not going to preach that again, but I encourage you to go back and re -listen to some of that and do some study on your own.

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These things are important. Immorality, impurity, this is general filthiness, uncleanness.

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It's likened, it's a word that we use in that culture to refer to an open infection on someone, like leprosy or something like that.

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Only in this case, it's a leprosy or open infection of the mind. Untreated, unmedicated, allowed to just go wherever your mind and sinful thoughts will take you.

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He mentions this passion. Now, this does not mean that passion is wrong. I preach with a lot of passion. It doesn't mean it's sinful.

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This passion is raw, strong feelings based in sin and lust, which is not guided by God.

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He mentions evil desire, which is a passion built on evil desire. Now, when he mentions passion and evil desire here, these are somewhat interchangeable.

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They're basically covering two sides of the same coin. It's covering both the physical side of the sin and the mental side of the sin, so don't get too caught up or confused there.

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He then goes on to mention greed. This word greed here is something that should not be marked, or should not be the mark of a

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Christian. It's a word meaning covetousness. Remember the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet?

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And it goes on to list all the things we're not to covet. It's amazing to me as I grow in Christ's likeness, you know what

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I've found is one of the biggest secrets to living the Christian life? Biblical contentment.

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I speak from experience. Contentment is a very, very...Tammy's around.

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I told Tammy last week I was going to stop using, because she's a preacher's kid. I told her I was going to stop doing this. I'm going to do this one more time.

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And Gina, you've got to get me to stop doing this. But my 7 -year -old girl, you get her something, and the second she has it, there's something else she wants.

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That poor child having to grow up in a preacher's home, I feel so bad for her. She's going to be the illustration of so many sermons.

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But here's the trick. Her father is not too much different than she is. Biblical contentment.

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It solves so many things in the Christian life, because greed, this covetousness, this word actually also means it's the understanding that you have a desire for advantage.

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You have, or you want something, or you crave something, or you want to be something gives you an advantage or a control factor, ability to manipulate a situation.

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Greed places selfish desire above obedience to God, thus producing all kinds of idols.

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And these idols show up in all kinds of ways. The trick is this. If you do or give anything, whether it's in your life or in the church, whereby you're seeking an advantage or seeking to find and hold a level of power or control, it's sin to repent from it.

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If you're doing it in your life, in someone in a personal relationship, and you're doing something, and they're really not your friend, you might call them your friend, but you're just trying to use them or abuse them because they bring something that makes your life better.

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That's sin. You friend to them or let them loose so they don't have to be around.

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Couldn't give me an extra $6 ,000 a year, but you hire a guy off the street making $45. Covetousness and saying sins to get out of your life because you had this one thing, or that thing,

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I could do this. And you come up with all these justified reasons why you should have this. But then it's nothing wrong with wanting things, or even dreaming, or pursuing and thinking, you know, enjoy this blessing.

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But then it turns into God. It is at its basis that they're

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God desires. I was speaking with someone before the service, and we were talking about an idea someone had, and the idea is perfectly fine, and we're going to have a place where we'll be able to present it and talk about it and possibly do it.

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But I said, you know what? I caught something in the middle of the conversation. I said, this is an area I struggle, and this is something

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I'm trying to get all of us to start thinking in this vein. It was like, well, we or a certain people want this.

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I said, the thing itself isn't wrong, but we need to reframe our minds and say, what is it that God wants, not what we want?

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And I'm sure, I have no doubt that God would want this thing, but it's still the practice of changing our mindset, changing the way we think, changing our vocabulary, and we're going to get to speech in a minute, but changing everything to fit into what does

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God want? What does He desire? Because if you're in frustration, it's been marked by just this level of different sins and different feelings and everything, it's misguided.

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He says, that is in essence to worship themselves instead of God, and that is adultery.

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But you know what? He's not wrong. If I look at those times in my life where I've pursued selfish desire over what

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God wanted for me, for next week, because I also want to respect the sermon, and it's going to take more time, but we're going to park it here at verse 6, and we're going to tie this up and put a bow on it, and we'll pick this back up next week.

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But I want to hit on this point before we end. Obedience.

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It says, because of these things, the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. Those that are not saved will be judged for it.

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Thankfully for us that are in Christ, we don't have to look forward to that day. We can look forward with hope and understanding the eternal life that awaits us.

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But we need to be serious about sin in our life, and not because it's this understanding of beating up on someone, or saying someone's not good enough.

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No, it's because there's God says, you once walked in adultery.

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He didn't condemn her. He didn't judge her. He said, look, he's still judging the sin. It was still wrong. But he says, what?

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He says, go and sin no more. It's forgiveness with repentance.

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Is there something in your life that needs to be repented of? Is there something in your life that's holding you back from God's best?

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You care about the church in this instance. Forget about that. Just you and your life. Come back as a

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Christian in 2019. This Bible says you can repent, believe, walk in the freedom that is in Christ.