Book of Romans - Ch. 11, Vs. 30-36 (08/15/2021)

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Pastor David Mitchell

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All right, let me click the OK button. All right, Ben, does that look right?
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Looks great. Okay. All right, so we're in Romans chapter 11.
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As you all know, we went off on a little tour of the book of Revelation for a while because of a particular couple of phrases in the middle of chapter 11, and now we're back into chapter 11.
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So just to review a little bit, this is where we were last Sunday. Romans chapter 11, verse 26.
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All Israel shall be saved. The apostle Paul said, under the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit, there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer. Now, what do you think, what time period do you think that's a reference to?
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That is the second coming. So there shall come out of Zion a Deliverer, the
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Messiah, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant unto them, which
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I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they, this is speaking of the
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Jews, they are enemies for your sakes. That means us, the Gentiles, those of us who are
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Gentiles. But as touching election, they are beloved for the Father's sakes.
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And that doesn't mean God the Father. That means Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fathers.
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God promised them that he had chosen them as his people and that their children would be the lineage of the
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Messiah and the Messiah would reign from the earth on the earth for a thousand years.
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And because of God's promise, God, who cannot lie, will make this come to pass, where all
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Israel shall be saved. At the end of the seven -year tribulation period, when
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Jesus Christ comes as the lightning from the east to the west, the Jews will be called at that moment.
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The Holy Spirit, for the first time, will change their want to. He will open their eyes. He will open their ears.
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And they will see that Jesus is their Messiah, and they will bow the knee and receive him as their personal
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Lord and Savior, just as you and I did, and it will happen right as he comes back.
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Why? Because the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.
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That means God cannot change his mind once he promised the fathers that he would save their people.
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So that's what we talked about last time. I believe Jesus specifically was speaking to the
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Jews when he said this in Luke 21, 27. And then shall they,
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I believe that's the Jews, see the Son of predominately. I mean, it has a secondary application to every human on the earth when he comes back.
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There'll be hundreds of thousands of Gentiles saved as well. And then shall they see the
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Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.
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Well, that's what we talked about last time. Who was Jesus specifically speaking to here?
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A group of Jewish people. So it kind of falls in line with the promise that the apostle
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Paul just shared with us. Now, let's move on. In Roman chapter 11, verse 30, it says, for as you in times past have not believed
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God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief. Now, remember, this is speaking, it's going back and forth, talking about Jews and Gentiles, Jews and Gentiles.
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So Paul speaks to the Gentiles and he says, you in times past didn't believe in God. You didn't even know about him.
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The Jews had the oracles of God. The Jews were God's people. But now you have obtained mercy and they are in a state of unbelief.
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And the apostle Paul says these two things are related. Even so, have these also now not believed that through your mercy, they also may obtain mercy.
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What does that mean? Well, my mentor, Dr. Erwin Freeman, their name was actually
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Freedman, and they changed it to Freeman when they moved to the United States to avoid persecution of Jews because they were
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Jewish. And so Dr. Freeman was a Jewish believer. And how was he saved?
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He was saved because he saw a little blonde -headed gal that he liked and wanted to date.
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And her dad knew Rocky and knew he was a bad dude and he wouldn't let him date her except to take her to church.
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And he didn't have any use for church being a Jew, but he did want to be with this young girl. So he took her to church.
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And lo and behold, not long after he began to take her to church, the Lord saved him.
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And he goes down the aisle. He said, I felt like angels were pulling me out of the pew and down that aisle.
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And he became a Christian at that point and a world -renowned evangelist. But that's how the
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Lord saves the Jews in this dispensation. The church age is the same way he saves the
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Gentiles. But the reason they can be saved, one of the reasons is that they hear the gospel from the church, which is predominantly
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Gentile, as we know at this time. It has been since even before the end of the first century.
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It's predominantly Gentile. And so because of the Gentile church, the Jews can hear the gospel. They must hear the gospel.
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And the Holy Spirit uses that and calls them. And then they're saved just like we are in this dispensation.
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So that's what verse 31 is talking about. It's a beautiful thing. This word mercy in the
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Greek, literally means compassion. So it's a call for the
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Gentiles to have compassion on Jewish people and to love them enough to witness to them and tell them the genuine gospel.
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And then the rest is in the hands of the Holy Spirit. And it takes the water and the spirit, the water being the word of God.
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So we have to have mercy on them and compassion enough to tell them the gospel. And that's our job, right?
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For God has concluded them, the Jew, all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
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Now, this is a great. Let me just, first of all, say generally what this is talking about.
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God has concluded the Jews in unbelief that he might have mercy on Gentiles, too.
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That's kind of what this is saying, the whole world, in other words. But I want you to stop and think a minute, because this is an excellent place for us to study this whole idea of what the word all means in the scripture.
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I want to check something here. Never mind, I see. Okay, you can hear me all right. This word all in the scripture is a little different than the
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English word normally means, because in the Greek, it doesn't have that same meaning all the time.
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In English, sometimes it means all things, every individual thing. And in Greek, it can mean that, but more often than not, it means some from a bigger set of all.
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In other words, if you want to talk about human beings, normally when you see the word pos, especially in Paul's writings, but really all through the scriptures in the
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New Testament in particular, it means some people, some individuals from all people groups.
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So you could translate it this way. All kinds of is often a better translation than just all.
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Because let me ask you this question. Do you really think that God concluded all
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Jews, meaning every individual Jew, in unbelief so that they're all going to hell? See, that is not what that means.
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So clearly by the context, you can see that it doesn't mean every individual Jew. It means some from the
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Jewish people group, right? That he might have mercy on all. See, people would love to use that to say that God's going to save everybody.
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In fact, preachers today say God loves everybody. And that implies God's going to save everybody. Because why would he send someone he loves to hell?
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I mean, people don't ask these kinds of questions, but they should. And as I've had the privilege to go across American speech at the
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Tradeway Church, that's what we call it now because it's better than church. Why? Because people from every denomination will come to a
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Tradeway meeting. And then we just put scripture up. And we don't talk about dogma or denominational doctrine.
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We just read scripture together. And people see things they never saw in their own church because some pastors don't believe some of the stuff that's in the passages we read, which is fabulous.
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We've had hundreds of people who have had their lives changed not because I taught them anything, but because I got them angry enough to go study and try to prove me wrong.
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But listen, people will use the last part of verse 32 to try to prove that Jesus died for everybody.
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And the truth is, if he did, then everyone is going to be saved. There won't be anyone in hell. And just do the logic, do the math on that.
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But all doesn't mean that in Greek here, especially in this context. So what it does mean, and let me see,
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I may actually have that on here. Yeah, I do. What's interesting about it, if you look up the word all in the
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Greek, it's really two words, not in English, right? In Greek, both places there in verse 32 where I have the word all underlined, it's two words, not one.
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It's ho pas, ho pas. We know what pas means because we've studied it a lot in our church.
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It means some people, some individuals from every people group.
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In other words, when Paul would say to a group of Jews who didn't believe God would even save a
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Gentile that Jesus died for all men, he meant not just Jews. He meant he died for some individuals among the
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Gentiles and some individuals among the Jews. He died for all people groups.
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That's what it means. All kinds of men is an excellent translation of the word pas. Now, it's interesting here that it's two words.
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The first word ho means this. The second word means all, right?
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So this all. Now, you know, when you understand just that part, it shows you that it doesn't mean every individual.
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It means this group, this all, right? So God has concluded some from this all, in other words, the
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Jews, to be in unbelief, and others will believe. And then why? So that he might have mercy on this all.
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That means the Gentiles. So some from the Gentile people group will have
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God's mercy and be saved. So the best translation almost all the way through the
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New Testament for the word pas is all kinds of. Jesus died for all kinds of men, not for all men.
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If what you mean by all is every individual. Now, if you don't believe me on that, that's okay. Just go study it.
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Do your own study. That's what I did because I didn't grow up believing this either. I wasn't taught this in the Southern Baptist Church.
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But this is what the Holy Spirit has taught me through rightly dividing the word of truth, using the ten rules of proper
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Bible interpretation, and actually looking the words up, seeing what they actually mean. Not just believing what every preacher says they mean, all right?
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Now, so in Greek, the word pas, the best translation in this context, is not all men, but all kinds of men.
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In other words, not just Jews only, but Jews and Gentiles. And so this is really interesting that you find this passage right here because starting in the next verse, it's about to begin to talk about the wisdom of God and how
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God's plan is so wise that he made it to be so that some of the
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Jews would begin to fall away into unbelief, and then God would raise up Gentiles with belief, and they would be plugged into this branch, right?
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They would be plugged in. They were wild branches, and they're plugged in when some of the natural branches, which is the
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Jews, were broken off. And this is so that all kinds of men would come to know the
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Lord. And we know Jesus was sent to preach the gospel to the poor and to the Gentile. The Scripture says in the
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Old Testament many times he would bring the word to the Gentiles. The Jews simply didn't want to believe that in the first century.
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And Paul was telling them every group he spoke to, he'd tell the Jews, no, Jesus died for all men, not just you, not just the
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Jews. He died for Gentiles too, all kinds of men. That's exactly the meaning of the word all.
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If you know just that, then you'll understand why it is that if you go back to the 1600s and 1700s, probably 85%, 90 % of all
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Baptists at least believed that Jesus died only for the elect, not for everybody, because they understood these words, they understood these meanings.
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And there's more to it than just the word study. Look in Isaiah 53, 8. Jesus was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation?
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For he was cut off, he was killed, he was cut off out of the land of the living. Because of the transgression of my people was he stricken.
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Now, that doesn't say all people, does it? God says he died for God's people.
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It says plainly here that Jesus was stricken or died for the sins of my people, not the sins of every person.
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Jesus did not die to give his blood to Satan's children, the tares.
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Jesus said very clearly, I did not put them here. I put the wheat here.
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I did not put the tares on the earth. Satan did. And they are people who hate
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God. They hate God's son, and they hate us, God's people. He did not die for them.
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He died for his people. Scripture says, Isaiah 53, 10, yet it pleased the
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Lord to bruise him. That means the Lord being the father. It pleased God the father to bruise the son of God, and God the father put him to grief.
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When thou shalt make Jesus' soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed.
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Now, what does that mean? Isn't that interesting? The seed of Christ as opposed to the seed of Satan.
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Do you see that? It's the wheat, not the tares. He will see his seed and prolong his days, and the pleasure of the
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Lord will prosper in his hand, and he will see, God the father will see, the travail of the son's soul and shall be satisfied.
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That is one of the earliest teachings in Scripture on the doctrine of propitiation.
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It means that one of the things, one of the most important things Jesus died for was not for us.
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It was for God the father to satisfy his justice, his judgment, his wrath against sin.
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And that's what propitiation is. And so when the father saw the travail of the soul of his son, he was satisfied that the sin debt had been paid for his people, not for every human.
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Because look what else it says. By his knowledge, in other words, by knowing Jesus, that's how we get saved, right?
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The Holy Spirit opens our eyes. He opens our ears. He makes it where for the first time we truly see
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Jesus as our shepherd. And by knowing him shall my righteous servant justify many.
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I want you to underline the word many. It doesn't say all. And I'm going to make a point about that in a moment.
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For he will bear their iniquities. Whose sins does Jesus bear? The many.
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Okay, that's clear grammar. And then you have to look up the word many and get the word meaning. And then all of a sudden you understand something that people have forgotten since the 1600s and 1700s when almost everybody knew it.
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Now they have forgotten that Jesus only died for the elect. That's been forgotten. Probably only 5 % of all
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Christians on the earth today believe that, like I believe it, like Spurgeon believed it, the prince of preachers, greatest preacher that ever lived since Christ and Paul.
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And they don't believe that way anymore because they won't look these things up. Now let's keep going.
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The Father is propitiated with respect only to the sins of the ransomed.
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Now notice that the Father is pleased when he sees the travail of his son.
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He is satisfied. That is propitiation. And by knowing Jesus Christ shall my righteous servant justify many.
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So God the Father is propitiated or satisfied that the sins of the many, not all, but many, have been paid for and ransomed.
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And Jesus bears their sins. You see that in Scripture, do you not? Jesus bears the sins of many, and the many are the ones who are justified.
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Now justified is an important word because when the Baptist, and we're not Baptist anymore, we took that off the sign, but I grew up Baptist, so I know
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Baptist better than anything, and Bible church people, I know them pretty well too. But when we say
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I got saved, what we really mean is I've been justified. That's what we really mean because salvation is a much bigger word than something that happened at one moment in time, like our spiritual birthday.
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That's not the day we got saved. That's the day we got justified. The day we got saved started before the foundation of the world.
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God already knew us as his people, his sheep, before he made anything. He knew us before the foundation of the world and loved us.
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He didn't love everyone, but he loved us as his own children before he ever put us here. So it's the many that are justified, which you might as well say saved.
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I mean, you know that that goes on and means that because when you get justified, that means God himself has done the work to place you into a state of being as if you have never sinned in his eyes.
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Ever have sinned, never will sin. That's how God the Father views you because of Jesus' death on the cross and the fact that he bore your iniquities and paid the sin debt on your behalf, took your sins away from you, put them in his own account and died for him like the scapegoat, took him into the wilderness, which pictures hell, far away from us, far away from God.
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That's where your sins are, and that's why you're saved forever. You're justified because of that. But not everyone is, only the many.
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Now, Matthew 20, 28 says this, and there are many, at least three places in scripture where it says this, two in the
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New Testament, one in the Old, but even as the son of man, that's Jesus, came not to be ministered to, but to minister just like that, he also came to give his life a ransom for all people.
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No, it doesn't say that, does it? It says many. All right, and in the
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Greek, it says many. It does not say all. It is the Greek word for many.
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Everyone Jesus ransomed is ransomed. Now, that's a David Mitchell quote, isn't it wise?
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Doesn't quite sound like Spurgeon, does it? But think about it. Everyone and only those who are ransomed are the ones that will be ransomed.
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The ones that he paid his blood for are the ones that he bought out of the slave market of sin and Satan and paid the ransom and took them away from captivity.
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He didn't take everyone out of captivity because Jesus said, broad is the way to hell, and many there be that go thereby.
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Narrow are the gates to heaven, and few there be. So way more people are going to go to hell, but everyone who
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Jesus ransomed and he paid the price to ransom them out of that shall be saved and are ransomed.
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And when you really think about how ransom works in the human example, which is what
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God uses as allegories to teach us spiritual things that we can't understand, he'll use physical things we're familiar with, such as ransom.
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If my son gets taken captive and they want to ransom, and your son gets taken captive and they want to ransom for him, and I have the money and I pay for my son, they don't let your kid go.
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They let my kid go. That's how ransom works. And with the Lord, every single person that he did ransom is saved for all eternity, and the ones who aren't ransomed aren't.
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And so not everyone is ransomed, and clearly he gave his life to ransom many, not all.
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All right, now, as we go ahead and we take a look at this, just think about the logic.
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Now, if you haven't taken a course in logic, I would go online and look under the School of Philosophy and any good online university or any university that has online courses and audit a course in logic and take it.
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You'll love it, and it'll help you understand the Bible, because God said, come, let us reason together, and reasoning is logic.
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You can't really understand the Bible if you don't understand reasonable thinking, logical thinking. But in logic, this is a sound logical statement.
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All can sometimes mean many, but many can never mean all. So I want you to think about that a minute.
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We just saw an example on the previous slide of a place where all really meant some from every people group, so it didn't really mean all.
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It meant many, right? Many Jews would be lost so that many
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Gentiles can be saved, but not all Gentiles are saved and not all Jews are lost. So the word all doesn't always mean all.
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Sometimes it means many, but the word many can never mean all. So there you have it.
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The Holy Spirit is very selective when He chooses words to put in the concise book we call the
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Bible. And so when He says that Jesus pays the ransom for many, that He bears the sins of many, that He justifies many,
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He doesn't mean every individual. He means many people, many individuals from every people group, from all people groups.
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And that's a great lesson in this. Here's one more, 1 Peter 118. For as much as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain lifestyle received by the tradition of your fathers, that's not how you got saved.
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You don't get saved by tradition. That's why we know the Roman Catholics are wrong when they elevate their tradition to be equal with the word of God.
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It's not equal. Tradition is important. We need to look and see what our forefathers believed about certain passages.
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I like that part of what the Catholics do because we do that too. Everyone should be reading the church fathers and all that, but we don't elevate that as if this is
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Scripture, here's tradition way down here. And these are humans who are sinful and can be wrong.
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This is Scripture. It's God wrote it. It's never wrong. It can't contradict itself. You understand that. But we're not saved by anything that comes from the tradition of our fathers.
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Our Roman Catholic friends should take note of that. They don't. They ignore it. But how are we saved?
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With the precious blood of Jesus Christ, as of a lamb, without blemish and without spot.
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Right? That's why I like to say we're saved by the blood of Jesus plus nothing. Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
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Do you believe in foreordination? Predestination? The Bible does. God does. The Holy Spirit believes in it.
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Talks about it a lot. Jesus was foreordained before God made the world and was manifest in these last times, not for every individual, but for you.
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So what you have to do, if you want to use the ten rules of proper Bible interpretation, is you've got to ask the question, who is you in this sentence?
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And the only way you can know who you is is by looking at the context of the whole book of 1 Peter. You have to ask the question, who is this book written to?
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Because that's who you is right here. So that didn't sound like good grammar.
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That's who you is. But that's who the word you is right here. Verily, Jesus was foreordained before the foundation of the world for you, but also manifest when he came into the world for you.
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So who is you? You, well, verse 21 tells us, but we're also going to go back and look at 1
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Peter 1 and see who the book is written to. Verse 21 tells us who you is. It says you who by him do believe.
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So people who have genuine belief in God are the you here. So he gave his blood for the believers, not for every human.
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You see, even this proves that, but it goes further than this. Who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God.
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That's the same you, right? You're so clearly here. Ye who were redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus were the very people that 1
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Peter was written to. This letter was written to the elect, and you'll see that in 1
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Peter 1, 1 here in a moment. He died for these people alone who by him did believe in God that your faith and hope might be in God.
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That's who Jesus died for, not for every individual. So let's look at it. Context is everything.
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Look who this book was written to. 1 Peter 1, 1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus. Now I'm reading this in the actual
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Greek. If you read it in the English Bible, you'll see the word elect there on the second line is actually the first word of verse two, but in the
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Greek, it's not check. Check it out. If you don't believe me, go get a Greek English interlinear and read the verse.
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You'll see that the word elect is actually in verse one, right where I have it. Okay. So here's how it reads in Greek, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.
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And now it's going to tell who the whole book's written to, to the elect strangers. Elect means the elect, those who
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God chose to be saved. The elect strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God, the father, et cetera.
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So the book is written to the elect and that's who you is in this verse.
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And that's who Jesus died for. So, I mean, there's so many illustrations of this. There's no wonder that 90 % of all genuine believers, especially among the
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Baptist in the 16th and 1700s believe that Jesus died for. I mean, they called them particular
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Baptist. Look up what that means. What is a particular Baptist? That's what 90 % of Baptist were. That means they believe that Jesus died for a particular group of people, not for everybody.
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Why? Because of all this, all of this biblical information is why they believe that. So Jesus gave his blood to redeem his people, not everybody, not
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Satan's people, not the tears. Now, verse 32 is the verse we've been covering this morning so far, right?
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But let's go on to the next verse because it's amazing. It's really where I'm trying to go today.
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It is just magnificent information that we have about our Lord. For God has concluded the
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Jews, some of the Jews in unbelief, some from the whole people group of the
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Jews are going to be in unbelief so that he might consider have mercy on some from all of the groups of the
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Gentiles. We just covered that. We'll look at the next verse. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
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So you know what? People hate the doctrine of predestination and election. But God says about it of himself that it shows my own riches, the own riches that I have in wisdom and knowledge.
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So the very idea that some from every people group will be saved, but not all demonstrates the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
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So when we argue against it, we show how foolish we are and how wise he is.
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How unsearchable are his judgments? Well, I will say this. No human being would have made this up. No human would have ever put the choice in God's hands of who would be saved.
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Humans would put that choice in their own hands. And that's exactly what 90 to 95 % of every
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Christian group in the world today does. And we call them Armenians. They don't believe in the sovereignty of God.
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They don't believe in election. They don't believe God chose who the bride of Jesus would be that you get to choose. It doesn't work that way among humans, but they want to insist that God puts the choice in man's hands.
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Well, I'm glad God didn't put the choice of who would be saved and not in my hands or your hands or anyone's hands.
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It's in his own hands. And this shows the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God and humans hate it.
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Humanism just simply hates that God is in control. And that's why so many of them try to pretend there is no
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God. They don't want him to be in control, but pretending that doesn't mean he's not in control. Unfortunately for them someday in the near future, they will be shouting, let the mountains and the rocks of the hills fall upon us and hide us from the wrath of the land.
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They won't be able to hide forever. Will they? How unsearchable are God's judgments? That word's the same as God's justice.
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Listen, if you don't think it's fair that God gets to choose who his own kids are, or that Jesus gets to choose who his own bride is, then you don't understand the justice of God.
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God says it's perfectly just. So it really doesn't matter what we think his ways are past finding out.
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If you don't understand all of this, it's okay. You're not God. Right. I'll tell you this.
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When you step into eternity. And ages and ages and ages and ages, as we go forward in time, yes, there's time in the future.
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And we go forward in time. You will always be learning something new about the infinite
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God, because you're finite and I'm finite. We will never know God completely. We will always be knowing
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God. We'll all be learning about God. We will understand more and more about his justice.
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We'll understand more about his wisdom and his knowledge. And for human beings in churches today in seminaries across this land to teach that predestination election isn't true because it's not fair.
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Defies the fact that God in verse 33 says it's the very justice of God. It is what
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God says is just. So there we have it. I could preach all day on that, but I won't. Now, let me tell you where we're really headed with the port.
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The remainder of chapter 11, starting with verse 33 is where this starts and moves on to the end of 30 theories.
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We're actually heading to what the Bible, the modern Bible calls chapter 12, verse one, remember there were no chapter divisions in scripture or verse division.
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It's a letter. It's a letter that Paul wrote. We have to take the whole thing as one letter and we have to take it all in context.
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But when, when we get to where we're headed, which is Romans 12 one, all of the verses starting with 1133 to the end of chapter 11 are the context for Romans 12 one.
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So let's take a, a four view of 12 one, see what it's talking about. I beseech you therefore brethren.
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Now notice the word. Therefore, that's how I know that what I'm saying is true. When you see that word, therefore it has to refer to the information that's previous in the letter.
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So chapter 12, verse one has to refer to the last part of Romans chapter 11. If not all of chapter 11, if not all of the book of Romans, but it certainly refers to verses 33 to the end of chapter 11.
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So I beseech you because of this information. Now this is the information we're about to study, right?
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Because of this information that we are about to study, Paul says, I beseech you by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto
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God, which is your reasonable service. So people want to talk all the time about people that believe in the sovereignty of God and grace.
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They don't care anything about how they live. They don't worry about it because they just say, God is sovereign. Now that I'm saved,
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I can't lose my salvation. So I can live any way I want to. Well, you would have to defy Romans 12, one, if you believe that way, but we don't believe that way.
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We believe all the Bible, not just parts of it. We believe 12, one also in 12, one says that our body does not belong to us.
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Once we're saved, it belongs to the Lord. And that we should present that body willingly as a living sacrifice to the
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Lord, Jesus Christ. And therefore we should live. Holy. Now remember, holy to the Christian never means perfect.
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Like it does for God. It means different, different than the world.
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You know, I'm just use this as an example, because I like to use it because I can, I'm the preacher here, right? I can use it.
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I don't believe the Bible teaches. You can't have a social drink, but I do have to ask the question.
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Why would one want to, because if the goal is for you to be different than the world and everyone else in your quarter of life is having a little drink when they go out to dinner, getting a little tipsy so they can laugh and giggle and have fun.
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Then if you're supposed to be holy, then maybe you shouldn't do that. So maybe that's a better reason.
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I just don't like alcohol. Okay. And I'm, and I'm not, I don't have a list of rules. I'm not a legalist.
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Jesus made wine and they drank it. So I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, look, as you grow in your consecration, you're supposed, you and I are supposed to grow more like Jesus and less like our friends.
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Okay. Less like the world around us more like Jesus, less like them. Why? Because when they get in trouble, they will come to us for help, but not if we're just like them.
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So that's what holy means. So we're supposed to present this body, our brain, our body, all of us to God.
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As his possession. And we therefore are a living sacrifice and we're supposed to be different than the world.
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And that is acceptable to the father. And that is our reasonable. We haven't even done anything great.
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When we live that way, we haven't done anything. Great. We did what's reasonable. We did the bare minimum. Now that's what that verse says.
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Now, I don't know about you, but I have a problem with that in my life.
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I have a problem with that verse. Because I like to use my body for me. I like to go do stuff.
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I want to do with it. I like to think what I want to think with it. You know,
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I don't mind this idea of holiness, but, you know, I'm not going to keep a set of rules. So I'm free.
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I'm like, Paul said, I'm free from all things. I like to focus on that verse. I don't know about you, but I'm talking about me right now.
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And so yet the scripture says, this is where I'm supposed to be. So I need to go back to the end of chapter 11 to figure out how to do chapter 12, verse one, because I don't know how to do it.
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So that's what we're about to do. So let's, we don't have, yeah, we got lots of time left. I'm just going super fast today.
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So let's look at it then. So where do we start? If we want to live a godly life and be better than we are now, what if we want to be a better man, a better woman, a better dad, a better mom, a better child, better teenager.
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What if we actually want to be someone powerful in this world for God to use in these end times when people are going to need us so badly to be salt and light, but we're just kind of trotting along, living like they are right now.
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How can we change that? How can God change that in us? We're going to get some hints on that in these next few verses.
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It starts with verse 33. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his justices and his ways are perfect.
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Past finding out. We're going to start by thinking about the awesomeness of God and really anywhere in the
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Bible where you see the fear of God, that's what it means. It doesn't mean you're afraid of him to sense. He's going to kill you. Although he might, if we get into a sin habit that he needs to take his home early, but it'd be for our good if he did that, but that's not even really what fear of God means.
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Fear of God means you recognize how awesome he is. And I dare say that unless you've ever gotten off by yourself in God's awesome nature, perhaps you've glare, glanced up at the universe and the stars at night and the vastness of it.
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Or you've ever read any material about how humans try to study the numbers of stars that they are, and no one can comprehend how large it really is.
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Or look at a waterfall or the ocean, the beauty of the blueness of the water in the
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Caribbean and the clouds. And when I was, I had to go on a business trip out to Midland this past week and driving back,
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I've never seen clouds so pretty in my life. And you think about Jesus is the artist who painted those clouds up there.
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And I get to praise him and thank him for being able to be alive and to exist and see that and experience that with him.
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Those are the kinds of things that we need to think about. If we want to get to the place where we live a more holy life, we need to think about how holy
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God is. We need to think about the unsearchable riches of his wisdom. Then we need to think about the unsearchable riches of his knowledge.
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And then we need to think about how unsearchably just he is. Even when we think stuff's not fair, it is his justice.
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Therefore it's perfect. And then we need to understand that even though we're already experiencing eternal life, which means we never die.
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We're in eternity now, really. That goes forever to infinity.
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And we never find out all there is to know about God. His ways are past finding out for infinite people.
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I'm sorry, for finite people. And that's what we are. We'll always be learning more and more.
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And that's the fun of it, the excitement. But we're not going to know all of God ever, as far as I know, because his ways are past finding out to us.
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And we need to think about the awesomeness of God. You know, I have a particular thought.
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My kids know about it. And most of you guys have heard me talk about it before.
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And, um, um, so, um,
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I'll go, I'll just give this example. I was going down the highway. One time I had about a 40 mile drive to get my kids to school for all 12 years of all five of my kids.
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And we would drive from our ranch to course Canada, where the church school is, and they'd be with me. And those are great times
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I had together with my children. But when we had Ben and Matt kind of came as our second batch kids.
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So there are a lot of times I just had the two of them. The other ones were gone to college. And, um, so one time
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I was coming back, I don't know their exact age or right now, but I would say, you know,
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Ben would know, but I would say probably, um, you know, maybe Ben was eight and Matt was five, something like that.
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Uh, little guys sitting in the back seat. And I thought, well, These, these young men are old enough for me to tell them what
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I think is the deepest thought that I have about God. And I'm going to share it with them today. I bet they can handle it.
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So I said, Hey guys, let me tell you something interesting about God. I want you to think about this for a minute.
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You know, a lot of people ask, where did God come from? You know, who made
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God? And I said, boys, that is not a real great question to ask because the Bible gives us that answer.
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We should already know that the answer is he is eternal. He's always existed. So no one made God. And I said, that's right, dad.
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We learned that in school. You know, we know that because they went to Christian school. Right. So we know that.
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And I said, so that's not that deep of a thought, is it? And they said, no, we kind of know the answer to that. And I said, well, here's the question
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I want to ask is how did he do that? And they were thinking, well, what do you mean by that dad?
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And I said, well, think about this. What if God never had existed? Cause everything besides God has to be made by something else.
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So if God never existed, there would be no nothing because God created the idea of nothingness.
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There'd be no nothing. And I'm driving along, you know, and all of a sudden out of the backseat, the youngest one,
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Matt says, dad, that's a great thought. That's something great to think about, but not for long.
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I just busted out laughing because the truth is when I have that thought, I have to stop thinking about it pretty quickly because it drives me nuts.
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Right. But here's the thing about it. When I do think that thought, that if God hadn't been able to do that, however, he did it, if he had not been able to do it,
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I wouldn't be here. None of my kids would be here. The world wouldn't be here. None of the stars would be here.
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In fact, nothing wouldn't even be here. There'd be no nothing. And you know what it does? It's the moment that I'm thinking at it drives me to be the holiest
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I ever am. I want to do nothing but serve God with a hundred percent that I am of me right there during that moment.
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The bad thing is I can't think that thought all the time. So sometimes I get in the flesh and you do too. Right. But I'm just saying that's, that's the place.
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The starting place is to think about the awesome nature of God and that he did do that somehow.
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And if he hadn't, nothing would exist, not even nothingness. Think about that. She talking about vanity and vexation of spirit.
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You wouldn't have been thought of because there'd be no thought of anything. Cause there'd be no nothing, but God did do it.
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He is here. He is. He's always been here. And I don't know how he did it. And you don't know how he did it, but pinch yourself.
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And if it hurts, you then know that he did it because you're here and you're real and God is awesome.
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So when we look at the unsearchable judgments of God, we began to move more into a place of desiring to be holy.
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Now, listen, I'm going to tell you something. Otis was right about this. He said, we don't, we only do what we want to do.
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Humans always do just what they want to do. That's all they do. So if you're going to present your body as a living sacrifice and be a holy person that other people can come to from help, which is acceptable to God and it's your only, you're reasonable.
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That's how you should be as a Christian. If you want to get to that place, you have to get there by putting yourself in that place of contemplating the awesome nature of your father in heaven and of the son,
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Jesus Christ and the holy spirit. When you think about the awesome nature of God, it will pull you into line. And the first thing you'll do is confess your sins because every man of God or woman of God had ever met
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God in the Bible. First thing they just fall right on their face and say, I'm a man of unclean lips or unclean hands or whatever they would say.
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And then you can bathe in the light of God and be a different person than the world is.
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And we're just getting started here. So let's look at, let's see what we got next. So we move into the context of Roman 12 one.
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What are the causes of the experiential things? We do the stuff that we live.
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I'm not talking about positional things like, I know I'm saved because God made me righteous. That's positional. Nothing I do can change that.
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I know that I'm saved because God took my sins and placed them on Christ and took his righteousness and placed it on me.
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That is a work of God. I had no part in it. It's a gift from God. I had no part in it other than that.
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He made me want to receive it. So I did when he called me, the holy spirit made me want it. So I received it.
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I didn't cause it, right? I just partook of it. That's positional.
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I know that I'm always have always been God's child. I've always been wheat. I've never been a tear.
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I've always been a sheep. I've never been a goat. I was a lost sheep. Now I'm a saved sheep, but I've never been a goat and all that's because God shows me,
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I know all of that is true. But here in chapter 12, verse one, we're not talking about positional truth.
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We're talking about how we live, what we are responsible to do that we're supposed to be a good person because we try to be a good person.
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We're talking about our good works. We're talking about our obedience, our ability to be a good man or woman or boy or girl on this earth right now in space and time.
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That's what we're talking about. And the first starting place for that is to recognize the awesome nature of a being who has always been.
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And if he hadn't have always been nothing, no nothing would have ever existed.
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Okay. Like Matt said, that's enough to think about that for now. So the first point is we recognize the unsearchable omniscience.
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That means all knowingness of God. What else?
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Well, there's other scriptures that relate to this, right? Ephesians three, eight and to me who am less than the least of all saints.
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That's how Paul looked at himself. He was honest about himself, his flesh and his spirit.
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Isn't it wonderful that the Lord himself said that he placed this treasure, which means the new man in earthen vessels, and he did it on purpose so that God would receive the glory for our lives.
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So God knows we're not perfect. God knows we have a flesh and we have a spiritual man. We have a flesh.
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We have a spiritual woman. We have flesh and we got a spiritual boy or girl or teenager, our young person, right?
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He did it that way on purpose. There's no accident. So we can either beat up on ourselves for the sins we did last week, or we can agree with God.
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That's what confess means. First John one, nine agree with God that it's sin and believe God when he says,
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I will cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Believe him when he says he's done that, that means even the ones you forgot to confess.
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And he's makes you stand before God as if you have never sinned. That's what justification is.
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And that's who you are. But at the same time, we're exhorted to live, right?
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That's the hard part because the flesh pulls against it all the time. Our own mind will think ungodly thoughts quicker than it'll think godly thoughts.
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You know that if you're honest with yourself. So you have to continually be spiritual warfare, praying the prayer, dear
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Jesus, give me the mind of Christ. Take this thought away from me. It's not even my, my new man doesn't even think this way.
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That's my old man. Remove this thought from me. Don't let my brain think like the old man put, give me the mind of Christ.
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Let me think like you would think about this person or this event right now. And it just goes away.
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And all of a sudden you're walking right again. And you have to continually be fighting that battle. But why would we even try?
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Because we're thinking about how awesome God is. Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given that I should preach among the
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Gentiles. Look at this. The unsearchable riches of Christ. Listen, we can learn about God for all eternity future, which is a funny word when you think about it.
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We move out into the future with never ending. And every moment of eternity in the future, we can be searching
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Christ riches and searching to know God better. And we will never fully know them, but we'll always be learning more.
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That is an amazing fact. And that is the fun part for those who love to study the word now, but all of us will love to study the word then.
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Right? So the second thing that we must do to help us get to a place of wanting to live a holy life is recognize the unsearchable riches of Christ.
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So the first thing was to recognize the unsearchable wisdom and, and omniscience of God and his perfect justice.
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And that the way things are is the perfect plan. There's only one plan and we're living it. You may like everything in it, but heck
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Adam and Eve chose it. Satan said, Hey, you don't want to just know good. You want to know good and evil.
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And that, and Eve said, yeah, that's exactly what I want to know. And Adam said, me too. So that's what we get. We get what we asked for.
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We get the evil together with the good. We never just get the good. Now, not in this life. And that's because we asked for it.
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It's also because God knew it'd be best for history to be this way, his story to be this way, because he would get the glory and Jesus could spread his arms on that cross and be nailed to it and show us the riches of the love of God, which he never could have shown us we hadn't fallen.
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So it was God's plan for the beginning from the beginning. It's the perfect plan, but we have to, we have to look at the unsearchable wisdom and knowledge and justice of God and secondly, the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ.
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What has God done in Christ? All of the work that it takes to save us, all of the work has been accomplished.
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And if we understand that and focus on that, we'll want to be a good person too. Verse nine says, and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God who created all things by Jesus Christ.
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Now, why does he want to make all men see this when not all men are going to be saved? Cause there is a, such a teaching in scripture of the universal calling.
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And then there is what we call the effectual calling. The effectual calling is when the Holy spirit saves you, when he comes in and wakes you up and while you were yet in your sins, he regenerates you and gives you life.
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Everything else after that's an effect. The cause of the salvation was the effectual call when the
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Holy spirit woke you up, but he doesn't wake everybody up, but he does move among everybody and gives them the word of God.
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He shows them there is the word of God. He shows them the creation of God and they're without excuse.
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Romans chapter one says they've all seen the, that God is and that he created everything and they have the word of God has been preached throughout the entire world.
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Even in the first century, it had already gone to the whole world and it has many times since then.
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And so they're without excuse, but they're, you know, most people don't want
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God. All right. So, and to make all men, yeah, all men will see, all men will hear.
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They just don't hear with understanding or see with spiritual eyes that truly see it. And that's sad, but they don't, they don't see what the fellowship of the mystery is, which from the beginning of the world was hid in God who created all things by Jesus Christ.
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Jesus is God. All things were made by him and for him. And without him was not anything made that was made to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, talking about the same thing, the unsearchable wisdom, knowledge, justice of God and the unsearchable riches of Christ.
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Understanding these things help us to reach a place of wanting to be a good person. The third thing we see here is a manifold wisdom of God.
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So we already saw his manifold knowledge, omniscience.
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We saw his perfect justice. We saw the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. Everything God has done for us through the work of Jesus Christ and the life of Christ.
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And now we see the manifold wisdom of God is something else to think about. All right.
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So we see these things in these passages, according to the eternal purpose, which God, the father purposed in Jesus Christ, our
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Lord, and that, you know, in the passage in Romans 11, where it speaks of these things, where God put the
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Jews under blindness in part so that the Gentiles could come in. And then he says, at the end of time, the
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Gentiles will be plucked off. I mean, that's the witness of the church. Doesn't mean you lose your salvation, but the church as a whole will cease to be effective as the witness.
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They will go into hiding and God will send the two witnesses in the streets of Jerusalem and 144 ,000
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Jewish believers to witness and an angel circling the earth witnessing. I think that's pretty good.
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I think at that point we can afford to hide like we're instructed to do. In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.
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Yeah. How many times have I told you guys that only the King James translates this correctly from Greek, where it speaks of the faith of Jesus, because all the other
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English versions say faith in Christ in Greek, it's not in it's off.
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Okay. So here we see another example where we're saved by faith of Christ, which means the
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Holy spirit has to give us Jesus's faith when he saves us. And that's a real faith.
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It doesn't waver. Whereas human belief is on one day off the next, depending on if God answered our most recent prayer or not, you can't be saved by that.
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It's wishy -washy. We're saved by the father through the Holy spirit, giving us a gift of Jesus's faith.
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Here it is again, the faith of Christ in whom we have boldness and access to God because the faith of Christ that God's given us in that beautiful, wherefore
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I desire that you faint not at my tribulations. Paul was writing this from prison, most likely, and it's all for your own glory for this cause.
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I now bow my knees and to the father of our Lord, Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named
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God's family, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory.
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Look at this. So you start thinking about the riches of the glory of Jesus Christ, and that will help you to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man so that you can live a better life in the outer man.
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So this passage is teaching the same thing as Romans 11 is teaching. Why? The result is so that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith and that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.
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So another thing is we need to recognize the strength of his spirit in us and the depth and breadth and width of God's love for us that he said,
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Jesus himself said, the father loves you like he loves me. Can you even imagine that? That means at the same level, at the same level of strength, the father loves you at the same level, the strength that he loves
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Jesus Christ. Can you even believe that you better believe it? The scripture says he does. So when we recognize that now we're in a position where we want to live, right?
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We don't want to live dirty. We don't want to think dirty. And when we do, we realize that's the old man is not even us.
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And we just rebuke it. We just say, Lord, there it went. That thought went through my mind.
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Give me the mind of Christ. That's not how I want to think. And it just, it flees at that moment. You have to live that way as many moments of every day as we can.
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If we want to live a different holy life. So we also have to be rooted and grounded in God's love.
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We see both of those two points for a number four, number five in 17 through 18 there in Ephesians three, now, and to him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, you see here again, we're thinking about the awesomeness of God.
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He's able to do stuff. We can't even think he could do. And the power of God works in us.
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That's the only way we can live a good life is by the power of God working in this body, which we should give to him as a living sacrifice, which is a reasonable service because he saved us and he bought us.
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And he ransomed us out of the slave market of sin. When he didn't ransom everybody, he ransomed us.
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Then we ought to live for him. Thinking about this really helps. And to him, be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.
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Amen. The result chapter four, verse one, either for the prisoner of the
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Lord. See, he's given his body a living sacrifice. Paul has, I beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation that you've been called to be.
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You've been called to be what a saved person walk worthy of that. How do you do it?
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You do it with the information above it. Just like in Romans here in Ephesians, if you were to just pluck out chapter four, verse one, and you didn't understand chapter three, verses 20 and 21, you wouldn't know how to do chapter four, verse one, would you?
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But if you understand what comes before it, it's all looking back at the power and glory and abundance of power of God and all the love that he's loved us with and all the work that he's done.
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And he gave his own son to die on a cross, to raise us from the dead together with him.
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He did all that for us. And he's perfectly just he's all knowledge. All love, all power.
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And that's who we serve. And all of a sudden, like Paul, we can see that we need to get on our knees and be the prisoner of the
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Lord and beseech you that you would walk worthy of the life that God called us to walk with all loneliness and meekness.
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Boy, that's hard for us, isn't it? And long suffering. That one's hard for me. Patience, right?
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For bearing one another, lifting one another up in love, putting the other first, looking on the things of others rather than things of ourself, all these wonderful teachings.
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Why are they so hard to do? Because we're not looking at the power and glory and omniscience and love of God.
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We're looking at this world and we're looking at ourself and our problems and our lack and all these things and the trouble we're going through and all the physicalities.
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And we're focusing on that rather than the invisible God. And when we focus on him, all of a sudden it brings us in to the place where we can walk our reasonable walk, where we walk worthy of what
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God called us to be, which is a Christian, a Christ -like person with loneliness and meekness and long suffering, lifting one another up before ourselves in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.
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Do you know, there's one thing to Bible list that grieves the Holy spirit the most, and that's people that create division.
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Holy spirit hates it, right? Don't ever be that person bring unity, seek peace, bless.
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Jesus said, blessed are the peacekeepers Romans 11. Now we're back into here.
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All of that was like, just came out of verse 33. Okay. Verse 34, just simply says,
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God is sovereign for who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor.
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It's like, like you're going to, you're going to tell God what's fair. That's what our minions do.
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Well, God, that's not fair. Not fair. You don't save everybody. I've said this many times in big groups of people around the country.
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I say, you know what? Here's the problem is that in this big room out here, we got basically two kinds of people.
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Like half of us. If we were God, we would just wipe every human out and start over. And the other half of us, if we were
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God, we would just figure out a way to let it slide and just not worry about saying, save everybody. But none of us like how
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God did it, where he chose, where he, what he chose to do was to choose a remnant out of a completely fallen godless race and choose a remnant and save some of them.
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We don't like the fact that he did it that way, but who's going to give
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God counsel, right? Who's known God's mind. Who's going to teach him how you really ought to do stuff.
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Our minions are, who has first given to God and it's going to be recompensed to him.
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Now, have you ever thought about that? Sorry about the throat here. I actually think
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I have a minor case of Delta because two days ago, I completely lost my taste for a whole day.
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And then yesterday it came back, but that's because I already had it once. And I had the vaccine and just I'm fighting it off.
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It's it's gone just about at this point. But think, have you ever think about that?
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What can I do for God? Have you ever, I have the thought all the time. And it's funny when
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I think it, I can almost hear brother Otis whisper to me. And I'll be praying or something, going down the highway, praying.
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And I'll say, Lord, I just want to do something big for you. And notice that come back and say, brother
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David, what can you do for God? He's done it all for you.
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What can you do to pay him back? Nothing. All right. But you know, what's reasonable for me is to try to be
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Holy, try to be different than the world. Right. Why would I do that? Because he's so awesome.
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Right. So the next thing is to think about the free gift of salvation.
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So when you stop me, think about what the Lord's done to us. He gave us, he, you know, he gave us the free gift.
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We didn't first give him anything. And I know the modern gospel has got it backwards. They'll even tell you ways to get saved.
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The Bible has knows nothing. I'd like to say, well, give your heart to Jesus. The Bible never says that a lost soul can do that.
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You don't have the ability. You don't have the desire to do it. Well, just give your heart to Jesus. You'll be saved.
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No, it doesn't work that way. You don't give to him first. Who has first given to him?
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Nobody. He has to first give you the faith of Christ as a gift.
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And that's called the calling of the Holy spirit, the effectual calling. He, he does 33 things to you in a nanosecond.
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And without that, you're lost. And because of that, you're saved. And anything you do later is an effect, not the cause of the salvation.
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Like Spurgeon said, an effect can never be the cause of the cause. God saves you. God gave to you first, the gift of salvation, the gift of Jesus Christ, the love of God, the
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Holy spirit to dwell your body in your body and be sealed there until the Lord comes back in 33 things.
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So how are you going to give him anything? Well, there's nothing really we can give him, give him other than to give him our bodies as a living sacrifice and just walk with him.
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You know, God's a lot like a grandpa. He just wants that grandchild sit in his lap forever.
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He doesn't want the child to jump up and go play and do his own thing. If you're a granddad or mom, you know what
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I'm talking about, right? So if you're the parent and struck your children, that if they want the larger part of the inheritance, sit on grandpa's lap, the longest, right.
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Am I pre that good preaching or what? God's like that. God is exactly like, that's a great analogy of what
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God is like. That's why he gives us grandkids. And so we can know him better. So we can't really give him anything other than our life.
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For of him and through him and to him are all things. You can't give him anything. He owns everything already to whom be glory forever and ever.
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Amen. All we can do is love him, sit on his lap, go with him, walk with Jesus, wherever Jesus goes tomorrow, you just walk with him.
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You don't, you don't go figure out what you're going to do and say, well, Lord, I hope you'll be with me. Listen, he's not the disciple you are.
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So figure out where he's going and go with him. Right. And the result of all this, what is it?
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Well, number seven, the all encompassing sovereignty of God is taught here in this passage.
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And here's the result. We make our way all the way down to Roman chapter 12, verse one,
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I beseech you. Therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.
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And all of this is our reasonable service. So I hope that'll be a help to all of us today.
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Seven great things. Found in Romans 11, 33 through 36. That will help us have a focus on these seven things.
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That would be kind of like Ben preached the week he preached in my place weekend before last, when he brought out this logical statement,
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I hadn't thought about in years that yeah, an effect cannot be the cause of the cause. But effect can be the cause of the next thing.
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So the effect of these seven things we've just seen and Romans 11, 33 through 36, the effect of that can cause us to live a holy life and to desire to live a holy life and to lay aside some of the worldly things that other people do that, you know, if it distracts from what the
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Lord wants us to do, and we can't make a set of rules because it's different for all of us. The only way you know, is the
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Holy spirit just say, Lord, Holy spirit, will you do this with me right now? If not, I won't do it. Just take that approach.
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It will be absolutely fine. So I hope this will be a blessing to you guys. I'm sure enjoyed being with you and I'm going to turn it over to Ben.
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Alrighty, dad. Appreciate that. I'm going to, I'm going to take over the screen share for just a second, just to remind you guys that y 'all can go over to our website and check out recordings.
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I know sometimes I don't get them up quite as soon as I like some weeks. I'll get them up within an hour or two after I get home from services.
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And as you guys, I'm sure are well aware. Sometimes it'll be a couple of weeks behind, but if that regardless we archive everything.
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In fact, we have over a year's worth of sermon archives at this point on our website, you can go back to July of wait a minute.
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I'm sorry. Two years worth of archives at this point, but you can go back to July of 2019. And for dad sermons alone and go through them.
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Same with brother bill Sunday school. And of course we have some cool archives of our guest speakers like brother
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Myron brother Raj, some of brother Otis's Sunday school are on there, although I'm still working on converting his tapes to digital.
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So that that's kind of a work in progress. A lot of brother Rockies are on there. So go check that stuff out. Cause it's pretty neat, but yeah, dad, appreciate that.
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I'll close this in prayer and then we will close it for the day. Definitely. Father Lord, thank you one more time for just allowing us to get together as a church family to learn more about you, to talk about you, to worship you.
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Even when we can't get together in person, we ask once more that you'd be with our church family. That is out there sick right now, currently fighting the virus.
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We ask that you help all of us stay safe and healthy. And for those who currently have it to get over it fast, so we can get back together in person and worship together in fellowship together once more, as soon as possible.
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Thank you again for everything you do for us. And we ask all these things in your name. Amen. Say bye
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Parker. Say bye Gemma. We'll see you guys later. Y 'all have a good one. And we will see you next week for our services, whether it be online or in person, either way, we hope to see you there.