Sunday Sermon: Opinions Raised Against the Knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:4-12)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

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Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

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In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand. Second Corinthians chapter 10, beginning in verse 4.

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The apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

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We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey

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Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.

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Look at what is before your eyes. If anyone is confident that he is

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Christ's, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ's, so also are we.

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For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you,

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I will not be ashamed. I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters, for they say,

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His letters are weighty and strong, but His bodily presence is weak, and His speech of no account.

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Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present.

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Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.

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Let us pray. Our God, as we come before you this morning with this text, I pray that your spirit would continue to speak to our minds and to our hearts, that we may take every thought captive and make it obey

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Christ. There are no doubt things that we came in this morning concerned with, something that happened this past week, something that's going to happen this week, and we pray that any of those thoughts, any of those things that we might otherwise be concerned with would not affect us now from hearing your word proclaimed.

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This gospel that we need to be reminded of, that our hearts may be refreshed in the promises of our living

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God. As this congregation today will sit with the intention of listening to the sermon, we are but weak and fleshly people, and the mind has a tendency to wander.

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And so I pray that we would have our thoughts guarded, being distracted about trivial things, and instead we would focus on this word that is being proclaimed, that which we need to hear, the importance of this, which we need to know and we need to also share with others.

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You are a good God who considered our need when we were sinners, and God demonstrated

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His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Let us not forget this truth and the great treasure that we have in the life of Christ that was given for the forgiveness of sins.

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We pray all of this in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated.

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When I was in high school, I had a friend who had over the course of one school year had given his life to Christ three times.

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And my youth leaders in my youth group had come to me and they knew that we hung out a lot and they said, why is it that your friend has done this three times now?

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And I said, I didn't know. I said, we don't talk about it. I didn't know that he had this insecurity in his heart, that he did not understand the security of his salvation.

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And they said, well, is there something that we could help you with, maybe something that we could equip you with so that as a friend, as somebody who could help him in his accountability or you can study the scriptures together, will help him to understand what it means to have assurance of salvation.

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And so we talked about some things and we came up with some different ideas. And my friend and I got together one night over at his house and we were going through the

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Bible together. And it wasn't one of those things where we were studying an entire book, which we probably should have done.

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The recommendation that I give now to somebody who comes to me and says that they're struggling with assurance of salvation,

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I'll tell them to go and read the book of 1 John. For John says there in chapter 5, we have written these things to you that you may know that you have salvation.

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So that would have been a good place for us to start. But that wasn't really the way that we went about searching the scriptures.

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Honestly, what we did was we just flipped through our Bibles and we'd come to various passages and read those aloud to each other.

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So this was the way that we were coming to an understanding of the Word of God and trying to find a way to encourage one another.

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And so we came to a passage here in 2 Corinthians chapter 10. And it's 2

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Corinthians 10 .5 in particular where Paul says we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey

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Christ. And when we read that particular passage, my friend spoke up and said, boy, that's it right there.

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That's where I struggle. That's where I struggle is keeping my thoughts obedient to Christ.

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How do I do that? How do I get to where what I'm thinking about is even honorable to God?

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Not just my actions, but even the things that I think. And as we started talking about this, one of the things that I figured out from my friend was that he was giving his life to Christ at youth group.

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He would hear a gospel message be proclaimed and think that he would need to come forward and do something in response to that message that was being spoken.

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And then he was going and living his life completely contrary to the gospel that he had just heard.

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So then when he heard it again, he realized, I've not been living that way. My life has been in sin.

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And he was feeling guilty about it again. So then he would give his life to Christ again, thinking, this is what

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I need to do in order to be washed of all the sinful things that I've done since the last time

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I gave my life to Christ. Come to find that he had a Roman Catholic background, which

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I was not aware of. And at that particular time, I wasn't even really all that familiar with Roman Catholicism.

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I just knew that I wasn't one. But in his upbringing, he had learned that on Sunday, that was where you went to confess your sins.

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And then all of his friends who attended Roman Catholic mass with him were all living their lives in very worldly ways throughout the week, but would go to church to have their sins forgiven on the weekend.

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And so one of the things that we were talking about as we were going through this passage together in 2 Corinthians 10 5, and again, it was something we were taking out of context, but nonetheless, we understood that we needed to have a thought life, even that was obedient to the

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Lord, not just in our actions, obedient to God, but even in the thoughts that we thought.

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And so I said, what if we take this verse? And I said, take every thought captive to make it obey

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Christ. And I realized you could abbreviate that into letters that spelled out a certain word.

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And that word came out, it came out, tetkamiak. That's a word.

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If you abbreviate that phrase, take every thought captive to make it obey Christ, it comes out tetkamiak.

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And so I said, what if we did this? What if every day at school, when we pass by each other in the hall, because we didn't always have the same classes together.

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So I said, when we pass by each other in the hall, how about we say to one another, hey, tetkamiak, and that's the way that we remind one another that we're supposed to take every thought captive, that we not dwell on those things that are not pleasing to God, but instead meditate on the things that are pleasing to God.

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And if you're ever struggling with that and you don't think you're doing well with that today, you can either tell me, yeah, tetkamiak, you know, back and forth to each other, or you can shake your head and say, no,

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I'm not really doing too well with that today. And so this was the way that we kept one another accountable, to making sure that our thoughts, we were even thinking things that were pleasing unto the

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Lord, is we would throw this word that we invented back and forth at one another, tetkamiak.

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Now this isn't an invitation to a gimmick, and I don't have little bracelets for you today that have tetkamiak on them, so that you can look at that and be reminded, oh yeah, take my thoughts captive to obey

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Christ. But nonetheless, that is a discipline that every Christian needs to exercise, that we think about those things that are pleasing unto the

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Lord. Remember what we read this morning out of the Psalms, that the

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Lord our God in Psalm 141, that he would set a guard over the door of our lips, that the words that we're speaking, what's coming from our mouths would be obedient to the

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Lord. Jesus said, it's from the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks.

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So what we say is a reflection of what is in our hearts. Maybe you have friends and acquaintances around you who know you as somebody who is generally very kind and compassionate and generous with the words that you say.

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But what do you say when you're by yourself? Do the words that come to your mind or even come out of your mouth when you're in the car or in the office alone or any of these other things, do they still sound compassionate as your friends might hear those words that come from you sound compassionate?

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Because otherwise, that persona that we present to the people around us is just a costume that we wear.

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It's not a genuine, legitimate reflection of our heart before God. If even in private, our words would not be pleasing unto

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God. So when Paul says, take every thought captive, he means every thought.

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We not even have those thoughts that we think that we can get away with every once in a while. Because you know, I've been good this week.

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I'm entitled to one of these thoughts every once in a while, right? But as we sang this morning, holiness is what the

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Lord wants from me, that we would be holy and righteous and faithful, not just in the things that we do, but even the thoughts that we think.

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Someone asked me just this morning, and it's the providence of God that this question came to me this morning.

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But what does the 10th commandment mean? When the 10th commandment is, thou shalt not covet.

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What does that mean exactly, that we should not covet? All the other nine commandments that we've been given have something specifically to do with action.

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You will not bow down to another God. You will honor the Sabbath and you will keep it holy.

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You will not misuse the name of God. Don't murder, don't lie, don't steal. So all these other commandments are kind of laid out as things that you either do or don't do.

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But then you get to the 10th commandment, and it says don't covet. And this is the commandment that deals explicitly with thought.

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So everything else becomes an outward exercise, but coveting in particular, there's only one way you covet, and that's in your thought life.

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And then it's not taking that thought captive that then leads to envy, rivalry, stealing, conning, you know, any of these other things that coveting might turn into.

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But at its heart, what coveting is, is a lack of thankfulness to God.

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It's ungratefulness. It's I'm not thankful to God for everything that he has given me, and so Lord, I need this other thing that this person has or that I don't have, and then once I have that, then

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I will be satisfied. And it's what leads Paul to say in Colossians 3, 5, that coveting is idolatry.

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It's desiring something else other than God that you think you need to be happy.

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And it doesn't matter that you are a Christian who believes that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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If there is something that you need to be satisfied that Christ does not satisfy you in, you've made that your priority over God.

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No matter how much you want to quantify the percentages that you give to God, well,

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I give 98 % of myself to God. Only 2 % of my attention has this other thing.

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No, you are 100 % devoted to the other thing that you think that you need to be happy in order to find contentment in life.

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These thoughts we need to take captive to make obey Christ, that we not even be coveters in our hearts.

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For as God is giving those commandments to Israel in Exodus chapter 20, he gets to that 10th one and says, by the way, sin is not just a thing that you do, it's also a thing that you think.

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And then every other sin comes from the thoughts that you first had in your mind and the wickedness that is in your own heart.

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It is Jesus who said, and we talked about this the last time we were in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, just a couple of weeks ago,

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Jesus said it is from the heart come evil thoughts, evil suspicions, sexual immorality, slander, malice, all kinds of anger, idolatry and coveting.

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These things come from the heart. We do wicked things because we're wicked people.

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All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And it's understanding this that we realize our need for a savior and the mercy and grace that God showed us through the giving of his son,

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Jesus Christ. So if we are now followers of Christ, my friends, if you can proclaim in your baptism that you have been buried with Christ in your sins and you've been risen again to new life, then you would desire that even your mind would be cleansed.

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For as Peter says in his first letter, that our baptism is an appeal to God for a clear conscience.

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So we might have even our thoughts cleansed to be obedient to Christ.

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Philippians 2 .5, have the mind of Christ Jesus. Now this is something that we're not necessarily going to do perfectly, but that is not a license or permission to sin.

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And that doesn't mean it's okay when you do sin or when you stumble in your thoughts or your thoughts betray you.

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One of the things that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago is that I struggle in sometimes enjoying the thought.

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When there's some sort of thought that I have against another person that would be sin against that person, though I may not play it out in my actions, there is some sort of satisfaction in the thought that I have.

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But that's not okay. That's sin. Any thought that we might have that is contrary to the glory of God would be sin.

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For the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 14, whatever is not done in faith is sin.

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Even the thoughts that we think if not done in faith is sin against our God. So we must understand what it means to have the mind of Christ and submit all of our thoughts unto

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Him, taking every thought captive, destroying every argument and lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.

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Now as I talked about this two weeks ago when we first got into 2 Corinthians chapter 10, I was sure to help you understand that specifically what

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Paul is talking about here is not merely the thoughts that we think, although that's certainly applicable.

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That's certainly an application that we can draw from this text and important for every Christian that we would think thoughts even that are pleasing to God.

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For what comes out of us is going to be a reflection of our hearts. May our hearts be cleansed to be like Christ.

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That's certainly the application. But the context very specifically that Paul is talking about here is related to false teachers and that you would not be led astray by their false teaching.

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Because again, look at verse 5. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.

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What is raised against the knowledge of God? Those who would speak or say anything that is contrary to the truth of God's word.

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And that's what Paul is going to go into next in chapter 11. He is going to be confronting the false teaching that has come to the

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Corinthians by way of these men who regard themselves as super apostles.

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They are even greater apostles than the apostle Paul. And so Paul is going to have to do a little boasting in himself, which is rather comical the way that he does it.

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And we'll get into that in a couple of weeks once we jump into chapter 11. But this is where his argument is heading.

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Contending for the souls of the Corinthians, he does not want them to be led astray by anyone's false teaching that is contrary to the knowledge of God.

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So the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but they have power. They have divine power to destroy strongholds.

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That was verse 4. And so then in verse 7, Paul says,

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Look at what is before your eyes. If anyone is confident that he is

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Christ's, let him remind himself that just as he is

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Christ's, so are we. If anyone is confident that he is Christ's, let him remind himself that you belong to Christ and also the rest of his saints.

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That we might see the fruitfulness of one another's behavior and know that we belong to the Lord. And if at any point, if at any step, we see that there is someone who is not acting according to the example that we have in Christ, that we may be faithful to encourage and admonish one another, correct one another with goodwill when needed.

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Last week, I spoke at Countryside Bible Church, Countryside or Country View? Yeah, now see, now you're thinking about it as well.

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Countryside, Countryside Bible Church in Meade, Kansas. Little church out in the country. It's actually a very beautiful church, but right out there, out in the middle of nowhere, literally, there's nothing around.

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You can see neighbor's houses, which are several miles off, but there's nothing out there.

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Hardly any trees. What's that? You could see Oklahoma from there. Yeah. Becky, we were driving to church where the road that we were on, we're heading east to go to church, and she looks out at the range and she was like, oh, look at how beautiful that is.

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That is way out there. I said, yep. She said, you could probably see Oklahoma from here. I said, that is Oklahoma.

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She went, oh really? Yeah, we were only like 20 miles from the state line, even less than that. 20 miles by road, less than that as the crow flies.

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So beautiful little church that we were out there in the middle of nowhere, southwest Kansas, completely flat. You can see, you could watch the sunrise and set, you know, all the way, a great journey all the way across the sky, and it's like the longest journey of the sun that you've ever seen.

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It was so much sky that is out there. It's really quite beautiful. Some people might panic with that.

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They say, you know, I feel the opposite of claustrophobic out here. It's just so wide open, but it's beautiful.

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It's a gorgeous countryside. So we're out there at Countryside Bible Church. I preached in the morning from Romans, and in the evening, we had a little service in another part of their campus where everybody was eating pizza, and we sang some praise and worship songs, and then for me, there was a

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Q &A. And I don't know if this is regularly what they do with the speakers, but I guess since Becky and I do a

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Q &A on the podcast on Friday, they decided to present me with some questions taken from the congregation that I would answer in this

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Sunday evening service. The first question that was presented to me was, what does it mean to preach the gospel to yourself, and why is that important?

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And one of the things I said was, it's important to preach the gospel to yourself because, quite frankly, you're weak and you're prone to forgetfulness.

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You forget. As bold and as confident and as prideful as we are as American Christians to think, hey,

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I gave my life to Christ when I was 12. I was baptized. I wrote the date down in my

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Bible, so I know that I'm saved. I tell you, if you don't preach the gospel to yourself, you'll forget, and you will stumble, and you will fall off the way, or you might become discouraged by the things in this world, and you'll begin to feel hopeless, and you'll look around and you'll say, what's the point of all of this?

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Where is there any satisfaction or any purpose in anything that I am doing?

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Does any of this mean anything at all? And if you have forgotten the commands and the promises of Christ as given in your word, then even life itself will become mundane and trivial, and you won't see that there's any purpose in any of this at all.

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But we are told that we are to do everything to the glory of God, and that God is working all things together for good for those who love

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God and are called according to His purpose. And these are reminders that were given in the scriptures.

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We're also prone to temptation and sin, and if we're not reminded of the gospel that we are called to obey, not merely believe, but obey, for what purpose is believing in anything if it doesn't change your actions, if it doesn't change your lifestyle?

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So we obey the gospel, which is not a suggestion, it's a command, repent and believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We obey these things so that we might have our consciences bound to Christ and desire to be like Him, and we don't walk in the way of this world anymore.

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We are no longer enslaved to our sin, but we're set free in Christ. And the gospel communicates this to us.

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So we need that refresher every single day. This is why we as Christians gather together as the church on Sunday, to be reminded of the promises of God that are given in His Word.

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There is all kinds of toxicity that your brain has been infected with all week long.

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I do not watch much television. I find it to be a waste of time. This has not always been the story of my life, but right now in the season that I'm in, television is a waste of time.

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So I don't like watching TV. I would rather be reading or working on my computer, doing a what video or a podcast or something like that.

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You know, those are the things that I would rather be investing my time with, not watching trivial entertainment.

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But right now I'm watching a lot of TV, because the baseball playoffs are on. This is my

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Super Bowl. I've actually not watched the last two Super Bowls. I watched the baseball postseason, which lasts an entire month.

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My wife is thrilled when October rolls around. But actually this year, she was very defensive of me when the kids were protesting because they wanted to watch their show.

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She actually spoke up to the kids and said, hey kids, your dad never asked the TV from you, except during the baseball playoffs.

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I think you can let him have it. I was like, thanks babe, that was wonderful.

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So I love the postseason. Even though the Braves have been eliminated, I'm still watching every game. I just love baseball.

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That's my thing. I love baseball. So because this is unusual for me to be watching

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TV now at this point in the year when I haven't been watching it all the rest of the year, I'm being plagued with commercials that I don't generally see.

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And these commercials are playing, some of these commercials play every break. It's like, I've seen this 30 times, enough already.

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So I'm having this toxicity that is infecting my brain because commercials are made for the purpose of getting you to do something.

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They're not just there to be entertaining. Although it's wildly hilarious that the thing that everybody talks about every

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Super Bowl season is the commercials. Some people watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.

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That says something about us as a culture. But we're bombarded with advertisements constantly, daily.

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When you leave here, you're going to go downtown and there's going to be billboards that you're going to pass by. There's going to be signs in front of people's restaurants trying to entice you to come in and eat their food.

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Or stores that you will pass by that want you to come in and buy their product. We're constantly being bombarded with these things.

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And it's been going on for as long as civilization has had a marketplace. There has always been ways that mankind has tried to use to get you out of your money.

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And get you to believe a certain thing. And get you to think a certain way and adopt a certain philosophy.

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The whole world is built this way. It's fallen. It's in the hands of the fallen one who is

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Satan, referred to as the prince of this world. And so we are having our minds infected constantly.

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So that we need a regular refreshing of our thoughts that they might be taken captive and made obedient again to Christ.

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Now, you do that with your own Bible study and prayer, certainly. But there is a way that the fellowship of the saints does that for you that you do not receive the rest of the week.

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This is why church attendance is so important. First of all, it's eternity practice.

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Because what we see in the book of Revelation is people behaving as we should be behaving here in church.

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Lifting up their voices in song and praise to God and celebrating Him for all the work that He has done and the fulfillment of His promises.

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And so as we are working on that practice now with all of these saints gathered together, so we're going to be doing forever, for all eternity, praising

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God around the throne. But while we live now in these imperfect bodies, with imperfect minds and imperfect hearts, we need to have a regular refreshing and renewal in the knowledge of God.

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And that is what gathering together as the saints and singing His praises and hearing the instruction of His word does for us.

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You know, we were in church last Sunday. It was a different church, but we were still in church.

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And yet, there still was just not something to that church that I get from mine.

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They're the wonderful believers. We had a wonderful time while we were there. And everybody was incredibly friendly and loving.

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But they're not my church family. They're certainly my brothers and sisters in the Lord. Not taking anything away from that at all, but they're not the people with whom

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I regularly fellowship and grow with. This is the family that I regularly fellowship and grow with.

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And so we are that benefit to one another, that we might grow and strengthen each other in the faith.

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Let us not neglect to gather together as the saints, as it says in the book of Hebrews. So Paul is telling the

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Corinthians to do that here. Remind yourselves that you are

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Christ's. And also remind yourselves who belongs to Christ. As he goes on to say, remind himself that just as he is

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Christ, so also are we. The way that you would test yourself to see that you are in the faith, you can test one another to see that they are also your brothers and sisters in the

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Lord. And we have a responsibility to one another that way. As I read the story of Cain and Abel two weeks ago out of Genesis chapter 4, when

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God speaks to Cain and asks where his brother Abel is, Cain replies, am

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I my brother's keeper? And the answer to that question, my brethren, is yes. We are the keepers of our brothers and sisters.

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That we may be sure that we are walking straight and narrow. Paul goes on in verse 8 to say, for even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the

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Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed.

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My position here as a pastor is not to make life hard on you. My position as a pastor is to proclaim the word of God to you.

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And as a shepherd in this church, that means also fending off the wolves. Those that would try to lead you astray with false teaching, as Paul is also doing with the

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Corinthians here and appealing for their hearts. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that here in just a moment. Verse 9,

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I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters. For they say, his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech is of no account.

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I mentioned that verse two weeks ago, where Paul has a very strong presence in the letters that he writes, but his oration skills are a little bit lacking.

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He's not that gifted an orator. Seems to be kind of meek in his speech, and I'm not really sure if he did that on purpose or if that really was his personality.

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But he goes on to say, let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present.

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So in other words, what we say in our letters is just as valid in person as what you read in the

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Bible. We're not any less convicting with our words when we are present with you as when we write a letter to you.

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And so it is the same with me as your pastor. I may preach to you strongly from the pulpit, and I hope that I don't have to confront you as strongly when we're one -on -one with one another.

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But you might be convicted by the words that have been proclaimed from here and know to be obedient to Christ, to turn from sin and follow

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Jesus. For that is the call of every Christian as given to us by Christ our

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Lord. Verse 12, not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.

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So Paul is basically saying this. If we are a part of a body of believers that is committed to the teaching of the truth of God's Word, we're committed to the faithful teaching of this

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Word. Not wanting the Bible to say what we want it to say, but we truly desire to understand what the

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Spirit of God means to communicate through His prophets and apostles. That's what we want to know. I'm not just looking for a fluffy thought or some sort of encouraging motivational verse or message to get me through my week.

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I want to know the mind of God. That's why I hear the Bible preached.

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If that's our desire, then we should be able to test one another by this very same

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Word to find each other accountable to the commands of Christ. And if there's something that you don't know or understand, you can ask another elder here, or you can even ask your fellow brethren, and you might be encouragers of one another in the same

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Word that you are committed to. Because we're all committed to the truth. We're all bound by that same truth.

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We all test one another according to that truth. Truth is the same for everyone.

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Amen? But here Paul is saying that there's a group of guys, false teachers, that do not know the truth and they do not love the truth, therefore they can't test themselves by that truth.

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And so when they compare themselves to one another, they don't find one another walking in the truth.

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They actually increase their misunderstanding. So if we test one another by the truth, we increase our understanding.

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But those who test one another by something other than the truth, they increase their misunderstanding.

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And they fall farther and farther away from God, whereas we who are devoted to the truth grow closer and closer to the

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Lord. My brothers and sisters in the Lord, there is a famine in this country right now for the

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Word of God. And there was a survey that was released just this past week that exposes the famine that is so prevalent in our culture right now.

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It is called the State of Theology Survey. And I put some results in your bulletin. Let's go through a few of these things together.

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Now, the State of Theology Survey is lengthy. It's my favorite survey of all of the surveys that I read because Ligonier Ministries is really quite thorough in the way that they do this.

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And they've done it every two years, at least for the last six years. I don't know if they've done it earlier than that. So in every even year, we will have a report that comes from Ligonier in which they have surveyed the country.

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And they've surveyed people from all backgrounds or walks of life. What I'm going to focus on with these particular statements that I've outlined in your bulletin are just the way that evangelicals have answered this question.

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So this is not just about the entire population of the country, regardless of creed or belief or anything like that.

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This is specifically the evangelicals, people who claim to be Christians and churchgoers.

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And here's what we have in these statements. Each one of these statements is a different statement that was made, and then the respondent says whether they agree or disagree with that statement or they have no opinion about that statement.

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Statement number three. God accepts the worship of all religions, including

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Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 51 % of evangelicals agree with that statement.

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42 % disagree. What did our Lord Christ say?

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John 14, 6. I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one gets to the

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Father but by me. God said to Moses in Exodus, I share my glory with no one, for the

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Lord your God is a jealous God. There are not multiple ways to God.

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Well, I will say this. A pastor friend of mine put it a very eloquent way. He said every way is the way to God, but there's only one way that you get to God in righteousness, and all the other ways lead to judgment.

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So everyone will stand before God, but there's only one way that we receive salvation, and that is through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. Statement number six. Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.

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78 % of evangelicals agree, including those who said they are not sure.

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That puts the number over 80%. So that means this, my brethren.

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Over 80 % of confessing evangelicals in the country believe something heretical about God, that Jesus Christ was created by God.

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Basic catechism deals with this. If you have kids that are in Awana and they have those

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Awana books, there's those catechism questions in their books, and those questions will deal with understanding that Jesus Christ is

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God and is eternal as the Father is eternal. But most evangelicals in this country couldn't tell you that.

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Statement number 11. Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.

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52 % of evangelicals agree, 44 % disagree. What does

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Romans 3 .23 tell us? For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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Earlier in that chapter in verses 10 through 12, there is no one righteous, not even one.

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No one does good. And friends, this is necessary for us to understand so that we realize our need for a

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Savior. For if you don't know that you've done wrong and sinned in God's eyes, and that you can, by some goodness that is inherent inside of you, merit some sort of favor with God, then you don't have any need for a

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Savior. But all of us need a Savior. For all have sinned and fallen short of His glory.

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Statement number 12. Even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation. 23 % of evangelicals agree, 69 % disagree.

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Now, what this communicates is that the majority of evangelicals, nearly 80%, do not understand the holiness of God.

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That's what that means. So when you get into these little squabbling arguments that are like, so if I steal a pack of chewing gum, that means

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I'm going to go to hell for that? Yeah, that is what that means. Now, that's not the only sin you're guilty of. But what you don't realize when you do sins, no matter how small you might think they are in your eyes, any sin conveys a rebellion against the

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Creator God of the universe, and that you have proclaimed your ways are better than God's ways.

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If you were to stand before a judge in a courtroom, and you were to say to this judge, well, let me fashion this a little bit differently.

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Let's say that there was a man who was well -known for being a philanthropist. He has given millions and millions of dollars to wonderful, great causes that have benefited hundreds of thousands of people.

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And he murders someone, and then he's standing before a judge, and he says, judge, yeah,

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I know, I did this, I killed somebody, okay? But look at all the good that I've done.

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By weights and comparison, I mean, come on. You've got to give me a little bit of credit here.

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Would any of us expect that judge to go, yeah, you're right, you know what? You're dismissed. Would any of us call that judge good if he did that?

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And yet we read in Habakkuk 113 that God's eyes are so holy, he cannot even look upon sin.

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Paul Washer has said, our God is good, and to the sinner, that's bad news.

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Because a good judge will not allow any sin to go unpunished.

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And what we don't realize in our sinfulness and in our fallenness is that in our rebellion against God, if we were given all eternity to come to God, we would never make that decision.

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Forever we would never make that decision. For all are without understanding, again, as it says in Romans 3, there is no one who seeks for God.

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So how did any of us come to God? It's because the Holy Spirit cleansed our hearts to receive his gospel and believe it, and you have come to salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.

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This is all the work of God, Ephesians 2 .8. By grace you are saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

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All of this is his work. If left up to ourselves, we would never make the decision to follow

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God. For all eternity we would rebel against him, which is why hell is an eternal sentence.

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Because God in his sovereignty knows that when those individuals who have been condemned to hell, if they had been given all eternity, they still would never have made a decision to follow

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Christ. God is so holy and so good, if he is anything, when we read about God's character and his attributes in the scriptures, if he is anything, he is eternally that thing.

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So if God is love, he is eternally love. But if God is just, he is eternally just.

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And his decrees stand forever.

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His holiness cannot be tainted, he is unchanging, he is perfect, and we are not.

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And we are saved only by his mercy and his grace. Not because he looked at us and said, you know, there's some good parts about you

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I like, so I'm going to save those. We were totally depraved before a holy

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God, and we are acceptable in his eyes because he's clothed us with the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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That's the gospel, and it is good news. Good news to all who believe it, a dread to all of those who do not.

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Statement number 14. The Bible, like all sacred writings, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths, but is not literally true.

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53 % of participants ages 18 through 34 agree, which is up from 46 % in 2016 and 44 % in 2014.

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I put the statistic in there that way so that you would see and understand. Our youngest generation is increasingly denying the inerrancy of the word of God.

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And my friends, it's not being taught in our churches. Most churches are obsessing over lifestyle or cultural issues.

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They're not teaching their people about who God is and what the gospel is according to what the word of God says.

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We are committed to the scriptures here at First Southern Baptist Church, and I pray by the grace of God that we remain committed to these scriptures, for it is only by the word of God that we are saved.

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Romans 10, 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

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Statement number 20. Worshiping alone or with one's family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church.

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58 % of evangelicals agree, 30 % disagree. And I encounter this all the time.

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I encounter this here in Junction City. One of the first questions that I'll ask a person if I'm sharing the gospel with somebody just kind of out in public or out in the neighborhood,

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I will say, do you attend church? That's a pretty good icebreaker. Do you attend church?

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Almost always they say yes. Nine out of 10 times I'll get somebody that will respond to me and say, yes,

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I go to church. Over the course of our conversation, I will find out that they haven't attended church probably all year, but they think that they go to church.

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It's really only something like three out of every four people, or three or four out of every 10. That was what

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I was going to say. Three or four out of every 10 people that I encounter actually do go to church once a month or more.

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And people think that I am the church, right? So people are the church, not the building is the church.

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It doesn't matter if I go to a building. I can be the church sitting on my couch. Now, what

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Peter says in 1 Peter 2 is, you are a stone being built up into the house of God.

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So you're only part of the church. You're not the church. The church of God is the people of God, whom he has redeemed by his blood for his own possession.

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Titus 2 .14. Statement number 27, abortion is sin.

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52 % of evangelicals agree, 38 % disagree. Good news is that number is actually on the rise.

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Statement number 29, the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior does not apply today. 44 % of evangelicals agree, 41 % disagree, which leaves a whole 20, 19 % or somewhere in there that aren't sure.

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And that number is rising. That evangelicals agree the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior does not apply today.

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My friends, there are ministries that exist. They're false ministries, but there are ministries that exist for the purpose of getting you to believe that what the

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Bible says against homosexuality was 2 ,000 years ago. That does not apply to our culture today.

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Those ministries are completely devoted to rewriting the scriptures so that you would believe that. And they are working hard to get

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Americans to believe that. And so how important is it for us to understand the difference between sin and righteousness?

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Julie talked with the kids this morning about the fruit of the spirit, and we even sing that song with our kids about once a month in Iwana, at least, so that they know the difference between what is right in God's eyes and what are the works of the flesh.

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And we understand these things according to what the Word of God says. The Word of God needs to be taught. Statement 30, religious belief is a matter of personal opinion.

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It is not about objective truth. 32 % of evangelicals agree. 62 % disagree.

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And again, the number in our youngest generation is rising among those who believe that the scriptures are not inerrant, that they're just opinion from long ago.

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It's an old, dusty book, but it doesn't really apply to me today. It's just merely one man's opinion, but it isn't truth that applies to all.

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I know that truth is real because the statement, there is no such thing as truth, commits suicide. If there is no such thing as truth, is that statement true?

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Then, therefore, there must be such a thing as truth. And Jesus said that He is the truth.

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In Colossians 2, we read that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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So we get to know about God and His truth and what it means for our lives right here in this word that has been spoken for our benefit and for our edification.

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Romans 15 .4, for what was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

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And it's through the scriptures that we have read today and we have heard from God and His Holy Spirit proclaim to us that, my friends, you might take every thought captive and make it obey

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Christ, that you would not be led astray by false teaching or worldly philosophy or any of these things that the world is doing to try to win you away from God and to destruction.

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But you must be on guard and you must be equipped with the full armor of God, waging spiritual warfare against your flesh every day.

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The enemy is fighting for your thoughts. Fight against him with this.

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Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.