Why Kids Leave the Faith

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I'm thankful to be back with you.
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I know that I was with you just a little over a month ago and we had the Easter service and we talked about the resurrection.
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And today we are going to address a little bit of a different subject.
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I want you to know that I spent a lot of time sort of trying to decide and through prayer and talking to God asking what what is it that needed to be said this morning.
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I'm given a very limited amount of time and it may be that I never see you again.
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I mean, who knows? And I want to make sure that whatever I say has value and is God honoring.
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So this morning, if you have your Bible, I want you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 7 and we're going to read a few verses together from the Sermon on the Mount.
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This is Jesus speaking.
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And in Matthew chapter 7 and verse 13, we're going to begin and we're going to read down to verse 23.
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It says in verse 13, enter through the narrow gate.
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For the wide for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction.
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And many enter through it.
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But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life.
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And only a few find it.
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Watch out for false prophets.
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They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
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By their fruit, you will recognize them.
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Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
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A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
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Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
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Thus, by their fruit, you will recognize them.
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Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven.
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Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you away from me, you evil doers.
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Can we pray? Father, this is a solemn moment.
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We have an opportunity to hear from you this morning.
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And I pray that, Lord, as you give me the opportunity to be the mouthpiece, that you would keep me from error.
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For, Lord, I know that I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error, and I don't want to do that for my sake and the sake of my conscience, but more so for the sake of these young people and their conscience and their heart and their soul.
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I pray that you would keep me in line with the truth.
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I pray that you would open hearts as you see fit.
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And I pray, God, that there would be genuine, genuine self-examination today, all by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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In Jesus name, amen.
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One of the questions that I often get from parents is, Pastor, why do so many kids leave the faith when they leave my home? They become adults in the first few years of adulthood.
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They leave.
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Why does that happen? In fact, I have been asked and have spoken on this particular subject several times at conferences to parents, and it's a very popular talk because parents want to know the answer.
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And yet, at the same time, we need to understand why they want to know the answer, because why are people asking the question to begin with? Well, I'm going to ask for an exercise this morning.
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I know you probably don't want to, but I'm going to ask everyone to stand.
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Please stand up.
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At least now you're awake.
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All right.
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Row one, sit down.
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Row two, sit down.
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Row three, sit down.
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Everyone else stay standing just for a moment.
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Everyone who is standing represents the percentage of young people who, while in high school, attend church and yet leave after high school.
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Seventy percent of students, according to Barna Research, Lifeway Research and many myriads of other studies, have demonstrated that it is between 70 and 75 percent of students who spend their lives growing up in Christian homes will depart the faith after they leave home.
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So you who are standing represent those who will depart.
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Turn around, look, it's a lot of folks.
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OK, you can be seated now.
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That's why your parents care.
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That's why people ask me to come.
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That's why I go to these conferences and talk.
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And that's why parents fill the room, because they know this is a reality.
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And here's the thing.
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They come in and they say, Pastor Keith, why do children leave the faith? And my answer is often surprising and sometimes offensive.
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If I offend you today, that's OK, because I didn't come here to be your friend.
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I came here to tell you the truth.
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Now, if we can be friends, that's great.
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But that's not why I'm here, because I think most people want a sociological answer.
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In fact, parents really like that.
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Parents want me to come and they want me to give a scientific answer.
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They want me to propose some type of commentary on the state of higher education and the state of moral decay in the American society.
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And I do.
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I have a degree in social science, so I can talk about those things and I can talk about moral ups and downs and the mores of society and how those things change and what gives rise to this or that and way of the way people behave in society and those types of commentaries on the rise of atheism in the universities today and the rise of things like Marxism and leftism and things that would push away from the gospel, away from Jesus Christ.
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And we can talk about those things.
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And I do believe those things exacerbate the problem, but they are not the root cause.
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You say, well, what's the root cause? I believe that most children depart the faith when they become adults because they are not safe to begin with.
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You say, how dare you? Who do you think you are? Well, if you don't know this newsflash, it is possible to be raised in a religious home, have a moral upbringing and even to have some type of religious experience where you make a decision and still be lost.
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So I don't believe that.
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I don't care what you believe.
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Jesus Christ said it.
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We read the passage already.
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He said the way to life is narrow and the way to destruction is broad.
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And on that day, that day being the day of judgment.
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I believe there's two lies that have perpetuated in our society today that have really given rise to a new morality.
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The two lies is one, there is no God.
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And two, if there is a God, he's not going to judge anyone, especially me.
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And yet Jesus said on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Have we not cast out demons in your name? Have we not done miracles in your name? And he said, I will say to them, I never knew you.
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Doesn't say I knew you while you were in high school, but you left.
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Says I never knew you.
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People oftentimes say the most important thing in the world is that you know, Jesus, it's not true.
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Most important thing is does Jesus know you? Paul Washer made a point.
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He said, he said, if I go to the white house and I say, I know Donald Trump, nobody's going to care.
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And I don't get to get in.
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Even if I say, I know Donald Trump, nobody's going to care.
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But if Donald Trump walks out onto the ports of the white house and he says, I know Keith Foskey, guess what? I get entrance.
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Does Jesus know you? I give you some just things to think about.
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A.
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W.
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Tozer, great Christian thinker, writer and pastor said this.
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He said, it is my opinion that tens of thousands of people, if not millions, have been brought into some kind of religious experience by accepting Jesus Christ.
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And yet they have not been genuinely saved.
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In November, 1970, a number of churches combined for a convention in Fort Worth, Texas, where they secured 30,000 decisions for Jesus.
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Six months later, a follow up committee went out to try to find these 30,000 decisions.
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They found only 30 people of 30,000 who were still continuing in their faith.
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That's not one percent, that's less than one percent.
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Charles Hackett, the Division of Home Missions National Director for the Assemblies of God in the US said this, quote, A soul at the altar does not generate much excitement anymore because we realize that ninety five out of every hundred of those people will not become integrated into the church.
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In fact, most of them will not return for a second visit.
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And even the beloved Billy Graham, who recently passed, said this.
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He said, I know for a fact that most of the people that walk forward at my conventions, my crusades are not really getting saved.
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See, here's the problem.
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Everybody in America believes they're saved.
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You go, you knock on 100 doors, 80 percent of the people, 80 of those doors are going to have people behind them that think that they're safe.
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And yet America has one of the most godless societies on the planet.
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We murder 4000 children every day through abortion.
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We sanctify things like same sex marriage and all kinds of other illicit behavior.
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And we wonder why we have a church filled with people.
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Who say they're saved and are not, I tell parents when I talk to them about this, I say modern evangelistic techniques are very good at creating false believers or false converts because modern evangelism is based on four things.
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Modern evangelism is based on emotionalism, pragmatism, moralism and minimalism.
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And I know you're probably not familiar with those things, and because I only have a short time, I can't go through all of them, but I'll give you them the breakdown very quickly.
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Emotionalism.
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I'm going to appeal to your emotions.
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This is why kids go away to youth camp and they spend a week and they come back excited about Jesus.
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And it lasts about a week because that's how long the emotional up or the emotional high last.
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And when the emotional high goes away, so, too, does the supposed experience.
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Pragmatism, what is that? That's a fancy word.
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Pragmatism simply means doing what works.
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We're going to do anything we can to get people to come and get people to come down the aisle.
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We intersperse people in the church that are told to come forward so that they encourage other people to come forward.
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They do this at crusades when the crusades happen and they have these thousands of people in the stadiums.
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They put people in place to come forward first to prime the pump, to get people to walk forward.
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I don't know this anecdotally, or rather, I don't know this because someone told me.
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I know this as a fact because I've been a part of these things and I've seen them happen.
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What's minimalism? Minimalism is we're going to focus on the absolute minimum knowledge that anybody needs to know.
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We're not going to challenge anyone to think harder or deeper or actually inspect ourselves.
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You know, the apostle Paul said he said we're supposed to examine ourselves.
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Have you ever even heard that? The Bible says, make your calling and election sure.
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Have you ever even heard that that you're supposed to examine yourself? No.
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What you hear is somebody who tells you if you ever doubt your salvation, go back to your Bible and look where you got baptized and where you wrote the date down and you go back and you tell the devil you're a liar.
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That's not what you're supposed to do.
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The Bible says, examine yourself to see if you are walking in the faith.
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For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that all the believing ones will have eternal life.
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And that believing is an ongoing thing.
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It's not a one time thing you did when you were seven.
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It's something that changes your life and you continue to believe that instead we have, again, emotionalism, pragmatism, minimalism, we minimalize everything.
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Here's the thing that surprises me.
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People will tell me, Pastor Keith, you can't say this to young people.
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They're just not ready for it.
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Let me tell you something.
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We we put you guys through advanced calculus.
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We give you advanced algebra.
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We give you AP English, AP history.
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And then we give you a picture of Noah's Ark to paint to color.
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You can handle AP English, but you can't handle the truth about Jesus.
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That's patronizing to you.
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And it's untrue.
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If you're uncomfortable, good.
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We're supposed to be in America, we don't like to be made.
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We don't like to be made to feel uncomfortable, but we should.
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We should have to think we should have to examine, we should have to deal with the truth.
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And if you don't like that, I get a little emotional.
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That's OK, too.
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Because I actually care, I care about the fact that 70 percent of people leave and the fact that most of them people, most of them leave because they're not saved and because most of them don't even understand the gospel.
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We do a 10 day evangelism exercise every year at our church.
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We go to the Northeast Florida Fair and we we call it the fishing hole.
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You know, Jesus said we're supposed to be fishers of men.
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So we have this thing called the fishing hole.
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Basically what it is, it's a booth.
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It has got nice colorful banners.
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It's got a nice big dry erase board that we write questions on.
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Sometimes they're provocative questions just to get people to stop and talk to us.
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You know, do you know you're saved? Things like that.
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And it just big, bold letters just to get people to stop and talk.
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And every year we spend 10 days at the Northeast Florida Fair talking to people, we we give out usually around 3000 tracks in 10 days, that's a little small information about Christ.
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In most of the conversations that I have, I talk to people who tell me they're saved.
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In fact, this is a rural area, it's a county fair.
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So a lot of these people are people who grow up in rural areas.
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A lot of those people do go to church.
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And so I ask them, I say, OK, do you do you believe in Jesus? Do you know that you're saved? And they'll say yes.
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I say, OK, do you understand the gospel? And it's blank stare.
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They said, you mean the music, like gospel music? No.
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Do you understand the gospel? Very few times do people even say yes.
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And then when people do say yes, often don't really know.
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They just don't want to sound ignorant.
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And most people simply say, I don't know or I couldn't tell you.
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And yet they're convinced that they're saved.
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They're saved, but they don't know how they're saved, but they don't know why they're saved, because some evangelists came and told them, if you walk the aisle and you take my hand and you repeat after me.
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You're going to be saved.
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How have we so diminished? Salvation as to make it some kind of a ticketed event where you just have to come and get your ticket punched, come hold that chilly hand of the evangelist and let him pray over you.
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Or wait a minute, you don't even have to come anymore.
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You don't have to come anymore.
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Now you stay in your seat and you raise your hand.
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Oh, wait, we don't even do that anymore.
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We say you stay in your seat and you close your eyes and you bow your head because heaven forbid anyone see you raise your hand.
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So you close your eyes, you bow your head and then you raise your hand and you only raise it for a second, only only long enough for me to see it.
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Every one of you are thinking, I've seen this before.
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I mean, you tell me that guy was wrong.
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Yes, that's offensive.
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Doesn't matter.
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Really doesn't.
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Because if we're if we are offended by the truth, then at least we've heard the truth.
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And I want to tell you this, there's no person who loves you more than the person who will tell you the most truth.
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The person who doesn't love you is the person who satisfies themselves by trying so hard to be your friend that they're unwilling to tell you what is true.
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Remember the four things I mentioned, emotionalism, pragmatism, minimalism? Well, the last one was moralism.
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I didn't mention this yet, but this is the gospel that we're talking about.
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Of.
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The modern American teenager, in fact, they there was a large study that was done and during that study, they studied the religious beliefs and patterns of young people in America, and what they came away with is that they realized that American teenagers really aren't Christians.
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What they are is they believe in something called moralistic, therapeutic deism.
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Moralistic, therapeutic deism, and that sounds fancy, so let me just break it down.
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Moralistic.
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God, if he exists, he wants me to be good.
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If he exists, he wants me to be happy.
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That's therapeutic.
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And if he exists, he really isn't involved in my daily life.
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That's deism.
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If God exists, he wants me to be good.
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That's moralism.
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He wants me to be happy.
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That's therapeutic.
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And he wants he he's not really involved with my life.
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That's deism, and that is the belief of the modern American teenager.
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God is there.
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He wants me to be good.
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He wants me to be happy.
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He's really not involved.
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And that's not the gospel.
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What do we say? What do we say when when we go talk to people? I want you to believe in God.
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No, that's not the gospel either.
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You know what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter one, the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans chapter one that every person already knows that God exists.
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It says they they suppress that truth in unrighteousness, but they already know.
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This is why when every man stands before God at judgment, no man's ever going to be able to say to God, I didn't know you were there.
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In fact, I heard an atheist one time.
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He said, well, if I die and I find out God does exist, I'm going to chastise God because he didn't give me enough evidence for his existence.
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Romans one, go home and read it.
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Eighteen to twenty three.
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Romans one, eighteen to twenty three.
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It says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth for what can be known about God is evident to the evident to them, for God has made it plain to them so that they are without excuse.
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No man will ever face God with the excuse of saying, I didn't know you were there.
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No man's ever going to be able to look at God and say, I didn't know you were there.
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That knowledge is already within us.
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We suppress that knowledge because we do not want to believe.
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Because to believe in God is to believe that we are accountable to someone, and that's the reality.
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When I talk to people about the gospel, I say, do you understand the gospel? I say this.
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Do you understand that you are accountable to God? Do you understand that? Do you understand that one day you will face God and your life will be judged by him? Remember the two things I say people hate when they say, I don't believe God exists or if I do believe God exists, I don't believe he's ever going to judge anyone, especially me.
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Well, this is it.
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People say, when I face God, he's not going to judge me or if he does judge me, he's certainly not going to condemn me.
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Let's do a little exercise.
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I'm going to ask you a question.
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Very quickly, I'm going to ask you a question.
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I want you to stand up again.
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You don't have to raise your hand.
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You don't have to say anything.
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In fact, I don't want you to say anything.
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I want you to answer in your heart.
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I want you to answer this question.
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Do you believe that you are a sinner? Yes or no.
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Don't shake your head.
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Don't say things.
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Answer the question.
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OK, now I imagine most of you probably went, no, I remember from vacation Bible school, ABC, you know, always admit I'm a sinner.
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So, yes, I'm a sinner.
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OK, do you believe that because you are a sinner, you deserve the wrath of God? Now, see, now the question gets more hard.
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Because the next thing in your mind is, well, nobody's perfect.
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Let me let me just address this real quickly.
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How many of you have ever told a lie? You don't raise your hand on saying how many of you, you know, you've ever told a lie.
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I would assume it's 100 percent.
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I can't imagine any of you that could try to convince me that you've never told a lie.
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In fact, I think you'd be lying then.
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How many lies do you have to tell to be a liar? How many murders do you have to commit to be a murderer? Just one, right.
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So how many lies have you told? Just one? Probably not.
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You could probably go back in your life and you can think of all of the times that you have told lies.
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What does Revelation 21 8 say? All liars will have their place in the lake of fire.
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One time a lady came up to our evangelism booth at the fair and she said actually she walked by and she screamed out, she screamed out, and I hope this isn't too much for this.
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Hopefully don't don't get mad.
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She said, I'm a lesbian and I'm going to hell and I don't care.
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And I just shouted out, I said, well, I love you and I do care.
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That was all we could get out as she walked by.
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The next day she was back again at the fair and she was standing at a distance.
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And one of our men walked over to her and just started to try to talk to her.
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And as he started to talk to her, she said, I've been told that that gay people are automatically going to hell.
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I don't have any chance for heaven.
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I don't know what to do.
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And he said, can my pastor come and talk to you? This is one of our our new guys.
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And he just wanted to make sure that he was able to communicate with her.
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So he came and got me and I walked over to her and she said, she said, Pastor, I've been told because I'm gay, I'm going to go to hell.
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I said, let me ask you a question.
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Have you ever told a lie? And she said, yes.
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I said, how many lies have you told? She said countless.
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I said, so you would consider yourself a liar.
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She said, yes.
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And I said, well, let me ask you this.
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I said, do you know what Revelation 21 says? It says all liars have their place in the lake of fire.
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I said, before we even deal with the fact that you're a homosexual, let's first deal with the fact that you're a liar and that everybody is a liar and everybody deserves the wrath of God before we even deal with this external sin that you're dealing with.
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Let's deal with the fact that your heart is far from God.
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And, you know, her whole countenance changed and she was willing to listen to me, talk to her about Jesus for 30 minutes.
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And we sat and we talked about the gospel and I talked about the fact that what is the gospel? She said, I don't know.
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I said, the gospel is this.
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I said, you deserve the wrath of God because God is a good judge.
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Let me ask you a question, is it is it is God being righteous? Is something that scares you? It should.
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Because you're unrighteous.
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And when an unrighteous man faces a righteous judge, the righteous judge is going to punish the unrighteous man.
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Let me ask you a question.
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If you went home today and everything in your house had been destroyed and somebody had come in and come in and had had hurt your parents and that person was taken before a judge and the judge saw the man, he saw the evidence for all that the evil the man had done.
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And the judge said, you know what? I refuse to condemn this man.
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I refuse to count this man as guilty.
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He is set free.
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Would you be angry at the lack of justice? You know, you would.
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You would be furious.
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You would you would call Rick Scott and you would demand that that person be disbarred.
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That judge is an unrighteous judge and he does not deserve to sit on the bench.
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And yet you believe when I face God, I have broken his law and yet he is going to be unrighteous.
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And let me go free.
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You see, God is righteous.
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He is holy.
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We are unholy.
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We have to face him one day at judgment.
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And we're guilty of breaking his law and we deserve his punishment.
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But this is where the gospel comes in.
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By the way, the word gospel means good news.
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And don't stop me now, even if I'm out of time, because this part is what I have to say.
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This is if I left it there, it wouldn't be enough.
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If I left you there, you would just be condemned.
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And you know what? That might be a good place for some of us to stop, because some of us need to ponder that.
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And if we could stop for 20 minutes and just think about that, that might be a good thing.
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But I don't have that time and you don't have that time.
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So I'm going to move right into the next part, because what I just gave you wasn't the gospel.
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What I just gave you is what makes the gospel necessary.
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If you go up and tell somebody Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, that is not the gospel.
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The gospel is this, you are a wretched sinner and you deserve the wrath of God and God loved the world so much that he gave his only son who, when he came to the world, he did not sin.
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He was perfectly righteous.
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He never had an evil thought.
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He never did an evil deed.
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He never lied.
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And when he went to the cross, he went to the cross to take the punishment that I deserved.
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See, I know what my sins are and my sins are awful.
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I tell people this, I say, imagine just your thoughts were projected onto the screen behind me and then one whole day of just your thoughts was projected onto the screen behind me.
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You don't you couldn't tell me that you would be absolutely embarrassed and ashamed of what has gone through your mind.
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And only one day Jesus never had any of that.
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So when he goes to the cross, he goes as a substitute.
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There's a big, long theological phrase, penal substitutionary atonement, meaning this, there is a punishment that is due, a substitute takes the place for that punishment and an atonement is made through that substitutionary work.
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When Jesus Christ died on the cross, who was he suffering under? People say he was suffering under the Romans.
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No, he wasn't.
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People say he was suffering under the Jews.
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No, he wasn't.
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And I've heard people even become super spiritual, say, well, he was suffering under me, it was my hands that nailed him to the cross.
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OK, but here's the deal.
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Isaiah 53 says this, it pleased God.
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To strike, you see, when Jesus was on the cross.
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Jesus was taking God's punishment for me and he was taking God's punishment.
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For every person who would ever believe on him.
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You see, God is righteous.
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He's a righteous judge.
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He is bound by his righteousness to punish sin.
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And we have sinned and deserve that punishment.
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And God pours out his punishment in one of two ways.
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Either he will pour out his punishment on us in hell or he pours out the punishment we deserve in Christ on the cross.
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Jesus Christ became the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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He became the sacrificial lamb.
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And God poured out his cup of wrath on him, I want to end with just a quick reminder here, this thing, listen to this thing, do you remember when Jesus was in the garden on the night before the crucifixion and he was down and he was praying and the Bible says he was crying and that the sweat on his head became like as it was drops of blood because he was so anxious about the next day.
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And people say, oh, he was afraid of the Roman cross because, oh, what a brutal way to die.
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You die by asphyxiation, your arms are stretched out, your body collapses and your lungs begin to fill with fluid and you literally drown in your own fluid.
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It's one of the worst ways man has ever conceived to die.
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Is that why Jesus was sweating drops of blood and crying out to God? No, he said this to God.
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He said, God, Father, if it be your will, take this cup from me.
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So what does that mean? That is an Old Testament image of the wrath of God.
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The Bible says our sins fill a cup of God's wrath.
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And on the day of judgment, he will pour that cup out on us.
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And Jesus, knowing full well what he was about to do, knew the cup that I deserved for my sin was about to be poured out on him.
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And here's the thing.
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People often say, is there another way to heaven from Jesus than Jesus? And people will quote John 14, six there.
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I'm the way, the truth and the life.
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And no one comes to the father except through me.
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And they'll say, see, that's proof that there's no other way to heaven except through Jesus.
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And I believe that's true.
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John 14, six can be used to prove that.
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But here's the verse I use to prove it.
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Jesus cried out and he said, Father, if there be another way, take this cup from me and the sound from heaven.
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And there was silence because there was no other way, the gospel is this.
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You deserve the righteous punishment of God, but God sent his son into the world who lived a perfect life and by his substitutionary death, took the punishment we deserve on himself.
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And he says now, whosoever believeth in me and remember that word, believe it means ongoing whosoever believeth in me, though he die.
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Yes, shall he live.
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Do you understand the gospel today? Maybe do you understand it better today, maybe is today the first time you've ever really heard it.
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The first words Jesus preached that we know of in his outward ministry, his public ministry was this repent and believe the gospel.
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Have you done that? I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, I'm not going to ask you to do anything.
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I want you to leave this room with the question, do I understand the gospel and has that gospel changed my life? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this opportunity to speak to these young people, I pray, oh God, that you would use it now to change hearts in Christ's name, Amen.