1689 London Baptist Confession (part 32)

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Father in heaven, Lord, we come before you this morning just thankful for your word, for your son, for salvation, full and free.
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What an amazing thought that though we sin and rebel against you, you would purpose from all eternity to rescue us, to send your son, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, to live, die and be raised for our salvation, for our justification, for our sanctification, all these things true and presented to us in the
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London Baptist Confession of Faith. Just pray that you would bless us as we look to your word, as we look to the great news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you would bless us and strengthen us and cause us to focus anew on the promises of Christ.
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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We're talking about good works, been talking about them.
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And, you know, when you think about it, if you talk to an unbeliever and you say, why are you going to heaven, right?
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What do you hear? A recitation of good works.
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If you talk to a Roman Catholic, oh, I repeat myself, unbeliever, Roman Catholic, if you talk to a
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Roman Catholic, what do you hear? Why are they going to heaven? I mean,
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I was at a funeral once and it was so distressing to me because the woman was, the priest who was doing the service said that she was in heaven because, and he started listing some of the things that she did.
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What do you think the first thing he said was, Larry? She was baptized. She was baptized.
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Now, you know, as a baby, she was baptized. Is that volitional?
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Did she choose to be baptized? Did she play any part in that whatsoever? No, but somehow that contributes to her salvation.
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And then, you know, I, I just, it's one of those things where you hear, and at one point you want to, it, it, it would be humorous if it wasn't so sad because part of the reason she's in heaven is because she was part of a knitting circle, see, and that's what
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I want. But at the same time, I'm like, these people who most of them need
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Christ are listening to this and thinking, how do I get to heaven? I get baptized.
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I participate in a knitting circle, right? It's crazy.
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Our good works cannot get us into heaven. And we're talking about works, but the fact is that works do, uh, we're, we're talking about what they do.
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They don't get us into heaven. They don't qualify us for heaven. They don't remove any of our sins, but they do help us.
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We mentioned last week that they give us assurance. They give us, yes, yes, yes.
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For the professionals here, leave your cell phone somewhere else. I hate that someday there will be a cell phone or a microphone that doesn't do that.
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Okay. Our good works give us assurance, right? Um, last week we read this.
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Jesus said, well, what did he say in Matthew chapter seven?
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What's that? Well, judge not. That's how it starts. Right. But later on in the chapter, he's talking about false teachers, what they do.
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And ultimately he says, good trees produce and bad trees produce bad fruit.
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So when we, when we see good things coming of our life, we should be encouraged. On the other hand, what do you do when you see sin coming out of your life?
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It's not really encouraging. Is it not encouraging at all?
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In fact, we talked last week about how our bad works can discourage other Christians.
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Our good works can encourage other Christians, our faithfulness, even in small things.
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And we stopped last week when we stopped, we were talking about this quote from RC.
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If you are a Christian, I've never been falsely accused or slandered. Then there may be something wrong with your
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Christianity. What do you suppose he means by that? Especially as it relates to good works.
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No one's seen your good works, right? And they just think you're like everybody else. But on the other hand, maybe your works aren't that great.
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But, but when he says you've never been falsely accused or slandered, it's because you're a
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Christianity, you may not be so evident that people see any difference between you and everyone else.
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You just kind of fit in. If you're sort of in the go along to get along crowd, then maybe there's something wrong with your
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Christianity. Now back to the London Baptist confession of faith.
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And it says when it says there, that's us believers, their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the spirit of Christ that they may be enabled there unto.
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I like all these big words there unto. I mean, there's a preposition you don't use every day. They're unto besides the graces that are, they have already received.
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There is necessary an actual influence of the same Holy spirit to work in them to will, and to do of his own good pleasure.
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So now we're going to explain what that means. We don't possess the independent ability to do good works.
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Why is that? Even as believers, we don't have the independent ability to do good works.
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Thank you. All of our works are filthy rags. They're all tainted by our remaining sin.
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Hangover are the remnants of the sin nature that just kind of hang out and influence us.
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We have, of course, the doctrine of total depravity or tort, total inability, which, you know, before salvation, we don't have any ability to do good works because the whole of our being is impacted by our sin nature, by the fall of Adam.
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Now, true or false. I don't know if we mentioned this or not last week, but we'll do it again.
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Faith proceeds regeneration. Faith proceeds regeneration.
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False. Why is that, Bob? Okay. Regeneration is the root and faith is the fruit.
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I'm going to write that down somewhere. That's pretty good. I think we should just make a little flashcard.
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Regeneration is root, faith is the fruit. Why is that? Why is it that faith doesn't proceed regeneration?
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I see that hand in that red shirt. It's a lovely shirt, by the way. Okay. Faith is a response to what
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God has wrought in us. I like to say wrought. So it's a good one. And if you're not using that in your daily conversation, why not?
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W -R -O -U -G -H -T. Thank you. Thank you very much. Spelling bee champion. No, sorry.
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It's a response to what God has done in us. We're dead in our sins and trespasses.
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And then we get to Ephesians 2, 4, which says, but God made us alive, takes us from spiritual death to spiritual life.
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And as a response to that, in other words, as a response to being regenerated, we believe, but even that faith, as Andrew said, is not something that we do on our own.
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It is a gift from God, not of ourselves. And Sproul, as I'm reading through his commentary on the
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Westminster Confession of Faith, makes this point. Faith preceding regeneration would be what?
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Besides impossible. Be works, right? If you tell somebody you have to believe, and then
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God will save you, you have to have faith and then God will save you. What is that? That's a precondition of salvation.
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That's saying you do this work and then God will save you. Sometimes people will say something like, well,
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I have to straighten out my life, you know, before I get back to church. What does that, what should that tell you?
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Right, right then. I have to straighten out my life and then I'll get back to God.
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What does that mean? I have to be perfect, right?
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There, there, well, here, here's what I would say. It gives you a couple of ideas, right? First of all, it lets you know that they know that they're a sinner, which is good, right?
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That's a good place to start with. But it also tells you something about their mindset, which is this.
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I have to pull myself up to a high enough level to where God will approve of me.
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That's works. That's works. We hear that all the time is so -called evangelical circles, self -improvements, being better,
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I want to be worthy. Will you ever?
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I mean, I think in my own mind, I think this, this whale, I mean, who could not think this way? I want to be worthy of the office of an elder.
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I want to be worthy of being a pastor. Why would you not think that way? Right. Because you know, your own deficiencies.
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But when you start thinking about your own worthiness and making yourself right and everything else, you're kind of falling into the same trap as unbelievers.
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You're getting on the works treadmill. Sproul says, as he says, if I were to say, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, work as hard as you can bring forth the fruits of righteousness, because now you can do that without any further assistance from the
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Holy spirit. I would be telling you the creed of activism.
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I would be telling you the act of kind of, well, what
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Roman Catholicism or whatever, you know, I mean, this is just salvation by works. Um, he says to become more righteous, you need only gird up your loins, get active, start doing what's right.
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This is self -improvement and not Christianity. And we've also mentioned quietism before that's the opposite of activism, which is let go and let
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God kind of the Keswick K E S W I C K view of sanctification, um, the idea being that if we can't do anything good apart from God, then why not just leave it all up to him, right?
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Just kind of be really spiritual, but believers do good works.
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We do let's look at John 15, John 15 versus five and six.
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And if somebody would read that when they get there, please. I think John 15 was, uh, verse five was one of the first verses
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I ever memorized because I was kind of stunned by it, John 15 versus five and six.
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Would somebody read those please? I mean, this is pretty dramatic imagery, right?
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To produce good works, he gives us a condition. And what is that condition? Abiding in him, right?
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And then it's interesting too. He says, apart from me, you can do something.
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You can do some little things, some insignificant things. No, you can do nothing.
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And if we don't abide in Christ, in other words, if we are fruitless, if we produce no good fruits, he is thrown away like a branch and withers.
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Well, why is that? I thought, you know, once in Christ you're, and we'll get to that.
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We're going to talk about perseverance of the saints next, but how is it possible that somebody could be a
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Christian and then wind up one of these branches that are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned?
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How's that possible? It's not who said it's not.
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Well, why is that John? Because of preservation of the saints.
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Okay. That's it. Exactly. Right. You will do good works. Okay. We see verses in the
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Bible that say that we're going to do good works. And so we apply a cause and effect, meaning our good works.
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Make us a Christian. They don't make us a Christian, whether they do is they demonstrate that we are in fact in Christ.
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I mentioned it earlier, Matthew chapter seven, listen to just the beginning. I'm not going to read the whole thing.
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Cause we kind of covered it. So every healthy tree bears good fruit.
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Every single one. You know, when I read that imagery, I think back in Psalm one and how it talks about how, uh, the righteous man, it has the,
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I mean, the imagery in someone is like a canal, you know, a straight line cut, how he, he's a tree and he's, uh, fed by this canal of, you know, water or whatever the, the idea being that God nourishes him and cares for him and takes care of him.
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And that's the idea here that a tree like that can't help, but produce good fruit.
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It's, um, a work of God and God is not going to be thwarted in what he wants to do.
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The confession of faith, uh, goes on to say this yet. They are, here we go.
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They are not here upon one word to grow negligent as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the spirit, but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.
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Now I just read it and I think it's very evident what it means. It's a, it's just this.
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There ought not to be, I'll just put it plainly a lazy
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Christian. Someone who's just like, uh, you know, I have no duty whatsoever to do anything because God will do it.
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So when it says that we must be diligent to stir up the grace of God within us, how do you do that?
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How are you diligent to stir up the grace of God that is within you? Okay. You continue to meditate, to focus on your position in Christ.
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And so, you know, let's just kind of extrapolate that a little bit and say that part of that would come from reading the word, right?
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As you read the word and you meditate on the word and you, as pastor Mike likes to say, chew on the word, reflect on that.
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Is, is God at work in you, you know, through the word of God? I think so. Other ways that you can stir up good works.
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I mean, is there anything that we do? I don't know. Let's see on Sundays where we throwing you a bone people,
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Andrew. Oh, okay.
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Okay. Practicing the one and others. I think I have that somewhere in here. I didn't say it exactly like that, but yeah.
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You know, does that, is that, um, being diligent and stirring up the grace of God that is within us?
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Yes. Well, for example, when you are saved, you get a spiritual gift.
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True or false? True. Okay. And how are you to employ that gift?
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And serving one another, right? So it gets back there. Okay. Attending church.
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Very good. Listen, very good. Very nice. Uh, would you say true or false since I can't get any, you know, true or false when you evangelize somebody, is that helpful to your spiritual health?
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You ever think about it that way? I mean, I hear people say all the time, well, I'm terrified to preach the gospel of somebody, or, you know,
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I don't, I don't feel sufficient for that. Well, who is sufficient for such things? I think the apostle
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Paul said something about that, but what happens after you do it, when you share the gospel with somebody, you know, an unbeliever, do you think, well,
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I guess I'll have my sandwich now. I mean, seriously, how do you feel after you share the gospel with somebody?
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I mean, I've just got a great big old pot here and I'm just stirring the pot. That's what it is.
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Diligent and stirring up the grace of God. When you preach the gospel of somebody, you're stirring that pot because you're thinking,
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I remember what it was like to be separated from God. I remember what it was like not to have the joy of knowing that my sins are forgiven.
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I remember these things. And I remember the first time I heard the gospel and believed. I'm stirring up the grace of God in my life.
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Good works do that. When you serve somebody else in the body of Christ, do you feel good or do you just think,
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I could have cleared some more shows off my queue on Netflix?
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I don't think if we're thinking rightly, if we're thinking rightly about the grace of God and the service that we give to one another by the grace of God and how that kind of encourages us, nobody ever thinks, you know what,
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I wish I had less of the grace of God in my life.
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I wish I had less joy in the service of my brothers and sisters in Christ.
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I wish I had less fellowship. I wish I spent less time in the word. I wish I didn't go to church so often.
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Who thinks like that? Well, unbelievers. Well, yeah.
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And, and, you know, you introduced an interesting concept and I think it's really maybe a word that we should coin here, you know, podge, how's your podge, your post -obedience joy, right?
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Nice little acronym there. How is your podge? I mean,
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I bet we can name lots of things that we've done, bet. Okay, scrap that. I'm sure that where there are lots of things that we've done and where we're just like, you know, in anticipation thinking, oh, this is not going to be that great.
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You know, I'm going to go to the rest home and, you know, preach the gospel to a bunch of people who can't even, you know, feed themselves.
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Is there ever a time where you leave and you just think that was a complete waste of time?
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Well, yeah, maybe if you had the wrong motivation in the first place, but if you're doing the right thing, even if your motivation wasn't great, if you do the right thing, then you get that podge, you get the reward, right?
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You're stirring up the grace of God in you. Now, physically, when we think about survival, it was interesting, who was it was just talking about, oh, yes,
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Simon. But the other night we were talking about the short -term missions trip to Mozambique, you know, and goes and gets water and then finds out later on that there are crocodiles in the water.
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There are things that we do to survive. Getting water is one of them. Knowing that there's crocodiles in the water is probably another good thing to know.
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But there are things that we do just to survive, eat, drink all these things.
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And physically, we know that we have to do these things. Well, spiritually, there are things that we need to do.
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And when we neglect them, when we fail to stir up the grace of God that is in us, we become spiritually malnourished.
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And what do you suppose happens when you're spiritually malnourished? You're weak, right?
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I mean, it's like try to go to the gym if you haven't eaten in a week. That's going to be a pretty bad trip to the gym.
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What'd you bench press? I couldn't even get in the door. I just kept pulling and it wouldn't open.
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If you're spiritually malnourished, if you're not attending church, if you're not having fellowship with, or you know what,
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I'll put it this way, supposing you're attending church, you know, you come in after you've gotten your latte.
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I just had to get that little dig in there. You come in after you get your latte, you sit down, you listen, sort of, you sing, kind of, you go home as soon as you can.
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What happens when you just kind of sit down and you listen? That's the extent of your spiritual nourishment.
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You become weak. And what happens is you start to doubt.
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You start to be disconnected from the things of God. Well, why is that?
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Because you're not abiding in Christ. You're not living in light of the gospel.
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You're not stirring up the grace of God that's in you. And it is any wonder that you're then struggling spiritually.
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You're making bad decisions. You're getting involved in certain kinds of sin. You don't have certain desires anymore.
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Well, why is that? It's because you've just kind of severed yourself from the grace of God. So R .C.
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says, or asked the question, you know, because ultimately we don't do things for rewards, but the
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Bible does talk about in multiple places, I forget how many times he says, like 70 times or whatever in the
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New Testament. It talks about rewards in heaven. Now, me personally, and I've said this before,
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I don't really ever think about rewards in heaven. I don't start thinking, you know, like I'm some kind of, like I'm storing gold bricks in Fort Knox or something like that.
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I never think of it like that. In fact, sometimes I think, you know, when I get into heaven, if it were possible to do this, and I know it's not because I know that sin doesn't exist in heaven.
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And this is kind of a sinful thought. But sometimes my idea of heaven is I get in there and it's glorious and everything.
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And I'm just kind of, you know, like I like to do, I'm standing in the back and I'm just kind of looking around and going, hope nobody notices
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I'm here. You know, it's like, I'm going to be embarrassed to be there. But the
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Bible talks about rewards for things that we do in this life. And I'm like, I can't even, I can't even comprehend that, honestly, because even if I did everything that I'm supposed to do, what am
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I? What's that? A sinner, but I'm, you know, an unworthy servant.
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I mean, I'm just kind of, I'm just, you know, doing what I'm supposed to do. And if I, if I, if I do it well, but I still didn't do things perfectly and I still have sin and rewards.
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That's what Sproul says. Okay. I exaggerated a little bit. I knew I would.
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I would say that there are at least 25 texts, sorry, in the new Testament that make it clear that we, uh, we will be rewarded in heaven, according to our works.
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But what did Augustine say about our best works? He said that they are splendid vices.
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Our best works are still tainted by sin, but God does reward them is as Augustine said,
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God crowning his own gifts. In other words, why is it that we do what we do, even when we're trying to stir up the spirit within us?
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Why do we do these things? It's God at work in us. We're abiding in Christ and he produces the fruits.
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The Holy spirit begins a good work in us and he continues it. The London Baptist confession of faith says they who in their obedience attained to the greatest height, which is possible in this life.
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In other words, when you're as much of a spiritual giant, as you can be are so far from being able to serve super arrow gates, and we'll talk about that in a minute and to do more than God requires as that they fall short of much.
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In duty as they are bound to do. Okay. What is super irrigation?
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It's it's, it sounds like some kind of agricultural term, right? How's your lawn?
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Well, I super irrigated it. Oh, that's pretty impressive. I only irrigate mine.
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I don't super irrigate it. What a super irrigation. I don't even want to know what super irrigation.
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Okay. But it's not because it has an E instead of an a I'm sorry.
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You take to yourself. Yes. When you irrigate something, right? Yes.
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Okay. Beyond the call of duty. Sounds like a new game. So, uh, super irrigation is the idea in Roman Catholicism, which is why it's in here and never forget, it's important that we mentioned this from time to time.
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The London Baptist confession of faith, the Westminster confession of faith are written in response to the errors of Roman Catholicism.
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So when we read a word like super irrigates, it's because it's a Roman Catholic term.
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And here's what it means. It means not only does somebody have enough righteousness of their own to merit heaven, they have more than enough righteousness to merit heaven.
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So Roman Catholicism teaches, for example, Mary had more than enough righteousness of her own.
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That's why she was assumed up into heaven because the Lord wouldn't allow his mother to suffer death.
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Sorry. I just, you know, all the rationalization, but the excess she had goes into something called the treasury of merits and the treasury of merit becomes important in terms of the reformation, because what is the treasury of merit for, for people that don't have enough, correct.
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It's kind of like a big bank, right? So Mary takes her excess merit, her excess righteousness and deposits it into the treasury of merits.
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Jesus, of course, had excess righteousness, which goes into the treasury of merit. Now, what's her name of Teresa of Calcutta.
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Yeah. Mother Teresa. She also had allegedly an excess of righteousness, which, you know, and so all these saints and people, you know, have this excess of righteousness, which goes into the treasury of merit.
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Now, what's interesting about the treasury of merit is how is that accessed? You know, before you die, do you apply for a loan?
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You know, I'd like to, I'd like a loan for the treasury of merit. And it's not that far off.
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How do you, how do you get something out of the treasury of merit? Ultimately you pay indulgences, right?
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Sacraments help, right? But you need the indulgence. Why? Because you need, um, who controls the treasury of merit, who's the secretary of the treasury, the
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Pope. So you give money to the Roman Catholic church, the
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Roman Catholic church says, or the Pope says, uh, well,
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Steve, in light of your generous gift, here's, you know, 500 years out of purgatory, there you go.
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Thank you. And since I only had 495 years of purgatory coming,
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I go, you guys, you guys aren't laughing. I mean, who knows how long
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I had it in purgatory. Purgatory is not a place. We discovered that last night. Um, but that's the idea, right?
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Now this, this, uh, idea of super irrigation, this idea of the treasury of merits, what's wrong with that,
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Charlie? I saw it was like, boom. Yeah. I mean, that's a, it's a crazy idea, isn't it?
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Subsumed into the Trinity. I'm going to, you know, I need you to write a paper about that. My plan is to be subsumed into the
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Trinity. Um, yeah, yeah.
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You have more righteousness, the Trinity be subsumed. But I mean, the whole idea is crazy because just think about how can you be, let's put it this way.
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If perfection is the standard and you're saying, well, I've not only met the standard, but I've exceeded that, you know, talking about giving 110%,
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I've not only fulfilled the law, I've exceeded the law.
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What does that mean? I mean, that's just, you know, by, by just logic, right.
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That is so illogical. It's it's borders on sanity. It's certainly unbiblical.
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I'm so perfect that, you know, when I, when I come into heaven, God is going to be happy to see me, you know?
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Yeah. I mean, that, that's a, that's a great point. If God is the very definition of righteousness and holiness and all these things, then the idea that somehow we can exceed that, then we have become
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God, you know, we've basically dethroned him. Step aside. I'm better than you are.
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I mean, this is blasphemy. Yeah. Larry. And that's a great point. I mean, what it really does is minimize, you know, what sin is, you know, the idea that Mary or Teresa or anybody had excess, excess merits kind of negates the whole idea of how bad their sin is, right?
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Their thoughts and their deeds and everything that they do. Um, and somehow that they could not only overcome that or by virtue of the grace of the church and the merit from Jesus and everything else, you know, somehow, uh, overcome that and then become so perfect that they have excess merit is a folly.
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And it really does grossly understates the impact of sin. And, um, you know,
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I mean, they even have classifications of sin. So there, there certainly are problems.
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There are other thoughts, Bob. Um, they probably are saying that, but then the idea of, you know, what is the standard if you're, if you don't have to have a hundred percent righteousness to get into heaven, then what is the standard?
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And why would, you know, let's say 90, 95%, you know, uh, the master seminary that 95 % was an
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A - by the way, I'll never forget that, uh, 3 .7
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grade point average, uh, for that, you know, 95, 3 .7.
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No, no, right. But yeah, you know, then what is the standard? If it's not a hundred percent, if perfection is not the standard of God, where would we see that in the
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Bible? Yeah, we don't see that, you know?
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Um, so this, this would be, you know, another one of those Roman Catholic errors.
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Charlie, we, we call it crypto righteousness.
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Yes. Yeah. No, it's not a material thing.
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And the whole idea that it could be, you know, transferred from one account to another, this is, this is not something we would, we would see in scripture, the idea that a mortal being can earn enough righteousness to give some to another.
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We wouldn't see that. So I, I mean, there are a lot of, uh, there are a lot of problems. The only one who has any excess righteousness, of course, is
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Christ. Uh, the confession of faith says this, we cannot, by our own best works, merit pardon of sin or eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come and the infinite distance that is between us and God whom by them, our righteous works, we can neither profit nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins, but when we have done all we can, we have done, but our duty and our unprofitable servants.
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And because as they are good, they proceed from his spirits. And as they are wrought by us, they are defiled and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection that they cannot endure the severity of God's punishments.
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In other words, our best works are filthy rags. They have so much weakness and imperfection in them.
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Sproul said, we don't really understand the gospel until we understand that whatever we do as Christians in this world, is it the very best?
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Nothing more than our duty. There is nothing meritorious about doing what one is obligated to do.
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You know, do you ever do something nice for your wife, for your husband, and then, you know, like want to pose or flex or something and say,
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I'm, I'm so awesome. No, because you understand that this is what we are to do and we, you know, hopefully we're motivated rightly to do it.
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And in the bigger picture, when we do the things that the church God says we ought to do, whether it's attend church, serve other people, have
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Christian fellowship, read the word, whatever it is, we ought to be thinking, well, this is just what
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I am called to do. I don't get extra points for this.
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Sproul says when the Bible calls us unprofitable servants, that does not mean we are unproductive servants.
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Unprofitable does not mean unproductive. Um, what does it mean to be profitable?
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If you're running a business and you're profitable, that means you have more income than you have debt, right?
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Or costs. Yeah. You're adding value, value added. We like that term. You're a net plus, but in moral terms, if we do all we can, then measure it against God's requirements.
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There cannot be an excess, right? What's greater than a hundred percent? Well, in spiritual terms, there's nothing.
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We are always debtors who cannot possibly pay our debts. That's the gospel, right?
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When we understand that chasm, when we understand how bad our sin is, how far it separates us from God, we can never close that, that, uh, gap by ourselves.
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Sproul says we suffer from moral hemophilia. I like that term, moral hemophilia.
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If we are scratched morally, we bleed to death. It's not like there's, you know, a certain level of sin that we can withstand.
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We one sin and we're done. He says we are entirely dependent upon the perfect life of Jesus Christ.
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His righteousness imputed to us. He pays for our sin, but we need his righteousness to enter heaven.
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There is but one source for it is Jesus. Let's look at second
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Corinthians five. And I always think, you know, and I guess this almost happened a few weeks ago when
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Mike said, uh, you know, he had the stomach flu and he was not sure he was going to be able to preach.
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And Harry was sitting up in front and he said to Harry, he goes, I don't know if I could preach.
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I'm super sick. And I might have to get up and leave during the middle of my sermon. He goes, can you preach?
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And Harry says, I'm sick too. And I said, well, you could have called me. And this is probably where I'd go right in the last second.
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I just go, well, let's just open up second Corinthians five because this is one of the great, if you can't preach this, you just need to sit down.
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Listen to verse 20. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.
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God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
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That's why sometimes you'll hear me beg people from the pulpit to be saved. Why? Because Paul does it.
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It's good enough for him. It's good enough for me. We implore people on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
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For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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And this is just such a beautiful picture, because here's the idea for our sake,
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Jesus on the cross, God puts all of our sin on him.
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Even though he never did anything wrong and not only did he never do anything wrong, he did everything right.
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And there is a difference. He fully obeyed the law. You know, when you say, well, what's the difference?
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Well, not only did he not say anything nasty to his mom or dad, but he always honored them.
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Which we don't always do. He never had a lustful thought in his mind that he didn't resist, that he didn't fight off.
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He's perfect. God puts all of our sin on him. And then. He imputes accounts.
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His righteousness, his perfection, the perfection that we need, what we're talking about here to get to heaven, that 100 percent righteousness.
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That Jesus performed, he grants to God, grants to us so that on Judgment Day, when we stand before God, we're not standing there.
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As it were, naked before God, trying to justify ourselves by our works, saying, well, you know what,
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I I taught Sunday school and I went to church and I counted the cars in the parking lot when they asked me to and I and I gave to the church because all those things would make us what?
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Unprofitable servants. We're just doing what we're supposed to. We need not our filthy works.
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We need the perfect works of another. We need those imputed to us. Our works would never get us to heaven.
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It's the perfect work of Jesus Christ and him alone. His perfection for our imperfection, his righteousness for our unrighteousness, our sins on the sinless one.
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And then him raised on the third day so that the father might look upon Jesus Christ and say,
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I have approved of his work by raising him from the dead. That's how we know we're going to get to heaven.
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Not by anything that we've done, certainly not by being baptized as a child, not going to church, not by taking communion, not by participating in a knitting circle, not by doing anything that we think might justify us or might make us good because there's nothing that we can do that would make us good.
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We need an alien righteousness, that is to say, a righteousness that we can only.
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I want to say dream of, but we don't have to dream of it. It's revealed to us in the words of scripture, it's there every day for us, we just have to pick it up and study it and marvel at it.
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That such a thing would be granted to us. We have to close, let's pray.
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Father. It is amazing, amazing in light of who we are and what we've done, the sin that so easily befalls us, that you would call us to yourself, that you would grant us the blessings and honors of being in your son, being counted in him righteous, being wrapped as it were.
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In the righteousness of Christ, that we don't have to stand before you without a defense, we have a defense and our defense is
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Christ, what wonderful blessings are ours.
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Lord, we are unprofitable servants, but by your spirit, would you cause us to be faithful to stir up your grace in us that we might serve one another better, love one another better, do all the things that we ought to be doing.