What is the Bible All About?

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While we remain standing, take your Bibles and open them with me to the 2nd chapter of 1 Corinthians.
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And we're going to be looking this morning at verses 1 through 5.
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The title of the message today is, What the Bible is all about.
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What the Bible is all about, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 1 to 5.
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Paul is speaking and he says, And I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
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For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
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And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and much trembling.
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And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word.
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I thank you that at this moment we have the opportunity to study the Word together, to be renewed by it.
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Your Word tells us that we are not to be conformed to this world, but we are to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.
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And we know that the renewal of our minds comes as a result of studying the Word of God, the very Scripture which is able to provide for us doctrine, and reproof, and correction, and training in righteousness, that the people of God be fully and completely equipped.
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So I pray, Lord, that you would, at this time, as I go to preach, keep me from error.
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For Lord, I know how easy it is to preach error.
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I know how susceptible it is to go out and try to use men's wisdom, try to use vain, worldly methods.
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And Father, I pray that you'd keep me from that.
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I pray that you'd keep me from error.
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I pray that you'd keep me in the truth.
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For the sake of these people, and for the sake of my own conscience, I pray, Father.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would open hearts today.
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First, Lord, I pray for those who have come today as believers who know the Lord and are saved.
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I pray that this message would be to them a sanctifying work in their life that would draw them closer to the Lord Jesus Christ and conformity to Him.
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And Father, for those who have come today who know not Christ, whether they be young or whether they be old, I pray, Father, that today you would open their hearts to the truth, convict them of their sin, and give them the gift of regeneration which gives birth to faith and repentance in their life.
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We pray all this, Lord, in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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I'd like to begin this morning with a question.
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But I want to ask that when I give this question, I'd prefer that everyone not shout out the answer, as that is sometimes the natural thing to do is to just proclaim an answer.
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I want you to sort of, in your mind, answer this question, and just sort of place the answer in your heart, because as we go through the message, I hope that the answer that you give will be in line with what I'm going to say, and you'll understand why I'm asking the question.
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The question is simply this.
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What is the Bible all about? What is the Bible all about? And when I ask that question, I'm asking what is the overarching point that the Bible drives us to? What is the overarching focus that the Bible points us to? It forces us to be faced with this one reality and truth that cannot be ignored.
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And when I say it's the whole Bible, I mean from beginning to end, this is the focus.
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Well, this morning, my goal is to help you understand the answer to that question.
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And you may already know the answer, and if you do, that's wonderful.
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But I have a feeling that in the larger church, the universal church as it were, the body of Christ throughout the world, I think that question is answered in many different ways.
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I think if I were to ask certain groups what the Bible is all about, I might hear something very different than what is actually the case.
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In fact, I've come to realize that people often...
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Martin Luther, during the time of the Reformation, talked about people treating the Bible as it were a wax nose on the face, meaning that a wax nose can be contorted and shaped to any way you want.
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So if you had a wax nose, you could look one way one day, and you could go out the next day, and you could look another way another day.
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And so if you had a wax nose, you could just look any way you wanted.
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And he said his concern was that people were going to treat the Bible as it were like a wax nose on a face, that they could just read it any way they wanted to, and they could make it say anything they wanted to say.
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And really that's true, isn't it? If you look on the television, and you watch the preachers that are...
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And not all of them, please know that I'm certainly not condemning mass media Christianity as a whole.
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I think that there are some great preachers who reach the world through media, and I think that's wonderful, but there are many preachers who take the Bible and just twist it, and turn it, and just almost put it in just like a grip, and contort it to the point that it doesn't even recognize anything like what the Bible truly teaches.
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And in so many of those cases, they have missed what the Bible is all about.
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So this morning, we're going to look at our text.
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I believe this text has the answer, by the way.
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That's what drives the question.
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I believe the answer is found in these verses that we're looking at this morning.
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And if you haven't been with us, let me just very quickly remind you, or introduce you, if you haven't been here, we are in a series through 1 Corinthians.
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We do try to preach here expositionally, which means we preach verse by verse, book by book.
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Since coming here as pastor in 2006, we've preached all the way through several books of the Bible, the Gospel of Luke, the Book of Hebrews, several other books, Old Testament and New Testament alike.
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And we believe that the best way to teach the Bible is an expositional way.
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It's to go through the Word of God and not skip around and jump around, but go through and look at the Bible as it was written.
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And so that's what we've been doing.
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And we've been in 1 Corinthians now since the beginning of the year.
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We're just now in chapter 2.
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And we've learned in the first chapter that Paul's biggest concern is division in the church.
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He's concerned about the fact that this church has allowed itself to be broken into factions.
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It's allowed itself to be broken into cliques and divisions.
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And these divisions have found for themselves figureheads.
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Some say, I follow Paulus.
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Some say, I follow Peter.
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Some say, I follow Paul.
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And some say, I follow Christ.
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They've created cliques and each clique sort of has a spiritual dimension.
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They're saying, well, I'm of this person or I'm of this person.
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So it's an expression of spiritual pride.
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Well, I know I'm right because I'm with Paul.
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Or I know I'm right because I'm with Peter.
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I hear that a lot today.
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Somebody might say, well, I know I'm right because I'm a Baptist.
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Or somebody may say, I know I'm right because I'm a Calvinist or a Methodist or whatever.
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And so we end up tying ourselves in these cliques which can sometimes be more trouble than they're worth and sometimes more dangerous than they should be.
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So Paul is dealing with division in the church.
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And we looked at the beginning of verse 18 of chapter 1 and downward.
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He talks about the fact that the church is not made up of the wise of the world.
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The church is not made up of the intellectual elite of the world.
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The church is not made up of celebrity or nobility.
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The church is made up of the simple.
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The church is made up of the basic.
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The church is made up of the lowly.
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Because in God choosing to use that which is lowly, when that which is lowly does that which is grand, God gets all the glory.
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When that which is small does that which is big.
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And we talked last week about David and how he came from relative obscurity.
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He was nothing.
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And he went out and was used by God to be one of the greatest kings in the history, not only of Israel but of the world.
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How? How did this young shepherd boy become the great king? Because it was God doing it.
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And what was his downfall? Pride.
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What's the downfall of the church? God uses the weak and the low.
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He raises us up and then we become prideful.
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And there's our fall as well.
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So that leads us to where we are now in chapter 2.
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Because now Paul is going to talk about himself.
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He's going to bring in his own experience.
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And he's going to talk about the fact that when he came into Corinth, back in Acts chapter 18, when he came into Corinth, he came into Corinth with three things.
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And I don't normally do the whole alliterated sermon, but you get one today.
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It's about one a year.
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So this is the big deal now.
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We get an alliterated sermon.
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We're going to talk about the fear, the form, and the focus of his preaching.
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The fear, the form, and the focus of his preaching.
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Now I want to say this.
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We're not going in order of the verses.
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Because I want to end with the focus.
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And that's actually in verse 2.
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But I want to start with the fear.
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And that comes in at verse 3.
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So look with me now at verse 3.
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He says in verse 3, He says, I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.
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Now, just to kind of point you back to the situation that Paul's talking about.
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He's talking about when he first came to Corinth.
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Paul first came to Corinth during one of his missionary journeys.
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And it followed his time in Athens.
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Athens was the intellectual height of the Greek world.
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It was the place where the philosophers would come.
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And would discuss and debate their philosophy.
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And Paul had gone to the Areopagus.
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What the King James calls Mars Hill.
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It was a place where the philosophers would gather.
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And they would discuss philosophy.
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And Paul had brought the gospel to them.
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And he preached the gospel to them.
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And he told them that God commands all men everywhere to repent.
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And when Paul called them to repentance.
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And to believe in the resurrected Jesus.
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It says many of them mocked him.
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Some of them said we'll hear you at a later time.
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And a few of them believed.
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So Paul had experienced already some rejection.
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He'd experienced already some success.
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In the sense if we count success by those who hear the message and believe.
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And Paul leaves this bastion of intellectualism.
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This bastion of philosophy.
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And he goes to Corinth.
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Now Corinth is to Athens.
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What Las Vegas might be to somewhere like Boston.
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Or somewhere else that has Ivy League colleges.
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You know you go from the Ivy League to Sin City.
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And so he goes to Sin City.
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And he says in this passage.
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He says I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling.
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I think it's easy for us to see our Bible heroes as being somewhat super human.
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I think it's easy for us to see our Bible heroes as somewhat just not like us.
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They didn't have the failures and the weaknesses that we have.
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But Paul here explains.
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He says I had a weakness and fear when I came to you.
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Now some might say well his fear was that he is preaching.
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And he's fearful of preaching God's word.
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Because that's a fearful thing.
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And I agree.
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When I come behind the pulpit.
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Every week I come with a sense of reverential fear.
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Because this is God's pulpit.
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This is God's church.
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And you are God's people.
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And at this moment I'm representing the voice of the word of God to you.
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And I'm afraid of preaching that which is wrong.
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I pray every Sunday.
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God keep me from error.
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Because that to me is a fearful thing.
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To be a false teacher.
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To be one who would proclaim the false things.
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There have been times where I've said things that were wrong.
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And I came back a week later and said you know what? I messed up.
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And I can do that.
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Because I'm not infallible.
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But I don't know that that's the fear that Paul is talking about here.
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It could be and I'm not writing that off as a possibility.
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When he says I came to you in fear and in trembling.
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It could simply be that what he meant was.
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I came to you out of reverential fear of God.
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And preaching the word of God to you.
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And I came with a sense of reverence.
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Okay.
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If that's the way we want to take it.
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That's fine.
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But there's another thought that we can consider in this passage.
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And that is Paul's leaving the intellectual capital.
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Going to the capital as it were of sin and debauchery.
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He's entering into a place that he doesn't know what's going to happen.
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He's entering into a place that is a dangerous place.
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To be someone who's proclaiming repentance of sin.
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You know people who love sin hate the word repentance.
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The world hates to be called to account.
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The world hates for.
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Think about socially.
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If you get up and you celebrate sin.
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You'll make it on CNN.
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They'll be happy and I don't mean to point them out.
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You make it on Fox 2 whatever.
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You make it on all the news networks.
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Because you're celebrating sin.
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But if you condemn sin.
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You are outcast.
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You're hated.
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And Paul has already dealt with this.
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When he was in Philippi.
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Which was a few cities before this.
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Paul had been imprisoned.
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You remember when he was there? In the prison at Philippi.
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And he was singing the hymns.
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And the earth shook.
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And the jailer was going to kill himself.
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You remember that story? He's already in this missionary journey had to deal with persecution.
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And he talks about later.
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The fact that he's been whipped.
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He's been beaten.
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He's been stoned.
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Left for dead.
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And now I'm heading into Sin City.
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So I came with fear and much trembling.
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Now that could be what he means as well.
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And I think that makes sense.
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Because he's going into a place.
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Where there is not going to be an ear to hear.
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Anything that he has to say.
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Because he's calling men to repentance.
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If he's already been left for dead by the sinners.
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What is he going to do with those whose sin is their marking characteristic? Now I'm making this point on Paul's fear.
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Because this is part of what ties this passage back to what was said before.
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Paul has challenged the Corinthians in their pride.
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He's told them that not many of them were wise.
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Not many of them were powerful.
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Not many of them were noble.
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They were called by God even in their weakness.
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And they ought not to be prideful because they weren't chosen because of their strength.
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And in keeping with this he points to the fact that he's weak also.
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He points to the fact that he is a weak man as well.
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He says God chose you.
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Not many of you were wise.
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Not many of you were powerful.
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Not many of you were noble.
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And really neither am I.
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Now there are times where Paul may seem a little braggadocious about his pedigree.
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He talks about the fact that he learned at the feet of Gamaliel.
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He was a Hebrew of Hebrews.
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And if anybody should be proud of their heritage it's him.
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He's a Benjaminite and all these different things.
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But in this instance he's saying and yet I still feel fear.
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And yet I still feel weakness.
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And yet I still feel a sense of dread in preaching the gospel.
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The point is this.
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It's very simple.
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If there's any power in Paul's preaching it's in the message and not the messenger.
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If there's any power in what he's saying it's in the gospel not in the preacher.
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And that leads us to the next part because we looked there at the fear.
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Now I want to look at the form.
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And this is in verses 1 and 4.
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Verse 1 he says, When I came to you, brethren or brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
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And then in verse 4 he says, My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
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The phrase lofty speech and wisdom and plausible words of wisdom both in verse 1 and verse 4 are references to the methodologies that Paul used or didn't use when he was preaching.
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In the Greek world philosophy and rhetoric were held in high esteem.
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Even in Corinth philosophy and rhetoric were held in high esteem.
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And so the expectation was anybody who was coming to bring a message was going to come with flowery oratory.
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He was going to have an ability to proclaim with worldly wisdom his message.
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And rather than that, the form of Paul's message was simple and primitive and base.
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He didn't come with flowerly, flower, can't say it, flower.
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He didn't come with beautiful language.
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I don't know what happened.
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He didn't deliver clever rhetoric.
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He had a profound truth, but he didn't wrap it in a worldly package.
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I think sometimes we feel like we have to do that.
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I think sometimes we feel like we're at a disadvantage if we're not using the language of the world.
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And we're not speaking the way the world speaks.
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Paul says in a sense this put him at a disadvantage because the Greeks loved wisdom.
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And he didn't bring it to them.
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He didn't bring it in the way they thought they should get it.
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And he knew that coming with a primitive message in a simple language would not go far in reaching men in a worldly sense.
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But he wasn't trying to reach men in a worldly sense.
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He wasn't trying to reach men through worldly means.
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He relied on the power of God.
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He says that he relied on the power and the spirit of God, not on a methodology which was meant to satisfy the ears of the world.
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And I think there's a profound connection to the church today.
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And I want to speak about, I feel like I can speak about this fairly because we're a Reformed church, meaning we tie ourselves in a sense back to the Protestant Reformation, the preaching and teaching of the Protestant Reformation and the split from Rome.
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And in Protestant Reformation teaching, in Reformed churches, there tends to be a high value placed on deep theological conversation and really deep thinking.
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I don't think anyone would disagree that some of the greatest thinkers, some of the greatest minds, some of the greatest preachers in the sense of deep, heavy, reverential preaching has come out of the Reformation.
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And I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
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I think, I mean, it's great that Jonathan Edwards, it's great that these men who were so powerfully thoughtful about the word of God, you know, they have changed the world.
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And I appreciate that.
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But here's the thing that's concerning me.
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The Reformed movement is growing.
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But my fear is that it's growing because people want to be seen as intellectual by the world.
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And Reformation teaching has a sense of sort of satisfying that.
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I know a lot of young people who are getting excited about Reformed teaching because we use words like infralapsarianism because we're willing to talk about things like the chain of redemption and regeneration and pneumatology and all these words that most churches don't use.
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I went to preach at a church one time.
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And they said, what are you going to preach on? I said, I'm going to preach on John 3 and the doctrine of regeneration.
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They said, don't.
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I said, why? They said, don't use that word, use something else.
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They said, who's going to know what you're talking about? I'm not kidding.
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That was the phone call with the person who said, don't preach the doctrine of regeneration.
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Call it something else.
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I talked about how to be born again.
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And that's really it.
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Because that's what it is.
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And I'm not saying they were dumb or anything.
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They just didn't want that.
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And I believe we should be thinkers.
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I believe the church should be an institute of higher learning.
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I've said that.
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I'm on record as saying that.
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I think we should be pushing ourselves to know more and learn more because the word of God is a treasure of wisdom and information.
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But I don't think we should ever become prideful or try to satisfy the world by that pursuit.
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I don't think we should ever become prideful in what we know.
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Because we never know what God knows.
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And we're always on the receiving end.
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Of the conversation between us and God, we're always on the receiving end.
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We're never the one giving Him information.
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Right? So everything...
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What does the Bible say? What have you had that was not given to you? Right? You should never be prideful about your intellect.
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You should never be prideful about what you know.
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But be thankful to God for what you know.
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And if we allow our theology to make us prideful, that's wrong.
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And that's my fear for the rise in Reformed teaching.
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I fear that it's scratching an intellectual itch rather than a spiritual need.
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I think the church needs Reformed theology.
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I think the church needs good theology.
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I'm not saying we don't.
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And I sort of took a left turn there.
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So forgive me.
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But this is important because Paul says, I didn't come with that.
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I didn't come sounding like the Greeks.
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I didn't come sounding like the rhetoricians and the great speakers and the philosophers of Mars Hill.
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I came with a simple, primitive message.
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And that leads us to the third point.
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Because the focus of Paul's preaching is verse 2.
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For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
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I mean, you just stopped there, couldn't we? We're not going to, but we could.
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I want to admit something to you.
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Failure in my own heart.
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There was a while that this passage sort of confused me.
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Even sort of bothered me.
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Not in the sense that I had difficulty believing it, but in the sense that I got to thinking as a pastor, reading this passage and thinking about Paul, I get to thinking, he's got to talk about something else.
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I mean, as a pastor, we deal with things like dispute between believers, leadership questions, marital questions, financial questions.
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We have all kinds of things.
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The number of things that the elders have to deal with are just one on top of the other after the other.
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And here Paul says, I knew nothing except Christ and Him crucified.
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And like I said, at first it sort of just didn't register.
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But then it dawned on me.
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Paul is saying more here than we realize, I think, normally in our first reading.
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Because Paul is not saying, and hear this, because this is important.
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Paul is not saying that every sermon he preached in Corinth was a Good Friday narrative.
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And you know what a Good Friday narrative is? You know on Good Friday we talk about the cross, we talk about Jesus going up the hill of Golgotha and being nailed to the cross and hung on the tree.
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Not every message is a passion narrative.
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And I also don't believe that he was saying that every time he got up he said, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, Jesus Christ and Him, and that was all he said.
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What I believe he's saying here is that no matter the subject, no matter the issue, no matter the problem, no matter the need, the focus of the answer, the focus of the preaching is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
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How long was Paul in Corinth according to Scripture? He was there for 18 months.
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He was there for over a year.
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And he preached to Corinth for over a year.
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That's in Acts 18.11 if you want to make a note of that.
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And in Acts chapter 20 he's talking to the Ephesians, the elders of Ephesus.
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And he says, when I was with you, this is the Ephesian elders, he says, when I was with you, I did not shrink back from declaring to you what? The whole counsel of God.
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He said, when I was with you I didn't shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.
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So we've got, Paul is with Corinth for 18 months.
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And he says, I knew nothing among you except for Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
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Over here he's with Ephesus for a similar amount of time.
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And what does he say to them? I didn't shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.
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What do we learn? That the whole counsel of God finds its purpose and its focus and its meaning and its fulfillment in one historical event.
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Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
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The whole of the Bible points to one specific event of history.
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We talk about the fact that it split history in half.
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How do we define history? B.C.
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and A.D.
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Which is before Christ and Anno Domini, which means in the year of our Lord.
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They don't do that anymore, by the way.
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If you look at your textbooks, it doesn't say B.C.
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anymore.
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It says B.C.E.
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It means before the common era.
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And then the C.E.
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is common era.
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It's not before Christ and A.D.
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and Anno Domini anymore.
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But you know what? It's still divided the same way.
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It's still 2017 years since what? Since Jesus Christ came and was hung on a Roman cross, and He was buried in a Jewish tomb, and He raised from the dead.
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That event in history split time.
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And that event in history is the focus of the whole Bible.
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When Paul came to the Corinthians, I believe he taught them the Bible.
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Now at that time, there was no New Testament.
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Paul is writing 1 Corinthians, one of the first letters of the New Testament to be written.
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So there's no New Testament.
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When Paul talks about Scripture, he's talking about the Old Testament.
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And he preaches Christ from the Old Testament.
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Paul went back to the law of Moses.
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He went back to the prophets.
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He went back to the Proverbs.
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He went back to the teachings of the wisdom literature.
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And he taught Jesus Christ.
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And every message he preached, he pointed to Jesus.
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No matter the subject, I believe it would always come back to Christ.
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Is there a marriage problem that needs to be solved, that needs to be addressed, that needs to be dealt with? Yes, we're going to bring it to the foot of the cross.
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Is there a dispute that needs to be satisfied? Yes, we're going to find the answer at the foot of the cross.
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Is there a number of problems in the church that we have difficulty dealing with? Yes, but in whom will we find our answer? In man's wisdom or at the cross? It will be at the cross.
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In the book, The Soul Winner, by Charles Spurgeon, he writes this.
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He says, I believe that those sermons which are fullest of Christ are most likely to be blessed to the conversion of the hearers.
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Let your sermons be full of Christ from beginning to end, crammed full of the gospel.
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As for myself, brethren, I cannot preach anything else but Christ and His cross, for I know nothing else.
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And long ago, like the apostle Paul, I determined not to know anything else, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
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People have often asked me, what is the secret to your success? And this is Spurgeon, he was called the prince of preachers.
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People have asked, what is the secret to your success? And I have always said that I have no other secret but this, that I have preached the gospel.
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Not about the gospel, but the gospel, the full, free, glorious gospel, the living Christ who is the incarnation of the good news.
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Preach Jesus Christ, brethren, always and everywhere.
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And every time you preach, be sure that much of Jesus Christ is in your sermon.
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Beloved, Paul's point is not that he just went about saying, Jesus Christ is crucified, Jesus Christ is crucified.
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His point is that he didn't use worldly methods.
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He didn't use clever rhetoric.
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He didn't use philosophy or fancy language.
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He instead gave the simple message of the gospel and let the spirit and power of God be the one to convert the sinner.
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I know guys who believe they can convert hearts.
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I know a guy who told me once, he said, you give me five minutes with anybody and I'll talk them into believing in Jesus.
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Beloved, Jesus couldn't talk everybody into believing in Jesus in the sense of clever words.
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In fact, Jesus started the church ungrowth movement because every time he preached, the people would leave.
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The entire message of Paul began and ended with a sublime truth, Jesus Christ and him crucified.
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I want to take you somewhere to end.
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I want to take you back to Luke 24.
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We had our brother read a portion of this this morning.
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I want to just look back at it very quickly as we begin to draw to a close.
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If you go to Luke 24, it begins in verses 1 to 12, talking about the resurrection of Jesus.
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I'm looking forward to the fact that just in a few short weeks, we'll be celebrating the resurrection of Christ here, as we do every year, as we do every Sunday.
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But in verse 13, there's a story that's included in Luke's gospel.
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It's unique to Luke's gospel and it tells the story of two disciples who are going to a village called Emmaus.
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And we're not going to read the whole text because it's rather lengthy, but most of us at least remember the narrative.
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These two men are going to Emmaus and they're met by a third person.
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And we don't know, by the way, we don't know they're two men.
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It doesn't say that.
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There's been comments that maybe it was a man and his wife because they're going to their home.
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It could be disciples of Jesus and a man and his wife.
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So there's a conversation, you know, there's questions about that.
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But there's two people here going to Emmaus together and they come across a man whom they do not recognize.
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And as they walk and talk with this person, he asks the question, what's wrong? And they say, well, have you not heard what's happened in Jerusalem? Have you not heard about the death of Jesus? And they're going through this conversation back and forth.
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And down in verses, let me see here real quick, verses 25 is what we read this morning.
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It says, And he said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
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Beloved, there is no clearer passage in the Bible that tells us unequivocally and without doubt that the whole Bible is about Jesus.
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Because Jesus himself, when he was walking with these two disciples and he looked at them and he said, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have said, and beginning with Moses.
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Why Moses? Because that's the first books that we have.
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That's the first scripture that we have from the hand and the pen of Moses.
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Beginning at the very beginning, he interpreted for them.
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Could you imagine? Really this week I was trying to imagine this.
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Sitting at the feet of Jesus, having the Bible interpreted.
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My ministry in the church is that of an interpreter.
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I have to read and interpret the text and apply the text.
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That's my goal in preaching.
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That's all preaching is, is read the text, interpret the text, apply the text.
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That's what we do.
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But can you imagine sitting at the foot of the one who inspired his writing? The word of God incarnate is explaining it to you.
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No question.
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Remember how earlier I said we don't really know what the fear Paul had? Jesus knew.
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No questions.
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And he's interpreting to them himself.
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Throughout the Bible.
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Showing himself as the focus.
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Now I've heard people say this.
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I've heard people say we should not try to force Jesus into every text of the Old Testament.
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And I want to say something here.
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I agree that we do not need to over allegorize passages.
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For instance, some people say the red cord that Rahab let out of her window.
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That red cord represents Jesus' blood because it was red.
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Or they'll say that the painting of the blood on the door posts was painted in the shape of a cross.
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So that represented the cross.
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I think that we can, there is a way that you can over allegorize to the point where it becomes a wax nose again.
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And it sort of can be anything you want it to be.
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So that's not what I'm talking about.
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What I'm saying is that Jesus Christ told us in this passage.
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That when we read the Bible.
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We need to read through the lens of the cross.
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That the Bible is a Christocentric message.
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From beginning, the fall, to the end, with the great restoration.
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It's all about him.
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And we can see him in the scriptures.
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We can see him in types.
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David was a type of Christ as king.
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Moses was a type of Christ as prophet and priest.
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We can see him in even other types.
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Did you know 1 Corinthians 10 talks about the fact that there was a stone.
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That followed the Israelites in the wilderness.
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And the stone had water coming from it.
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And 1 Corinthians 10 says that stone was Christ.
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Meaning it pointed to Christ who would give living water.
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So we need to be careful in over allegorizing it.
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But we know this, the Bible tells us it's all about Jesus.
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So when I asked the question this morning.
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When I started the sermon and I asked the question.
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What is the Bible all about? I believe the answer.
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Unequivocally and unashamedly.
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I believe the answer is the Bible is all about Jesus Christ.
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And him crucified.
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Some argue that the focus of scripture is Israel.
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Some argue that it's Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
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Some argue that it's Moses.
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Some argue that it's David or maybe even Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah or even the Virgin Mary.
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But the focus of the Bible is Jesus Christ.
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And everything in the Bible means to point us to him.
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To point us to his salvation.
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To point us to his crucifixion.
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To point us to his resurrection.
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Beloved, if you're here this morning and you know Jesus Christ.
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You have an entire Bible that points you to him.
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And if you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus.
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Let me tell you something.
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This Bible is pointing you to him as well.
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And it points you to him in this way.
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If you come here this morning and you don't know Jesus.
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Let me tell you something about what the Bible says about you and me.
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It says that we were born in sin.
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And that we love our sin.
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And that our sin is what separates us from God.
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But that God has the ability to save us from sin.
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And he does it through the cross.
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You see when Jesus Christ went up on that cross.
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And he was nailed to that cross.
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All of the sin that I had ever committed.
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Was placed upon him.
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And he bore the wrath of God for that sin.
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And Christ never sinned.
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He demonstrated a perfect righteousness.
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And he gives to me that righteousness.
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And the Bible says when I stand before God.
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I stand not clothed in the righteousness of my own.
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But clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
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So that's where I am.
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And the Bible says you can be as well through repentance and faith in him.
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The Bible says repentance towards God.
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And faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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If you've never done that.
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If you've never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The Bible says God commands all persons everywhere to repent.
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That's you.
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God has commanded it of you.
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And I want to pray for you now.
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Let's bow our heads.
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Father I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you that you have commanded all men everywhere to repent.
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And that you have given us the gospel of grace to proclaim.
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And that salvation is for all who believe.
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Your word tells us Lord.
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That all the father gives me shall come to me.
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And the one who comes to me I will in no wise cast out.
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Which is Jesus' promise that the one who comes to him.
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Will not be barred at the door.
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Will not be pushed back away.
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Will not be held back.
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But the one who comes to Christ.
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Will never be cast out.
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Lord if there are those here today who've never come.
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Who've never trusted Jesus.
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Lord may it be today that you open their hearts.
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Give them the gift of regeneration.
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Give them the gift of faith.
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And a desire to repent.
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And trust in him.
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And for the believers Lord.
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Help us to trust even more today.
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The word of God which from beginning to end.
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Is about Jesus Christ.
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And him crucified.
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And father we pray all this.
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In Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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We're going to stand now and sing.
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And we're going to prepare our hearts to receive communion together.