07-26-2020

Park Meadows Church

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So Spurgeon was, in fact, correct, as most of the time he is. Those who do not believe

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God is sovereign, or at least, as Spurgeon said, who are not willing to look into it with an open heart, are not righteous.

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Verse 12 says that. All right, now we're done with the review, so let's look at another one.

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We're still taking kind of a road trip through the Bible on this great topic of the sovereignty of God predestination, specifically the sovereignty of God.

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God is in control of everything. Man is not. Okay? Daniel 4, 34. And at the end of the days,

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I, Nebuchadnezzar, now here is a man who basically ruled the world, just like America does now.

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He ruled the world in his day. And God had to teach him a lesson. God had to teach him, look, you're not sovereign,

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I am. And God did that. Then he took him out and made him go crazy for a while, where he lived like an animal and ate straw, and lost his mind until he repented, and God gave him his mind back and his kingdom back.

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You remember that story. This is the man we're talking about here. And so he says, he lifted his eyes unto heaven, and my understanding returned unto me,

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Nebuchadnezzar says, and I blessed the Most High, in other words, the king no longer thinks he's the

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Most High, he thinks God is, and I praised and honored him that lives forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation.

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So for the first time in his life, Nebuchadnezzar understood he was not the sovereign. God was, and he acknowledged it, and God put him back on the throne after that.

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So we see it teaches God is sovereign. Now look at the next verse, and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing,

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Nebuchadnezzar says, including me, the great king that rules the entire known world of that day.

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We're like nothing compared to God. And God does according to his will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

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And I think maybe that's what Nebuchadnezzar had not understood. God is not just sovereign in the heavenlies, he's sovereign on the earth.

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What happens on the earth is God's plan, period, and God is pleased with his plan, and none can stay his hand.

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Once God, before the foundation of the world, laid down the plan, no one could change it.

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Now Satan, I think, was the first, Lucifer, was the first Arminian, and an

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Arminian is a person that has a theological viewpoint that man plays a role in his own salvation, that he determines his own destiny by deciding whether or not he'll accept

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Jesus, and that's taught in so many churches that you may believe it, but it's because you heard a preacher say it, does not mean the

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Bible teaches it that way, which it doesn't, by the way. The Bible teaches that while we were yet in our sins, has he, that's the

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Holy Spirit, quickened us. He brought us to life. He regenerated us. We didn't make that decision.

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He made that decision because the Father told him to, because he had chosen you before the foundation of the world and said, now is this birthday, wake him up, and he woke you up, and he gave you new desires, and he gave you the desire for Jesus that you never had before, and now you received him, but that was an effect, that was not the cause.

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You received him, you believed in him, the Holy Spirit gave you 33 things when he saved you that allowed you to do those things, and one of the things he gave you was the faith of Christ.

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You'll only find that in the King James and in the Greek. It's not in other modern English versions, but it's throughout the

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Scripture in the Greek that a gift, a free gift of grace, the free gift of salvation, and the gift of Jesus' faith was given to you, and of course at that point you believe, but those were effects of the regeneration that the

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Holy Spirit had already accomplished from the heavenlies. Salvation is of God. It's not of man. Anyone that wants to mix it and say, well, yeah,

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I believe in Jesus, but I also had to repent or also had to do this or do that, then you're an Arminian, and you think you play a role in it.

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You help Jesus save yourself, and all that defies the very definition of being born again.

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The baby doesn't help its mother birth itself. Let's get real, okay? He just doesn't do it, and Jesus said getting saved spiritually is like being born physically, on and on.

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We've talked about it at length already, but the point is that Nebuchadnezzar understood for the first time in his life that he did not play any role in any of this, that God had put him on that throne and taken him off the throne and then put him back on it once he was given the knowledge from God that God was the sovereign.

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All inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. God does according to his will both in heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand.

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You're not going to change it. Man, listen, Arminianism is nothing more than religious humanism.

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If you say humanism is the secular viewpoint that there is no

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God, well, then Arminianism is the church viewpoint that God is not all -powerful.

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Man has to play a role with it and so forth. Terrible teaching, but it's prevalent even in Baptist churches now.

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You go back to 1700s and early 1800s, 95 % of the

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Baptists believed God was sovereign, and they were clearly people who believed in predestination and in election and so forth, and 95 % of them were called particular

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Baptists, which meant that they believed Jesus only died for the elect, not for everybody. We'll get into that in a minute if we have time, right?

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We probably will have time today. So it's totally different now today. It's flip -flopped.

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In the Baptist circles now, only 5 % of people believe that Jesus only died for the elect.

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I'm one of those 5%. Probably by now, most of you guys are at least looking into it, like Charles Spurgeon said you should, but 90 % believe he just died for everybody and he loves everybody and all that.

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None of that makes sense logically or biblically, and we'll get to that. I know it can be totally new to a lot of you.

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It can be, and that's fine, because I'm not trying to convince you. I'm trying to get you to study, because you know what? You won't be convinced unless you convince yourselves.

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I mean, I know that. You've got to hear yourself say, you know what? This is how it is. Once you hear that, you'll believe it.

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You won't believe it no matter what I say, but the Holy Spirit is your teacher and the Word of God is there.

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So look into it as my exhortation. I'm giving you the scriptures to go back and study, and there are many others you can look up on your own, but I'm giving you some of the key, wonderful scriptures that our brothers and sisters for 2 ,000 years have brought out as they studied these same topics.

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All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, so none can stay his hand or say to him, what are you doing,

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God? What you're doing is not right, and yet we're tempted to do that when something goes wrong in our personal life.

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Aren't we? God, why'd you do that to me? I'm a good person. Isn't that the same thing? What doest thou, God? You just let that happen to me, and let me point something out to you that Brother Otis used to point out to me.

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God doesn't let anything happen. God does not allow He causes. I think you should look into that statement.

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I know in even some of the seminaries, it talks about the permissive will of God, but that was created by men.

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You don't find that in the Bible, in my opinion. God rules over all the affairs of men and nations, verse 35 teaches.

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Also, no man can change the predeterminate will of God. Who can stay his hand or ask

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God, why are you doing that? Then verse 37 says, now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the

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King of heaven, all whose works are true and His ways judgment.

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So God is true. He is good, and He is just, and when we don't like things that happen in our lives, we need to step back and think, wait, but I don't have the whole picture.

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God does, and I am not good. God is good. I'm not all -knowing. God's all -knowing.

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I'm not always true. I lie. God doesn't. So I need to rest and just wait and pray and ask the

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Lord to show me why this is happening, because there's a reason for it, and it's all going to work together for good to those who love

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Him and who are called according to His purpose, and we know that, but we need to remind ourselves sometimes.

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So He says that all whose works are true and His ways are just and those that walk in pride

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He is able to abase. There is a special message to Arminians right there in the last phrase, right?

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You walk in pride where you think you add something to the blood of Jesus to help Him save you,

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He's able to abase that doctrine in you and to get it out of you and to push you down and let you see you don't.

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Or you think God looked out and saw you being good or saw that you had faith and so He saved you? Listen, if God looked out in time and saw you getting saved, what

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He really saw was His grace opening your eyes and His Holy Spirit lighting on you and calling you and the

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Word of God springing into your heart and God saving you. That's what God saw happen. That's exactly what

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He saw because that's what happened. So that last phrase is especially for those of the

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Arminian persuasion, and many of them are friends of ours, but God blessed them and opened their eyes so they can see that this is a prideful position to think that man plays any role in his own salvation other than receiving it as a free gift.

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All right? Now, let's go to another passage, Isaiah 40, verse 21 through 26.

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Have you not known? Have you not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning?

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Have you not understood from the foundation of the earth? It is He that sits on the circle of the earth,

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God that is, and the inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers compared to God.

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You see, it's a blow to our pride. This is why people in churches across this country especially hate this doctrine because it is a blow to humanism, it is a blow to the pride of man, and it makes it harder for man to shake his little fist in God's face and say, why did you do this?

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And to say, well, I determine my own destiny by deciding whether I want Jesus or not, that's virtually blasphemous, really.

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Once you understand these things, it's blasphemous, but I know a lot of people don't know that when they say it. And I just pray that by God's grace, their eyes will be open to it and they'll stop saying it.

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But listen, it's God that sits upon the circle of the earth, and by the way, that was written some 2 ,800 years ago, a long time before science knew that the earth was round.

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So anyway, also if you're a flat earther, this may blow your bubble here, but anyway. Anyway, that stretch, it's

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God that stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.

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This is obviously speaking of the complete sovereignty of God. So God is sovereign in creation, speaks of some of the things he did in the creation.

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And it's God that brings the princes to nothing and makes the judges of the earth as vanity.

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So God rules in the affairs of men and nations and kings and places them there and then pulls them down when he wants to.

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Yea, they shall not be planted, yea, they shall not be sown, yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth, talking about the leaders, all right, and he shall also blow upon them and they shall wither and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.

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This is how God moves great important men and women, totally out of the picture when he's done with them or when their time is up for God's plan.

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And he puts a new leader in place. And let's hope that's not in the cards for President Trump for another, at least not for another four years, right?

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And then who knows, maybe God would, in his sovereignty, determine that he'll just stay even after eight years. No, I'm kidding.

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I know that scares some of you guys. I don't believe that would be constitutional. But you know what? God can do anything he wants to do.

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It says right here, he's the one that puts the leaders there, he keeps them there as long as he wants them there, then he removes them, and then he puts the next leader that he wants in place.

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This is God doing these things. God is sovereign, not man. God rules over all the affairs of men and nations.

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To whom then will you liken me, God said. Who will I be equal to,

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God said, right? So God is the only sovereign, and that's what we see in that beautiful passage.

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Then we come to Job. Now, these are some very interesting, with regard to us individually, some wonderful information we need to remember.

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Job 7 -1 says, is there not an appointed time to man on the earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hireling?

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So when we think about our own lives, do you know that God says that the day and the hour of our death is predetermined by God?

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And I know we're not to tempt God. We're supposed to take everything we know and all the strength we have every day and do the best we can with it.

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It's up to God when the strength goes away and we die. It's not up to us. It's up to God.

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And so it's interesting, Dr. Freeman used to tell me, David, until your duty and God's plan for you is complete on this earth, you are immortal.

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No man can kill you. And I thought, that sounds good. And then I thought, wait a minute, how do I know when my plan's over, right? But anyway, it's clear that we have an appointed time that God appointed to us to live a certain amount of time, number of days, number of heartbeats on this earth.

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And then it's over and God takes us to be with him. Job 14 -5 says, seeing his days are determined, that's predestination.

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That's foreordination, predetermination. The number of his months are with God.

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You see, not man, God determines these things. Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.

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You cannot cross one second over a line that God put the line there when your life is over.

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We should take account of this, the days that we have left, so that we do more with those days because they're not guaranteed and only

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God knows when that last moment is. But he does know because he predetermined it.

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This is part of the doctrine of predestination and the sovereignty of God is he has set the number of days you will have on this earth.

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Psalm 39 -4 says, Lord, make me know my end and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail

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I am. See, that destroys humanism right there. So God is sovereign over the number of days of our lives.

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Proverbs 16 -4 says, the Lord has made all things for himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.

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Now that one blows people's minds nowadays in this modern easy -believism gospel where only parts of the

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Bible are preached. I mean, look here, God brings good and evil into the world according to his purpose and his will.

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If you walked up to any of your Christian friends, you say, did you know that God brings evil in the world? They would think you were blasphemous, and yet the scripture says he does.

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Well, obviously, if he's sovereign and he is the planner and he institutes everything that happens, then he's the ultimate, the buck stops here.

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You could put it that way. God is the ultimate determiner of everything that happens, which has to include good and evil because since the

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Garden of Eden, when we fell, evil was brought into this plan, and it was man who chose it, by the way.

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But did that surprise God? Absolutely not, because Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world in God's mind to take care of it.

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It was not a surprise. It was God's plan. Why, you might say. Well, listen, the

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Bible says that this treasure of being saved is in earthen vessels, which means imperfect bodies that will continue to disappoint the

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Lord from time to time, and that that was God's will for it to be that way, and that God gets the glory from it.

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Now, you may not agree, but that's what Scripture says. So it's intended to be this way, and it always was intended to be this way.

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So obviously, we don't just get the beauty of the waterfalls and the beauty of the

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Caribbean Ocean and the beauty of the mountains and all that and the beauty of our loved ones, and that's all.

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We get all that, and it's wonderful to see what God has done and put there for us to see and experience and have joy in our lives and focus on those good things, but we don't just get those.

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We get the evil things, too. They're part of our life, too, and if you think about it, that's exactly what

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Eve asked for. Satan said, God has not said that you will die if you eat that fruit.

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By the way, Eve, God knows if you eat that fruit, you'll know good and evil, and she took a bite. She wanted to know both.

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She had only good. There was no death in the garden. There was no getting old. You lived forever in the garden.

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You walked with God in the coolness of the day in the garden. There was no separation from God in the garden until she decided she didn't want just good, and Adam agreed, and they wanted good and evil, and they took the fruit and disobeyed

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God and flung the world into the curse, and so we've been in that curse ever since, and we're born with the exact same nature.

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We would have done the exact same thing because that's the human nature, so that's what humans do is they want to be

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God themselves, and they want to take more and more control, and that's what the Holy Spirit saves us from when he calls us and regenerates us and gives us a new heart, makes us a new man or new woman, new boy or girl, so the

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Lord's over everything, not just the good stuff, okay, so that's one reason we should fear God with a healthy fear like a child fears the father coming home when he's about to get a spank, and we need to realize there are repercussions when we sin.

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I will say this. You cannot get out of God's will like he's taught. You can't, but you can disobey

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God and get spanked for it, which is part of his will. Go figure that out, but it's the truth, all right?

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Now let's look at another one. Oh, I think, let's see, I think that popped up at the wrong time.

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Let me see. No, maybe it didn't. Yeah, it did.

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It popped up at the wrong time, so let's just put all this up here.

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Let's read this was supposed to pop up first, okay? If God elected the saved, so we've already pointed out that God chose who would be saved before the foundation of the world.

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It shows that he chose them for himself, and if that's true, he also elected who wouldn't be saved by default, if nothing else.

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I mean, that's just logic. If you take the whole human race, every man, woman, boy, girl ever born in all of history, and God selected a remnant out of that fallen race to save that remnant because of his grace and mercy, because he wanted to, and because his son,

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Jesus, loved the earth and the inhabitants thereof, so he saved a remnant of the human race that will go into the millennial kingdom, et cetera, all of those things, if that is true, then it's at least true by default that it also determined who wouldn't be saved.

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That's just logic, but it goes beyond default. It's also part of God's sovereign will, so I'm going to back up and take this a little at a time so you can read it with me, but the point is this.

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If God chose who would be saved, he also chose who wouldn't be, so I've had so many people in my church life throughout, from the time

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I first got saved at the age of 24, 41 years ago, wow, people come up and say, well,

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God did not determine who would be saved. That's the choice of man. You either receive Jesus or you don't, and you determine your own destiny.

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Well, back then, I didn't know a lot of the Bible yet. I was a brand new believer, and I just listened, and I felt like they were wrong, but I didn't know what the

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Bible said totally yet, but I know a lot more about it after 40 years, so let's look and see what the

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Bible does say about that issue. Did God predetermine who would be lost? Listen, I know that doesn't feel good, but I would ponder to say the reason it doesn't feel good is you have heard so many false preachers preach untruths that when you hear the truth, it's confusing.

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Think about that and see if you think that might be the problem. So look what it says, Jude, verse 3,

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Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith, look at this, which was once delivered unto the saints.

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If you look at the Greek on that, that shows that the faith, all of biblical

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New Testament Christianity was delivered once and for all to the saints by the time

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Jude wrote that, which means God is not still writing Scripture. So there's a back page on the

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Bible, and if you add to these words or take away, there's a curse for that. The Scripture says in the

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Old Testament and the New Testament, and yet there are whole denominations that add to it every day by saying that the gift of prophecy in the sense of future telling is still operative.

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Then if that's true, when you stand up and you say, thus saith the Lord, you just added to the finished Word of God that was completed according to that Scripture by that date.

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And that was certainly before 80 AD, so I don't mean it had all been compiled into one book yet.

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That didn't happen for another hundred years or so, a little more than that, but Paul said when that which is perfect is complete, then some of these gifts will pass away, such as tongue speaking and word of knowledge and those things, and he was talking about the completion of the canon because it was in the neuter, which means it's not a thing.

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I mean, it's not a person. It's not the second coming. It's not Jesus. It's a thing, and this right here is the only thing that's a thing that's on this earth that's perfect, and it's called the

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Bible, and it's complete now. It was complete when Jude wrote that, but that's not what I'm preaching on today. Just throw that in.

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That's called a rabbit trail. It's free. All right. Look at verse 4. Now, look at this.

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There are false preachers, false teachers that teach the opposite of what Scripture says. Even on that concept where it says the faith was completed and delivered to the saints and in the

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Greek it means past tense, it's done. It's finished. It's not still being added to anymore, but anyway,

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Hebrews chapter 1, 1 through 3 teaches the same thing. Check that out. Now, verse 4, there are certain men crept in unawares back then, and the same is true today, but these false teachers, look at what it says, were before of old ordained to this condemnation.

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So who ordained them to this condemnation? God is the one who foreordains things and predetermines things, and we've already studied that and seen it.

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These false teachers were foreordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our

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God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. If you look at verse 13, this is what they're foreordained to.

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Raging waves of sea, these false teachers, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars to whom is reserved, the word reserved is a predestination word, it's foreordained in other words, who it is reserved to these people, the blackness of darkness forever.

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Now you got to study the cause and the effect on this. You know, if you're an Arminian, you'll say, well, God looked out and saw them being false preachers, and so then he ordained them to go to hell.

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That's not the order it happens in. It says they were before of old ordained to this.

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That means before God made the world, he had already predetermined who these people were. Now you say, well, it doesn't show that he predetermines all the laws people go to hell.

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No, it doesn't say that, but it says he does some of them. So if you have a problem with that happening, you have a problem with this too.

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So the truth is, it's obvious that if he elects who is saved, he elects who's not his child too.

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And Spurgeon put it this way. Spurgeon's logic was so amazing. Maybe because he wasn't from college.

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He wasn't from seminary. He just was well -read. He studied logic. He studied philosophy.

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He studied the scriptures. He studied what the saints of old had written about the scriptures. And he said, you know, you guys that don't believe in election, you will not even give

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Jesus Christ the right to choose his own bride. Think about that. Isn't that what the church is?

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It's the bride of Christ. Shouldn't the groom choose the bride? I think that's kind of beautiful logic.

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But here, anyway, we see that this definitely points out this fact that if God elected the saved, he also elected who would not be saved.

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And, you know, think about it. If you want to go the opposite route, let's say you're a mom who doesn't like this doctrine because you want to determine which of your children will be saved, which means you want them all to be saved, and you don't want

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God to have predetermined it because then they might not be and you can't change what he's determined and you're worried about that.

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Well, let me ask you this. Would you rather him made the gospel where you had to live such a perfect, sinless life in front of those kids that they would get saved because of how good you are?

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Because that's your choice if you're an Arminian. Or would you rather God, who we know is all -loving, all -knowing, all -wise, and all -just be the one who draws your child to himself?

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I would pick that choice, and I hope you would too. And as I said last time, and I say so many times, if God predetermined who's his child and who's his bride as we grow up, right, and he's already predetermined that, but he also predestinated the means by which we would become part of his family, which is believing the gospel, then doesn't it make logical sense that he would put a lot of the elect in the homes of people that are already saved so they'll raise those kids up hearing the gospel every day of their life?

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It makes sense to me, don't you think? So leave it in God's hands. You're better off than leaving it in your own.

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All right, now let's look at this scripture, Matthew 13, 27 through 28.

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Now this is with regard to the question, are you comfortable with God being in control of who gets saved and who doesn't?

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I mean, that's a great question. Are you comfortable with that? Well, you may be at a stage where you're not comfortable with it, but you believe it.

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But eventually you'll get comfortable with it too. But let's see further proof of this issue in the scripture.

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Matthew 13, 27, let's see what Jesus says about it. So the servants of the householder came to Jesus and said, well, in the story, it represents

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Jesus of course, he said, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in the field? So Jesus is showing us an object lesson of a farmer who sowed seeds, and some weeds came up with the seeds, and they're asking him, did you sow bad seeds?

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Well that farmer is a picture of Jesus, and the field is a picture of the world, and the seed is a picture of, in this parable, it's not so much the word of God being sown, it actually represents elect people being put into the world, and then they grow up and there they are, and they're called wheat.

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And the weeds picture the lost people who never get saved, sometimes he calls them goats, but in this parable he calls them tares, weeds.

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And they ask him, did you accidentally throw some bad seed in with your good seed? Well, look what, you know,

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Jesus said, he said unto them, no, I don't, I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, no,

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I don't sow bad seed, I only sow wheat seeds into my field. He said, an enemy has done this, an enemy sowed the tares in my field, and the servant said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

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And you know the story, he said, no, because you might hurt some of the wheat, let my angels do that at the end of the age, they will separate them out, and they'll take the tares and bind them in bundles and burn them, that's a picture of hell, and they'll take the wheat and put it in my barn, that's a picture of heaven, and you remember the story, all right?

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It continues, and the field, they came to him, they said, now, we don't understand this parable, Jesus, would you explain it to us?

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And he says, okay, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, that saved people, right?

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That's the wheat, but the tares are the children of the wicked one, who's that? That's Satan. So the tares are

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Satan's children when they come into this world and they remain his children their whole life, and they go out the other end and go to hell, because they're tares.

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And Jesus said, I didn't plant the tares. It says, the enemy sowed them, and his name is the devil.

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The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels, as therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world.

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Now, you think about that, Jesus said, look, I didn't plant the tares here,

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Lucifer put them here. Now, there's a great question he asked, how'd he do that? We don't have time to talk about it today, but there are some answers in Scripture for that.

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That'll keep you coming back Sunday after Sunday to find out that answer maybe. But Jesus didn't put them here, so they don't belong to him.

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And do you remember when Jesus was, I'll probably get ahead of myself, so I'm not going to say that right now, but listen,

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Jesus didn't put them here, he put the wheat here, Satan put the tares here. So you can call them sheep and goats, it's the same thing, just a different allegory.

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And so you look around yourself when you go out into the world, and you look around the room if you're, you won't be in a place now with the virus, but you look out, look out your car window, okay, and you're going to be surrounded by a whole lot of human beings that are tares that Satan put here that will never get saved, because tares never get saved.

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This is what proves that you don't determine your eternal destiny by deciding whether you're going to take the gift or not.

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I know preachers preach that, but that's not how it works. You don't make that decision. The Holy Spirit makes it when he calls you and opens your eyes and your ears and changes your want to, where all of a sudden you want

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Jesus, and he regenerates you. That's what causes it. And the truth is, he does that to the people that Jesus knows and planted here.

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The people Jesus put here are the ones the Holy Spirit awakens. That's just the Scripture. And Satan put the others here, and they never get saved.

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Now I'm not saying you and I can tell the difference, but sometimes we can, I think. The Holy Spirit can let us tell the difference if he wants us to know the difference, but we're supposed to witness to the whole world with the

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Gospel anyway, because not only does the Gospel save the wheat, it condemns the tares.

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So our job is to witness, right? We don't need to worry about it. It's God's job to save the people. But Jesus didn't plant them all here, obviously.

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He said the devil put the tares here, and then he shows what happens to them.

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Now let's go to another passage in John 8, 21. Look at this. Very interesting. Then said

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Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and you shall seek me, and you will die in your sins.

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Now if you look at the context of this passage in John 8, he is talking to the religious leaders of the day, the people who thought they were telling everyone how to get saved and go to heaven, right?

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The Jewish Pharisees, the Bible scholars of the day. And Jesus looked at them in the eye, and he said,

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I go my way, and you will seek me, but you will die in your sins, and where I go, you cannot come.

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Now notice he didn't say you won't choose to come. He said you can't come. Why? Because he could see who the tares were.

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We can't necessarily see it. He could see it. And he was looking at men who were not

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God's people, who Jesus didn't plant here. Satan planted them here on the earth.

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And Jesus is the one who said it, so that'll get you studying. But Jesus said again,

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I go my way, where I go, you cannot come. He says, then said the Jews, will he kill himself?

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What does he mean if I go my way? Because he says, where I go, you cannot come. Does that mean he's going to the grave and we can't come there?

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But Jesus corrected them. He said, that's not what I'm saying. And he said unto them, you are from below.

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All right, look, you're from below. I am from above. You're of this world.

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I am not of this world. He is pointing a difference between two groups of people, wheat and tares.

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And he's saying the tares are from below. They're not from above. And where I go, they cannot come.

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He said, I said therefore unto you, you will die in your sins. Now, look, Jesus didn't offer them the gospel and say, well, if you'll just pray this little prayer after me, you'll go to heaven.

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That's not what he did. He said, you will die in your sins, because where I'm going, you're not coming because you're a tare.

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For if you believe not that I am, you shall die in your sins. Now, there he puts in, and I've said this so many, everywhere

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I go, I say this. When you look at these powerful sovereignty of God verses in the

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Bible, almost invariably in the same passage, sometimes in the same sentence, there will be a verse that indicates that our choices and our responsibility is also important.

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Now, they go together. So notice here, Jesus already told them who they were and why they're that way.

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And he had spoken at a different time and said, there's tares, there's wheat. I put the wheat here. Satan put the tares here.

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Where I go, the tares are not going there. They can't. They cannot come there, because they're from below.

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I'm from above. My people are from above. And then it says in verse 24, he comes back and says this too, though.

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He said, I said to you, you'll die in your sins, because if you don't believe that I am he, I am, like in Exodus 3 .14,

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when Moses asked God, what's your name? He said, tell him I am, has sent you. If you don't believe that I am, now look, this is

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Jesus talking. He's talking to these Pharisees, these Jewish Bible teachers who did not believe,

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I mean, they wanted to kill him because they thought he was claiming to be God, but he said, if you don't believe I am, you'll die in your sins.

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So now he put the responsibility on them, but he's already told them where I go, you can't come. But still, they will end up in hell because they didn't choose

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Christ. And listen, at the great white throne judgment, there won't be anyone who stands up and says, wait a minute, God, you can't send me to hell because you predestinated that I would not believe.

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No one will say that, because the Bible says at the great white throne judgment, they're all judged according to their works.

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And there is no man that can do good works and make himself be saved. Arminianism thinks you can add to it, but the

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Bible says, no, no, no, can't do it. Charlotte's snickering now because she knows my mentor,

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Dr. Freeman, when he'd get fired up, he'd say, no, no, no, no, and I say it. So that's Rocky coming out of me. But anyway,

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I said, therefore, to you that you will die in your sins. And you notice that he says you will, he doesn't say you might.

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But then he says, because the reason is from your viewpoint is because you didn't believe you rejected me.

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And that's what's going to come against you, and your very words will be used against you on the judgment day, and that's why you're going to go to hell from your viewpoint.

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From my viewpoint, it's because I never chose you. I never knew you. Depart from me.

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Jesus says that too. You know he does. He says, there are many that come to me saying, Lord, Lord, have

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I not healed in your name, have I not done many wonderful works in my name? And Jesus said, depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

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I never knew you. That's Ephesians 1. That's Romans 8. He didn't know them before the foundation of the world because he didn't put them here because they were tares.

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They weren't wheat. I don't know why this isn't common knowledge in the church today.

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John 8 .43 says, why do you not understand my speech? So Jesus drops down.

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He's still talking to these same people, the Pharisees, the religious leaders. Why don't you understand what

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I'm saying? And I would ask the same question today. People that cannot grab the idea of the sovereignty of God, predestination, election, that God's in control of all those things.

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I would say, why can't you hear the word of God? It's clear. Why don't you hear it? And he says, even because you cannot hear my word,

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Jesus said. It's not that you don't choose to, you can't hear it. You are of your father, the devil, and the lust of your father you will do.

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He was a murderer from the beginning, and he abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him.

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When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And he told these people, you can't go where I'm going.

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I'm from above, you're from below. You can't even understand my speech, so how in the world are you going to get saved?

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You can't understand the gospel because you don't hear it, right? And he said, the reason you don't is because you're of your father, the devil, and what he does, you'll do.

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I'm of my father, and what God does, I will do. And all my sheep, what I do and what the father do, that's what they'll do, and you'll do what your father does.

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So there's two groups of people Jesus taught, wheat and tares. And God himself chose the wheat for Jesus and gave them to him as a love gift out of a fallen race that all should have gone to hell.

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And that's called the remnant. That's called the sheep. That's called the wheat. And so many different teachings throughout the

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Bible. So let's see, we got a little more time. We're having fun.

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Let's stop and take a breath. I'm going to get a drink of coffee, and you guys can stand up for a second, take a stretch break.

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And I want to pose this question before we stop today. And this is so controversial today, but it shouldn't be.

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If you go back to the 1700s, early 1800s, 95 % of Baptists, I don't know about other denominations,

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I know Presbyterians are this way, 100 % of them, but they believed that Jesus only died for the elect, not for everybody.

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So I ask you the question, who do you think he died for? Well, let's look what some great people...

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I don't believe we should have our own private interpretations. We should go back and see what great men and women of God for the past 2 ,000 years have thought about this subject.

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Now, I've already shown you, you can go back to 400 -something AD, Augustine taught predestination, all right?

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Well, you've seen all that. So we have read a lot of what brothers and sisters in Christ say about this going all the way back as close as 88

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AD in our previous sermons. But let's look at a little more modern here.

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This was Charles Spurgeon, and Charles Spurgeon said this. Hold on,

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I'm getting ahead of myself. A redemption which pays a price but does not ensure that which is purchased, a redemption which calls

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Christ a substitute for the sinner, but yet which allows the person to suffer hell later, is altogether unworthy of our apprehensions of how

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Almighty God is, all right? Charles Spurgeon. So a type of salvation where Jesus pays a price, but He does not ensure that which was purchased, in other words,

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He pays for it, but He doesn't ensure that that then belongs to Him, or a redemption that's taught by these churches where calls

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Jesus Christ a substitute for the sinner, but yet at the same time, it allows the person for which

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He's died for to die and go to hell, that's not worthy of our complete understanding of God from the scriptures.

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Or a doctrine that teaches that is altogether unworthy,

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I'm sorry, a doctrine, a redemption that calls Jesus a substitute for the sinner, any of these things where you say, okay,

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He died for everybody. We know not everyone's going to heaven. Jesus said that.

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And so therefore, apparently, Jesus failed, and His blood was not sufficient for those people.

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That type of gospel, Spurgeon says, is altogether unworthy of our understanding of Almighty God, okay?

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Now, Spurgeon also said this, if it were Christ's intention to save all men, how deplorably has

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He been disappointed? Think about that. Like some people say, well,

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He died for everybody, and He's not willing that any should suffer. The problem is they take that verse out of context. Go back and read the first verse in that chapter, the first book in that verse in that book, and ask who's being written to in this statement.

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And you'll see it was only written to the elect. And so obviously, it's not Jesus not willing for the elect to go to hell.

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That's what it was teaching. That's just known as eternal security, ladies and gentlemen. That's not something new.

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So it's taken out of context. And so I find this, the logic of Spurgeon is so beautiful.

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He said, if it were Christ's intention to save all men, like some of you guys say, well, He wanted to save everybody, then how deplorably disappointed

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He must be. Now, that's tongue -in -cheek, isn't it? But it makes a point, makes a point.

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And Spurgeon also said this, Christ came into the world not to put men into a salvable state where they could get saved, but He came in the world to save them.

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It's just so good. You wouldn't want to argue this against these concepts with Charles Spurgeon.

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Now, John MacArthur, a little more modern, he's still with us, isn't he? He's still preaching out in California. He said this, if Christ paid the penalty for everyone's sins, how could

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God sentence people to hell for sins that Christ bore the punishment for?

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In other words, everyone would go to heaven if that doctrine were true, that He died for everyone. Now, I think that's well stated.

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So, let's see a little bit of Scripture here. John 10, verse 14, who did

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Jesus die for? Well, Jesus said this. He said, I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep.

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Now, remember, the sheep and the goats is the same as the wheat and the tares, okay? Jesus would say, okay,

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I put the sheep on the earth, but the devil put the goats on the earth.

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We can talk about later how the devil did it, and that's something for you to think about and look into, see if you can figure it out.

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But it's a fact that Jesus stated it. He said, I'm the good shepherd, I know my sheep. He does not say He knows the goats, right?

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He says, I know the sheep, and I am known by my sheep. He doesn't say I might be known by them, or they have a choice of choosing me or not, and if they choose me, then they'll know me.

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He didn't say that. He says, I am known by them. Well, to know Christ is to be saved, right? Verse 15 says, as the

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Father knows me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

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So, I ask you the question, who did Jesus say He died for? What'd He say?

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I lay down my life for the sheep, not the goats. He didn't include them in this.

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So, Jesus never said that He died for everyone, not if you take everything in context in the scripture.

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I know there's about five... I did a whole series, maybe with you guys with us, someday we'll do the series again on what

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I call the problem verses. There's about five verses out of millions, right, that seem to say that maybe

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He died for everybody and so forth. But if you take every one of those and look at them in context and read all the way from the start of the chapter all the way through, you'll see not one of them teaches that because it would contradict this, and the

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Bible won't contradict itself, and you're just taking them out of context. And I've proven it many times in different groups of people that I've gone through that study with.

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Scripture proves that I don't. I just read the scripture to you. So, as the Father knows me, even so I know the

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Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. So, that answers the question who Jesus laid His life down for.

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John 6 .36 says, but I said unto you that you also have seen me and believe not.

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Now, he changes his direction a little bit, and he starts to say to the

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Pharisees this, I said unto you that you also have seen me and you believe not.

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So, he has people he's talking to out there in the crowd that believed him. That's the sheep and they're saved.

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But he looks at the Pharisees, who he knows are goats, and he said, I see you out here and you see me, but you don't believe me like these other people believe in me.

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And then he says this to these Pharisees who don't believe in him. He says, all that the

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Father gives me will come to me. He didn't say some do or he doesn't say, well, it's up to them to choose. Some of them will choose me, some won't.

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He said all of them that the Father has chosen for the foundation of the world to give me shall, not might, come to me, and he that comes to me

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I will then know why is cast out. For I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of God, my

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Father who sent me. So, it's the Father who chose who his children would be and who Jesus' brothers and sisters would be.

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And he sends the Holy Spirit to wake them up one at a time throughout the history of the world. And when he wakes them up, he regenerates them, and they become part of the family, and that's how it works.

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And we get the benefit of it. Then all of a sudden, we have all these effects, these things we want to do for the Lord, and that's great.

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That's part of it too, but it's not part of the cause. Those are the effects. And this is the

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Father's will which sent me, Jesus said, that of all which he has given me, I will lose nothing.

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So, let's take the hypothetical case that the Father gave this particular person to Jesus, and then he comes to a church, and the preacher says, well,

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Jesus died for everybody, and it's a gift, and here it is. You will determine your eternal destiny by making a decision right now.

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Will you take this gift or not? And the person says, no, I don't want the gift. Well, Jesus just lost that person that God had chosen, and Jesus now has to answer for it because he's the shepherd.

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Listen, it's not the sheep that answer for doing bad stuff, it's the shepherd. He's the one that's responsible for getting us to heaven, not us.

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We're not saved by works that we do. Jesus has to answer to God if he loses one of you, and he won't lose one of you because he's

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God. And this is the Father's will that sent me, Jesus said, that of all which God's given me,

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I will lose nothing, but will raise it up in the last day. How do you not see this?

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How can a person not see this? The saints of old saw it. All these people I'm quoting, they saw it clearly, but not so much in this modern age.

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John 6, 44, no man can come to me. In the same context of all this, Jesus says, no man can come to me unless the

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Father which has sent me draws that person. That's the Holy Spirit coming and calling you.

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I will raise him up at the last day. Doesn't say I might, doesn't say if he chooses me,

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I will. If he doesn't, I won't. It just says he will choose me and I will raise him up. Because the Holy Spirit makes it irresistible.

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Listen, when the Holy Spirit wakes you up and takes your chin and goes like that, there's a shepherd, you're the sheep, you're hungry, he's got the food, what will you do?

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That's like a duh choice, right? You do have a choice, but what are you going to choose? Why don't you take a 12 -year -old boy and starve him for three days and throw him in a room and throw a

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Big Mac in there and just say, what are you going to do with that? You can choose, you can eat it or not. What do you think he'll choose? It's irresistible.

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That's a stupid example, but the Holy Spirit, it's his job to make Jesus irresistible to the sheep.

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And he will do it with every one of them because Jesus said, I'm not going to lose any of them. Oh, boy,

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I don't know how I can say it enough. Charles Spurgeon said this, I would rather believe a limited atonement.

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Now, by limited atonement, that's what this doctrine is called. It says that Jesus died only for the elect, not for all men.

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That's called limited atonement in theology. And Charles Spurgeon is arguing for it.

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He says, I would rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended.

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In other words, it's effectual. In other words, it works. For everyone that God intended for it to work for, it works for 100 % of them.

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Spurgeon would rather believe that than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody except the will of the men that they add to it.

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So, you know, Spurgeon is so logical. He says, look, I would rather have who he died for be limited, but 100 % of them go to heaven than to have it where he died for everybody, but only people that choose

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Jesus get it. When the Scripture says from the Old Testament that there are none that seeketh

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God, not one. So, Spurgeon was on the right side of that. He would rather it be the way it is and leave it in God's hands than man's.

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Now, John Owen wrote an incredible book back in the 1600s. I've read this book.

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You should get it. You can get it on Amazon. It's called The Death of the Death. It's called The Death of Death in the

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Death of Christ. When Jesus died, he destroyed death for all the saints, right? That's the title of the book,

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John Owen, 1600s, right? He said this. Now, let's see what time it is.

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Well, it's getting late, and I hate to do this this late because this takes some very good logical thought.

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In fact, you know what? Why don't we save this for next time? You're too tired. You won't get it.

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I have found when you read things written by godly men in the 1600s, the sentences are this long.

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We've been taught in school to make our sentences this long and have bunches of them because people can't read well. So, this is in 1600

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English. You're going to need to be fresh. So, I'm going to stick this in at the very front end of the hour, Lord willing, next

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Sunday, and we're going to take a look and see what this great saint of God said back in the 1600s about this issue of who did

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Jesus die for. So, we're not done yet. So, I thought we might finish, but we didn't. So, we'll pick it up where we left off right here, same time, same channel.

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Dave, I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay. Thank you, sir. Well, we hope that you enjoyed the services this morning, and we can't wait to see you again next week.

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Thank you for joining us. Don't forget, you can get a recording of this at parkmeadowschurch .com, and we will be praying for you guys to have a great week.

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Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you for this great, great Sunday. Father, we just pray that you bless this family, bless this church, bless the families who are attending this morning.

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We just pray that you continue to work wondrous miracles in the lives of the people who are sharing this morning.

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Lord, we thank you for the healings that we heard about, and we just pray that we continue to see healing in this nation.

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In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. All right, guys, take care and have a fantastic day.