Watch Your Temper

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

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Well, good morning, guys.
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Good morning.
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We're going to be in James 1 again, as we have been.
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And we're going to start reading the Word at verse 19.
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We're going to read through verse 21.
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And before I read, let me write a word up here.
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Am I erasing something important? OK, all right.
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Every week, I come in and get presumptuous with the whiteboard.
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I don't want to ever cause a stir.
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This ain't my house, so I have to be careful.
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I'm going to write a word on the board.
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You don't respond verbally, but I want you to put in your mind what you think about when I write this word, what it means to you, how you would use it in your own mind, and maybe what it's meant in your life.
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Yeah, everybody says, he's been reading my diary.
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Well, the word is temper.
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And today is going to be the focus of the subject of our lesson is our temper.
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And so let's read James chapter 1, verses 19 to 21.
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Know this, my beloved brothers.
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Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
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For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
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Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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And Lord, as we look today at this subject of anger, the subject of self-discipline and reliance upon the grace of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit who comes to live within us and implant the word in our heart, Lord, may we be as the psalmist and ask, Lord, make me delight in your word.
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Make it that your word is in my heart so that I will not sin against you.
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And Father, I ask as I preach today and give the word to these men who I know you love and who I love, I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error, because I am a fallible man and I'm capable of preaching error, and I don't want to.
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For the sake of your name and for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of their ears and hearts, Lord, protect my speech.
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Give me wisdom and have your Spirit speak through me.
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In Christ's name, amen.
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I was thinking on the way here this morning, I've had a lot going on this week.
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A dear friend of mine passed away yesterday, and he was only 60 years old, and he had a heart condition that had been going on for a few years, so their family, of course, is reeling.
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And our church family is reeling.
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This is the son-in-law of one of our elders, but he's like a son.
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And so on the way here this morning, I'm just thinking about life, thinking about death, thinking about the difficulties that we all face and the things that drive us toward being frustrated.
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Life is a frustrating thing.
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I was going to say, if I can't get amen to that, I don't know what I'm doing.
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Life, it really is, and it's a hard thing.
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And it is a hardening thing, because life, because it is hard, will sometimes harden us and make us bitter, make us angry, make us the type of folks that other folks probably don't want to be around.
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I was thinking about the word temper this morning on my way here, and I was thinking about how we use that word.
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It's interesting how we use that word, because I remember being a child, and I would have fits of anger when I was really little.
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And I remember somebody saying one time, oh, Keith has a bad temper.
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I thought that was good.
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I thought that meant I was a tough guy.
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I really did.
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When you're four or five years old, you don't know no better.
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When somebody says you have something, and they're making note of it, whether it's good or bad, it's sort of like news.
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Good or bad news gets you on the news.
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It's all news is fit to print kind of thing.
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And so when somebody said I had a bad temper, well, I fed right into that.
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And at that point when somebody said that, every time I would get a little hot under the collar, I'd just let it go because it got the attention that I wanted.
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All children want some kind of attention.
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Doesn't matter if it's good or bad attention.
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I just wanted the attention, and so I'd let my temper overflow until the point where somebody told me, and I remember the person who did and when she did it.
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I remember when I said to her, I said, I have a bad temper.
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And she said, that's not a good thing.
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And never dawned on me that it wasn't a good thing.
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I always thought, because it got me attention, I always thought because it made people listen, and I always thought because it was a way people identified me that it was a good thing.
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But she said, you know, that's not a good thing.
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And that's not really the way you want to be known as a person who has a bad temper.
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And that caused me to think about my life.
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As a young man, it caused me to think about how I was presenting myself to others.
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It caused me to think a lot about who I was as a person.
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But the word temper is interesting because we think about it in Scripture.
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It's actually used in different ways.
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We talk about bad temper, and usually if you say somebody has a temper, you're saying it's bad, right? Don't mess with John or Smith or Ron.
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I don't want to name anybody in here like I'm talking about you, but don't mess with this person or that person.
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He's got a temper.
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That usually means bad, right? But there's another word that we see sometimes.
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Temperate.
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You've seen that word come up.
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Temperate.
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And that means good, right? He's a temperate person, right? That's a positive, right? If you say he's, or you might even say he is of good temper rather than bad, right? Now, you might not talk that way.
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That's sort of an older way of talking about somebody, but if you said a man had a good temper, that usually means he's a nice guy.
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So temper itself isn't the problem.
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It's whether your temper is a bad temper or whether your temper is a good temper, whether you're temperate or whether you're non-temperate.
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You know, one of the qualifications for being a pastor that I had to really think about whenever I was feeling the call to ministry and wanted to enter into ministry, you know, the Bible says not everyone should be teachers because teachers are held to a higher standard.
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And so I had to think about that.
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And one of the things I had to think about was, am I a temperate man? Have I grown out of being that little wily kid that just gets angry every time somebody says something that's a little sideways? Am I a man of anger? Or am I a man of temperance? And I ain't perfect, I tell you that.
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But it is something that we all have to think about.
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And that's why I bring this up in regard to this text because James is here talking about, and I think this is tied to what we talked about last week.
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You guys remember last week, James talked about being born again? And he said that by the Word we've been brought forth and now we're the firstfruits.
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And by the way, I didn't even get a chance to explain that, but firstfruits are the things that come that tell us the promise of what else is to come.
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When you first see the first budding of the fruit in the field, that's proof that the seed has taken root and that the rest of the harvest is going to come.
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And so they'd have a celebration of the firstfruits because firstfruits is proof there's going to be more fruits.
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If you don't see anything coming up after you've planted, if you don't see any firstfruits, then you know there's not going to be any later fruits.
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There's not going to be a yield of crop.
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So firstfruits is like a promise.
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Jesus is called the firstfruits of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.
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Why is He called the firstfruits of the resurrection? Because Jesus is the first resurrected man.
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You say, now wait a minute, Lazarus was resurrected, the daughter of Jairus was resurrected, all these other people were resurrected.
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How can you say Jesus is the first one resurrected? Because Jesus is the first one that was resurrected never to die again.
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Lazarus was resurrected, he died again.
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He died twice, can you imagine? Jairus' daughter, she died twice.
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The widow's son at Nain, he died twice.
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Jesus is the only one whose resurrection was permanent.
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Jesus is never going to die again.
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And so His resurrection is the firstfruits or the promise of our resurrection.
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Because when we die, we go into the ground, one day we're going to be raised from the dead, and when we're raised from the dead, we're going to be raised from the dead like Christ, never to die again.
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So Christ is the promise of our resurrection.
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His resurrection is what we stand on for our resurrection.
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Now we go back to how are we then the firstfruits? Well, remember who he's talking about.
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He's talking, James is talking to the early church.
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And he calls the early church here in verse 18, he said that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
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The early church, that budding of the gospel church was the firstfruits of the worldwide church that was to come.
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And so in this context, the firstfruits he's talking about is that early church.
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We are the firstfruits of this harvest.
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Remember, Jesus said the field is white for the harvest.
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This harvest that's coming in, we can see the gospel has gone all the way around the world.
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So the church early was the firstfruits of that.
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And it's the byproduct of regeneration.
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What we talked about last week, it's the byproduct, people being born again.
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The church is built on born again hearts.
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People being changed by Christ.
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People being born again by Christ.
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Now, once we are born again, what should be the result? A changed life.
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Brother, you asked that question last week and we talked about it.
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You said, does the change come immediately? Do we automatically have a change? I say, I believe the change comes with a new desire, but we don't always become perfect.
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And we never become perfect.
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We don't always, we have to fight a battle.
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We're like those dead fish going down the stream that one becomes alive.
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He's fighting his way back upstream now.
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He's getting hit in the face with another fish.
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Right? So that's what you're doing.
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You're living the Christian life now.
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And so what does, in this context, James address? He addresses the issue of our temper.
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Okay, now we are in Christ.
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Now we have been born again by the Word.
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Know this, my brothers.
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Let every one of you, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
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So here's, and again, I always like to use the word, I know some of you probably have a hard time seeing it.
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He uses the word quick and the word slow.
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And he says, I want you to be quick to do what? Hear.
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And I want you to be slow to speak and slow to get angry or slow to anger.
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All right, the reason why I point this out and I write it on the board is I like to show a little diagram with this.
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If you think about this is the, this is the admonition of James.
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This is what he's telling us we should be.
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We should be quick to hear and slow to speak and slow to get angry.
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We are literally the opposite of this most of the time.
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Most people are quick to speak and even quicker to get angry and very slow to listen.
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I have been a pastor for 12 years.
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Before that I was an associate pastor.
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Before that I was a youth minister.
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And so been in the ministry for about 16 years or so.
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And so in that amount of time have spent hours and hours and hours talking to folks and counseling.
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One of the things I realized early on in counseling is most people do not listen very well.
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They want to be heard but they do not want to hear.
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Married couples are the worst.
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When people say we want marriage counseling.
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I say well, I'll give you biblical counseling regarding your marriage.
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I'm not gonna Dr.
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Phil your marriage but I'll call the husband to love his wife and the wife to submit to her husband and that's the biblical call of the marriage covenant.
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And so we'll have that conversation and there'll be calls to repentance.
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But in almost every sense there's an unwillingness to listen.
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We are so slow to hear.
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We are so slow to listen.
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And on the other side we are quick to get angry.
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And why did I jump to anger instead of hearing? Because we don't even listen.
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We just get angry immediately.
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Let me give you an example.
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Slow to hear, slow to hear.
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Most people when they have a conversation especially if it's an antagonistic conversation like let's say you and I are having a little bit of an issue and I'm saying things to you.
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What's your name brother? Eric, you're saying things to me and I'm saying things to you.
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We're going back and forth.
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Eric, you're not listening to me.
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You're listening only enough so that you have something to say back.
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You're formulating your response while I'm talking.
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You're creating and I'm doing, it's a debate now so I've gotta fortify my position.
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I've gotta put up my walls.
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I gotta be, I don't really listen.
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I fortify and get ready to strike.
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And you know what I'm talking about.
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And it happens all the time.
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We are very, very bad at listening.
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In fact, one of the things I talk about in counseling and it's kind of a weird analogy is I say anytime two people are in conflict and this is I don't care whether it's marriage, I don't care if it's you and another man or you and a woman or whatever.
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Anytime two people are in conflict there are actually six people present.
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Say that again, say that again.
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Anytime two people are in conflict there are actually six people present.
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And here they are, me as I see myself, me as I think he sees me, and me as I am.
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And then on the other side there's he as he sees himself, he as he thinks I see him, and he as he tries to see me.
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He truly is.
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Here's why that matters.
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I see myself always as the hero and the other person as the villain.
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I'm always the hero of my story.
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I can justify anything I do.
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Ain't that right? No matter how heinous, I can come up with a reason why I did that.
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And no matter how virtuous the other person, I can turn him into Gargamel.
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I can turn him into a villain.
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I just made a Smurfs reference.
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That's an old.
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All right.
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Yeah, I take it back, right? So my point is I see myself as the hero and I know he sees me different so I see myself also as he sees me.
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But there's also that the way I truly am.
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Most people are not honest about how they truly are.
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Most people are not honest with themselves about how they really act.
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And when somebody's honest with us what do we do? We get mad, mad, mad.
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I tell you what, the most mad people I've ever had in my life at me is people I was honest with about how they are.
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You go to a man who's got a poor attitude with his wife and you tell him and you watch out.
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That's how you'll test somebody's level of sanctification when you say, brother, I don't think you treat your wife well.
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I mean, I become, you got to put up that shield, right? Because that right hook's coming out.
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I mean, if you say, brother, I think you're mean to your children.
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How quick are you to hear that? Not very, right? That's right.
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So James tells us, he tells us be quick to hear absolutely opposite of how we normally are.
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Quick to hear is opposite of how we would be in the flesh.
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The flesh's main job is to justify itself.
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The job of the flesh is to justify itself because it wants to be made happy.
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And yet still, even in unsaved folks, God gives them a conscience.
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This is why even Hitler loved his mama, you know? You know, I mean, people who were evil still have a modicum of something in them that's a conscience, right? They beat it down with sin and lust and all kinds of things and that's what the Bible talks about in Romans 1, suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
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I feel like it's a spring.
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God is pushing this spring up in them.
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They're constantly pushing it down.
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This is why at the ages of our teenage years, our formative years, when our conscience is really starting to make sense to us, 12, 13, 14 years old, we're starting to realize things are bad and things that we do are bad.
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We start to try to kill that with either alcohol, drugs, sex, or some other pleasure that pushes that spring down because we don't want that conscience coming back up.
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And eventually we have it weighted up with too much stuff and it seems like we have no conscience at all.
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So we have this way about us.
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We push these things down.
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Like I said, that happens oftentimes.
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That's why people who get into all kinds of, whether it's sexual immorality or drugs, it's usually in their teenage years or early 20s because that's the time when you're realizing the things that are wrong and right and that conscience is speaking to you and you don't want to hear it.
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So you suppress the truth.
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It was Romans 1, 18.
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So they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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We don't want to hear the truth.
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And when somebody tells us the truth, we get angry.
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And this is why I think this text, there's a progression.
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We need to be quick to hear because we're slow to hear.
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We need to be slow to speak because we're quick to speak.
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And we need to be slow to anger because anger almost always follows somebody saying something we don't like.
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We hear something and it sets us off.
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We hear something and it drives us crazy.
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We hear something and it makes us mad.
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And so rather than being slow to anger and listening to what the person has to say, because even if they're a jerk, they may have something valuable to say to us.
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Well, I don't like the way that guy looked at me.
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Who cares if what he said is true? I don't like the way his tone was.
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He should have said that nicer.
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What are you, five? But we do.
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We act like five.
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I got five kids.
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I got a 20-year-old daughter.
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I got an 18-year-old son.
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Six-year-old daughter.
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Three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter.
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I think.
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I'm trying to figure it out.
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Once I get this many, you just say, load up, we count them off.
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Think of it like this.
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A baby, my son is three years old.
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The only thing he cares about in the world is Superman and his mama, right? He wakes up in the morning and he wants to put on a Superman cape and he wants to play with mama.
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He loves mama.
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Which I'm- And the Batman toy.
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And the Batman toy, that's right.
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He loves that little Batman toy and now it's lost.
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So that's a big deal.
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But my son, when he gets angry, there's just, it's rage.
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You ever seen a three-year-old rage? At first, it's kind of cute.
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Oh, look at him, he got mad.
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But then it's like, if he were a 200-pound adult man, you'd call him a psycho.
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I mean, you would.
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We call them, they're a viper in a diaper.
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They are.
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They are just, because they don't have yet the ability to control that emotional outburst that's within them.
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This is why we say, when somebody is an adult man or an adult woman who is not able to control their temper, what do we say? You're acting like a child.
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You're a big baby, that's right.
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What was that, brother? I'm sorry.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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It just makes it more, you big baby, yeah.
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But it's the reality of it.
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And so James is calling us here, really, he's calling us to consider our sanctification.
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If last week, we were considering regeneration, which is being born again, this is the result of being born again, which is growth.
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And growth comes from being quicker to hear than we are to speak and being slow to get angry.
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Now, I wanna say this, and I wanna be, I wanna be careful how I say this, because there are guys who use this wrongly.
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And I would hope you wouldn't do this, but I wanna say it because it's the truth.
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And there is such a thing as righteous anger.
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Sometimes we call it righteous indignation.
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When I see somebody murder a baby in the womb, I get angry.
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I do.
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When I see somebody hurting someone else, when I see a man abuse his wife, I get angry.
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When I see a child be molested, I get angry at that.
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Right? So, and I don't necessarily think that's wrong, to be angry.
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But this text goes on to say, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
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So I have to consider, what does my anger produce? When I think about myself getting angry about a man who's hurting his wife, do I just go and talk about him? Or do I go and talk to him? Do I call him to repentance? Do I maybe call the police? If this is some kind of physical assault.
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Yeah.
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So my point is, the text is saying, and this is, I think, a generalization, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
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If we are angry people, and we are people who are just known for being angry, then we're not going to be known as people who are living for Christ.
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Practical, daily righteousness does not abide in a person who is always angry.
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Life has treated me wrong! What does that even mean? I know, yeah.
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But that's, but we say that, right? So we make excuses for our anger.
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Then we make that same excuse apply to why we're living in bitterness.
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And then why now we are a man of bad temper.
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Well, it's life's fault.
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Life did this to me.
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Really? People did this, even if it is people.
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Even if somebody has done you wrong.
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Let me say this.
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When you stand before Christ, you're going to be by yourself.
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You're not going to have somebody to blame.
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Adam tried that.
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Remember I mentioned that? That didn't work.
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The woman who thou hast given me, she gave me the fruit to eat.
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God didn't allow that.
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He's not going to allow it with you either.
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My mama didn't hug me or she hugged me too much.
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My daddy yelled at me too much.
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My brother treated me bad.
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I was beat up.
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I was molested.
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Okay, all those things are bad.
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And maybe you were.
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But if you are in Christ, you are a new creature.
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Old things have passed away.
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All things have become new.
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And you are not what you were.
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So stop acting like it, James is saying.
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Don't live where you were.
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Live where you are now.
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And you are in Christ, if you are in Him.
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So if you are in Christ, be slow to anger.
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By being quick to hear and slow to speak.
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It's a very simple process, but it's hard to do.
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Because even if we are saved, we battle the flesh.
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As my brother mentioned last week, it's a battle.
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And so we have these practical calls.
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And I do think the next section actually is part of the practical call.
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Because he says in verse 21, therefore, and by the way, anytime you see the word therefore, it means it's connected to what just was said.
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And so he says, therefore, put away all filthiness.
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And rampant wickedness.
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And receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
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Let me just break this down by its constituent parts.
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Putting away all filthiness and all rampant wickedness, that is our old man.
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And to be honest with you, even as a saved man, and I've been honest with you before, I'll be honest with you now, even as a saved man, I still fight a battle with filthiness and rampant wickedness.
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I fight a battle with my mind.
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I fight a battle with my mouth.
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I fight a battle with my hands.
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I fight a battle with my tongue, you know, as with the things I say.
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And yet the call of the regenerate heart is now that Christ is in you, you now possess a power that's greater than the power of your flesh.
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What does 1 Corinthians 10.13 say? That's right, every temptation that you have is shared by everybody else.
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And God does not tempt you beyond what you are able to endure.
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But with every temptation, there's a way of escape.
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Every time I've ever blown up and had a anger outburst, I could have done different.
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Amen.
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There was an opportunity to have done different right there.
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And at that moment, I chose...
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And you know that makes me worse than an unbeliever at that moment.
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Because when the unbeliever sins, he's doing what is according with his nature.
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Because the unbeliever has an unregenerate heart, has an unregenerate soul, and so when he acts out in anger, he's acting out in the natural man because that's what he is.
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The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, right? He doesn't have the Spirit of God.
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But when someone who has the Spirit of God does that, they're going against their nature.
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They're allowing the flesh to take over when the Spirit should be the one who's leading.
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So James gives us this call.
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Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness, or you could say the word humility there, the implanted word.
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Now, I was hoping to get to this because the word implanted here is very important.
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When you were saved, when you were saved, several things happened all at once.
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The first thing that happened was God opened your eyes and your ears to hear the truth.
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He took out your heart of stone.
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He replaced it with a heart of flesh, which means He took out the heart that wasn't beating, the spiritually dead heart, that stony heart, took it out.
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He gave you a heart of flesh.
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That's what we talked about last week was regeneration, remember? And regeneration produced the ability and the desire to repent and believe.
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Repentance and belief is not something you do on your own.
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Repentance and belief is something God enables you to do.
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The Bible says, Jesus said, No man can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.
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And then He said it again in verse 65 of John 6, No man can come to Me lest it be granted to him by the Father.
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Your coming to Christ, your ability to come to Christ in faith was a gift from Almighty God.
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If He didn't give you the gift, you would still be in the same condition you were in before.
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God changes the heart and you come.
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Now, when you come and that change happens, something else very special happens.
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The Holy Spirit of God comes to live inside you.
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And by the way, the Holy Spirit of God doesn't come in parts.
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Some people believe you get saved and then you don't get the Spirit until later.
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I preached on that Sunday, this past Sunday.
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You know, John Wesley taught that, and he's the father of Methodism.
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If you don't know, if you're Methodist church, John Wesley was the father of the Methodist church.
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He taught that you could be saved, but later receive a second blessing, and that second blessing would give you the ability to live without sin in thought, word, or deed.
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And he believed you could be sinlessly perfect in this life by a special administration of the gift of the Spirit of God.
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He's insane.
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Well, I disagree with him for sure, but that's where that term second blessing originates with John Wesley.
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Later, the Charismatic movement adopted the word second blessing to attribute that to the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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They said you get saved whenever you believe.
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But later, God will give you the Holy Spirit and you'll know that it happens because you'll speak with tongues.
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This is what the Charismatic, which actually people don't realize is the Charismatic Pentecostal movement was birthed out of Methodism.
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Of all the denominations.
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It was Wesleyanism that became Methodism that would eventually become Pentecostalism and give birth to the Charismatic movement which spread through all the denominations.
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And it was based on this idea of a second blessing that you can get saved and then later get the Spirit.
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But the Bible teaches that when you get saved, you have the Holy Spirit.
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In fact, Romans 8, verse 9 says if you have not the Spirit of Christ, you are not His.
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Which means if you do not have the Holy Spirit in you, you don't belong to Christ.
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And again, I'm not here to step on you if you have a Charismatic background or anything.
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I'm just telling you, I disagree with that position because of what the text says.
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In fact, what I'm preaching to on Sunday morning is 1 Corinthians 12.
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And 1 Corinthians 12 says all of you have the Spirit.
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That's what makes you one body.
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All of you who are believers are part of the body of Christ and you were baptized in that body by the Spirit.
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Not by the water because the water is the symbol, but by the Spirit of God, you were baptized into the body of Christ.
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The Spirit baptizes you.
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So those are the things that happen when you get saved.
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God opens your heart.
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He changes your heart.
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He gives you the gift of faith.
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You believe and you are baptized by the Holy Spirit of God who comes to live inside your heart.
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And He brings with Him a new understanding of the Word of God.
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1 Corinthians tells us this, the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him.
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They are spiritually discerned.
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You guys remember that text from 1 Corinthians? The unbelieving person can understand the Bible, but only so far.
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They can understand facts.
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They can understand figures.
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They can understand people.
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They can even maybe understand motivations and they can understand principles.
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But they will not truly discern the Word of God without the Spirit of God.
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The Spirit of God must indwell us for us to truly receive the Word.
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And when that happens, it becomes implanted or the Word is engrafted, however you want to use it.
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The Word is in our heart.
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And so James is calling us to live accordingly.
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He's saying live according to that Word which has been engrafted into your heart.
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Brothers, if you are in Christ, the Holy Spirit of God lives within you.
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And the Bible tells us this.
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In the Old Testament it says when that change happens, when the new covenant comes and the Spirit of God begins to live inside the heart of every believer, that the change will be this.
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Not that he will have miraculous power.
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Not that he'll be able to speak with other tongues even though that did happen in the first century.
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Not these other things, but the thing that will matter most is he will know God and he will know the Word of God.
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Now you say, does that mean I don't have to study? Don't have to learn? No, that's not what that means.
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But what it does mean is this.
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The Word of God which did not make sense before.
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The Word of God which you rebelled against before.
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The Word of God which you were opposed to before.
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And by the way, as a teenager, I hated the Word of God.
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Now I wouldn't say that because I was a good young man.
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Let the record show I made a face.
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No, I was not a good young man.
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People would have thought I was, right? But I was not.
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And anytime somebody said something to me about my life that I didn't like or I thought was a little sideways, what was my response? Anger.
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That's how you know you hate the Word of God.
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When somebody gives it to you and you respond in anger.
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When somebody preaches the Word of God to you and they spit on you than preach to you.
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Or you'd rather spit on them than hear them preach.
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I get spit on.
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My buddy Mike and I do open air preaching.
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And we go down to the monster truck rally and we preach outside.
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Every year the Jehovah Witnesses gather for a big conference in Jacksonville and we go preach outside their conference.
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And hey, what's funny is the lady came one time and she goes, why are you here? I said, because I don't know where you live.
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Y'all been to my house plenty of times.
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This is the only time I can get you all together.
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What was so funny was they forced them to wait outside.
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It's at the arena downtown.
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And so it's like literally a thousand Jehovah Witnesses gathered in front of a door.
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We're right across the street just preaching it up.
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And you're trapped! We got you! But again, we look at the preaching of the word and when somebody hears it and they don't like it, what do they do? They get angry.
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Yeah, they get angry.
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I can't tell you how many times people have walked out of our church, wouldn't even look at me.
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You know, I always stand in the back, shake people's hand, give hugs, you know, get old lady kisses, you know, that's a good part of being a pastor.
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Ladies come up and give you a hug, you know, you're happy to see them.
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But some people just...
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And they're intentional, right? I sat by an atheist's bedside a few years ago.
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He was a smart guy, you know, intellectual fellow.
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And he was a committed atheist, doesn't believe in God.
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But he had gone through a period of real sickness.
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He had to get a major surgery and his body was failing him.
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And so his family said, well, you go see him.
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I'll go see anybody.
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But I said, I said, I don't know if he's going to want me to come.
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He's not a believer, you know.
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I mean, is he going to want me to pray? You know, yes, I'll go, but I don't have any idea what's going to happen, but I'll go.
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So it was about mid-morning.
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I show up at the hospital room, knock on the door, walk in.
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And he knew me and I knew him, so we had pleasantries at the beginning.
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Hey, it's good to see you.
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I know things are rough right now, blah, blah, blah.
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You know, had that little pleasant conversation at the beginning.
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And I sat down in the chair next to his bed and then we started talking.
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I didn't come out and say, I know you're an atheist.
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That might have been a little awkward.
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But we began to talk about God and I began to talk about reasons why I believe in God and why I know God exists.
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But about halfway through the conversation, somewhere in the midst of the conversation, he said, you know, I went to your church once.
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I didn't even remember.
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It had been so long ago.
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He said, I went to your church once and I didn't like it because when I went, you preached on hell.
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I didn't like that.
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I don't like to hear people preaching on hell.
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I kind of let it go.
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I didn't argue with him at the time.
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Kept on with the conversation.
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Kept giving him the gospel, talking to him.
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And finally, at the end, I said, you know, you came and you didn't like that I preached on hell.
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That made you angry.
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So you never came back.
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I said, but the reason why I preach on hell is because it's real.
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I said, if I believe hell is real and I don't tell you about it, I said, what kind of a monster am I? If I believe that this life doesn't end with your last breath, but actually after your last breath, you will either spend eternity with Christ or you'll spend eternity paying your sin debt, which is an eternal debt against an eternal God in a place called hell where there is fire and brimstone and the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
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I said, if I just said to you, you're good, go on being like you are, and I didn't tell you about this place called hell, what kind of a monster would I be? I said, you feel justified in your anger because you didn't like what I said, but it doesn't make it untrue.
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When somebody says something to you that you don't like, always remember this.
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Just because you don't like it doesn't make it untrue.
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That's right.
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And facts don't care about your feelings, right? That's right.
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And the truth does hurt.
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So James is calling us here to live according to the implanted Word because here's what happens when somebody speaks the Word of God to you and you know it's convicting, you feel that pain inside.
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Pain causes us to wince.
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You know, you get touched with a hot frying pan or you touch a needle to your skin, what does your body do? It reacts and it jerks away.
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That's what happens when somebody has that hot poker of the Word of God and it pokes us in our conscience.
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We wince.
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We want to react.
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Rather than listening to what's being said, we want to be angry.
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We want to respond with anger.
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We want to respond with an answer.
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We want to justify ourselves.
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I want to tell you this and this is where I'm going to begin to draw to a close.
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If you spend your life justifying yourself, if you spend your life justifying yourself rather than hearing the call to repentance, that says something about your heart.
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Because a person whose heart has been changed by the Gospel will stop trying to justify their sin and they will recognize it for what it is and repent of it.
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My biggest fear in life are my family who every time I try to talk to them about Christ and about their sin, they come up with a thousand reasons why they had to do what they did.
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Or why it was right what they did.
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Rather than simply recognizing and repenting of our sin.
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I've mentioned this verse before.
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I've preached it here I think before.
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Romans 5.1 is the verse that touches my heart so much.
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Outside of Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, Romans 5.1 would be the verse I would want displayed in my room forever if I were trapped.
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It's this, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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You will never be justified by yourself.
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And you'll never be justified by what you say about your sins.
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And you'll never be justified by giving some kind of justification for what you have done.
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You will only be justified when you repent of your sin and you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
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There is no other justification.
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There's no justification for sin.
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No matter how much we might try to find a reason for our wickedness.
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No matter how much we might try to find an answer for our rampant filthiness, is what the word here means.
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Our filthiness, rampant wickedness.
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No matter how much we might try to justify that.
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The only way we can truly be justified is to recognize it for what it is, repent of it and trust in Christ.
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And when that happens, then we'll know that we're saved.
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We will have the commitment or the confidence that we are saved.
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And like I said, my fear for so many people is that they trust in something else other than Christ.
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They justify themselves some other way than with Jesus Christ.
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And like I said, I can always know when I'm talking to somebody that way.
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Because when they get poked with the word of God, they're not slow to hear.
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Or rather, slow to speak.
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They're slow to hear.
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They're not slow to get angry.
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They're quick to respond with a justifying word.
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So James says, here's the result of your sanctification.
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Here's the result of your justification.
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Is it perfection? No! You're not going to be perfect.
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Here's the result of your justification.
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It's that you're going to be a new man.
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And the new man is going to listen to the word of God.
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He's going to hear the word of God.
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And instead of spitting on the preacher, instead of throwing eggs at the person who's saying you're sinning, instead of getting angry at the person who calls you to repentance, you're going to receive that word with humility.
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Meekness, the ESV translates it.
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Humility.
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You know what humility is? Being brought down.
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That's what the word means.
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Being brought down.
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We have to be brought down to receive this call to repentance.
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We have to be brought down.
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And again, I think the important thing here is our understanding the connection between what has happened and what is happening.
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What has happened? If you were in Christ, you have been saved.
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You're not being saved and you're not going to be saved.
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You're saved.
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Now, let me back that up because there's a sense in which all three are happening.
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You were saved.
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You're being saved.
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You're going to be saved.
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But in the sense of your justification, you were once and for all justified by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
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That cannot and will not change.
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But you will.
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Your justification can't change, but you will.
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And we will, by the sanctification of the Spirit, when we are slow to speak, slow to anger, and when we are quick to hear.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth of the Word.
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I pray, Lord, that now, that as we draw to a close, that You would, by Your mercy, give these men grace to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
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Particularly, Lord, at the hearing of the Word.
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That the Word of God would shut our mouths and open our ears.
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That the Spirit of God would take that Word and plant it in our hearts and cause us to live by it.
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He exists within us.
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He already is there if we are believers.
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Lord, that the Word might be mixed with faith and by the power of the Spirit bring forth fruit in our lives.
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Lord, may we bear the fruit of the Spirit.
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Love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness.
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Against these things there is no law.
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Father, may we walk in them.
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In Christ's name.
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Amen.