Special Episode IV: Weight of Majesty Week One | Behold Your God Podcast

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Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Grantiae.

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This is our final episode in the series where we've presented you with the first two sessions of both

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Behold Your God studies. This week is week one of the weight of majesty, knowing the

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God who is incomprehensible. If you missed the introductory message last week, let me encourage you to go back and listen to it.

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For both studies, the sermons are only one aspect. The heart of the study is the workbook.

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You can find week one of the workbook for the weight of majesty in a downloadable PDF on the Media Grantiae blog.

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Next week, we'll be back to our regular podcast with Dr. John Snyder. But until then, we hope you enjoy this final presentation in Behold Your God, the weight of majesty.

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Today, we are in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, to talk about one of the most revered and controversial figures in Scottish history.

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John Knox, the architect of the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Scotland. Knox was denounced by queens and church councils, shot at in his own home, enslaved upon a

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French ship for 19 months and hunted throughout much of his adult life. Yet his impact upon his homeland is unquestionably unparalleled.

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Knox has been described by one Scottish historian as the most excellent man our country has produced.

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Yet not all appreciated his religious convictions then or now. Today, over four centuries after his death,

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Knox is still a controversial figure. I am standing in the magnificent structure of St.

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Giles Church where Knox pastored just a few blocks from the Edinburgh Castle on the

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Royal Mile. Edinburgh is a city full of monuments to great men. Yet we begin the account of John Knox's life here because he is buried in a parking lot beside the church.

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Very little is known of Knox's early life. Even the date of his birth is difficult to pin down, falling somewhere between 1505 and 1514.

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He was born in Haddington, about 20 miles east of Edinburgh. John Knox's father was a farmer and his mother died while he was a child.

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He attended university and was ordained as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church in the year 1536.

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He was a papal notary or a church lawyer. However, Knox was not destined to remain in this position for long.

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In 1543, he left this post and began tutoring two boys whose fathers had both embraced the teachings of the

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Protestant Reformation. Now, Knox taking this position seems to indicate that he too was beginning to rethink spiritual matters.

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Like most of the early Reformers, John Knox doesn't give us much detail about his conversion.

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We do have a few significant hints. One is found at the end of his life. On his deathbed, he asked his wife to read to him from the

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Gospel of John, chapter 17 and verse 3. He described that passage as the place where he first cast the anchor of his soul.

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The passage contains a portion of Jesus' prayer prior to going to the cross, where he says to his father,

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This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

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Now, exactly when John Knox cast the anchor of his soul on Christ is not known.

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But we do know that his conversion occurred in connection with his friendship with a

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Protestant preacher named George Wishart. George Wishart was a young man who, in 1538, fled to England, fearing for his life after teaching the

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Greek New Testament to his students. He remained there for six years, studying at the

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University of Cambridge. In 1544, he returned to Scotland and preached with great effect.

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Knox and Wishart became close friends, and Knox often accompanied him when he preached.

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In fact, after an assassination attempt on Wishart, Knox acted the part of a bodyguard and followed him about armed with a two -handed broadsword.

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Sadly, their friendship was short -lived. But for that part of the story, we must travel north to the city of St.

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Andrews. George Wishart's preaching aroused the hatred of the

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Roman Catholic Cardinal David Beaton, who was Archbishop of St. Andrews and one of the wealthiest men in the region.

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He was directly responsible for the deaths of Protestant men and women. So it is not surprising that he had

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Wishart arrested and tried for heresy. On the 1st of March, 1546,

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George Wishart was burned at the stake. His martyrdom occurred here in St. Andrews, and it is commemorated by a martyr's plaque.

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Wishart feared such actions would be taken against him, and on the night that he was arrested, he protected

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John Knox by sending him home, telling him that one person was sufficient for a sacrifice.

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When we hear of men and women being willing to die for the sake of reforming the Church, it ought to raise the question, what was so wrong with Roman Catholicism in Scotland?

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While there are differing opinions on how to answer that question, historians are generally agreed regarding the fundamental issues.

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First, many of the priests were not educated. Some could not even read English or Latin.

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The problem was made worse because the people were forbidden to have a Bible in their own language. The result was that ignorance of the true

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God and of His gospel was widespread, even among those who were devout. It was often a case of the blind leading the blind.

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Also, immorality was a problem. The priests were notorious for sexual misconduct. Cardinal Beaton himself was known to have fathered nearly 20 illegitimate children.

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And many of the Church leaders were characterized by extreme luxury and greed. Perhaps it was inevitable, given the fact that over one half of Scotland's wealth was in the hands of the

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Roman Catholic Church. But these were symptoms of a greater problem. The reformers were also concerned with the doctrinal errors in the

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Roman Catholic system. The people were taught that forgiveness of sins for the living and the dead could be obtained through the sacrifice of the mass.

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And, of course, a reduction of time in purgatory could be purchased. Mary and the saints were considered as mediators, in addition to Jesus, between humanity and God.

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The Roman Catholic leadership recognized many of these problems, but their response was inadequate.

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They were reluctant to deal with the root errors, wrong views of God, the gospel, and the

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Church. Instead, they attempted to cure the problem with a superficial change. And those who insisted upon a more thorough reform often met with violent resistance.

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In fact, in Scotland between 1528 and 1560, 20 people were burned at the stake for attempting to address these very problems.

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Behind me is the ruins of St. Andrew's Castle, once the impressive home of Cardinal Beaton. After the martyrdom of George Wishart, the people were enraged, and a small group of men snuck into the castle and murdered the archbishop.

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Fearing the response of the Scottish authorities, they decided to take shelter in this castle. The castle also became a safe haven for Protestants who, although they had nothing to do with the murder, they feared persecution.

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Knox took his pupils and lived with them here. Over time, the refugees heard Knox teaching the scriptures to the boys and recognized his spiritual abilities.

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They gathered one day and asked him to consider being their pastor. John Knox refused.

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Weeping, he ran from the meeting and hid himself for days. Why did this man, who so often appeared fearless, fear taking this position?

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It was because John Knox had come to know the truth about God. Remember that before knowing the

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God of the Bible, he was perfectly willing to be a priest. But now, the thought of representing the living

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God overwhelmed him. After days of isolation and prayer, he finally agreed to accept the call to pastor.

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Through the many hardships that were ahead of him, John Knox never turned back from this decision. Knox's labors among the refugees sadly did not last long.

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While the castle's fortifications were strong enough to repel the Scottish troops sent to capture the murderers, the castle could not endure the constant bombardment of the

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French Navy, which had come to help put down the Protestant uprising. 21

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French galleys came to the aid of the Scottish Catholic forces. The castle surrendered.

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All of the men were taken as prisoners and forced to row in the French galleys. John Knox was one of these.

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Life on a galley was wretched. The ship was propelled by 50 oars, with three men chained to each oar.

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They sat on wooden benches. They had no roof over their head. They baked in the summer and froze in the winter.

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Disease was rampant, due in part to the lack of sanitation. Death was expected.

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John Knox himself was often on the verge of death, but he assured his fellow prisoners that God would one day restore him to his homeland, where he would again preach the gospel of Christ.

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In 1549, 19 months later, John Knox was released. This week, you will be considering the kind of God that makes a man dissatisfied with empty religion, that makes him tremble, and that sustains him in the midst of hopeless situations.

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Last week, we talked about King David and his determination to meditate upon, to contemplate the glorious splendor of God's majesty.

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After a week of studying God's attributes, we need to face the question, how can truths like these be made practical in my life?

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The 17th century Puritan pastor Thomas Manton wrote this, We do not meditate that we may rest in contemplation, but in order to obedience.

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And we would agree with a statement like that. Meditating on God is not merely for us to enjoy the rest of contemplation.

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It's meant to move us to obedience. But how do we get from the study, from the workbook, from the pages of scripture to Monday morning?

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There's always a danger involved in a study like this, where we're giving attention to biblical doctrine, which is important.

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But biblical doctrine becomes a destination rather than a road to a destination.

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Instead of being just important, biblical doctrine becomes everything.

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When truths are studied and understood and even emotionally appreciated, but not lived upon, they become stale and stagnant, like a river that has been diverted in its course and it creates a swamp.

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All the vitality, all the beauty of the river is gone. Knowing God can be the greatest adventure presented to us.

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But when we don't apply the things He's teaching us day after day, then we become disillusioned.

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Christianity becomes stale and stagnant. And the enemy comes alongside of us and he whispers to us, and he says to us,

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I'm sorry to have to say this to you. While Christianity is a noble profession, well, this is really all

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Christ truly offers. And if you believe Him and the disillusionment settles, it's not that you quit

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Christianity altogether, but you do quit yearning, hoping, stretching, you begin to fill up again on the world.

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Perhaps we should stop and ask ourselves, is that where we're at right now? Does the thought of 12 weeks of serious study of the attributes of God honestly seem to you to be a bit of a drag?

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Just not really worth it. Now the cure to this disillusionment is to get back to the life of a follower.

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Christianity is really not a student in a classroom in a desk. It's really a journey with the

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King. And each day He is revealing Himself to us. He's showing us where to walk. And each day we have the opportunity, by the great aid of the

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King, to respond wholeheartedly. We want to take the truths we are learning, dust them off with hard work, and make room in the life for application.

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Even if you have to use a pickaxe and a piece of spiritual dynamite, we cannot afford to allow the truths that God is giving to us to remain on the surface of life.

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One of the problems we encounter when we really get serious about applying these things is the issue of complexity.

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The Scripture is pretty complex at times. There's a lot of things about God that we want to learn. But also, human life is complex.

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We hear sermons, there's a lot of good points, Monday morning comes, we can't remember them.

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Simplicity is a real friend to the Christian here. The Bible often gives us truths in pictures or metaphors.

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And I think of these as portable libraries. They contain a lot of truth, but in just a few words.

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They're great for people on the move. They're great for people on a battlefield. We can't imagine bringing a large library onto a battlefield.

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We couldn't imagine carrying all the books behind me on a hike. But just a small book, just a few words.

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Today we're going to get help from one of the greatest pastors ever, Paul. Now in Paul's New Testament letters, he helps us to understand what truths are there that are so significant for us.

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And not only what are they, but how do we bring them down into everyday life. In the first chapter, in his letter to the

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Colossians, Paul lays out some of the brightest truths about Christ's deity. This is what he says.

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In chapter 1, verse 15, He is, Christ is, the image of the invisible

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God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

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All things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

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He is also head of the body, the church, and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place or preeminence in everything.

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Now go back over just quickly that list. Paul says Christ, your Christ, is the image of a

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God that is otherwise invisible. He is the firstborn or the heir of all creation.

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He created all things. He is sustaining and holding together all things.

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He existed before all things, and all things are for Him.

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With regard to the church, He's her head, the governmental head, the living head, representative head.

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He is also the firstborn from the dead. That is, He is the beginning of the great resurrection.

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And all of this, all of this godness is united to the human body and soul of Jesus of Nazareth in the person of God's Son for the purpose of that Son being preeminent, having first place.

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Where? Well, not just in the church, not just in Sunday morning services, but all across creation.

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After those heights, Paul expresses a very deep concern for this young church.

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He wants them to take the truths that he's just given them and to find in them courage and to be knit together in love around those truths and even to reach the riches that come only in a full assurance and understanding of the mysteries that are revealed through Christ.

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Paul sees the young church of Colossae as being in danger, and it's very strange the way he describes this in chapter 2 and verse 8.

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He says this, See to it that no one takes you captive. Now, the word there is kidnap.

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See to it, he says. Now, that's a command. It's not just a suggestion. See to it. Take great care, church.

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Don't let anyone kidnap you. But he's not talking about Roman persecutors, Jewish persecutors.

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He's talking about false teachers who come in and say, I'm a Christian, but I have a little different slant on things.

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You need to add something to this Jesus for fullness of life. And Paul says that these false teachers are kidnapping

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Christians. Now, how do you prevent this? Well, Paul gives them some very practical counsel.

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In the two verses that precede that command, he employs four metaphors or four very simple pictures of what we might call

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Christian progress, Christian growth. And these are the pictures we're going to be looking at.

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We'll use them in the coming weeks in the workbook to ask ourselves, are we really being very practical in the way that we're applying the truths about God?

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Now, the passage I want to call your attention to now is found in Colossians 2, verse 6 and 7.

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Let me read that to you. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the

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Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed.

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And overflowing with gratitude. Let me sum it up.

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Having received Christ, you're to walk in those realities. That is, having been rooted in them, continue to sink roots into Christ.

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Now, build a life with the truths of Christ and get yourself established in the faith.

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Not in your own belief system, but in the great realities, the faith, the content of the

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Christian message that was brought to them through the gospel. And you're to do all four of those things, overflowing with gratitude.

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So these four metaphors, walk, root, build, and establish, and doing all of that with gratitude.

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You can take this picture that Paul gives with a very specific application here to the Colossians, and you can back up from the passage and apply it to any of the truths that God gives us in the

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Bible. Walk in those truths. Root yourself in the truths. Build a life with those truths.

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Make sure you are established in those truths. And as you do that, let there be a gratitude that flows out.

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Well, we want to look at those four pictures, but really, none of them is the starting place. There is another starting place.

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It's in the statement that he gives before he describes them when he says, You have received

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Christ. That's essential. If we skip that statement because it just sounds religious to us, well, having received

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Christ, well, of course we've received Christ. Now, here's what you do. Good. We like lists.

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Give me a list of things to do. So are you telling me if I do these four things, and I do it with gratitude, then

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I'll be the right kind of person? No. Having received Christ, you are able to walk, root yourself, build and establish a life on these truths with gratitude.

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But what is it to receive Christ? If you skip this, and you rush on to doing things, then no matter how hard you work at those four pictures, you will be disqualified in the end.

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So let's ask ourselves, have we received Christ? Well, first of all, which

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Christ? Well, the Christ that he just described in verses 15 through 18. There are a number of Jesuses that are offered to us today.

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You can pick a Christ in a sense that fits you. But do you want to do that?

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Because if you receive a Christ that is not the Christ that Paul is talking about, then it's all for nothing.

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So have you received a Christ that is that magnificent? Have you met that person, the image of God, the creator, the sustainer?

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The reason for everything is that the Jesus you've received. Have you received him, reached out by faith, and grabbed hold?

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Everything you know of yourself, handed over? Everything you've learned about him, taken to yourself?

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It's not a perfect faith, perfect repentance, but it's real. In Colossians 1,

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Paul talks about when the gospel came to them, how they responded. He says this,

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We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and the love which you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth the gospel, which has come to you just as in all the world also.

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It is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth.

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Now that's Paul's description. Is that us? Have we received Christ in such a way that you have a faith that could be reported?

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Paul heard the reports of their faith. Do you have a love? Do you have a love for Christians that could be heard about?

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Is there not a perfect, but a genuine and continual production of Christlike fruit in you?

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Are you being changed? Have you ever come to an end of yourself?

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Have you ever been shrunk by the immensity of Christ? Have you ever seen the dirt of your soul in the light of His purity?

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Have you ever come to the end of all of your religious schemes for fixing yourself?

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Have you received Christ? Now that's the starting place. For those of you that say, yes, by the grace of God, I have received

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Christ, then there are four pictures. First, you must walk in His truth.

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Every time we open the scriptures and God reveals Himself to us, we're going to have to make sure that we walk in those truths.

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We're going to have to walk in the truth of His infinite character, of His all -power, of His all -presence.

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We're going to have to walk in the truth of His self -existence. What does this mean? Well, two main things come to mind.

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Obviously, Paul is using a metaphor. He's not really interested in how many steps you're taking each day.

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We have our devices on our wrist and we can count how many steps we've done.

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Are we being healthy or not? But that's not what Paul's talking about, is he? What is a walk?

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It's a lifestyle. In other words, the countless common choices we make every day that we don't even think about.

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That's our walk. Not really the important choices. Not really the very spiritual choices.

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Just the normal stuff. The thousands of normal events that make up a life.

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If we don't take the truths that we're learning about God and bring them down into the common, unimportant, insignificant, inappearance kind of choices, then our

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Christianity is only lived on a Sunday morning or in a quiet time. Walk also has the idea of a destination.

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The first century Christian was probably not getting up early to walk for his exercise.

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This is not a treadmill. What's the difference between a treadmill and a walk? Well, a treadmill is like walking, isn't it?

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You're going through all the same motions. It's not a lack of effort. A treadmill can require a lot of effort.

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There's a lot of sweat in that. And you're very diligent and you're there. It's not a lack of time. You're walking, you're walking.

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It's not a lack of footsteps. But the difference between the treadmill and a walk that Paul's talking about is the treadmill is what you do for self -improvement.

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I'd like to be more healthy. I'd like to lose some weight. But Paul was talking about walking, not for self -improvement, but to arrive at a destination, to get somewhere.

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You have a definite destination with every single truth that God is going to reveal of himself to you through the

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Scriptures. The destination is love. Love to God. Love to man.

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To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. To love the person next to you like you love yourself.

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How are you going to do that? Well, you're going to have to take the truth of God's character. You're going to have to look at the weight of his majesty.

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And by the grace of God, you're going to bring it down into those everyday little choices so that the destination of loving is reached.

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Second picture, roots. Being rooted in Christ.

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Now, Paul was talking about a positional change. God took you out of Adam and put you in Christ.

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God took you out of the old life and brought you into the new realm. That's a positional change.

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You couldn't have done that for yourself. But if we take that metaphor, having been rooted in Christ, having been planted in the soil of Jesus of Nazareth, he's my life.

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It just makes sense that every day we sink down our roots purposefully into Christ, into the truths of God.

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We nourish our souls on God. Think about the table that God provides.

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He provides a table that you can come to no matter how poor you are. Isaiah 55,

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Oh, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come buy and eat.

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Come buy wine and milk without money, without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread?

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And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good and delight yourself in abundance.

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You see the picture. The poorest believer can come again and again to the table, to the feast that God provides and sit at the table, can sink their roots again in God.

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The fact that you're having a hard time doesn't keep you from this table. Psalm 23, David says,

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God, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. There's a war going on.

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Battlefields are not normally a place where people set up nice banquets. You have an MRE, a meal ready to eat.

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They don't taste good, but they're portable and they last a long time. But God doesn't treat his soldiers that way.

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In the middle of the battle, there's a great table. Christ, the realities of God, they're yours now.

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And he feeds us even when everything around us is in turmoil. No room for excuses.

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Set the roots of your soul in these truths that you're going to be studying or else it'll just stay in the area of concepts.

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If you don't do that, then you will sink the roots of your soul in something else, won't you?

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Junk food. It's like rushing out. You're late for work. Perhaps your wife says, I made your breakfast.

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You say, sorry, honey, I can't make it. I'll grab something on the way. And it's always the same thing, right? A donut, cup of coffee, something that later you might regret.

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It's all right to do every once in a while for breakfast. You might even do it on purpose. But for the soul to neglect sinking its roots down in the truths of God and therefore having to find something to live for in the world, it's a dangerous thing.

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Rooted. Third, building up a life on this truth. God's work for us at the cross, it's the foundation.

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So we're not going to add to the foundation no matter how diligent we are. You're not going to make yourself more acceptable to God.

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You're not going to earn his love. But he does give you truths like bricks, and you are to build by his help on that foundation.

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We are not allowed to face God at the end and say, God, we're very grateful. You gave us a wonderful foundation.

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And God looks at the life. And what did you do? Did you work outward? Did you work out your salvation with fear and trembling?

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Oh, no, Lord, I just appreciate the foundation. But I gave you all these truths. Did you build on them?

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No. Every area of the Christian life, as we study these things about God, these perfections, you're going to have to build something with it.

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Think about your own life as an individual, your leisure thoughts. They tell a lot about us. Not what we think when someone's requiring us to think.

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We're at work. We have to think about work. But what happens when you're off work? No one's clamoring for your attention.

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Where does your mind drift to? Do you build a godly thought life with the truths that you're learning about God?

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What about your words? Are they being built on these truths? What about your list of don'ts or, more importantly, your

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Christian list of do's? Are they being affected by these truths? Every area of the personal life, then there's family.

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The plans that I have for my children or grandchildren. The way I treat my spouse. The way

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I respond to my siblings or to my parents. We usually do this based on what we see around us.

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If we grew up with a certain pattern in marriage as children, now we tend to reproduce that.

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But what if we were to take the truths that we're learning about God and instead of going and buying a marriage book, we took the character of God and by the grace of God, we brought it home.

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And like bricks, we built a marriage with these. And it changed us.

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The workplace. How does a Christian look different than a non -Christian? The church.

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Objective truths of God become part of our living experience when we take them, like stones or bricks, and we build our life with them.

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Now, let me ask you a question. At the end of 12 weeks, will there be a new construction project in your life, spiritually?

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I don't mean will it be complete and perfect, but will it be there? Or will it just be a pile of bricks that you have from another church study?

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Good intentions. They're never enough. Not in Christianity. A fourth picture.

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Being established in His truth. Now, this is the idea of maturity. Established.

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You are established in the faith, in that great body of truth that came to you in the gospel, which is contained in this book.

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We need to take the truths of God that we're studying, and we need to become mature in them.

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We've got to get firmly established. We've got to grow up in our Christian thinking.

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We're not to be tossed about like a wave, James says. We're not to be like children, easily diverted off course.

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How does that happen? Well, we have to study. We study the fine print of Scripture.

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We get to know God from every chapter of this book. We're not satisfied with half -digested concepts.

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We want to know God. How does this really apply to me? What is this saying about you?

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About life? So we try to get to the bottom of these great truths, and we follow them out to their conclusion.

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Until they're part of our lives. Hebrews, chapter 5. Hebrews is a book about maturing and persevering, about being established, not tossed about.

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The young Christians in that day from a Jewish background were being tempted to go back. Jesus plus the rituals of the

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Old Covenant. And so the book of Hebrews was written to call them forward. Christ is enough.

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Christ alone. In chapter 5, at the end of that chapter, the writer tells us that there are some people that never really progress in spiritual maturity because they don't apply the truths that they're learning, and they never get good thinking.

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They're always a bit confused. They ought to be beyond milk, but they're still with the milk. They ought to be beyond the basic topics, but they can't get beyond the basic topics because they haven't applied what

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God said previously. It's the person, Psalm 111 tells us, that applies the

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Word of God that really understands God. To be mature in every truth that God reveals about Himself, in every attribute.

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To refuse to be childish in any of them. To be anchored.

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To be clear. I don't think we could say that the Western church is known for spiritual maturity.

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We kind of stumble back and forth, chasing after the newest fad that will fix us.

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But Paul tells us we need to be mature. Finally, we're to do these with an overflowing gratitude.

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So imagine a person. They take the objective truths of God that they're looking at. They see these attributes, and they bring them home.

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They try to understand them. They do their workbook. They try to walk in them and build on them and sink roots down in them.

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They try to get mature, anchored souls in them. But they're not happy, and they're not grateful.

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And God is not pleased. It is impossible to really progress as a Christian without gratitude.

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Now, for the unbeliever who holds Jesus Christ at a safe distance, what they feel is a safe distance,

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Every truth you learn about God in the Scripture is a terrifying reality, isn't it?

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You know the statement that Paul makes in Romans 8, If God is for us, who can be against us? Have you ever thought that you must flip that statement?

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If God is against you, what does it matter who's for you? Well, you begin to study

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God, and you see who He is. It's a terrifying thing to think that that is the

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God that I'm holding off. That is the God I'm at war with. But for the Christian, every one of these truths,

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This is my God. This is my King. This is my friend, my

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Savior, my Father. And there ought to be a deep -seated gratitude in us.

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So all the application of those four pictures is wonderfully flavored with happiness.

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Do the truths of Christianity make you grateful?

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Are the things you're reading about God making you grateful? Are you known as a grateful

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Christian? In Deuteronomy 28, God said to the people through Moses, Because you did not serve the

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Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the

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Lord will send against you, in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and in the lack of all things.

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Think about it. When we see the truths of God in the Scripture, we can apply them.

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But if we're grumbling and dissatisfied, God will hand us over to the old masters, to the old sins, and we will serve the old sins miserably, because they never give us what they promised.

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But as we see who God is, our hearts are moved to gratitude. And we're grateful that we belong to Him.

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And there's joy. Don't let yourself be kidnapped, Paul says.

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Take the truths you're learning. Contemplate them. Walk in them. Get rooted in them.

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Build with them. Be established in them. And do it with gratitude. Let's pray.

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Our glorious King, You are the ultimate realist, and we want nothing to do with a religion.

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It is unreal. We want nothing to do with religious talk that has no substance.

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Father, we plead with You not to let us to be a people who look into Your Word and remain unchanged.

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We don't want to meditate simply so we can enjoy the concepts of Scripture, but we want to be transformed.

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Our walk, everything. God, don't let us have mouths full of Christian words, but lives that lack change.

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So teach us, God, as You've taught others before us, to be doers of what we're learning.

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For Jesus' honor, we pray. To say that God is self -existent is to say that He is the uncreated creator of all things.

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Everything we know in the universe has been created by God. He alone is not from someone else.

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So a child will ask, Well, who made God? Or an atheist might say, Well, then where did God come from?

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And the answer is He doesn't come from anywhere. He is from Himself, He is of Himself. So that His existence is absolutely necessary.

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It's not derived from anyone else. He simply is. This is why He says, I am who I am. He's given.

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So to be self -existent is to be the one who's not made and doesn't owe His existence to anybody else.

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He has no life -support system that He hangs upon, that He needs in any way.

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In Him is life, and He has been the eternally self -sufficient

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One. But the wonder of the God that we know is that He is not alone, that He is

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Father, that He is Son, and that He is Holy Spirit. And there's no other

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God, not only like Him, there's really no other God. So as Ventile would say, we believe in the creator -creature distinction with a solid line in between the two.

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It's a whole different way of thinking for us because we can't comprehend God. He's essentially incomprehensible.

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As Luther said, He's a knowable, unknowable God. We know Him as far as we need to know Him to be saved, but even in heaven, as much as we know of God, He's still going to be beyond our total comprehension.

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So I think sometimes when we lose that right kind of joyful seriousness in our gatherings, it suggests a familiarity with God which is forgetting quite how different He is.

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And this God then is without beginning and without dependence and is self -sufficient for all

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His needs. He is self -sufficient in His delight and in His peace.

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He's not a God who, for example, is at all troubled by neuroses.

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He has no worries. He has no depressions. He is the ever -blessed

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God. I think if we gathered together mindful of the self -existence of God, we would do so filled with joy and with reverence as well as we come to worship

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Him together. Worship of God needs to exalt

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God. And as a preacher, no matter how much you exalt God in His solitariness, in His wonder, in His glory, in His unity, in His attributes, when you get done preaching, actually the more you exalt

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Him, the more you feel how little you've exalted Him. And you say to yourself, I've just barely scratched the surface of this majestic God.

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His majesty permeates all His attributes, all His character.

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It's all majestic because He's God and there's none else. And in a sense, when we sin, we are trying to un -God

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God and to make ourselves lords of our own lives. And we're forgetting the fact that we are from Him.

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So for our spirituality, understanding the self -existence of God is very important because it just reminds us of the greatness and the difference of God and how different He is from us.

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And that humbles us. So for the believer, I think it can bear great fruit to reflect on the self -existence of God in humbling us before Him and reminding us of His majesty.

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When a Christian really grasps the magnitude of the self -existence of God, a

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Christian's going to find all his security in a very changing world in that self -existent

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God because that God said, all things work together for good to those that love me. And I find then my strength and all my comforts in considering God, that God is, that God lives, that God will be forever and forever wise.

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He can never wrong me. He can never wrong those that are mine.

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He has caused goodness and mercy to follow me all the days of my life. This God, I cast myself on, on Him.

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Deep in unfathomable minds of never -failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works

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His sovereign will blind and belieficial to err and scan God's work in vain.

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God is His own interpreter and He will make it plain. This God, this

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God of infinite majesty, this God of self -sufficient power and authority and life, this