1689 London Baptist Confession (part 30)

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So last week we were talking about repentance and I just want to kind of quickly wrap that up.
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I'll be talking about it a little bit this evening as well. When we think about repentance, is there a difference between asking for forgiveness and repentance?
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Is there a difference between asking for forgiveness and repentance? Okay, so if you go back and do exactly the same thing again, then you didn't really repent because you didn't turn from your sin.
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So then my question would be, was the ask for forgiveness, was it genuine?
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Well, not if you go right back to the sin, right? Then it wasn't genuine. But what I'm getting at is if I ask
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Pastor Bob for forgiveness, is that the same thing as repentance? Okay, and what kind of situation would that be?
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Where you could ask for, or you could repent and not ask for forgiveness. Okay, I think that's pretty good.
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Forgiveness is more, asking for forgiveness is more between you and another person and repentance is more between you and God.
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So, you know, suppose, and I'm sure this never happens to any of you, but suppose you sin with your mind.
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Who would you ask forgiveness of? Right, the Lord, which in effect is repentance because, first of all, nobody else would know about it.
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But I mean, forgiveness is right too, you know, but if you think about 1 John 1 .9, you know, if we are faithful to confess our sins,
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He is faithful to forgive us. So we're asking essentially for forgiveness. But when we say confess, it's important that we think rightly about what confession is.
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What is a biblical definition of confession? To agree with God.
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Okay, to say the same as. But, you know, which is the technical, the
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Greek term homilogeo, it means to say the same as. But it really is to agree with God, to view things the same way
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He does. So when we look at our sin the same way
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God looks at our sin. And how does He look at our sin? Does He look at it and go, nice try,
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Steve? You know, that wasn't so bad. How does
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God look at our sin? It doesn't take us too long reading the
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Bible to understand how God looks at our sin. He looks at our sin this way. He hates sin so much that He punished
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His Son. And that was the only way on the cross. And that was the only way to grant forgiveness to us was through the work of His Son on the cross.
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He hates sin that much. The price to pay for our sin is so high.
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We talked last week about faith and repentance. You know, and I asked this question.
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Is it possible to have faith, saving faith, and to not repent?
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The answer is no. And is it possible to repent and to not have saving faith?
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Can someone who's not saved repent? And the answer is no.
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Not in the biblical sense. Waldron said this, he says,
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Repentance and faith are so intimately connected that one cannot exist without the other.
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You cannot repent unless you believe. You cannot believe unless you repent. All true faith is repentance, and all true repentance is believing.
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We talked about how there's no temporal difference. You know, does faith precede repentance?
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Does repentance precede faith? And the answer is they're simultaneous.
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You can't separate them. There's no time factor involved there. We also talked about repentance being
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Godward. I think that was kind of hinted at. But if you think about repentance, true brokenness, we think about, say,
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Psalm 51 .4, and we think about how David says, Against thee and thee only have
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I sinned. There's a true, have I sinned. There's a brokenness, a Godward brokenness, an understanding of how we have sinned against God.
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Repentance is looking back on sin and hating it. Again, viewing it the same way God does.
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We talked, too, briefly about the difference between repentance and penance.
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And I don't know why, just the whole idea of penance. What is that, you know? If you say to somebody,
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What shall I do for penance? I mean, I almost think if I said to Janet, Janet, I've sinned against you.
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What could I do for penance? What does that sound like? Well, it sounds
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Catholic, but to me, if I said it, maybe it's just because it's me. It sounds sarcastic for me.
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Probably from Anthony, too. But here's the point, because what merit is there in penance?
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Even if I sin against my wife, what could I do to make up for what
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I've done? And she might say, buy chocolate, lots of chocolate.
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So, I mean, maybe it can.
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Okay, the person you're doing it for, so Janet just took herself out of the penance game.
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Good. Now, here's the thing, though. Does penance have any value?
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I mean, maybe it has some value in our personal relationships. Does it have any value towards God? Is there anything we can do to make up for our sin?
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Okay, well, restoration is always part of it. If you stole money and you pay it back, yes.
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But does that assuage the wrath of God? Does that make God any less upset about, angry about what we've done?
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And the answer is no, but it can show repentance, right, which is good. But our penance, penance really,
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I think if we, let me see if I have the, yeah, well, it's because it goes, you know, when we think about penance,
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I mean, when I think about penance, I'm thinking about the
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Roman Catholic system. And it's, you know, putting ourselves through some kind of suffering in order to make up for what we've done.
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Yeah. Yeah, when, in fact, what is that, like Acts 2 .38
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or somewhere in there? Peter gets done preaching on the day of Pentecost.
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Let's just look at that because it is fascinating. Here we have the man
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Catholics like to say is the first pope. And I think he acts fairly un -Catholic like.
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So he gets done, and it's verse 37 of Acts 2. He's just finished preaching there in verse 36, giving them the gospel on the day of Pentecost.
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And verse 37. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart.
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Run through, as it were, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do?
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Perfect time for the pope to say what? Yeah. Here.
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Ten are fathers, ten hail Mary's. Go and sin no more. But he doesn't do that.
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Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you. And, you know, this is great. Why? Because, as we're talking about repentance, repent.
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Well, is this different than believe? No. They've been crushed by this. They recognize the weight of their sin for how, as a nation, they've rejected
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Jesus. So, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. Not crawl across broken glass.
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Not make the pilgrimage to Rome. Not anything else other than repent.
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Excellent point. I mean, because when he says repent, they're not just repenting over their remorse, or their sin, or whatever else.
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They're having a change of mind about who Jesus is. This is the man that they just mocked.
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They scorned, they crucified, and now they're to take him as their
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Savior, as the sin bearer, as their representative, and as their
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God. So, everything they rejected, now they are accepting. And what is that but a change of mind?
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Repentance. Good. A couple of other things from the confession before we move on to good works.
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It says, And I read that, and I just thought, how do
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I do that? Do I have a little diary? Just going to keep track of my particular sins so that I can...
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How do you do that? How do you repent of your particular sins particularly?
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We want to just do, you know, Lord forgive me for my... You know, the generic, forgive me.
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How do we repent of our particular sins particularly? How do we do that?
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Okay. So, to basically sort of reflect on our lives, on our days, or whatever, and repent as those things come to mind.
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Okay. Charlie. Okay. And I think one thing you said there is particularly helpful.
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And that's the idea of keeping, what, short accounts, right? In other words,
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I think for most of us, we know... Do we always know when we're in sin?
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Maybe not. But usually do we know? I think we usually know.
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You know, why? And here's, you know, just true insights into Steve this morning.
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I know when I'm, you know, in sin because I've let my emotions get the better of me.
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Okay. I've, you know, I've acted in haste. I've not taken that moment to pause and think, okay, do
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I really want to say this? Do I really want to do this? You know, what's going on right now? Why don't
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I just hold up for a minute? So I think I usually know.
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I don't always know, probably. But I think we usually know. But I think the idea of keeping short accounts is a good one.
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Yeah, I think the Holy Spirit is good about... In fact, we're going to be talking about the work of the
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Holy Spirit even as we talk about good works. But yeah, I think the Holy Spirit convicts us.
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You know, it's like I say, even as a young child, I can remember doing things, knowing that I wasn't supposed to.
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I mean, it's weird how you can remember some things. I probably don't remember half the fun I had when I was a kid, but I can remember the sinful things
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I did. And mostly what I remember, I think I confessed my burglary earlier, and I don't really remember.
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You know, they didn't take my mugshot. I think I was really just like five or six or whatever. But I can remember like alarm bells going off, but I was a kid.
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You know, I just didn't think anything about it. But even so, I knew my conscience was, you know, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, but I was having fun.
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So I think generally we're aware of that. Okay, we're going to move on to good works.
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Let's talk about good works. And it's interesting how the confession sort of moves in a logical manner and how it develops things.
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And good works come after repentance. Well, you can't, you know, let's just put it this way.
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Let's just start with this. Is there such thing as a good work from an unbeliever?
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The answer is no. Why? Because without faith it is impossible to please
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God. So if we understand that, then, and we understand that repentance is the flip side of saving faith.
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You can't have saving faith without repenting. You can't repent without having saving faith. Then it's logical then to look at good works which flow out of a repentant heart, which flow out of a saved life.
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This is just what believers do. Believers have good works. And we're going to discuss that here.
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First, just reading the first paragraph of the confession, what it says about good works. Good works are only such as God hath commanded in his holy word, and not such as without the warrant thereof are devised by men out of blind zeal or upon any pretense of good intentions.
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What does that mean? Well, that's what we're going to talk about. What makes a work good?
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Okay, done with the sole purpose of bringing glory to God. Let's close in prayer. Who decides that a work is good?
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God. And that's what the confession says. Good works are only such as God hath commanded in his holy word.
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I like the second part of it, though, where it says, and not such as without the warrant thereof, in other words, not commanded in his word, are devised by men out of blind zeal or upon any pretense of good intentions.
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Now, what's the background of the 1689 Confession of Faith? I'll get to you in a second.
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1677. But what's the background of it besides the
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Westminster Confession of Faith? Well, you know, in other words, why does the confession even exist? Okay.
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It's contra Rome, right? It's against the Roman Catholic Church. So, when you read that part, and not such as without the warrant thereof, in other words, not commanded in his holy word, are devised by men out of blind zeal.
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Does this sound like a godly pursuit? Blind zeal? No. Or upon any pretense.
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When somebody says, I think you did that under a pretense. Is that a good thing?
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No. No, it's not. I'll give you that hint. And so it says, or upon any pretense of good intentions, in other words, a facade of righteousness.
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So, when I read that, I'm just like, okay, this is Tetzel walking through the street selling indulgences.
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This is, you know, the pilgrims in Rome crawling across broken glass or, you know, going on their knees up the stairs there to make penance.
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These are good works, some say. But again, going back to this, good works are only such as what
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God has said in his word. That's it. There's nothing else. All these other things are made up, and they have no value whatsoever.
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And so when we see what 1689 says, against the expansive understanding of good works that Rome gives, we can understand why it's written the way it is.
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R .C. Sproul says, a good work is good because God says it is good, not because we say it is good.
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He says, we can describe good works as the opposite of bad works or sin, just like bad works.
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Good works are defined by the law. Bad works involve sin, which is lack of conformity to or transgression of the law of God.
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Conversely, good works involve conformity to and the obeying of the law of God.
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Let's look at Luke 18. Luke 18.
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R .C. picks up on something here that Jesus does with the rich young ruler.
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Luke 18 verse 18. In fact, would somebody read 18 through 23?
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Luke 18 verses 18 and 23. Go ahead, Johnny, or eternally rich. Well, not yet anyway.
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You know, just as an aside, how many times have you been dealing with an unbeliever and have them say something like, well, you know,
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Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had and give it to the poor. Therefore you should give or sell everything that you have and give it to the poor.
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You ever heard that? And I just think I was thinking about this yesterday and I decided, well, let's just carry that out to his logical conclusion.
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Everybody who has anything sells all that they have and give it to the poor. Well, then the poor are no longer poor, right?
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They're the ones who have everything. Then they have to follow the command to sell all that they have and give it to the poor, which used to be the people who had everything.
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It's, I mean, it is kind of like a bizarre, bizarro world Marxism, right? Okay. Today you have everything.
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Tomorrow I'll have everything and we'll just go back and forth. Be fun. Anyway, I digress because I like that.
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I guess the question he asks, what do I have to do to get to heaven?
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Right? He says, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What's wrong with that?
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What's that? You can't do anything. There's a major malfunction there.
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You know, you want you. And so Jesus, does Jesus answer that question? At least directly.
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I mean, in a sense, it reminds me of when, you know, Nicodemus comes to him and ask him a question and Jesus doesn't answer his question directly.
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He doesn't answer this one. I mean, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
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He could have said, there's nothing you could do. Just believe in me. He doesn't say that. He doesn't immediately say, you know, keep the law.
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What does he say? He says, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
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And R .C. says, you know, in the study of good works, this should be the major premise. Our major premise as we're studying good works is this.
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Only God is good. Only God is good. What we do,
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I think it'd be pretty hard to find, you know, well, let me just ask you, you know, let's see, see a show of hands.
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How many of you have ever done something good out of a purely good intention, motive, and desire?
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Go ahead. Let's show hands. Okay, only me. So, I mean, that's, that's when we think about that, that's an incredible standard, isn't it?
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I agree. I mean, that's just like unbelievable. Wow.
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Really adding. Let's, let's look at Romans three.
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I mean, this is familiar to us, but I think worthwhile to remind ourselves.
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And what really, you know, as you study, or as we study the 1689, what kind of, that the main thing, again, as we think about the contrast between Protestantism, the
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Reformation, the Reformation principles and Rome, the emphasis is going to be again and again and again on gospel principles about reminding ourselves of who
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God is and who we are so that we have that right view of ourselves and of God.
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Romans three versus 10 to 18, 10 to 18. And interestingly, and I'll just give you the spoiler.
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Now, the first three words are as it is written, or four words as it is written, and it comes from Psalm 14 and Psalm 14.
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Very interesting Psalm. But Romans three versus 10 to 18 was somebody read that.
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And I started thinking, I'm like, imagine going to a public school and reading this.
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Imagine going to work and reading that. What are people going to say besides, you know, separation of church and state or separation of corporation and church or whatever they want to say,
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Charlie, people are good.
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You're hurting our self esteem. How are we supposed to have any sense of self worth?
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If you're going to read that kind of thing, it's a, it's pretty harsh.
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No one does good. Their tongues are used to deceive all these terrible things.
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Now let me ask you another question. What would happen if you read this at most churches? The same thing.
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How can you say that? We're good people. We come here every week to get built up, not get torn down.
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If I wanted to hear that, I could go to, I don't know the local precinct. you know, that, that's just so negative.
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That's a, that's a total downer. We think too highly of ourselves, but now back to Luke 18, rich young ruler.
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And as Jesus goes through the commandments, he says, you know, after he's done with the, why do you call me good?
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And he goes back to the commandments. He starts saying, you know, these are the things that you need to do, right?
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What does he say? I mean, just listen to that list. He says, uh, you know, the commandments do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear a false witness.
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Honor your mother and father, father and mother. And as I read that list,
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I just thought, okay, what does Jesus do when he's talking about the sermon, or when he's speaking the sermon on the mount?
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And he says, you've heard it said, do not commit adultery, but I say to you.
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And so then he defines what the real meaning of adultery was. He defines what murder actually is, which is just hating someone enough to kill them.
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We read, we read these things. We understand that do not steal means don't even long for somebody else's goods.
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So you just think about these things and you think about the higher standard, you know, in the way that our hearts are deceitful and wicked, and we don't do what we want to do.
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And we think things that we ought not to think. And then you think about the temerity, the nerve of the rich young ruler who then says, all these
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I've kept for my youth. I mean, he might as well have had, you know, a giant neon light over his head, flashing liar, liar, liar, you know, pants on fire.
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I mean, he's just, he's completely gone. And does
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Jesus know that? Absolutely. So when he says, one thing you still lack, sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor because I'm all about social justice.
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That wasn't the reason why it wasn't. Verse 23, when he heard these things, he, the rich young ruler became very sad for he was extremely rich.
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What do I have to do to get to heaven? And what's the ultimate answer that Jesus is giving him?
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Yeah. Stop your idolatry. Stop worshiping the things that you have.
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Repent. Turn to God. Stop it. And instead he goes away.
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Sorrowful. Sproul says this. He says, Jesus didn't reply.
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You know, when he says that he's kept all those since his youth, I love this answer. Jesus didn't reply.
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Well, that is wonderful. It's a great thing to meet someone who is so obedient and righteous in this fallen and corrupt world.
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I've come to save those who have not kept the law from their youth, but I don't need to worry about you.
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And you don't need to worry about anything. You want to know how to inherit eternal life? Just keep on the way you are, son, because all who obey the law of God will go directly to heaven.
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Everybody who obeys the law of God will go directly to heaven. Is that true or false? If you perfectly obey the law of God, will you go to heaven?
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True. Will you? Can you?
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The answer is no. You can't. You won't. R .C.
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likes to talk about Martin Luther. And he talks about how
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Luther would go to the confessional. We know the story, how he'd go for two, three, four hours at a time, and he'd start to leave, and then he'd think of something else, and he'd go back in.
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Luther, before, as many of you know, before he went into the ministry, was studying for law, which, boy, he dodged a bullet on that one.
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But that love for the law gave him a focus and a zeal into studying the word and then thinking about the seriousness, the import, the exactitude of the law of God.
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So this is what Luther said. He said, I see Christ as an angry judge.
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You ask me if I love God. Love God? Sometimes I hate
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God, because every time I look at the law, I am stripped of my righteousness. I am stripped of my dignity.
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I am a worm and not a man. I hate it. And there we see that Luther understood, rightly, what the standard of God was, the perfection that God demanded, and he saw his own inability to keep the law, his failures, how the law was so high and he was so low.
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And I think the one thing that we can learn from Luther's confessional habits is, first of all, going and confessing your sin to a priest is a waste of time.
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But secondly, the law of God shows us one thing, that we are sinners.
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We're great sinners. R .C. Sproul said this, I fear the day of standing before Christ, talking about judgment, and having him look at me and say, here are the gifts
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I gave you. Here is the mind I gave you. And here is the sloppy performance you gave me with the gifts
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I gave you. That is my greatest fear. With each passing day
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I pray, I don't know how much time I have left in this world. Lord, please give me discipline and godly zeal to seek your truth and to stand forth no matter what.
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As we think about our own lives, do we love the Lord as we ought to, 24 -7, love the great commandment, love the
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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Do we do that? And the answer, of course, is no. So how do we measure ourselves?
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How do we look at ourselves? And I think for the most part, we set aside the law of God and we think, compared to other people,
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I'm doing pretty well. Listen to what R .C. says, and I think
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I posted part of this last night on Facebook because I just thought it was so good.
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He said, when I read Augustine, Calvin, Edwards, Warfield or Hodge, I realize that I am living in one of the most decadent periods in the history of the church.
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If I had lived in any other period in church history, I could not have been a minister, much less a theologian.
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Our church fathers were much superior to us and more zealous in giving their minds to God.
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That's R .C. Even our obedience is not often properly motivated.
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R .C. gives the example of a man who drives 55 miles an hour on the freeway.
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And one day he's actually pulled over by the highway patrol. And they pull him over on the freeway, 55.
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I guess this is rather dated when he wrote it because sometimes you can do 65 or 75. We don't have the national 55 mile an hour speed limit anymore.
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But he's pulled over by the highway patrol for driving 55 in a 55 mile an hour zone. And they give him a commendation for driving 55.
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He's very pleased with this. He's been awarded for driving 55 miles an hour.
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So then sometime later, he's driving in a school zone at 55 miles an hour.
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And they pull him over. He's speeding. He's way over the speed limit. And they go, what are you doing doing 55? And he's like,
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I like to drive 55 miles an hour. That's why I drive 55. He obeyed the law, was commended for it when he drove 55.
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But his motivation wasn't obeying the law. His motivation was what? I like to drive 55.
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Motivation matters. Why we obey God matters.
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If we're obeying either for the commendation of men or so that we think we look good or whatever, or if we're doing it because we just like obeying it, that has no value whatsoever.
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He goes on to ask some really hard questions. What is our standard of right?
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It ought to be the law of God. Well, what happens when the law of God and the law of man run into each other?
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And these days, it's getting more and more common. I mean, in 1973,
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I think it was, right, Roe v. Wade, abortion became legal. Does that make it moral? When the
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Supreme Court legalized by judicial fiat homosexual marriage, that made it legal.
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Did that make it moral? What does God's law say? What does the word of God say?
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What about there are many states right now legalizing marijuana? People say, well, that makes it okay.
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Does it? Does the word of God have anything to say about being sober minded?
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You're just a legalist. Okay. What does the law of God say?
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We are to mind the word of God. It's like I think part of our problem, part of the reason that the church is the way it is, first of all,
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I think the church is the way it is, and I'm not talking about Bethlehem Bible Church or necessarily anybody in this room.
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I'm talking about the church writ large, evangelicalism. One of the reasons why the church is the way it is today is because the church does not take the
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Bible seriously. You can go to any number of churches, and what do you find?
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Typically, the Bible is used as a launch point for whatever the pastor wants to talk about.
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And usually what he wants to talk about isn't all that important. I listened to a local service here.
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It was some time ago, and I couldn't even make it up. I'm watching, and I'm like, I don't even understand this.
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He spent the first 15 minutes of church talking about coffee. Now, I like that part. It was just when he got to the
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Bible that was problematic. The coffee part was really good. I thought this guy should be on TV.
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Well, he was on TV, kind of. Mankind, if we look at Romans 1, mankind has this proclivity, and it is to do what?
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To call evil good and good evil.
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When people make a stand for the sake of, you could call it righteousness.
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You could even say conscience. Somebody refuses to issue a marriage license to a homosexual couple.
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Now, legally, they're bound to do that because that's the law of the land. Morally, what would you say to somebody in that situation?
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What would you say to somebody in the situation who it's their job to give a marriage license to someone who's eligible to get married?
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And so a homosexual couple comes to them and wants to get married. What are they to do? What would you tell them?
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That's what I would have told them. Quit. If you're a doctor and you are ordered to perform an abortion, what do you do?
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If you're a doctor and the law of the land is to experiment on Jews, what do you do?
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What we can never conflate, what we can never join together, what we can never merge is the idea of morality and the law of the land.
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God sets the standard for what is right. He sets the standard for our conduct, for our good works, what is good and what is not.
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R .C. says this. He says, As my understanding increases of how wicked wickedness is, in other words, how sinful sin is, and how much
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God hates a particular form of behavior, the easier it is for me to avoid it.
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And he says, well, how do I do that? How do I learn to have the mind of Christ?
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How do I learn to view things as God views them? How do
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I learn to despise the things that God despises and love the things that God loves?
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How do I do that? Renewing of your mind, right?
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It's by absorbing, by being saturated, by meditating on the word of God.
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What do unsaved people do to salve their consciences? Even some
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Christians do to salve their consciences. They create their own systems of good, their own, how do
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I even want to say this, external systems, their extra
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God systems, extra biblical systems, systems that they create outside of the word of God because it makes them feel better.
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And if I say that, it's what every false religion does. Every false religion has some way to make people feel better about themselves, including
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Roman Catholicism. I feel better about myself because I went and confessed my sins to a sinner.
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I feel better about myself because I went through the rituals that they told me to go through. I feel better because I made my, can
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I even say hajj, you know, my pilgrimage to Rome. I feel better because I've seen all these relics and I know that, you know, they are going to infuse grace in me.
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I feel better because I ate the sacraments. I feel better whatever, you know, because I attended a marriage or I was involved in a marriage.
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False religions have rituals and systems to make us feel better about our own conduct instead of telling us this is the standard that God has set.
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You can't meet it. Only Christ can meet it for you. Okay.
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Thoughts, questions about good works before we close. Father, it is amazing to think that we appropriate the finished work of Christ, not by our own merits, not by the works that we do, but by believing in him, by trusting in his works, by investing ourselves entirely in him, in his life, his death, and his resurrection.
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Father, drive us to your word that we might see the glories therein and that we might be reminded again and again and again because we forget of what you call good.
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Let us never confuse the idea of legality with morality.
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You set the standard for what is moral. You set the standard for what is right and good and holy and pure, not any government.