The Abundant Life

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Now, I am an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and so, unfortunately, that means that the good folks of that church have learned to be sanctified in their holiness by having to endure me as a preacher.
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I am much more of a teacher and debater, I think, than a preacher, but I will ask you to join me in your sanctification in enduring my attempt this morning.
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If you turn with me to John chapter 10, I do unusual sermon series in the church.
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I did a series through the book of Hebrews over the past number of years, then
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I did a series on God's law, the holiness code. We tackled all the incredibly tough texts in God's law.
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Some of the ones that most people won't touch, the 10 -foot pole, but we felt it was necessary to do that type of thing. So now
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I just started a new sermon series, and I'm sort of going to give you somewhat of a preview even before our own people see the next section, but I can guarantee you it is the most unusual sermon series that anyone has ever preached in a
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Reformed Baptist church. Now I have set a few records for a Reformed Baptist. When I started the holiness code series,
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I began the first sermon by playing a clip from a television program over the speakers called the
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West Wing. I don't know if any of you have ever seen it. I never watched a single episode of it, even when it was on. I don't really watch a lot of TV, not because I'm holier than anybody else,
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I just don't have enough IQ points left to have it suck them right out of me. So it happens when you get this old, but there was a famous clip where the person representing the
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President of the United States just ripped into this woman who was supposed to be Dr. Laura Schlesinger, and he horrifically abused the law,
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God's law, to mock her statements in regards to a biblical view of sexuality.
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And so I actually played that during a sermon. Now that almost got me my
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Reformed Baptist card revoked by a number of folks, but I did it as an illustration of why do we need to do this series?
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Why do we need to think through these things? So I have somewhat of a record. In fact, I believe I am the only person who has ever preached from the pulpit of the
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Metropolitan Tabernacle in London using an electronic device, and I've never been invited back.
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So anyway, I have a feeling there is a connection there between the two. But the sermon series
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I've just begun at PRBC is based upon an ancient papyrus manuscript of the
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New Testament. In other words, it's P45, it's a manuscript that I'm studying right now.
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Originally, it was about 220 pages long, contained Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. We only have about 32, 33 pages of it left now, and it's fragmentary.
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But what I'm doing is if P45 contains the chapter, then we're going to preach through that chapter.
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And so we're going to let what, when you think about it, the ravages of time, and I would say God's providence,
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I think God intended us to have these great gifts, these ancient manuscripts, which increase our knowledge of the
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New Testament and our ability to defend it. But if it contains it, then we're going to be preaching it.
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And guess what? It contains John chapter 10. And so I start off there,
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I'll be going back eventually to Matthew. Why do it that way? Because my fellow elders are preaching through the parables right now, and we didn't want to end up basically doing the same text at the same time.
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So I may do John, then go into Acts for a while, and then go back to Matthew and Luke and cover those sections when we have the opportunity of doing so.
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Now, I've never heard of a sermon series that was determined by what is left of an ancient manuscript of the
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New Testament, but like I said, the people at PRBC have grown in their sanctification, or groaned,
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G -R -O -A -N -E -D, in their sanctification, and having me as one of those folks that, not every
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Sunday, but generally the last Sunday of the month is when they are afflicted with me.
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Now, John chapter 10, of course, just happens to be one of my, and probably one of your, favorite texts.
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When we think about chapters of the Bible that contain favorite texts, the Good Shepherd passage,
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I am come that might have life, my habit in abundance, overflowing. I give my life for the sheep,
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I and the Father are one. John chapter 10 contains some of the greatest theology of the book of John, and so a lot of us really appreciate it.
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But, unfortunately, because of the fact that we live in the modern period, most of us divide the
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New Testament up into discrete little chunks that no generations in the early church, the medieval church, would have ever thought of doing.
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What do I mean by that? Well, we've got John chapter 9, and then it's sort of its own little thing, and then you've got
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John chapter 10, its own thing, and then John chapter 11 with Lazarus, that's its own thing, and then
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John chapter 12, and those chapter and diverse divisions were not in the original
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Bible, of course. The chapter divisions started showing up in the
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Old Testament, the Jews sort of beat us to the punch on that, but the version that we have today with the chapters and verses that we have came about in 1551, a fellow by the name of Robert Estienne, or his
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Latin name was Stephanos, published the first Greek New Testament in 1551 that had the verse divisions that we use today.
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The chapter divisions came a couple centuries earlier than that. The reality is it's a flowing story, and we very often miss why
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Jesus is talking about the things that Jesus is talking about, because we don't see that flow anymore. But do you remember what
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John chapter 9 was about? John chapter 9 is about the man who is healed, and he's brought before the
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Jewish leaders, and they are basically trying to get him to confess that Jesus is a sinner, and he is besting them, basically by saying, well, look at me.
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I was blind, now I can see whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know, but look what he can do.
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And he's cast out eventually, and Jesus finds him, which I find interesting. He didn't find
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Jesus, but Jesus finds him. And when he reveals himself to him, there is, on the part of the
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Pharisees, this reaction. They recognize, by what Jesus has said to this man, his acceptance of this man, and this man's worship of him, there is this recognition on their part, well, are you saying that we are blind?
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And Jesus, in essence, says, if you said that you, since you say you can see, then your sin remains, and that's the direct lead -in into Jesus' discussion of the good shepherd.
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What this allows us to realize is when you look back at the Old Testament and the discussion there, in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, other texts, about the shepherds of Israel, and the false shepherds, and the fact that the shepherds were, in essence, fleecing the flock, and they were only looking to their own satisfaction.
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And that becomes the background of Jesus' discussion of his role as the good shepherd, in contrast with these men, who had just seen
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God's grace poured out in this man's life. They had just seen a child of Israel healed in a way that almost never took place.
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Blindness was a tremendous tragedy. You could not, they did not have the resources that we have today for someone to be able to live a good life, even without the gift of sight.
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And so, you were generally reduced to simply begging, unless your family was able to take care of you.
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Many considered it, obviously, to be a tremendous indication of sin.
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In fact, if you remember the beginning, remember the discussion that Jesus had had with the disciples earlier on, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?
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And Jesus' response was, neither one. It was God's purpose that was being fulfilled, and so on and so forth. But the idea was, this is an indication of God's specific punishment of this individual, all the way to the point where the
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Jews had developed the idea that a baby could sin in utero. I'm not sure if it's kicking mom too many times on the
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Sabbath, or just what it was the kid does, but somehow the child could sin in utero, which really makes very little sense to us today, but that was the paradigm in which they were operating.
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And so, that really becomes the background of what we have in John chapter 10, and this idea of Jesus being the good shepherd of the flock, which is
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God's people. And so, let's take a look at the chapter, and think about what happens here.
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And so, we only have time to focus in upon a few aspects of what we see here.
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So notice, in verse 40 of chapter 9, well, let's go back to verse 39.
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And Jesus said, for judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.
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Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and said to him, we are not blind too, are we?
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Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no sin, but since you say, we see, your sin remains.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber, but he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep.
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To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
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A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.
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This figure of speech, Jesus spoke of them, but they did not understand what those things were, which he had been saying to them.
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So Jesus said to them again, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.
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I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
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I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
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He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, he is not the owner of the sheep. He sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
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He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know my own, and my own know me, even as the father knows me and I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.
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I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock with one shepherd.
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This reason the father loves me, because I lay down my life, so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative.
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I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again, this commandment I received from my father.
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A division occurred again among the Jews, because these words, many of them were saying, he has a demon and is insane, why do you listen to him?
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Others were saying, these are not the words of one demon possessed. A demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he?
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At that time, the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple of the portico of Solomon.
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The Jews then gathered around him and were saying to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them,
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I told you, and you do not believe. The works I do in my father's name, these testify of me, but you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.
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My sheep, hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me, and I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
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My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the
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Father are one, and you know what happens after this. The Jews pick up stones to stone him. They understand that when
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Jesus said, I and the Father, we are one, and that is the only way you can understand the original language, by the way.
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I'm afraid sometimes we misuse this text, read more into it than it's actually stating.
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When it says, I and the Father are one, the context is, are one in bringing about the eternal life of the sheep.
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And the evidence of the deity of Christ that's found in John chapter 10, verse 30, isn't some type of statement of ontological philosophy that we are one in the essence of God, or something like that.
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It's one in bringing about the salvation of God's people, and no mere human creature could say the words that Jesus was saying.
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The Jews understood that by stating that he and the Father, if you are in the
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Son's hand, then you're in the Father's hand. No one can snatch them out of that relationship that is theirs.
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But even in saying that, and I guess I'm emphasizing this because of a debate we had five years ago, just because we had to talk about them, it does not say,
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I and the Father, I is one. It uses the plural. There is a distinction even maintained here between the
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Father and the Son, because the verb is plural. I and the Father, we are one, one in bringing about the eternal life of God's people.
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That's where the evidence of the deity of Christ is. No mere prophet could ever stand and say, I and Yahweh, we are one in bringing about the eternal life of God's people.
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If you are in me, Moses, then I and Yahweh are one in bringing about your salvation.
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That would be blasphemous. But Jesus could say these words, and the Jews recognize what it means, but it is not a statement that Jesus is the
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Father by any stretch of the imagination. The distinction is maintained. They pick up stones to stone him. Jesus quotes from Psalm 82 where the judges of Israel were called gods, and he is identified as the
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Son of God, and he is identifying them as unrighteous judges in their misjudging his statements and condemning him to death by stoning.
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So there is the text there at the beginning of John chapter 10. It's a text that's very familiar with us, but I want us to focus in just on a couple elements of it this morning in the few moments that we have left together.
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We live in a day, and we live in a society, in Western society especially, that has become absolutely focused upon self -gratification, me, me, me.
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Everything is about me. Everything is about my happiness. Everything is about my possessions, my future.
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So much so that it's become painfully obvious that we don't think much about the people around us, our society as a whole, the future, the idea that we have any type of accountability to God or to those around us to make this a better world.
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And I don't mean a better world just to have more stuff, but a better world where better people will be born and live and have the opportunity to do the right things.
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Instead, we're very, very concerned about our possessions and our financial stability and our safety, self -sacrifice, service, not so much the type of thing that is at the forefront of people's thoughts, and it's because of the massive secularization of Western society.
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And then the promulgation of that through the, well, electronic gadgets that all of us have pretty much attached to us.
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You've seen the evolutionary picture of the ape and going up and the
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Cro -Magnon man and all the rest of the stuff up until man. And now the last one is, and that's the way it is.
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You walk through an airport anymore, and you're having to dodge people right and left because they're all just doing this number, they're not even, it would be nice if, the next thing we need to, hey,
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I could patent this. We need to have, the next thing in our, the next generation iPhone needs to have a radar thing that lets you know you're about to run into whatever the funny
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YouTube video thing is, walls, street lamps, other people. The really great one was the guy
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I saw in California that didn't realize that a bear had come down into his community, and he's literally just walking through an alleyway just doing this number and all of a sudden runs smack dab into a black bear.
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And boy, that was really entertaining to watch. He did survive. He was not eaten by the black bear, but I don't think he'll ever be able to hold a phone in his hand anymore anyway.
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But that would be a really good device. But that's where we are, because of our connectedness, this worldview of self -centeredness and self -autonomy.
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And do not underestimate what that means. When you think you are an autonomous creature, when you do not any longer view yourself as one who has been made by God, if you don't have a maker, then you have no responsibilities to the one who made you.
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You get to define what your responsibilities are. You become the center of the universe, and so if you want to decide one day that you're a male and one day that you're a female and one day that you're actually another type of animal, we used to think it would be just pure insanity for 50 -year -old men to decide that they're actually six -year -old girls.
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But there are people like that. You've probably read the stories of one such guy who's actually been adopted by a family so he can live as a six -year -old girl and he's a 50 -some -odd -year -old man with children.
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In my day, when I grew up, that would have been considered insanity. Now we're being told that we need to honor this and give space for this and that if you reject this, that you're a hater and you're a bigot, and we really are seeing the results of this kind of insanity in Western civilization, this idea of the autonomous creature who is no longer under the authority of his maker, his creator.
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And so what we're told is you have to, your educational choices, your relationship choices, sexual choices, everything has to be focused upon your fulfillment, that you might have life.
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How's that working out? You look around, you look at the alcoholism and drug use and suicide rates and everything else and it doesn't seem to be working real well in Western society.
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Not only are we killing off the younger ones in the womb and now people pushing for infanticide, well, infanticide taking place in some forms of what's called abortion anyways, but then toward the end of life, we're working on putting together death panels and I don't know if any of you remember a movie from long, well, of course most of you don't remember this movie because it was even before 1985, which was just presented to you as a very, very, that was ancient history back there in 1985.
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Anyway, Ryan's Run, anybody remember Ryan's Run? How many, see, one, two, three, and every one of, yeah, okay.
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And each one of you is gonna be meeting me afterwards for a little shot of Geritol. But anyways, it was a movie about a society that had developed and basically was at 35, about 35 years of age, right around there, around 35, you basically had fulfilled your purpose and of course they created some sort of cultural thing, but basically you were killed at 35.
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It's not like they walked up and shot you, but they had their thing going and Ryan figures this is a bad thing and it's his attempt to escape from this type of society.
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Well, 35 does seem a little bit young as yet, but we have the death panels coming, we have the eugenics movement and the euthanasia movement and it's the culture of death, and I know the
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Pope came up with that term, but it's a good term because it's exactly what it is. When you separate yourself from the source of life from the creator, when you turn, if the creator is the source of true life and you turn your back to the creator, what else is there for you to run toward?
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If that's where life is, everything else is what? It's death. And so the culture of death is all around us.
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And if you think that you are nothing more than, well, you can't even use the term highly evolved because if you understand
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Neo -Darwinian Micromutational Evolutionary Theory, that's not an appropriate term, highly. You're just simply an evolved creature without any future.
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There is no intrinsic value to you. Literally, there's no more value to you than what is assigned to you by the people around you.
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There's no more value to you than there is to a cat or a dog or an elephant, and in fact, in Western society and more, less, much less.
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You shoot an ape that's about to kill a little child and the world goes insane. You will spend millions to save a baby dolphin and it costs you 250 bucks to kill a baby human.
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The breakdown of the idea of man created in the image of God and hence having a value that transcends, a transcendent value is having tremendous impact upon our law and upon the thinking of people around us.
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And what it all leads to is if we're now in the very throes of the culture of death, which values the destruction of human life, then when we hear the words of Jesus back there in verse 10, remember what he said?
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It's one that most of us have memorized, but I want us to think about what it really means this morning.
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When Jesus says that he is the good shepherd in verse 11, I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
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But right before that he had said, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it, and it's literally and abundantly having or overflowingly having.
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It's not just simply to possess the bare existence of life, but to have life in an overflowing abundance.
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But it's for a specific people in order, I came in order that they might have life.
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He's talking about his sheep, which in the very next breath, he's going to say he lays his life down for his sheep.
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I don't have time this morning to go into what I think is the only possible understanding of this text in the light of Jesus' words, and that is that there is a very specific element to his teaching about his self -giving in this text.
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I believe the last time I was with you, and I got to admit, I was talking with the brother here, and I was asking,
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I asked, you know, what are you preaching on right now? Because there have been a couple times I've gone to a church and I've forgotten to do that, and I just so happened to pick the text that he had preached on the week before, something like that, and I didn't know it, you know, and that's sort of a little uncomfortable situation when you travel and do things like that.
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So I was going, you know, Hebrews, maybe John, no, no, I'm not in any of those areas.
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But then there was just a heartwarming statement, and by the way, last time you were here, you spoke on the atonement from the book of Hebrews.
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People still mention that, and I'm just sort of like, really? That makes me feel very good that you remember that.
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I mean, you know, most situations, you know, you don't remember what you preached on last week, so for someone to remember five years later, that was very touching.
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I'm very, very encouraged about that. But I said, I'll bet you it was from Hebrews chapter seven, right? Yeah, it was Hebrews. Okay, all right.
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That probably means that wasn't the first time I had preached that sermon, and it is a tremendous text, and I don't have time to go into all the specificity that is clearly found here when
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Jesus, remember at one point Jesus says, the reason you don't believe is because why? You're not of my sheep.
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And yet Jesus comes and lays down his life for the sheep, and here he says,
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I've come that they may have life and have it overflowingly. There is a purpose.
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One of the most beautiful things that I see in the New Testament is the consistency of this revelation as to the purpose of the triune
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God, and it's all about him. It's all about the glorification of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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The gospel is about God. We just get to be the beneficiaries of it. But it's so sad that very often the gospel is presented as primarily being about man.
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It's what God does to make man feel better. No, it's not. It's about what God has done to reveal himself to his creatures as not only just and powerful and holy, but also loving and merciful and gracious.
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It's a revelation of who God is. Now, in the process, it's a revelation about who we are, too. It says a lot about us.
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It's going to say a lot about these men, these religious men, these men who are in possession of God's Word, and yet by the end of the section we read, they're picking up stones to stone, the very incarnate
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Son of God. That's an amazing thing to think about. It's not the first time it had happened. It already happened back in John chapter 8, and certainly it's going to come to its ultimate conclusion in the crying out, crucify him, crucify him.
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But in this very text, Jesus himself says, no one can take my life from me.
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I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I've received from my Father. What's that telling us?
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Everything that Jesus is doing here, it is a part of God's demonstration of who the
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Father is, who the Son is, who the Spirit is, and how they work together in this beautiful thing called the gospel in bringing about the redemption of God's people.
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Never forget, the gospel is first and foremost about God, and that's why we can never edit it.
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We can never change it. We can never alter it. We have to stand against everyone, no matter how much it costs us, because it's not about us, and it's not about numbers.
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It's about what God is doing, and he calls us to be faithful ambassadors of what he has defined.
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We don't get to change that. Even when it becomes highly offensive within our societies to say what the gospel says, we have no choices there.
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All the stuff we possess that's in our hands, God gave to us, and if God chooses to take that away in the process of glorifying himself in the proclamation of his gospel, if that's what it costs us, that's what it costs us.
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What's more important to us? That really becomes the question. What is most important to the true believer in Jesus Christ?
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That's why so many have stood the test of time and have stood faithful, because they recognize,
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I cannot compromise the gospel. I cannot give in at this point, and we are being asked to do that.
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But I want us to think about what it means. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly, because when you think about it, that kind of text is most often preached in such a context of how you're supposed to have a happy marriage, and how you're supposed to have maybe a biblical diet, and you can lose some weight, and have straight, perfect teeth, and have a nice home and car.
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That's what having life abundantly means, and there's a problem. And the problem is these words were written, and they were sent out to a church that was very quickly under persecution, just the preceding chapter.
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What do you see? The Jewish leaders standing against this man Jesus, and casting the healed man out from their place.
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And it was said in John 9, it had already been agreed that if anyone confessed Jesus was the Messiah, they'd be cast out of the synagogue. And so you're already seeing the beginnings of persecution.
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And for the next 280 -some -odd years, there is going to be persecution, not consistent persecution until about 250 under Diocletian, then until the
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Peace of the Church in 313. You have empire -wide persecution of the Christian faith.
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You have periods of persecution in the periods before that. But up until that time,
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Christianity could be considered a religio illicita, an illegal religion. So, how could someone have understood the idea of having life and having it more abundantly when you're running and fleeing and losing all your personal possessions and barely keeping your life, and maybe separated from your loved ones, and suffering in the way that many of those early
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Christians did? Are we to believe that maybe, you know, those words weren't for them, they're just for us 21st -century, comfortable,
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Western Christians? Or is it possible that the way we've understood these words isn't what they were intended to convey in the first place, that it has nothing to do with the ease with which most of us live our lives?
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Oh, I know all of us have trials and tribulations and things we go through in our life. But all you got to do is think about what it means to be a
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Christian in North Korea today to realize most of our problems aren't really all that bad.
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Christians in North Korea, Christians in Pakistan, most of us are not thinking too much about, well,
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I see a baby stroller out through the door, perfect place for an explosive. We don't have to think about that, but any church in Pakistan does, right?
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And it's happened, especially around Easter and Christmas, unfortunately. So, what are these words supposed to mean when down through the history of the church, true believers have understood when
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Jesus said, the world's hated me, it's going to hate you too. And church history tells us every time the church becomes a friend of the world, becomes popular in the eyesight of the world, that's when that church has become compromised.
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The gospel suffers. So, how are we to understand this? And if the day is not far at hand when you and I are going to have to start truly paying for our fidelity to Christ, when the society says to you, you will rejoice in, you will celebrate, you will call good what your
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Lord Jesus said was bad, and you say no, and you suffer the consequences, are
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Jesus' words no longer meaningful? Do they no longer communicate something to us?
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May I suggest to you that the answer to this question is fairly easily at hand.
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It's not that Jesus' words have ever been untrue. Jesus' words are always true.
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The issue is the traditions and the things that overlay the text that we bring to it and encrust it with and want to hear rather than what's actually been said by Jesus.
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Because having life abundantly does not mean having things abundantly.
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Some of the happiest, most joyous, peaceful people
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I've ever met were people who the world looked at and said, man, it wouldn't want to be that person. May I suggest that to have life abundantly as a
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Christian, no matter what your situation is, no matter what your physical situation is, what kind of disease you're dealing with, what your physical situation is, whether you're in prison or have freedom, whether you're in poverty and want, or you have everything that the world has to offer and have comfort, whatever it is, to have life abundantly is to be a person who finds your ultimate joy in the satisfaction, the passionate satisfaction that is yours in your relationship to your
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God. When you find in your relationship to your
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God the greatest joy, the greatest fulfillment, and it results in your soul being satisfied and in a word that is almost anathema in Western society, when you find great contentment in your
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God, knowing your relationship with Him, knowing what it's based upon, that it's not based upon anything you have done, it is based solely and completely upon what has been done for you, when you can think upon the words of Hebrews chapter 6, and not the part about the apostasy, the part at the end of the chapter that talks about Jesus as our forerunner who's gone into the holy place,
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He is that anchor for the soul that's gone into the holy place, in our place, when you can think about that and realize there's nothing in this world that can touch me, there is nothing in this world that can take that away from me, because nothing in this world can enter into where Jesus has gone in my place, and so I can have absolute contentment, the world cannot do anything to me, because I am in Christ and He has been accepted before the
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Father, I have that kind of personal relationship with God, and it's all been through Him, it's none of my own, when you recognize the grounds of the peace that you have with God, the contentment that flows from that is life itself, because if you've been made in the image of God, if you have been made to be
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His creature and to have relationship with Him, that's the perfection of that relationship, that's life, that is an abundant life, and it was something that these religious men for all of their books and all of their learning, they had missed, it's not that the prophets hadn't warned them, it's not that the prophets hadn't said all the sacrifice and all the religious, you're to love mercy, do justice, walk humbly with your
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God, they knew the words, but they hadn't experienced the reality, and their reaction to the grace of God showing the healing of the blind man demonstrated that, and their reaction to Jesus walking amongst them demonstrated that they did not understand the reality of the words that they professed, and so for us as Christians, I know,
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I think, if I recall correctly, I don't know if you have it here, but it used to be real common, it's still fairly common in the
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United States to have something called Vacation Bible School during the summers, and I'm pretty certain that at some point in my young life,
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John 1010 was one of those memorization verses that, you know, you'd have the contest, and whoever could quote it first, you know, your team would get more points or whatever it was,
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I mean, I'm really not sure that's necessarily the best motivation, but hey, it's motivation, so, you know, if it works,
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I guess that has its practical value, but we've all known these words, but have we ever considered how they're working out in our life, what that means?
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It's good to take self -evaluation once in a while and ask ourselves the question, am
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I experiencing life in abundance? And if I'm not, is it because Jesus was wrong, or because I've missed something?
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Let me tell you something, between those two choices, there's not much of a difficulty in figuring out which one it is, because here's the temptation.
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The temptation is for you and I to adopt the world's definition of what life is in the first place, and Jesus told us life is not found in the abundance of your possessions, and that's about all this world has to offer to us in the first place.
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How much stuff you've got, how secure it is, and it's amazing how little the world can give us, and we're enough, and we're willing to go, okay,
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I'll bow the knee to the world if you'll just give me that much stuff. It's amazing how easy it is to buy us, but the
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Christian wants life abundantly, and we need to understand that what that might mean is to have life abundantly, is to have persecutions abundantly, is to have suffering abundantly, so that a life that is not our own can flow through us in a way the world can never begin to comprehend or understand.
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You thought about it that way before? If you're like me, it's so easy to recognize the times that the world comes along every single day to try to distract you from these spiritual realities, and some of you, because I'm thinking this, most of us in this room have been so deeply influenced by the secular society around us, by a society that teaches us to be always looking down at earthly things and never really contemplating heavenly things, and mocking us for thinking there's a spiritual realm, and saying, well, you need to be really balanced.
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Well, yeah, balance is an important thing, but it's defined by Scripture, not by the society around us, which obviously is going to always want us to be silent and not radical in our following of Jesus Christ.
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But what the society is always telling us is, oh, be careful, don't get too radical with your
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Christianity. And this sounds pretty radical, because what you're saying is, I need to redefine what life is, and I need to stop following after what my society tells me life is, and start asking myself the question, am
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I living a Christian life, or am I living a secular life with a
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Christian veneer on it? It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. I have come, they might have life, might have it abundantly.
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He then gives his life for the sheep. So the whole reason that we can have this life is because of Christ's self -sacrifice, our union with Him.
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But once we realize that, once we have peace with God, what does it mean for you and I to have abundant life?
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We can have that. It can be our everyday experience. We can go to bed each evening rejoicing in the abundance of life that we've experienced, as long as we recognize that what that is has nothing to do with our external circumstances at all, has nothing to do with what we possess.
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It's all passing away. That kind of life comes from a recognition of what
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God has done in Jesus Christ, my acceptance in Christ, the fact
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I've been forgiven, adopted, sanctified, and I have been united with the
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One who stands in the very presence of the Father in my place. My salvation is absolutely secure in Him, and therefore
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I am blessed in a way the world cannot begin to understand, and yet I find that to be my greatest treasure.
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That is a treasure the world can never take away from the believing Christian, and that's having life abundantly.
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That's having life abundantly. So ask yourself the question, are you experiencing life abundantly?
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And if not, why not? As a believer in Jesus Christ, His words will always be true, no matter what our situation is, no matter the grief or the sorrow, the loss.
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I'll close with this. Some of you will be seeing Jeff later on.
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I guess Jeff and I are just sort of missing each other the whole week. Is that how it's working? But eventually, I think we're speaking at the same places at the same time, but it was barely a month ago,
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I think, that Jeff and I did a funeral. Jeff did the funeral.
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He was the primary one speaking. He asked me to pray, which I thought was grossly unfair because that's the hardest thing to do.
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I never learned how to install that emotion switch. You just turn it off when you're a minister, you know.
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And there was a loss in his church. Some of you may have seen on Facebook. Young woman, 34 years of age, seven children, three -week -old baby, and evidently a blood clot from the uterus, straight to the lungs, and she was gone just like that.
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And just a servant woman. She was just a tremendous baker, and she'd even cook stuff up and sold it to raise money to send me to South Africa a couple times.
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I mean, she's just a wonderful servant lady. Seven children, a three -week -old baby, gone.
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And that was the funeral that Jeff and I did, and he did a great job. It was obviously extremely difficult time for the church to deal with that, and they're still dealing with that even now, obviously.
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That's going to be a long -term situation with those young children. But as I gathered with those saints, we didn't gather in death.
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We gathered in life. And Jesus' words didn't become untrue for a few days, then sort of start coming back into being truthful.
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There was an overflowing of life, even in the presence of death, because of the recognition, not only of her standing in Christ, but of the fact that even though we cannot discern them now,
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God was actively involved in his providence, that he was going to glorify himself even in calling this servant home at a time that, from our perspective, just didn't seem right.
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But we cannot see what God can see. There was life even then, an abundance thereof, and I am very thankful for it.
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Think about these words today. Think about Jesus' promise. They're beautiful words.
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They're words for life. Let's pray together. Indeed, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your
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Word, and we thank you for the promise that Jesus gave us, that he came, that we might have life and have it abundantly.
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Lord, we know that by your Spirit you have preserved these words for us to this day.
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We need to hear and understand. And so, Lord, if we have, by our adopting of the ways the world sacrifices some of the very blessings you've designed for us to possess, may you forgive us, may you give us wisdom, may you reveal this to us, and may we, even in this coming week, give serious consideration to what it means to have life, real life, as you define it.
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May we not be influenced by the world to think as the world thinks, for we know that the world and everything in it is passing away.