Book of Romans, 8:1 - No Condemnation For Those Walking After The Spirit, Pt. 3 (08/11/2019)

Park Meadows Church

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It was nice to have Brother John preach last week when I was in New York City. I got to preach in New York City.

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Actually, it was a stock market meeting, but after the first day, the next morning this little lady was sitting outside the door in a chair out there and she said,

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Brother David, can I say something to you? And I said, yes, ma 'am. She said, did you notice I brought my grandson to the class yesterday?

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And I said, I did. He was about eight or nine years old. And he said, well,

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Brother David, when the class was over yesterday, he leaned over and said, Grandmom, is the service over yet? And I said, well, that's a good stock market meeting.

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He thought it was church. So I thought, well, that's a good job. But it was a really great group of people.

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They were unusual. About three -fourths of them were brand new, never seen us, been to one of our things before.

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So usually people are skeptical until noon the first day, but this group was like on the edge of their seat from the first hour, just wanting to get the information.

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But they liked the scripture part too, so it was really good. It's kind of reminded me of Apostle Paul. When he would leave, they would hug him and cry and they didn't want him to leave.

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They were like that. They said, don't, can you make sure you promise you'll come back? And I said, well,

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I talked to Katie about that. I don't make the schedules. Well, okay.

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And then there was this Jewish believer, about 45 years old, real intense guy, and he stood up and said, we're all going to have a word of prayer for Brother Mitchell and his family before he leaves.

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So everybody got quiet and he prayed, and then they sent us off. But it was really kind of biblical in nature.

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But think about that. In the middle of New York City, one of the most liberal places in the world, you've got a group of Christian people living for the

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Lord, small group, but about 55 or so people. And there's more than that.

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I'm not saying that's all there are, but I'm saying it's just so interesting because there you don't fake it. You're either real or you're not, you know, you're either

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Christian or not. So I always kind of like going up there to be with them because they're, they really need, you know, they're not hearing a lot of great preaching.

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I don't imagine America's not hearing a lot of great preaching much anymore, except for a few quarters.

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And those are the ones who are preaching right out of this book right here. So there's still a few of them out there, praise the

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Lord, there will be until he comes back. Well, let's go, I'm going to, we're going to be in Philippians chapter one. You can turn there.

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I'm going to read Romans chapter eight, verse one, because that's really the first we're on. It's just, we're using it as a launching pad to go out and study something in particular for a few

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Sundays. Good to be back with you. Did, did brother John tell you his story? Charlotte, did

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John tell his story from the pulpit last Sunday, John King or not? Well, what's happened in his life?

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Can you tell about it? I don't know if he did. No, in Charlotte, she was in the nursery.

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What did he say? Oh, that's all he said. Well, they're more, they're more drastic than that.

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You know, the, he, he owned a fairly large company that built drilling rigs in Houston.

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And now they were not drilling much right now because the economy is kind of starting to slow down a little.

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So then they were driving out all the way to Midland, Odessa area, looking for work out there to see if he could manufacture or, you know, maybe do some repairs on rigs out there.

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Well, that didn't work out. I just found this out as soon as I got back last week. So now they've driven all the way to South Texas and I don't know the little town they're in, but you know, probably down around Pharr or one of those towns way out

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South Texas. And he's just taking a welding job, which he's a welder, but I mean, the guy runs companies, so he's just having to work right now welding just to make ends meet.

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So he won't be able to be with us much for a good while until that phase of his life is over.

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So he won't be able to come to our seminary class either. So what we're going to do is set up a

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Zoom meeting when we have it. We'll do Zoom and that way he can be on from where he is because there's no way he'd drive.

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So that made me kind of sad, but I know it's like you were teaching in Sunday school. The Apostle Paul was in a dungeon because it was the

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Lord's will at that time. So John's better off than that, wouldn't you say? He's not in a dungeon, but the good thing about the guy, he flat got called to preach in 2018 and he sure enjoyed being with you last week.

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So he drove all the way from South Texas here just to preach and drove back because he'd already told me he would do it.

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So what a great guy. Anyway, you guys ministered to him.

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That's the reason the Lord used you in his life to make this be the place God would call him to preach.

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So that's pretty cool. All right, let's pray and we'll get started. Lord, we thank you so much for being able to be here today, our home base where we want to be every

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Sunday and Lord, thank you for Brother John preaching and Brother Bill holding down the fort last

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Sunday and thank you so much for protecting all of us, getting us back safely.

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We pray for those who are traveling today, Brother Dave and his dad and others who may be traveling.

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I know Brother Paul and his family, so bring them back to us safely. We ask Lord, thank you for our ability to be together and study the word today and we ask you to bless by your spirit being our teacher, in Jesus name, amen.

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Romans 8 .1 says, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

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A lot of preachers preach this verse and they preach only the first half of it. They leave the second half off.

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I can understand why it's difficult. It's a difficult passage. You can't just read that and know what it means.

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You have to read all of chapter 7, all of chapter 8, and a whole lot of other places in the

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Bible to even know what it means. But where it says there's no condemnation to them that are in Christ, that's easy to preach by itself and those of us who believe in the eternal security of the believer love that part of the verse.

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But the second half says, comma, of course the comma wasn't in the Greek, but comma in English, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

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So now does that mean that the no condemnation is only for those who are walking after the spirit and never walk after the flesh?

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You see, well it does mean that, but then you've got to understand what it means in the Greek when it says who walk not after the flesh.

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Because in the Greek it's the continual tense which means it's a predominant lifestyle of being a carnal, fleshly person versus the predominant direction of a life moving more towards following Jesus.

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So when you understand that, it makes perfect sense. Well, I read what John Calvin said about this verse and it blew my mind.

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I read several others, old time preachers, Spurgeon and others, but the best was

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John Calvin and he said this verse, chapter 8 verse 1, is talking about three things.

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It's talking about number one, everything that was in chapter 7 because he said in the original they weren't chapters, it's all just one thing. And I really understand what he meant.

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Chapter 7, if you don't remember, is talking about the flesh and how that's an enemy. Talking about the flesh in the bad sense, not that our bodies are evil, but there is a sin nature that's within our old man.

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It's still there and it will cause us to sin, will it not? So all of chapter 7 is the

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Apostle Paul, the greatest Christian who ever lived, dealing with that problem in his own life. And you read it again in Sunday school today,

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Brother Bill. He says, I find myself doing what I don't even agree with and I find myself not doing that which

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I want to do for the Lord. O wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death? And then he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. And then the very next verse, therefore there is now no condemnation.

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Isn't that something? So see, it's all the same person. So we live in a body, in a life, in this world on purpose.

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God did this on purpose. He said, I put this treasure, which is the new man, the born again us,

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I put this treasure in this earthen vessel, which is this body that can pull the wrong way, on purpose so that I will get the glory.

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That means, look, if we ever get one thing right, God will get the glory for that because we sure didn't do it.

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If we do one good deed, God will get all the glory for that because we sure didn't do it. If we change nations,

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God will get the glory for that because we sure didn't do it. You see the point? This is on purpose. This is not an accident that God having to clean up.

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God's having to come in here and clean it up and fix it. He planned it from the beginning. He only had one plan and we're in it.

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It's the best plan. Now, I know it has bad stuff, but that's what we ask for. It's not God's fault. Adam and Eve, what did

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Eve say? Oh, I'd like to know good and evil, not just good. And Satan offered it to her. He said, well, me and God know good and evil.

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Why would God want to keep that from you? And she said, I want it. I want good and evil. So that's what we get. I told the people out in New York City this.

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I said, look, when you look at the beautiful clouds and the waterfalls and the oceans and the mountains and the birds singing every morning and love, you have your first boyfriend or first girlfriend.

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Don't start that till you're 40, all right? I'm teasing, teasing. I'm just trying to help your parents.

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They're going, go preacher, preach preacher. Anyway, so all of this, your first love and your spouse and your life and your kids and your grandkids.

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And you look at all these wonderful, beautiful things, the birth of a new baby and all those stages and all of this and Christian fellowship that we have where we sense that we're connected by the

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Holy Spirit to each other, but to Jesus and the Father, the Bible. Think of all the good things.

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Okay, so all of that never goes away. It's all very real, but you never get just that. You get the bad stuff that's going to happen in your life, too, and it's going to happen.

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You teach that, too, in Sunday school. It's always hitting on my sermons in Sunday school. But he talked about how

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Jesus said, I came and I died for you so that you might be saved, but then the phrase you didn't, the part you said you didn't like, the second phrase said, and that you will suffer for my name's sake, right?

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It's in the same verse. So you see, so both come together, but that's what humans ask for.

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Now, it didn't surprise God when Adam and Eve asked for that, though, did it? I mean, he already had the plan that his son would come and die in our place and die for his people so that we might be saved.

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So this verse, chapter eight, verse one, is all one person, one man, one woman, one boy, one girl, the whole life, all of chapter seven,

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John Calvin said this, all of chapter seven, the weaknesses of the flesh, and then verse one of chapter eight, the no condemnation, the mercy of God, and in the third part, he referenced the last phrase, who walked not of the flesh, but after the spirit, he said that is just merely talking about the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit, and I thought that was fascinating that he said that. Fascinating that he said that's all that means is a true, genuine, saved person.

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So it's just, it's not contradicting the first part of the verse, it's the same thing as the first part of the verse.

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It's the same person who has no condemnation is the same person who walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

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So it's not like a condition that if you'll do this, if you'll live right, you'll be saved, that's not what it is, it's saying because you are saved, you will live right.

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Now, I said to myself, you know what, I love John Calvin, and he's most brilliant, one of the most brilliant teachers that ever lived on the face of the earth, but I'm gonna check it out and make sure you got that from the

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Bible. So that's what we've been doing. And that took us to several places, but we ended up in Philippians chapter, I mean,

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Colossians, I said Philippians earlier, didn't I? That's because we were there in Sunday school. So Colossians, I meant, so it's pretty close.

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You're there, if you're in Philippians, you're close to Colossians. Chapter one, and I found in this chapter, you've heard me say many times that there are about 33 things that the

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Holy Spirit does to you the moment he saves you. Gifts he gives you, things he does for you, things he does to you, things that it just shows that God is the author of salvation.

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It's all this stuff that God did to us, none of it is what we did for him because that can't save us because our hearts are not pure enough to do good things, really, for God, for a pure, holy

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God. So salvation is not about what we do. And if you think the second half of Romans chapter eight, verse one means who walk right, those are the ones that get saved, that's not what it means because nowhere else in the

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Bible does it teach that. In the Bible, it teaches salvation is of God, that it comes down from heaven to us, not up to heaven from us.

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And all of this chapter one in Colossians shows it. And out of the 33 things that God does to us, the moment he saves, there's about 30 of them are in this one chapter.

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So we've already talked about some of them the last couple of times. We talked about number one, that he makes us faithful.

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These are things we found in this chapter of Colossians. The second thing we found was that he gives us grace and the definition of that meaning of grace doesn't mean grace to be saved, he does give us that.

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This is a different kind of grace, it's talking about you're growing. You grow stronger, you grow more like Jesus from grace to grace, that's what that means.

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So God not only gives us the grace to save us, by his grace, he causes us to be more and more like Jesus as we live in this life and as we study his word and walk together.

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The third thing is he gives us peace. And if you remember, it comes from a little root word, aero, which means to be joined.

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And so we talked last time, we have no peace unless we're joined to Jesus Christ. That's where our peace comes from.

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It's embedded in the root of the word in the Greek. The fourth thing was he gives us faith.

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Well, we know that from Ephesians 2, 8, 9, that the gift of faith that saves us is Jesus' faith, not our faith.

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It's the faith of Christ, not faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is a response to that.

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And it's something that we do after we're saved and that's not taught anywhere nowadays. It used to be taught everywhere.

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It's not taught. You don't hear that. And one reason is Satan has corrupted the Bibles and most

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English, in fact, all English Bibles other than the King James don't even have the word for in there. We've talked about that hundreds of times, but one of the gifts he gives us is the faith of Christ that he puts in us and gives us that faith as a gift according to Ephesians 2, 8, 9.

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And then we see the fifth thing was love for the brethren. There's no greater symptom of salvation than the fact that you love other brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Because before you got saved, you weren't that way. All right? Ben, you could goose this up just a hair if you want to.

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I'm gonna lose my voice before it's over if we don't. Doesn't need much, but just a little bit.

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We don't want it to ring, but that's better. Perfect. All right, and then the sixth thing that we saw last time was hope, he gives us hope.

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And do you remember the definition for that? Because the word has changed in English. Like today, if you say,

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I hope the Dallas Cowboys win, what you mean by that is they probably won't, but I hope they do, right?

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So it's kind of a negative feeling. But the Bible meaning is the joyful anticipation of a certain future event.

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That's what the word hope used to mean in English. So that's what he gave us. In Greek, it's elpis.

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It means to anticipate something that is about to happen. That's what the word means in Greek.

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It's what it used to mean in English. Satan's ruined the word in English now. Now it's a negative word.

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Hope is a positive thing if it's the true meaning. So those are the things we talked about. And I think the last one that we talked about,

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Sunday before last, was he gives us hearing. He makes it possible for us to hear

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God. Because Jesus was always saying, ye who have ears to hear, let him hear.

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Because not everyone has that. So that was the last thing we talked about. So now let's go into the next thing after that.

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So Colossians chapter one, let's look at about verse five. Start with verse five. For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel.

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So that was where we got that last, the seventh point was right there where it says you heard. Because that is a gift from God.

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You don't just hear. He has to make us have ears to hear. And we looked at some other scripture about that last

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Sunday. But notice what it is that, how you hear, is you hear in the word of God.

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God does a miracle where all of a sudden, as you read the scripture, you can hear what it's saying to you. Whereas before that, before you were saved, you read it, it was like an academic book that was quite boring.

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Except for a few of the cool stories. But it was pretty boring. But when you got saved, all of a sudden he gave you ears to hear so that as you read this same book that used to be boring,

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God talks to you and you hear it. His Holy Spirit speaks to you through the word. And that's why we need the water and the word.

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Or I'm sorry, the water and the spirit because the spirit is the Holy Spirit. The water is a picture of the word of God, the living water.

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So look at verse six. The word of God, which is common to you as it is into all the world.

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We mentioned that last time is exactly where we stopped, I think. Because I mentioned, you know, you ever hear anybody say, well, it's not fair to people in Africa, India or Iran because they don't get to hear the gospel.

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How can God judge them? My Bible says 2 ,000 years ago when the apostle Paul wrote this, that the word of truth is come into all the world already.

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I mean, it was present tense in his day. The gospel had gone out to the entire known world at that time.

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And we talked about that. So that's not an excuse. Men heard it, they just rejected it.

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Whole nations rejected it. And so look at them now. That's who we call the third world now.

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And the word of God also, it says in verse six, bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day you heard it.

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So from the time God opens your ears, which is the miraculous thing that happens when you're born again, when

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God saves you, he opens your ears. And from that time, you can hear the word of God.

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And from that day, he says, you knew the grace of God in truth. You didn't know it one second before it happened and all of a sudden you knew it.

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Now you didn't know all about it, but you knew it, your heart knew it for yourself for the first time and you knew you were different.

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You knew you were saved. As you also learned of Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, in other words, this same thing happened to him.

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He got born again too, who is for you a faithful minister now. He got called to preach.

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Now he's ministering to him, who also declared unto us your love in the spirit. He came back and told me you guys are living for the

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Lord. And I'm proud to hear it. That's what Paul was saying. All right, so now let's look. Here's the eighth point that we see.

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The eighth point is this, that at the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit, this is something he does to you.

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And that's how I know Romans 8, 1, the second half is not a condition of salvation. It's an effect of it.

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It is an effect of it. The cause of the salvation was the Holy Spirit calling you and quickening you, bringing you to life, bringing your ears where they could hear, which is what we're talking about right now.

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And then this new thing we're gonna talk about is it says that the

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Bible, the Holy Spirit makes it so that in your life for the first time as a human being, the

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Bible itself becomes fruitful when you read it. And I'm not talking about you being fruitful.

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That's gonna come later in these 30 things, but not today. This is talking about something that happened to this book, something that happened to this book.

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At the moment you got saved, the Holy Spirit made this book begin to bear fruit in your life.

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It came alive. The Bible came alive with respect to you for the first time and it began to bear fruit in you.

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Not that you're bearing fruit yet, but it is bearing fruit in you. Very important concept. You don't hear talked about a whole lot.

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Let me give you some other thoughts about it other places in the Bible. For one thing, in Colossians, this passage says very clearly what we're studying today is you heard before the word of God, the word of the gospel, which is coming to you as it was in all the world and it bringeth forth fruit.

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So it's the word of God that's bringing forth the fruit. It's not talking about the person bringing forth fruit.

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It's talking about the Bible bringing forth fruit in that person as it doth also in you since the day

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God opened up your ears and you heard it. You see, you see the progression. All right, so this is not talking about the believer bringing forth fruit, but rather the

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Bible bringing forth fruit in the life of the believer. This can be a very exciting study this morning for you if you just think it through a little bit because what it tells you is that your sanctification, you're becoming more and more like Christ is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend in this book, directly proportional.

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It has to bear fruit in your life or you won't change much. Now, I know the Holy Spirit's always changing us, but you won't change as much as if this book begins to bear fruit in your life.

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I remember, Charlotte, and I remember when I got saved in the spring. I was 24 years old.

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Three months later, we moved back to Mahea where we had grown up and went back to First Baptist Church where we grew up. It was still boring as the devil.

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The preacher was boring as the devil, but there was something new there that fall. There was a man of God who had come into town to preach named

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Dr. Rocky Freeman, had four earned doctorates. He was a Jewish believer, and she and I sat down and maybe, certainly in my life for the first time, maybe in Charlotte's life, we heard a genuine man of God preach the

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Bible, and I had never heard anything like it. I just couldn't get my mind off of it.

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It changed my whole life, that one week did, and it did Charlotte's too.

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We ended up becoming personal friends with that preacher, and he ended up becoming my mentor, and I have his entire library in my library back here.

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His wife gave it to me when he went to heaven, and I ended up preaching part of his funeral and his wife's funeral, which was just last year when she passed away.

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The Lord can do amazing things. I was a brand new believer when I met him, and I ended up having the honor of preaching at his funeral.

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He died young, unfortunately, but what happened was the word of God began to bear fruit in my life that week, and Charlotte's too, and we've never been the same since that week, and my mom saw it, and it began to bear fruit in her life too about that same time.

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She had been saved a long time, but began to really get turned on to the Bible. So that's what this says happens.

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This is what God says he does. Now, look at Matthew chapter 13.

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I want you to turn there. I'll show you something fascinating here. A couple of different places. Now, this is an interesting parable, and I don't have time to teach the whole parable because it's not what it's about this morning, but the parable is the one where it talks about where Jesus told the story of a farmer who was sowing seeds in a field, all right?

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Some of the seed fell on a hard path, you know, where they walked in between the corn, perhaps, and the seed fell on that hard path, and before anything could happen, black birds came and ate the seed, and Jesus later said that is a picture of Satan coming, and when people, some people, when the word of God goes in their mind, it's like that hard soil.

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It can't take root. They don't pay attention, they don't care, and Satan comes and just plucks it right out of their head before it can do anything, before the word of God can do anything to them or for them, and then he said some of it fell on rocky soil, and it said it sprung up quickly, and it looked great for a short season, and you've all seen people come to church, give a testimony, and then like three months later, they are gone, and they never set foot in church again.

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You've seen that happen, right? That's why our Church of Christ brothers think you can lose your salvation, because they go by sight, not by faith.

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God says you can't, but when they see that happen, it makes them think you can, so they believe you can. You should never go by sight.

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You should go by what the word of God says, right? But anyway, so this is a picture of a person, and here's the clue in the parable.

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It said it sprung up quickly, but when the sun came out, which pictures persecution, they just dwindled away quickly because they had no root, and that's the key.

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Jesus is known as the root of Jesse. They didn't have Jesus. They just got religion, and it wasn't real, and it just went away, but here's the one where if you read commentaries on this story, this one throws people, because the third one is, it says the seed goes down into some soil, and it takes root, and it springs up, but then the thorns and the thistles wrap around it and choke it, and it just kind of dwindles away.

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Most commentators will tell you that is a Christian who's caught up in the world, a carnal

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Christian, they call it, and so the world is, they love the world so much, it's choking the word, and they're not growing much.

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I've never believed it meant that from the time I was, first year I was saved and studied this for the first time.

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I said, nah, let's look at the next one. So the fourth one said it fell into good soil, and it sprung up, and it bore fruit, some 30 -fold, some 60 -fold, some 100 -fold.

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I said, there's the one that got saved. That's what I thought as a brand -new Christian, and I've read so many commentaries that disagreed with me through the years, but I know the word of God agrees with me.

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That's the only one that got saved, okay? It's not talking about a carnal Christian and the thistles.

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It is true that we, as Christians, can have the world kind of wrap around us and slow us down, though, isn't it?

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I mean, that's true, but it's not taught in that parable. It's taught other places. That parable's talking about three kinds of lost people who spring up and look saved, but they're really not, because they don't have

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Jesus, or they're not bearing fruit. And Roman chapter 8, verse 1 proves

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I'm right about that issue, because the second phrase, where it says, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, is the same person as the first part, who has no condemnation.

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So all saved people have a predominant walk towards the spirit life, not the flesh.

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They're moving away from that. Now, we still have to be stuck in it a little bit, aren't we? We still have, all of us have weaknesses we brought from our teenage years, so our young people should listen to this.

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Bad habits or sinful things that you do on purpose at your age will track you your whole life and give you trouble.

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Even when you don't wanna do it, it'll give you trouble. So stay away from bad people that want you to do bad stuff, because it'll get you into habits.

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The rest of us can say amen to that, right? All right, so you guys are fortunate enough to get saved at a young age and be in church, and some of us weren't.

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I didn't get saved until I was 24. So the point is, Christians can have things in the world slow us down, but it doesn't change our predominant walk towards Christ.

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I'm not walking towards the devil anymore. I'm not walking towards the world system. I'm learning things about the world system still at my age of 64 that I didn't realize were so bad.

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The system itself is so bad, and I'm learning that. In my own body, the part of my body in the bad sense that wants to pull and make me do stuff

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God doesn't want me to do, that I'm learning is just the more I grow in Christ, the more I know that is their real enemy.

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So that can happen, but in this parable, it is not talking about that. And I'll show you what it is talking about, though.

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First, let's look at Matthew 13, 22. This little part about the parable that I'm interested in this morning.

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He also that received seed among the thorns. Now, here's where they came to Jesus after he told the story, you know, his close followers, and they said, look,

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Lord, that was beautiful, but we don't have a clue what you're talking about. Would you please explain it to us? Well, you know why he was able to explain it to them?

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Because they had ears that could hear, all right? So he said, okay, it's for you to know these things. It's not for the other group to even know what

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I'm talking about, but for you it is. So he said, okay, he that received the seed among the thorns, that's the third type of soil out of the four types.

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He is he that hears the word and the care of the world. Now, there's two words in Greek for hear.

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One means just the sound strikes the ear, and that's what this one is. The other one is to hear with understanding.

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These people are not hearing with understanding. They're just hearing it, okay? And the care of the world, the cares of the world, we're so troubled down by the bad stuff happening, the deceitfulness of riches, there's the other half that are so rich, they don't care about God because they think money is

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God, and these things choke the word and he becomes unfruitful.

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Now, who is he? He becomes unfruitful. Who is he? He is the person, right?

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That is the person who is going to church, thinking he's a Christian, and he even does some good works, at least from the world's viewpoint.

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He might even be a deacon in the church or do something where he's serving in the church, and yet the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this world, and other things come in and choke the word of God, and the person becomes unfruitful, and all of a sudden, you don't see him in church anymore.

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You see? Now, that Jesus just said, that happens, but Jesus did not say this person was a saved person.

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Verse 23 says, "'But he that received the seed in the good ground,' now he's gonna talk about the saved person because that ground is talking about our heart.

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So the heart that's been prepared by God because God knows he's gonna plant the seed in there is a whole different story.

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"'He that received the seed in the good ground "'is he that hears the word and understands it.'"

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See, there's a different kind of hearing. It's a hearing with understanding because it's a gift from God.

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God opened the ears and allowed them to understand. He understands it, and this person also bears fruit and brings forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some 60, and some 30.

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So not everybody brings the same amount of fruit, but every born -again person is fruit -bearing. You see that? All right, so for years,

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I have felt that the only soil that represents a person getting saved is that fourth one, the good ground.

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So let's look at the same passage in Mark chapter four, verse 18. Turn to Mark chapter four.

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It's the same story, but from Mark's viewpoint as the Holy Spirit gives him the information. And it really gets to a deeper level because it begins to show why the person becomes unfruitful.

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And this is fascinating. I'll never forget the first time God showed me this. I was probably about 24 years old, probably the first time

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I read the Bible, I think. That long ago, he showed me this. I noticed it. Mark 4, 18, and these are they which are sown among the thorns.

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Same group, right? They hear the word, but not with understanding. But they hear it with their ear.

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And look at this, the same things, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches. And now it adds a third one, the lusts of other things.

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In other words, putting things higher than Jesus in our life, entered in and choked the word.

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Doesn't say it chokes the man. It says it chokes the word of God and it becomes unfruitful.

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Now, who does it refer to? The man or what? It refers to the Bible. It chokes the word of God and the word of God becomes unfruitful in that person's life.

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Now, that opened a whole new thing for me years ago when I saw that. I said, my goodness, my fruit bearing depends on the

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Bible bearing fruit in me first. It's got to bear fruit in me or I'll never bear fruit that'll last.

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Mine will just be like wood, hay, and stubble and be burned off on the way up in the rapture, right? But if I want my works to last, they have to be genuine good works and they can only spring from something on the inside.

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It can't be an outward thing you just decide to do because I want to do a good work. It doesn't work like that. It has to spring up from the inside where the

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Holy Spirit has already laid something down in you to make you who you are so that you want to do that for Christ and that's the motive behind it.

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It's why you do it. And all of that comes from this book bearing fruit within us. So there you have it.

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That can't happen if you've got the lust of this world and deceitfulness of riches and other things coming in and choking the word where you don't spend any time in it, then it can't bear fruit.

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But let me say this, it won't bear fruit anyway unless you're the fourth soil because God had to prepare a heart that would hear it anyway and give you ears of understanding.

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But if you have that, wouldn't you say we could at least make a secondary application? We need to be careful about the things of the world choking it too, don't we?

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Because it can't entirely choke it because we're saved and our conscience and the Holy Spirit would convict us and bring us back to a place of Bible study if we left it for a while.

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We know that. That's the difference. A lost person doesn't have that. He just finds it boring and leaves it.

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So here again, I come back to Colossians 1, 5 through 6.

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It bears this out. If you read it carefully, if you understand that passage in Mark where it's the Bible that becomes unfruitful, it says, you heard before, this is

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Colossians 1, verse 5, you heard before in the word of truth, which is coming to you as it did the whole world and brings forth fruit in you.

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Not in the whole world, but in you it brings forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day you heard of it where God opened your ears and began to bear fruit in your life.

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And then you knew with understanding the grace of God in truth. You understood

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God had saved you when you didn't even deserve it and you just wanted to live for him because he loved you first.

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You understand only if you're saved do you understand these things. So it doesn't say that the word of God might bring forth fruit.

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It says it does. And it bringeth forth fruit in you.

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All right, now then it goes on and says, and it causes you to know the grace of God.

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Let's just talk about that a minute because that'll be the ninth point. So now we're up to nine things that the

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Holy Spirit did to us the second that he saved us. And the ninth thing is that he opened up our understanding and knowledge of what grace means.

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Now you say, well, duh. Yeah, we have to understand that. Well, listen, you got friends going to all kinds of churches and Bill covered this in his

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Sunday school class too that Jesus made it clear that there's people out there preaching of contention that just disagreed with Paul and they preached the gospel and they hated

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Paul. And he said, but I rejoice in that because somebody might hear the gospel and get saved even from a person who's not doing it from a good heart, right?

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Isn't that kind of how you interpret that? And he said, but then there's also some who preach sincerely from a heart of love.

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Good for them too. But he said, I rejoice in all of it as long as the gospel is being preached. I don't care what their motive is.

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Now that's hard for us because we look at other churches and say, man, they're not doing it right, don't we?

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Yeah, they're just not doing it right. And Paul didn't do that. He said, they're doing it and I'm happy.

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They're not doing it right, but I'm happy that they're doing it. So that's a little bit different attitude. But when we look at this concept that when you get born again, and see, that's not a function so much of where you go to church or what the denomination is or isn't.

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It's a function of being born again where the Holy Spirit came into your life and quickened you when you were dead in your sins and he just raised you up.

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And he gave you ears that could hear instantly for the first time in your life. And one of the 33 things he did is number nine right here is he put knowledge in your heart and in your head that you're saved by grace, not by works and that God gets all the glory for that salvation.

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And a lot of your buddies go into these other churches where they teach false doctrine, where they teach that you're saved by works also.

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Either they say you're saved by works or you're saved by Jesus plus doing, but you also got to do this. They are so wrong that every page of the

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Bible shows that they're wrong. The Holy Spirit witnesses that they are wrong. And if you're saved today, when you got saved, the moment you got saved, he gave you a knowledge of grace that other people can't have.

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And that's why you have churches like that. They're filled full of tears. They're full of people that aren't saved who love the idea of works because it makes me better than you.

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If I can do these rules better than you, they love it. The Pharisees loved it. They killed Jesus. The people that love these laws and these rules, they just hate

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Jesus Christ. They hate grace. They want to earn it. And the only reason they think they can earn it is because they're prideful, right?

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They don't realize that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things. Who can know it? And that's how God looks at us.

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So how in the flesh are we going to please him by doing stuff? And yet they got all this stuff you got to do. Nearly every church has it.

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But those churches who are led by people who are saved people, where the leadership are actually saved people and they understand grace, they will move away from that position of works and legalism over time.

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They may not get it immediately. They will move away from it. So if you're in a church where they're moving more towards that, like how you dress, like you got to be real careful how you dress, how you look, how you talk, what you smoke, don't smoke, what you drink, don't drink, who you hang around with.

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And that's predominantly what they talk about. They need to be moving away from that because it doesn't say the

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Holy Spirit gives you a knowledge of works. It says it gives you a knowledge and understanding of grace.

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You can know grace. This word know is, genosko is normally the word for know in the

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Greek, but this is a stronger word. It's epigenosko. And so it literally means to, well, let's put it this way.

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I went back and tried to look at, sometimes it's good to see what Greeks that used to speak Greek as their language thought words mean, like Plato, for example.

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So I looked at what Plato thought this word means. And he said this. He said, it's different than just sensual knowledge or perception of something.

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You know, like a child can smell a, I don't know, strawberry and figure out maybe

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I should taste that. I mean, they taste almost everything, don't they? Babies do. But they can have that kind of knowledge where they just perceive it and it just comes from their natural body.

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They can perceive things, right? We have that. That is not what this word means. It's different than just the sensual knowledge or perception of something, but it is a knowledge based upon understanding and experience.

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Plato said it has to do with seeing, hearing, investigating, reflecting on something, and a personal acquaintance or friendship with a person.

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It's that kind of knowledge. You see, that's a deeper level of knowledge. And this is the gift that the

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Bible says the Holy Spirit gives you the moment you are saved. He gives you the ability to know the grace of God in truth.

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That is a bigger gift than we just read over it this morning. If we think about this, it's the whole thing really.

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Because the only difference between us and other groups or other denominations or other even world religions is that, is that we know it's not earned.

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Our salvation is free grace. It is totally unearned and totally undeserved. And the only reason we have it is because God knew us before the foundation of the world and loved us and knew we were his, and he opened our eyes and saved us.

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And at that moment, we understood the grace of God. Well, there's information about that in the gospels.

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Turn to Matthew chapter 13, verse seven. And there's information about that too in some of these stories

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Jesus was telling. Man, am I gonna actually finish early today?

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That's a new mirror. Maybe my watch is wrong. It can't be straight up 12, is it? Really?

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Maybe I'm tired today because I feel like I've preached for two hours. That's not normally me, but all right.

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Everybody's going, praise God. Lord, make him tired. Wait a minute, chapter 13's a long chapter.

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This could get exciting. Okay, Matthew 13, let's start with about verse seven, okay?

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And some fell among thorns. So here we have the same parable. And the thorns sprung up and choked them.

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So they withered away and died. That's not a real Christian, is it? Do you say, well, but they had fruit.

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It doesn't, it just means they did good works. It doesn't mean that it's like from God. It doesn't say that, it just says they had fruit.

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So they, but other fell on the good ground and brought forth fruit, some 100 fold, some 60 fold, and some 30 fold.

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Then Jesus says this, who has ears to hear, let him hear. All right, so the apostles heard it, but they didn't quite get it.

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So they said, explain it to me, so he did. And the disciples came and said unto him, why speakest thou unto them in parables?

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All right, now see, this comes right after that story we've already studied this morning. And the topic on point number nine, how the

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Holy Spirit causes you to know the grace of God is what I'm talking about. You're gonna find it embedded right after that other story was told.

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It's interesting, because it hits point eight and point nine that parable hits those two points. But look what it says now.

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So they ask him, how come, why in the world, we just heard you tell this interesting story to these people, and we don't think they're getting it.

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We don't think they're understanding it because we barely understand it. We've figured some of it out, some of it, we want you to explain it to us.

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But why do you teach that way in the first place? Why do you speak to them in parables?

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Verse 11, Jesus answered and said unto them, because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

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So Jesus named two groups of people. And the world today, the church world today does not want to believe this.

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They hate this doctrine. The world has always hated this doctrine. When Jesus taught this in a different way in a different place, it said all of his apostles moved away from him, and he looked at Peter and Paul and some of them said, will you leave too?

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And they said, well, no, because you have the words of life, but otherwise we would. It's almost like they wanted to leave too, because this teaching is so tough for human beings, because we're humanists, and we don't like God to be in control.

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We don't like that. We want to be in control. Nobody likes it. And certainly churches don't like it.

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And so he says, well, the reason I taught this way is because to you, it's given to hear with ears that hear and to be saved, but to them it is not.

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They're not a group of people God's even interested in as far as salvation. He's very interested them in the form of a creation like a tree or a rock, and they're servants of God's.

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And they actually, like Brother Oda said, they actually put everything on the shelf for God's children is what they do. And that's

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God's interest in them is they put stuff on the shelf to make your life better, but he's not interested so much in them.

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And the world hates that doctrine. Always has, always will. But Jesus is teaching it right here. He said, look, to you it's given to hear, to them it's not.

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Well, who's them? Aren't those humans too? Yeah, they are, but in a different parable, Jesus said, look, you're telling me, you asked me if I planted bad seed with my wheat, and the answer is no,

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I don't plant tares. He said, the enemy planted the tares. His name's the devil, and he named him. There's the other group.

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All right, I'm not saying we know who they are. I think you can know who they are. I think sometimes you have to know who they are.

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What was that in Sunday school, Ben? We were back there studying with Brother Bill. I might not have mentioned it to you, though.

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It might have been in my head, and if it is, you're not gonna be able to help me there, but we saw a verse like that in your Sunday school lesson. But anyway, here we are.

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He answered and said to them, because it is given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

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Now look at verse 12. For whosoever has, in other words, if you have grace, if you have been saved, and you have grace, and you have ears that hear, to him shall be given even more.

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He shall have more abundance. But look at this. But whosoever has not, in other words, the person who doesn't have the ears to hear, the person who doesn't understand grace at all, to that person who has not, from him shall be taken away even what he has.

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That is a picture of the black bird coming and snatching the seed from the hard path, ladies and gentlemen.

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Yeah, everyone gets to hear the gospel, right? Everyone gets the sun to shine on them, but not everyone gets to hear the gospel and keep it, because when you don't hear it with ears that understand,

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Satan plucks it out of your head quicker than it got there. And this is the people that God in his sovereignty did not choose to hear it.

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You say, well, I can't believe you believe that. Well, I believe John 3, 16, and that's in the Bible, but I also believe all of Roman chapter eight and nine, and Ephesians chapter one, and everything in the

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Bible teaches what I just said, that God foreordains who's gonna be saved. And listen, Jesus is saying it right here.

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I'm teaching in parables, because to them who will not be saved, they're not gonna get to hear it and understand it, but to you, you are.

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So he says, even the little bit that they do have, it'll be taken away too. It'll go away because they're gonna fill their life with the world, the cares of the world, riches, deceitfulness of riches, and other things are gonna creep in and choke what little bit they heard, but they did get to hear it, but they rejected it.

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Verse 13 says, therefore, speak I to them in parables. But now listen to this. If this weren't clear enough already, because they seeing, don't see.

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Now, actually, Jesus is quoting the Old Testament here. He says, because they seeing, do not see, and hearing, yet they don't hear, neither do they understand.

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You see, they hear with the ear, but they don't hear with the understanding, because that's a gift from God, and God didn't give them that gift, these people that he's talking to.

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And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah. So Jesus is quoting Isaiah from the Old Testament, which says, by hearing, you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing, you shall see and shall not perceive.

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For this people's heart is already waxed gross. Now listen, you say, well, what about free will?

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And what about, how can this be fair? Well, God said, look, they've already waxed their heart is gross.

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Their heart is hard as a stone. It's not my fault, I gave them the gospel. I let them hear it too, but they rejected it because their heart is so hard because they want it to be.

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So, you know, this whole thing about free will and predestination, they're both true. Okay, they are both true.

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They happen side by side all the time, every minute of every day. God has predetermined how and if you're gonna get home alive today, but he's also determined that you, with your will, should choose to drive carefully and be safe and watch and be careful.

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Why do we tell each other, all of us tell each other when we leave, be careful. Why do we do that if God's sovereign? Have you ever thought about that?

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Why do you worry about, well, be careful. And yet God's already determined the minute every one of us is gonna die.

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So why do we do it? Because it's important to be careful. You see, God is not only predestined how everything works, he's predestined that it's important for us to make good choices, right?

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It's part of it. I don't know how, I don't care about that. I'll figure that out when I do not make it home on whichever day that is.

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It'd be weird if it's today, wouldn't it? Charlotte, maybe you better stay over at Katie's house the way this sermon's going.

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But anyway, she says, half the time I wish I were in Katie's house when you're driving. Anyway, but I'm the safest driver in the world because I'm not still alive.

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But anyway, think about it. It's all happening at the same time. But God looks down and looks at this group of people, the ones he's not letting here.

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He said, well, their hearts are already waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes, they're closed.

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But look who closed them. Does it say in verse 15 that God closed their eyes? No, it says their eyes, they have closed.

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So whose fault is it gonna be at the great white throne judgment? Are they gonna say, God, you didn't choose me so I didn't get saved?

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Or are they gonna say, God's gonna say to them, what'd you do with Jesus? And they said, we rejected him because we didn't like him.

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Which is it gonna be? It's gonna be we rejected him because we didn't like him. That's what it's gonna be.

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It's gonna be their fault. But their ears are dull, their eyes, they have closed lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and should understand with their heart and should be converted and I would heal them.

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But now that's an answer to a question. What was the question? Why do you teach in parables?

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That gives me goosebumps because the whole world hates this, but it's true because we just saw it.

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He said, look, I speak this way because it's not for them to hear. Yes, they can hear it, but they have hardened their own hearts, they have closed their own ears and shut their own eyes and I'm not going to let them hear this because the little bit that they had is being taken away because I don't know them.

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I don't know them and yet, if they believed, I would have to save them, he just said.

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I would have to convert them and heal them so it's not gonna happen because I only save the ones the father gave me.

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I don't save the whole world. I don't die for the whole world. I die for God's children.

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You know how we know that? Because he's the ransom. Everyone that his blood ransomed shall be saved because he cannot fail.

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One drop of his blood cannot fail and you're not saved by his blood plus stuff. You're saved by his blood plus nothing.

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So if he shed his blood for the whole world, the entire world will be in heaven. Take note that David Mitchell said that.

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If he died for everyone, the whole world will be in heaven because Jesus cannot fail nor can the

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Holy Spirit who is told by the father, you go down there and you call my people to me.

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You wake them up. They're dead in their sins and trespasses. You quicken them. So listen, if you are chosen and you don't get to heaven, guess whose fault that will be and who will answer for it to the father, the

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Holy Spirit and Jesus. And you say, well, how can that be their one? They're only one in essence. They're not one in duty. They're not one in their ministry.

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They are in order, father, son, and then the Holy Spirit. I just got through reading 400 year old information on that last night from our forefathers talking about the very thing.

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People misunderstand that. They're equal in essence. They're all fully God, but they have different duties and in duty they're in a hierarchy and God the father is on top.

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And Jesus said this, no man comes to me unless my father draws him, but of them

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I will lose nothing. You see that, you see? So this is why Jesus cannot teach in such a way that is clear to every human being.

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It's only clear to the elect. Only the ones that the Holy Spirit opens their ears of understanding can even understand these parables.

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And half the commentators can't fully understand them, but they do over time. But I mean, not the day they wrote their book, some of it they didn't.

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So think about it. This idea that one of the things that God did for us the moment he saved us is that he opened our understanding to understand the difference between salvation by grace and what everyone else teaches.

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The whole world of world religion, Buddhism, Muhammadism, all of it is based on grace,

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Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses. And then you have Christian denominations where they say you can lose your salvation.

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That doesn't take much logic on my part to figure out if they believe that, then they believe something you do saves you because you're falling short and you lose it.

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They're off. They're off. I'm not saying they don't save people and they're the ones that maybe don't listen to them get saved,

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I guess. But the ones that listen to them, it's gonna be hard because that is not the gospel. You see, it's frightening.

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But we live in that day where Jesus said in the end times there'll be many false prophets, don't we?

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Many false prophets. And they just take the truth and just slightly twist it and add a little something to the blood of Jesus and there you have it.

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And if the world were here another 300 years, you'd have another Roman Catholic church because that's what happened to them.

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You'd have another Southern Baptist convention because that's what's happening to them. It's still in process with them. I grew up Baptist so I can talk about it.

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They're going full circle towards humanism as fast as they can go. Look at their seminaries and Bible colleges. Go down there to Baylor, it's only 40 miles away.

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Go down there and just look at it. That's a Bible college, supposedly. So Satan knows how to destroy nations, knows how to destroy church groups.

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So the only thing we can do is stick with what the Holy Spirit put in us when he saved us and it is a pure knowledge of the gospel of grace.

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Salvation by faith without the deeds of the law. For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of ourselves, not of anything that we do, but simply by faith and by the gifts

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God gave us. Huge gift, let's stand and have prayer together. So now we've covered about a third of everything mentioned in this one chapter.

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Can you even believe it? A third, we only covered one third of the things mentioned, not even quite. We didn't get to number 10 yet.

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Then it'll be a third. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word and the richness of it, of all the truth that is embedded within that word of God that your

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Holy Spirit can bring alive and bring to our thoughts and minds. Thank you that you saved us. Lord, we pray for the unsaved.

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We don't always know the tares from the lost sheep. We don't know the lost sheep from the goats all the time, but we just know that you do.

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And so may some word that one of us in this room would say as we speak truth about you and your gospel, may that stick in their heart and mind and that they might have soil where that seed could take root and grow and eventually bear fruit.

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Lord, help us to be used of you in that manner. Help us to water as well by speaking the word of God and teaching the word of God to people that have already been saved.

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And Lord, we just thank you that you let us be a part of your grand plan and you made us part of your family business.

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And so Lord, thank you for that. We ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship now. Bless the meal in Jesus' name, amen.