Arming Our Children

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Open your Bibles with me to Hebrews chapter four and remain standing for the reading of God's word.
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Hebrews chapter four and verse 12 will be our text for the morning for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that you have given it to us as not only a tool for study, but Lord, as the very lamp unto our feet and the light into our path, the very the very guide to lead us to this life.
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And Father, I pray that as I preach today, that you would keep me from error, as I know that I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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And I also pray, Lord, that you would give me a passion to preach the truth, to hold nothing back and to be committed to your word.
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And I pray that you would also open the hearts of everyone who is under the sound of my voice.
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For believers, Lord, I pray that there would be comfort and conviction.
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And Father, if there are those here who don't know Christ, that there would be conviction unto eternal life.
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And it's in Jesus name we pray and for his sake.
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Every Christian, every genuine believer, fights a battle daily.
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The battle that we fight is the battle for sanctity.
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It's the battle for holiness.
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It's a daily struggle against what have been called the three great enemies of the soul.
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The three great enemies of the soul are defined as the flesh, the world and the devil.
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And oftentimes when we think about those three things, we think about them somewhat in categorical terms.
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We have the flesh that we deal with.
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We have the world that we deal with and we have the devil that we deal with.
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And of course, you get the guys like Flip Wilson, the devil made me do it.
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And they sort of categorize some things in that vein.
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But the reality is that it's not as if we have three categories of things which we're dealing with.
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The reality is that each one builds upon the next.
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Our flesh has these desires.
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The world feeds those desires.
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And of course, the devil is the one who is conspiring to bring that in our path.
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So it's not as if one and the other and the other are in different categories.
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It's like one builds on the other.
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They use the other.
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And this is a battle that we all fight.
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If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you don't battle sin, you're dead.
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I don't mean dead spiritually.
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I mean, you must be dead.
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There's another battle that I want to talk about this morning, and that is the battle for our children, because not only do we fight a daily battle for sanctity, a daily battle for holiness, we also as parents and grandparents, you don't get off the hook either.
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Grandparents as well.
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We fight a similar battle for our children.
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It seems as if we're always having to shield our children's eyes from something that the world wants to feed them, which is evil.
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Recently, my family and I went on a little two day trip down to Orlando for Ligonier Ministries conference or videotaping.
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And while we were down there, we went to the hotel and we were sitting around.
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The kids were laying on the beds.
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I was sitting in the chair with my computer.
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And I look up on the television screen and of course, on the television, I see something that's unwholesome and my children hadn't turned it there on purpose.
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It just happened to come up on the screen.
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And so I looked at the kids.
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I said, turn the television channel.
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So they turned it.
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You know, it took us four times before we arrived on something that wasn't something that they shouldn't be looking at.
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And some people say, well, you shelter your kids.
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I say, yeah, I also feed and clothe them.
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It's one of the three things I'm supposed to do.
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You know, as far as you know, I feed.
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I mean, it's in there, isn't it? It's part of the job description.
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They said, no, we mean you over shelter your children.
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Well, let me tell you, I want to share with you an illustration that Vody Bokum, one of my favorite pastors, shared.
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He said, if I were to buy a brand new Ferrari.
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Not that I would or could, but if I were to buy a brand new Ferrari and I brought it home and I was sitting in my living room and a 16 year old boy came up and knocked on the door and I walked up to him and I opened the door and I said, here's the Ferrari.
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Have it back by midnight.
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Every one of you would think I was nuts.
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But yet, isn't this what we do with our kids? Yeah, go have fun.
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Be back by midnight.
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We don't know who you're with.
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We don't know what you're doing.
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We don't know what you're doing and who you're doing it with.
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You see, we're idolaters because we care more about that car than we do about our children.
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That's harsh words, but that's the truth.
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Beloved, we have a job to do with our kids.
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We have a job to do in raising our children.
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We have a job in knowing what's going on in their lives and caring enough about what's going on in their lives that we invest ourselves in them.
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We are in a constant battle for our children's sanctity as so much as we are for our own.
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So the question is, if our children are growing up and one day they're going to be out from underneath our authority.
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One day they are going to become grownups and one day they are going to be in this battle for themselves.
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They're no longer going to be under our shelter and they're no longer going to be under our established authority.
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They're going to step out into their own lives and into their own ways.
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The question of the day is what tool or rather what weapon should we give them for the battle? It's a battle.
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You fight it.
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They're fighting it through you now, but one day they're going to fight it on their own.
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What weapon do you give them for the battle? And the answer is not popular psychology.
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The answer is not secular philosophy, even though that's what we tend to give our kids.
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We give them pop psychology and secular philosophy instead of giving them the word of God.
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The word of God is the only sufficient tool for our children to use and have to fight the battles which this world will wage against them.
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The modern logic is this.
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The modern logic is we must give up the Bible and fight our battles using human wisdom and human logic.
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In fact, let me just let me add how many of you have ever heard of the intelligent design movement? I know most of you have.
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Here's the thing.
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They're the best example of this I can give you.
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The intelligent design movement says this.
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We can prove that naturalistic Darwinian evolution is a falsehood.
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We can prove it is demonstrably false that one type of DNA can miraculously change into another type of DNA.
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Doggies don't become goats, you know, and that's the idea.
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And the intelligent design movement goes even a step back further and says the issue is not just that that's not happening, but that we know by the very intricate nature of the cell.
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That the very intricate nature of the cell demonstrates an irreducible complexity that shows us that it had to have a designer, even at the very basic level of construction of life, that there had to be a designer.
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And the designer demonstrates intelligence.
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Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, goes into a lot of the irreducible complexity of the cell.
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That's something Darwin didn't even know about.
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He thought the cell was a was it was just was just a mush, was just some type of some type of a of of of protoplasm, some type of it wasn't.
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It didn't have constructive.
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They couldn't look like we can look now.
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Our tools of modern science prove intelligence was necessary for the bringing about of life.
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But here's the problem with intelligent design.
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If you're a promoted a proponent of intelligent design, let me tell you what the problem is.
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The problem is they'll say this.
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Yes, we believe an intelligence designed the world, but we don't know who it is.
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We don't know where it was, where it came from.
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That is not enough.
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Intelligent design is necessary, but intelligent design is insufficient.
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Don't just tell your children that they came from somewhere because something had to be smart enough to make them.
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You must tell them what the Bible says, that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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We must share with our children the truth of the word of God.
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We can't simply tell them, well, the statistics prove that the majority of chance of the fact that this probably couldn't have happened without a designer.
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No, that is not something upon which you can build a faith.
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But yet that's what we do.
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We send our children out to the lions and we take away their sword.
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We send them into the battles of life and we take away the only weapon for which they can fight those battles, which is the word of God.
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I want to show you something before we get to the Hebrews passage.
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Can you go somewhere with me so I can show you an illustration of this? Go with me to Matthew chapter four, Matthew chapter four.
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This is after the baptism of Jesus.
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Jesus goes into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan to demonstrate that he is, in fact, impeccable.
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Matthew chapter four, verse one, then Jesus led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
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He was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
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And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.
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And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.
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But he answered, it is written.
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Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
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Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written.
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He will command his angels concerning you and on their hands you will bear them up lest you strike your foot against the stone.
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Jesus said to him again, it is written.
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You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
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Again, the devil took him up to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.
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And he said to him, all these I will give to you if you fall down and worship me.
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Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written.
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You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.
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Then the devil left him and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
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So why did I pull you to this passage? Here is Jesus, the son of God, God, the son there demonstrating his impeccability through a series of temptations by Satan.
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Satan comes to him in a barrage of temptations.
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If you are God's son, do this.
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If you worship me, I'll give you this.
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How does Jesus respond? Hey, Dr.
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Phil said this.
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You know, one of the greatest scholars in Jewish history said this.
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You know, I had an idea once and it was this.
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Did Jesus use any of those things? No, he didn't appeal to pop psychology.
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He didn't appeal to the philosophers.
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He didn't appeal to any other authority except God himself.
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He said it is written.
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This is not just a book.
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This is God's word to us.
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And Christ, in his time of temptation and his time of battle with Satan, appealed only to this.
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And shame on us if we tell our children to do different.
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If we tell our children, no, you have to appeal to some outside authority.
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The Bible is the word of God and it is our authority and it is able to fight its own battles and fight our battles for us.
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Someone once asked a popular preacher, do you defend God's word? He said, do you defend a lion? No, you just let it loose and it will defend itself.
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Powerful thought, powerful words.
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So today we're going to look at five things.
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That was our introduction.
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Now we'll move to the actual text.
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We're studying Hebrews four.
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We're going to look at five things from this passage which tell us why the Bible is the right weapon to fight life's battles, why it's the right one for us and why it's the right one to give to our children.
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Because this passage in Hebrews four tells us five things.
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It references the word of God.
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There's a little debate among theologians as to whether or not the writer of Hebrews is talking about the word of God, referencing Jesus, because we know Jesus is called the word of God or whether it's talking about the actual written word of God.
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John Owen, the great Puritan preacher, said he believed it was referring to Jesus.
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John Calvin, the great reformer, said he believed it was referring to the written word of God.
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And Charles Spurgeon said he believed it could have applied to both the written word and the word incarnate, who is Jesus.
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So you have the word incarnate, the word inscripturated.
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I would make the point that I do believe it is the written word of God here, which is being referenced.
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I will side with Calvin on this.
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No surprise there.
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But but I will say that I think that Charles Spurgeon and John Owen certainly are not wrong, that everything that is said here could be applied to Jesus Christ, the incarnate word.
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But I think specifically this is referencing the Bible, the written word of God.
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And that is how we are going to take the text this morning.
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So in that there are five things that this text tells us about the written word of God, about this document that tells us that it's the best tool to fight the battles of life.
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Number one, and these are in your notes, if you're taking notes, I actually put them in your notes to write this week.
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Number one, it is a divine document.
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It is a divine document.
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Most of you know this passage.
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I don't have to have you turn there, but if you want to write it down, if you don't know this verse, Second Timothy three and verse 16 says all scripture is God breathed.
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Now, the old King James, it says all scripture is inspired by God.
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And I must say, I think that's that's a that's not a great translation.
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I'm not saying that the writers of the King James didn't do the best they could.
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But as I've often said, you know, we are not bound by a 16th century Anglican translation.
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You know, we can look at the original language and we can read the original language.
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And the original word there is the Greek word.
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They are no stops.
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They are is God.
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New stuff is breath and put the two together.
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Paul creates a word and the word is God breathed.
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And it says all scripture is God breathed.
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It comes from the very mouth of God.
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It is God's word, which is why in Hebrews four twelve, it's called the word of God.
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How long has to say the word of God? So it is divine in its nature.
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Many books claim to have divine origins, but only the Bible bears the marks of divinity.
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It was written over 1500 year period.
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It was written by over 40 different people.
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It was written in three different languages.
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Yet there is a consistency which runs through the Bible from the beginning to the end, which is remarkable and unmistakable.
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So you have a book written by 1500, written over 1500 years, written by 40 different people, more than 40 different people in three languages.
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And yet it agrees with itself.
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I could take four of you and ask where we're going to lunch and y'all wouldn't agree.
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And you all speak the same language.
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Is it not an amazing thing that we have 66 books which make up our Bible and there is agreement throughout the Koran cannot boast such a claim.
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The Koran was written by one man, one time and one language.
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The Book of Mormon, one man, one time, one language.
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But the Bible has within itself an internal consistency which demonstrates its divinity.
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It is also the most and this is important, I want you to hear this, it is the most well-attested work of antiquity.
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What does that mean? The Bible itself has more attestation to its correctness in the sense of its textual fidelity than any other work in all of history.
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Homer, Pliny, Tacitus, all these ancient works that we have.
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But the closest ones that we have, original copies, are hundreds of years after the original.
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We have copies of Scripture which date back within the first generation of its writing.
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Textual historians from secular realms, they literally would drool over the amount of textual attestation that we have for the Bible.
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So not only does the Bible demonstrate miraculous inspiration, it also demonstrates miraculous preservation.
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God has preserved his word for us.
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I remember one time I was sitting right out here, we were having a fall festival and these two little girls came to our fall festival.
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They were probably 16 years old and they were dressed as devils, which is, you know, we don't dress up for our fall festivals when we have them.
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And we especially ask people not to dress as demons.
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And they did not know that.
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But they also came with the intention of being somewhat disagreeable.
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You know, they knew they were coming to a church, so they dressed as devils with their little horns and their little tails.
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And they came to be somewhat sardonic at best, sarcastic at worst, you know.
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So I sat down with the young girls and I said, tell me what it is you believe and what would cause you to want to be.
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In the appearance that you're in, why are you doing this? Well, we don't believe the Bible.
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OK, a lot of people don't believe the Bible, but you guys are somewhat being antagonistic.
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What is it about the Bible that you don't believe? Well, the Bible was written so long ago and it's been translated over and over and over so many times we no longer know what it says.
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I said, you're wrong.
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I said, let's go in my office, I'll pull out the Greek New Testament and I'll read it to you.
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This is what the apostle Paul wrote.
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This is what Peter wrote.
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This is what John wrote.
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If you're worried about the fact that it hasn't been translated multiple, this whole telephone game that people talk about, that the Bible's been translated over and over and over.
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I can show you what the original said.
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We can talk about the original text.
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Hey, baby, she's coming at me.
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She thinks I'm she's on her way.
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Oh, that was sweet.
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But that's what I told the young lady.
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She'd never heard that.
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Well, I heard on the History Channel that the Bible's been corrupted.
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Well, let me show you the text, what the original said.
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There's over 70 or 7000 manuscripts, Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that still exist today.
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It is the most well-attested work of history.
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It has the foundation that no other document in all of history has.
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It is a divine document and it demonstrates its divinity.
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Not only through the prophetic utterance, which itself is amazing, it has internal consistency and prophecy that's fulfilled throughout.
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But it also has a textual history of preservation, which is amazing and beyond anything else in the world.
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So that's the first.
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It's a divine document.
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We got four more.
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Let's move on.
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Number two, it is a living document.
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It is a living document.
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Hebrews 4 says, for the word of God is living.
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The word living there, the Greek is zone.
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It's the same word, by the way.
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You remember when Peter gave his good confession? Jesus said, who do you say that I am? And Peter said, I believe you are the Christ, the son of the living God.
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The word living, same root word.
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In fact, when when Stephen was before the Sanhedrin, remember when Stephen was martyred before the Sanhedrin? He preached to the people.
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He called the Bible, he called it living oracles.
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Same word.
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He said this is we receive living oracles from Moses.
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You know, a lot of people today question whether or not the Bible itself is relevant to today.
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You hear a lot of people talk about relevance and they say, well, I don't know if the Bible is relevant to today.
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You guys know who Herman Melville is? Wrote Moby Dick.
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He also wrote a book named called Redburn.
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How many of you ever read that book? OK, it's a smaller book than Moby Dick.
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Redburn was all about this guy.
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He goes to Liverpool where his family is from and his father gives him a map of Liverpool.
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OK, and his son, the son is so excited to go back to his hometown.
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So he goes back to Liverpool.
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He's got the father's map.
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And as soon as he gets there, he's going to see all these places the father's map had laid out.
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And when he gets there, nothing's the same.
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All the street signs are different.
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None of the sign names are the same.
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All of the taverns and the buildings and the businesses had all changed or been sold or whatever.
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And so now he looks at this map in tears.
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He cries because he says this map is obsolete.
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It's no longer relevant.
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My dad's Liverpool is dead and this new Liverpool has arisen and he's depressed and in tears.
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And a lot of people don't realize this, but that was Herman Melville's view of the Scripture.
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He wrote that allegorically because that's the way he saw the Bible.
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He said it was good for my parents, it was good for the generations that came before me, but it's no longer relevant for my generation.
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How sad is that? How how disturbing.
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But that's the way the modern person looks at the Bible.
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They say the Bible is irrelevant.
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Let me tell you something, and I want you to hear this clearly.
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The Bible, because it is alive, because it is a living document, never ever becomes irrelevant.
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Think of this.
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I want you to consider this.
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It answers the most important questions that you will ever ask.
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It answers the questions, who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What happens when I die? The most relevant questions that any human being of any generation has ever asked.
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The Bible deals with those questions.
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People spend fortunes going to gurus.
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They spend millions of dollars going to self-help experts to try to find the answers to the questions that the Bible clearly gives.
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And I know some Christian leaders who say, well, the job of the pastor is to make the Bible relevant.
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That's a lie.
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The job of the pastor is not to make the Bible relevant.
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I have three jobs when I stand in the pulpit.
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Most of you heard this before.
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Read the text, apply the text or I'm sorry, read the text, interpret the text, apply the text.
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That's my job.
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It ain't my job to make it relevant, because guess what? It's already relevant.
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You speak to any issue, parenting, marriage, ethics, economics, justice, anything.
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And the Bible has God's will on that issue.
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And it's always relevant.
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One of the most contested issues I've already dealt with, the issue of origins.
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People want to know where we came from.
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People want to debate where we came from.
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And yet the Bible is not unclear on this issue.
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One scientist said there were four things that were necessary for the universe to exist.
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Time, space, matter and energy, that those four things are necessary for our universe to exist.
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In the beginning, time, God created energy, the heavens, space and the earth matter.
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The four things that are necessary for the universe to exist are in the very first verse of the Bible.
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It is not irrelevant.
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It is the word of God.
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Now, I'm going to hasten because I'm easy to get bogged down in each of these, so let me move on.
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Number three, it is a powerful document.
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It is a powerful document.
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It says the word of God is living and active in the King James Version.
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It says powerful.
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This is one place where I think they got it really right.
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The King James translators, when it calls it powerful, I think that's the that's the exact idea that I think the writer of Hebrews is trying to get across to us because it is powerful.
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The word of God has the power to convert dead souls.
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That's powerful.
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The Bible says in Psalm 19 and verse seven, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.
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It has the power to change the heart of man through the work of the Holy Spirit.
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The word of God is powerful.
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It can change your heart.
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It can take a stony, dead heart.
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It can remove it and replace it with a heart of flesh that beats for Jesus Christ.
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The word of God is powerful to convert, and it's also powerful to sanctify.
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The Bible says not only is it powerful enough to change your heart, but it's powerful enough to also keep you moving towards Christ.
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It says John 17, 17 sanctified.
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Jesus is praying for us, by the way.
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In John 17, if you ever want to know what Jesus thinks of you and how Jesus prays for you, go read John 17, because that is his high priestly prayer.
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And he's praying not only for his disciples, but he said, everyone who will believe on me because of their word.
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That's you all.
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We believe on Jesus because of the testimony of the apostles.
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And that's us.
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Jesus is praying for us.
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And he says in John 17, 17, he said, sanctify them with your truth.
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Your word is truth.
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So the word of God not only is powerful enough to convert the heart, the word of God is powerful enough to sanctify the heart.
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As it says, we read in our opening text this morning when we opened the passage, opened the word of God.
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Psalm 119 and verse 11, I have stored up your word in my heart that I would not sin against you.
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I like it in the King James, thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee.
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Thy word is in my heart.
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And that's what keeps me focused.
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That's what keeps me on task.
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That's what keeps me following after Christ.
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The word in my heart.
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All right, I want to give you a quote from John MacArthur.
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You all like John MacArthur.
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I think most of you do.
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He says the Bible will keep us from sin or sin will keep us from the Bible.
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And when I think about the sanctification power of the scripture, that's what it is.
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The Bible will keep us from sin or sin will keep us from the Bible.
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All right, number four, it is a piercing document.
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It says the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword.
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And it goes on to say that it's able to separate soul from spirit and marrow and joints.
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Beloved, what's interesting about this passage is that when the apostle Paul or I'm sorry, we don't know who wrote Hebrews.
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I say, Paul, I don't think Paul wrote it.
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So I clear that up very quickly.
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The person who wrote Hebrews, when he says the Bible is sharper than any two edged sword.
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The word sword here in the Greek, there's two words that could have been used.
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There's the broad sword, which is used to hack and battle.
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And then there is the short, two edged, almost like scalpel instrument, which was used for the fine cutting work.
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That's the word that's used in the Greek.
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And the idea behind this passage is that the word of God cuts us and lays us bare, both physically and emotionally before God.
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And here's the thing.
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You don't have to be open to it for it to open you.
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You do not have to be open to the word of God for it to open you.
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Because guess what? None of us are.
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But yet it still has the capacity to cut us right to the quick because it's powerful, it's living, it's active and it will cut you in half.
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It did that to Augustine.
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How many of you know, you know, St.
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Augustine, because we have a city right near us, you know, how Augustine was saved.
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Augustine had a mother who was a Christian and she prayed for him.
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But he lived a sinful life.
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He lived a very sinful life.
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He dabbled in paganism.
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He dabbled in all kinds of sin.
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And yet he was he was in a situation.
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And he heard a child's voice singing, Tolelege, Tolelege, which means take up and read, take up and read.
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And he didn't know what that meant, but he he took it as a divine whisper.
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And so he went and he opened God's word.
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And this is the passage that he read.
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Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling or jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
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That passage cut Augustine in half and it led him to Christ because he had been the one who had satisfied himself in orgies.
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He had been the one who had satisfied himself in lustful pleasures.
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He had been the one who had argued against the scripture, argued against Christ.
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He had argued against the truth.
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And yet when he finally was confronted with the word of God, it cut him in half.
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And he stood desperate for God, the word of God will split us down the middle and it does not need our permission.
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Finally, it is a discerning document.
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It says in verse 12.
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Not only is it a two edged sword, not only does it pierce the division of soul and spirit joints and marrow, but it also discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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And it says, beloved, when we need to know who we are, really and honestly, who we are, we look into the Bible and it mirrors back a reflection of who we are.
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The Bible tells me exactly who I am.
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It reflects my imperfections to me as James chapter 123 and 24 tells me it's a mirror unto me.
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If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.
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And then he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he is like.
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What does that mean? James is saying this.
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We look at ourselves in the word of God.
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We look at ourselves in the Bible.
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We see ourselves.
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But what do we do? We walk away.
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We don't let it change us.
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But that doesn't mean we didn't see ourselves.
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Doesn't mean we didn't see ourselves.
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And that's the point of James is we see ourselves in this word.
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It discerns ourselves.
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As Steve Lawson has said, the more I read the Bible, the more it reads me.
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Why do we walk away, though? If it discerns us so well, if it tells us why we lust, if it tells us why we struggle with truth, if it tells us why we covet, if it tells us all these things about ourselves that are true, why do we walk away and close our eyes and close our ears? Why? Because the Bible says we suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
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We know what the truth is in our hearts.
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We know what the truth is down deep inside.
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And we know these things.
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Yet we suppress it.
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We're like the we're like the obstinate child who, when he goes outside and the mother goes out and says, come back, come back.
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He sticks his thumbs in his ears and he yells and yells and yells and says, no, I don't want to hear it.
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All of the mothers in the room go, amen, because you know exactly what I'm talking about.
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And that's what we do.
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We see the truth in God's word.
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We see the power in God's word.
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We see ourselves in God's word.
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And yet what do we do? I don't want to hear it.
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Beloved, the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword, able to pierce to the division of soul and of spirit, of marrow and of bone.
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And it discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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And those are five reasons why our children need the word of God more than they need pop psychology.
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Our children need the word of God more than they need any other type of education.
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We spend thousands and thousands of dollars to ensure that our children receive the best of education in mathematics, the best of education in language, the best of education in science and literature.
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And yet we neglect to them the only thing that will have an eternal consequence, which is the word of God.
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Beloved, to truly arm our children for the battle of life, we must arm them with the only weapon.
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That God has provided to fight life's battles, let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for its truth.
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And I pray that it has gone out this morning as an encouragement to your people.
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And I pray that you would use this time to do whatever your will would be done to convict the lost, to convert them to Christ, to bring believers closer and to show all of us the absolute necessity of the word of God for us.
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We have no other place to turn.
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But to Christ, and it is in his name we pray.
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Amen.