Introduction to Scripture Memory

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And the series is about memorizing scripture for the purpose of evangelism.
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And so, as much as we're used to bringing up the topic of evangelism and seeing people's natural reaction often be to shrink in fear and concern, when we bring up memorizing scripture, we get a lot of the same thing sometimes.
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We hear frequently people say, or maybe you think to yourself, well, I just can't memorize scripture, right? I have too much to do, I'm too young, I'm too old, I'm too this, I'm too that.
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I just can't do it.
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Well, I'm here to tell you tonight that you can memorize scripture.
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That there's not a person in this room who cannot memorize scripture.
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And specifically for the purpose of evangelism.
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And so as we talk tonight, I just want you to think through a few things to start with.
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I want you to think about things that you know.
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Is there anyone in this room who does not know their home address? Anybody who doesn't know their address at home? Is there anybody in this room who doesn't know their social security number? For some of you in this room, you might know multiple social security numbers.
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You might remember yours and your spouse's and your children's.
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I used to would have said, does anybody not remember phone numbers? But I think we're all spoiled with cell phones now that are programmed.
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So really a lot of folks don't remember phone numbers anymore.
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You know, we remember the directions on how to get to where we work and where we live.
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We remember our favorite TV show and what time it comes on and what channel it's on.
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We remember the score from our favorite sports team ten years ago when they won that big game.
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We remember, you know, what Pete Rose's own base average was in 78.
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Some people really have tremendous memories, but even those of us who wouldn't consider ourselves to be great at remembering things, you remember a tremendous amount of information.
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And so really when we say that we can't memorize scripture, I hate to say it, but it's really just an excuse because if we dedicate ourselves to doing it, if we put in time and effort, you can memorize scripture.
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Now, granted, there are some people who just have a knack for this.
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I've met men in my life and women and children even who have an incredible command and ability to memorize scripture passages.
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I knew a guy in a church I used to go with, and I don't know if he knew the whole New Testament, but I'd be shocked if he didn't.
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I mean, chapter, verse, he could just go there.
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And that's phenomenal.
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And he worked at it, but, I mean, he just had an amazing ability.
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Not all of us are going to be able to do that, but that's not necessary.
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In order to share the gospel with someone, you don't have to remember the entire New Testament.
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We have, thank God, in the day and age we live, we have Bibles at the ready, printed Bibles.
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We have access to Bibles on our electronic devices.
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I mean, there's never been a time when scripture was more readily available, at least here where we live.
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So you don't have to memorize every passage, but it's important for us to be able to memorize scripture to make a gospel presentation.
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And so this is a logical extension for us, as most of you were here and spent the last 10 weeks learning about how to share the gospel, how to share your faith with someone through the way of the Master Course.
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This is kind of a 201 class.
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You know, what is the content of that message? What scriptures can I memorize that will help me when that time comes? And so our pastor had planned to go through one verse a week and talk about that verse and memorize it together.
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That's our goal is to memorize scripture together and to challenge one another to grow in this.
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And so when he called me and asked me if I could teach, I decided that as an overachiever, we should learn five today.
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So, you know, they say go big or go home, right? We're going to go over five verses today.
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They're very short and very simple, and many of you will already know most, if not all of them.
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But we don't expect you to necessarily have them all memorized by next week.
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But I want to show you in doing this just how simple it really can be, that we make it sometimes more complicated than it has to be.
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And so don't let tonight scare you away.
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Our pastor is committed to one verse a week for the next nine weeks.
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I think tonight, hopefully what I want to do is address a couple of questions.
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Why this is important.
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Why we need to memorize scripture.
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What we need to memorize.
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What types of scriptures.
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What things are important for us to memorize.
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So I want to build that foundation of why we're doing this and what we're trying to do.
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And then I want to kind of build up the spine of scriptures that cover the gospel from start to finish.
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And then as Keith progresses through the rest of the series, he's going to add things to it.
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Because if you can memorize 20 or 30 or 40 scriptures that concern the gospel, that's outstanding.
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That will give you a lot of things.
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It will give you courage and boldness to speak to someone because you know the content of what you're trying to talk to them about.
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It will give you scripture to answer their questions.
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Sometimes their objections with scripture rather than your own words.
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We all live in danger of waxing poetic at times.
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It's always best when we can go to scripture.
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But really if you can just learn five or ten, it's enough to start.
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And so that's what we're going to try to do tonight.
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So as we ask the question first, why do we need to memorize scripture? Well, I'm sure there's tons of answers.
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But just like I just said, it's best to answer these questions with scripture.
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And so I want you to look first at 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16.
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A scripture that maybe half of you in the room already have memorized.
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I know Brother Richard probably knows this one.
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You keep a sheet in your Bible, don't you, Richard, of verses? No, I don't get it.
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Okay, yeah.
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3, 2 Timothy 3 and verse 16.
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Yeah, Brother Richard has done this for many years.
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And has built up a nice repertoire of verses.
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And that's our goal.
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And this verse is going to tell us why it's so important.
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2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16.
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It says, all scripture is breathed out by God.
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And profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction.
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And for training in righteousness.
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That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
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I couldn't say it any better than that.
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So that's why I went to that verse.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So we have God's word given to us by God.
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Breathed out by God.
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And it tells us what it's profitable for.
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It's profitable for teaching.
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It's profitable for reproof.
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For rebuke.
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For correction when we're wrong.
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For training us in righteousness.
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And what God's word does is builds us up.
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As men of God, as women of God.
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So that we can be complete and equipped for every good work.
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I think that evangelism and sharing the gospel falls under the umbrella of every good work.
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I believe that.
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And so knowing the scripture prepares us for that.
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One more verse I want to look at before we move on.
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That also I think answers this question in a really good way.
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It's in Hebrews chapter 4.
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And this is a passage that describes God's word in vivid imagery.
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This just gets me every time.
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I mean, this is it.
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Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12.
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It says, for the word of God is living and active.
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Sharper than any two-edged sword.
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Piercing to the division of soul and of spirit.
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Of joints and of marrow.
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And discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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It goes on to say, and no creature is hidden from his sight.
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But all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
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Man, I need something to take to people to share the gospel.
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What in the world would I use? Why would I not use this? The very word of God.
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This is what we need.
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This is what people need to hear.
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Because God's word exposes.
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It breaks them down.
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You know, we heard in the way of the master.
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We heard that the law is a schoolmaster.
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That's a scripture that they've emphasized memorizing.
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The law is a schoolmaster.
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It shows us.
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It shows the lost.
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That they're in need of God.
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That they need a savior.
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It teaches them that.
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And this tells us that God's word is living and active.
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It's sharp.
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It cuts us to pieces.
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It takes the hard-hearted and the arrogant.
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Who stand in opposition to God.
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Who hate God.
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And it breaks them down.
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And by the work of the Holy Spirit brings them to life.
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So God's word is a critical part of what we do as evangelism.
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You guys heard me preach a couple of weeks ago.
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And I talked about the importance of having a testimony.
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Sharing your personal story of what happened in your life.
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How you came to know Christ.
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Just all the events surrounding God saving you and making you alive in Christ.
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That's great.
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But that's not enough just to go tell a story.
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Because this is the truth of God's word.
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This is not subjective.
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This is objective truth.
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This is something that we can stand upon.
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And so God's word is foundational.
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And if we don't know it well enough to share it with someone.
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And say this is what God's word says.
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Then how can we really evangelize anyone? It's great to know a method.
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But this is the content of that method.
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This is what, you know, having a method is like setting a dinner table full of plates and silverware.
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And putting no food on it.
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If we don't have the content.
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It's like, oh that's a beautiful soup bowl.
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Is there soup? You know, you don't feed hungry people with silverware and dishes.
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So that's why we need to memorize the scripture.
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And you know what? Here's the, let me give you the bonus.
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It's not just good for evangelism.
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You need to hear the gospel yourself over and over and over again.
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You need to preach the gospel to yourself.
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Because when you don't and you take your eyes away from that.
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We start to chase after all kinds of things and lose sight of what's important.
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What we're really here for.
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Why we're on this earth.
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And so we as believers need, desperately need to preach the gospel to ourselves.
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Over and over again.
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One of the greatest blessings for me of being in a seminary.
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Is that I spend hours and hours in a week.
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Because I'm, for my course work.
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In scripture.
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And it has made such a tremendous impact on my life.
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Just forcing me to be in the word more and more and more.
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And hearing sermons and preachers and reading books.
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You know because at some point.
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That's the greatest influence in my life is God's word.
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And not all the other things that we have a tendency to distract ourselves with.
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And so.
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I don't have special access to that because I'm in seminary.
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We can all do that.
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We can all increase our intake of God's word.
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And as we do that.
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Not only does it empower us for evangelism.
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But one of the things I'm going to talk about later.
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Is that it helps us to grow in grace.
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It's a means of growth in grace.
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So that's why we need to memorize scripture.
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Because it is the content of the message of the gospel.
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It is what people need to hear.
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They don't need to hear a slick sales presentation.
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That we've crafted together.
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That we think will bring them to their knees.
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And to the point of saying yes to trying Jesus.
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They need to hear God's word that tells them.
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That they are sinners.
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And that they are facing God's wrath and judgment.
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But that Jesus Christ paid the price.
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For the sins of all who would believe in him.
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So here's the question.
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We know why we need to memorize scripture.
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Then the question turns to this.
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What is it that we need to memorize? Right? It's a little bit of an impossibility for us to go about and just say.
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Well we're going to memorize the whole New Testament.
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Or I'm going to memorize the book of Hebrews.
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Well if you do that.
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That's amazing.
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Super high five.
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Two handed high five.
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But for those of us who aren't superheroes in memory.
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What is the basic building blocks of what we need to know? Well I think the paradigm from way of the master is helpful here.
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Because it talks about law and grace.
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Right? We preach the law to the arrogant and the proud.
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To show them their need for Christ.
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And then when they've seen their need.
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We preach grace.
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We preach to them the great truth of the gospel.
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That Jesus Christ paid the price.
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For sin.
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And so here are the things that I think we need to cover.
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We need to cover that God created the world.
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And everything in it.
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And that he established things.
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That because God created us.
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We have an obligation to obey him.
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Right? That's a foundational truth.
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One of the things that the way of the master uses to.
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Once they've established that to show is the ten commandments.
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And so some understanding of the law is vital for us to know.
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Right? We need to know that there was a standard to keep.
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And that none of us met it.
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And so that's the crux of the problem.
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And then we need to know from there.
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Obviously we move from the law to grace.
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We move to Christ substitutionary atonement.
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To what he did.
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To pay the price that we couldn't pay.
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And then finally we finish out the gospel.
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By calling people to repent and believe.
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You know I've been in the sales world for a long time.
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And the old saying is ABC always be closing.
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Right? At some point after you've given all this instruction.
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You've got to call them to action.
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You've got to say.
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You know when people realize that they are at enmity with God.
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And that Christ paid the price for their sins.
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You don't just walk go.
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Hey glad you know that stuff.
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Hope you figure it all out.
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No we call them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
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And so with that in mind.
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I want to share with you guys.
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A method of evangelism that uses a few verses.
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That's I don't know how old.
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Older than me.
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It's called the Romans Road.
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And these are just the reason it's called the Romans Road.
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Is because there are a few verses in the book of Romans.
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That together can make a basic but complete presentation of the gospel.
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Now I want you guys to hear this.
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I'm not telling you this is the best way.
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To present the gospel every time.
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But what I'm giving you is five verses that cover the basis.
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That are pretty simple.
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If you want to look into it.
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There are hundreds if not thousands of methods of evangelism out there right.
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There's evangelism, explosion, faith.
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There's the evangel cube.
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I grew up in Baptist churches.
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So I've been to training.
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I was a CWT trainer when I was like 10 years old.
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So there's all these different methods you can get.
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But this one is pretty basic.
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The scripture content is there.
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And it's pretty easy to go through.
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So I want you to go through these verses with me.
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One at a time.
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And this is what I want us to try and memorize this week.
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Five passages of scripture.
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The first verse is Romans 3.23.
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Who knows it? Brother Richard knows it I'm sure.
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Anybody else know it? I'm sure somebody knows it.
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Romans 3.23.
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Go ahead brother Richard.
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That's Romans 6.23.
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Let's look.
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Yeah.
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Oh, you got it.
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That's funny.
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Yeah, you're right.
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I'm sorry.
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So Romans 3.23 says what? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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That's a short verse guys.
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That's a good place for us to start out with memorization.
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And it's a pretty profound truth.
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Yes ma'am.
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That's very difficult.
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Yeah.
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I'm going to talk about some helpful tips for memorizing.
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What's that? Inspired.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, the chapter and verse numbers in your Bible came about in the 16th century.
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He's absolutely right.
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They were added.
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They're helpful in many ways, but they're not part of the inspired word of God.
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So it is helpful if you can remember it just because if you need to go to a passage for context, that's great.
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But if you can't remember that, I personally am much more concerned with you remembering the scripture.
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Because if you know the scripture, you can say this to someone.
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God's word says that for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
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And you know what? The odds are that person you're talking to doesn't know what Romans 323 means.
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And unless they're from some other church background, that doesn't mean anything to them.
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So I'm not telling you don't worry about that at all.
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But don't let that be a sticking point for you.
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And we will.
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Once I go through this, I'm going to talk about some helpful ways that make memorization easier.
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Yes, sir.
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The chapter division came out in the 13th century.
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Yeah, that's right.
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And then and then 1551.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And there are places that it's very helpful and there are places that I would argue they got it wrong.
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So there are some places where there are some unnatural chapter divisions in your Bible.
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They're generally pretty good, though.
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But there are a few places where as you study more, you go, well, the thought didn't really shift there.
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This is a continuation.
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So.
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So Romans 323, let's all say it together in the ESV, because that's our few Bibles.
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It says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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So what is the basic truth that all have sinned? We've all missed the mark.
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Now, this is a verse that that some people hesitate to use, because frequently you'll hear a response from someone that says, well, yeah, I'm just a sinner, just like everybody else.
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But I've done good things, too, or whatever the case may be.
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People use this as a sometimes as a pass.
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Well, yeah, I'm no different than you.
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Yeah, that's actually that's what I want somebody to see.
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I'm not I'm not standing here trying to proclaim my righteousness to you and tell you that you need to be like me because I have nothing to boast in but the cross of Christ.
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So.
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While there are some some people who will try and pull this on the way and twist it a little bit, I think it's still a good foundational verse for evangelism.
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I think that pointing out the entirety of the human race, every one of us has sinned, was born in sin, but has also willfully sinned against God and continue in sin.
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Apart from Christ is a great place to start.
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So that's Romans 323.
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The next reference is easy to remember because it's just three chapters later.
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It's 623 Romans 623.
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And this is a verse that you actually get double duty on this one because you break it up into A and B.
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So it it covers both angles.
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And Romans 623 says this for the wages of sin is death.
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But the gift of God, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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So we've explained to the person we're sharing the gospel with that.
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We're all sinners that we've all missed the mark.
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Of God's holy standard that if we were to face him in judgment.
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We will be condemned and we do that.
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One of the way the master does this part really well by sharing the law, the law of God, the Ten Commandments.
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So I would encourage you also side aside from your memorization work over the next 10 weeks.
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It would be very helpful of you to memorize the Ten Commandments in order.
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You don't have to memorize the full King James version of it.
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Memorize the short form.
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Have no other gods before the Lord.
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Do not murder.
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Do not commit adultery.
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However, however convinced you need it to be.
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But that is a very helpful thing.
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But we've shown the person that they've missed the mark.
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They couldn't keep God's holy standard.
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And now we're telling them, what's the result of that? The wages, the pay that you earn for your sin is death.
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Not just physical death, spiritual death, separation from Christ, separation from God for eternity and punishment.
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And then the verse flips the corner to tell us, but the free gift of God is eternal life with Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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And again, this is what I was talking about earlier when I said these verses don't cover every base, right? We're not only out just trying to sell people into heaven.
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I hear so many people make an evangelistic plea that basically is just this.
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Do this just so you don't go to hell.
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Right? There's so much more to the gospel than that.
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There's I mean, listen, don't get me wrong.
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I want people to come to Christ and avoid hell and spend eternity with Christ.
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But there's a lot more to the gospel than that.
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So that's where we're going to we're going to continue to flesh this out.
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So Romans 623, so 323 and 623, two very short verses.
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The first one says that for all have sin and fall short of the glory of God.
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The second one says that the wages of sin is death.
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But the gift of God is eternal life with Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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That's like two sentences.
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I'm confident that we can all get there.
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So then we go backwards a little bit to Romans 5, 8.
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Let me tell you, let me just take a quick pause here and tell you guys about a helpful way to make memory easier.
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You ever seen those guys on TV who do like super different memory programs and they remember this list of 100 things and like they give five minutes to look at it.
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Those guys use a trick.
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I don't remember the technical name, but what they do is build what they call a memory house in their mind.
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And so they envision a house with many rooms inside the house.
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And if the first thing on the shopping list is bacon, they envision themselves walking into a kitchen and seeing someone frying bacon.
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So they've got a mental image.
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They think about what it smells like when bacon's cooking and then say the next thing is eggs.
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They see the person go, oh, I forgot the eggs and walk over to the refrigerator and open up.
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And there are the eggs and they visualize the eggs on the top shelf of the refrigerator.
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The same shelf we all have with a little flap down door where the eggs go.
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And then if the next thing is carpet cleaner, they hear a crash from the living room.
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They go around the corner and see the kids ran and spilled something on the carpet.
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And now they need carpet cleaner.
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And so I'm giving you guys the Reader's Digest version of this, but essentially they build these mental images in their mind of how all these things tie together.
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Because when you bring more than one sense, touch, smell, taste, hearing, to play, you memorize things a lot easier.
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And so if you have a hard time with this, think about these things as a mental image.
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They call this the Roman's Road.
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Imagine yourself walking down a road and you come to the first spot and you see on the side of the road a sign.
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Every time I talk about this, I think of Pilgrim's Progress.
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You see a sign on the side of the road.
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And what does that sign say? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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Or even just a shortened version of that.
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We all fall.
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You see those three letters, three words on a sign.
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And then as you cover that, you imagine yourself, the road curves around and you come to another sign on the other side.
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You get what I'm saying.
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These kind of things seem a little silly to us, but they really work.
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They really do.
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So if you have a hard time, think about that.
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So we move to Romans chapter 5 and verse 8.
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And it says that God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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An amazing verse.
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We could spend hours or weeks unpacking all that, but suffice it to say that it communicates very clearly the truth of this.
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That we in no way reached out to God.
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Because while we were still sinning against him.
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While we continued in opposition to him.
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Christ died to pay the price for our sins.
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So we get tripped up on this sometimes because we conceptualize God being bound by our scale of time.
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But it doesn't work that way.
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So Christ paid the price for our sins.
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Even though we were active rebels against him.
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And continued in sin.
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And so this covers what we were talking about.
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Man's sinfulness and inability to meet God's standard.
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And the fact that Christ came down to us because we could not reach up to him.
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So Romans 5, 8, say it with me.
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God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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Another little trick I'll tell you.
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The more you can say a verse out loud, the easier it is to remember.
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Don't sit down at your desk or on your couch at home and try to read these to yourself quietly in your mind.
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You're doing it the hard way.
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If you say it out loud, it becomes much, much easier.
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I'll talk more about that later.
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So Romans 3, 23.
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Romans 6, 23.
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Romans 5, 8.
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And then we jump forward to Romans chapter 10 and verse 9.
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If you guys go home and look up the Romans road.
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You will realize also that there are about 38 different versions of this.
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Because there are other passages in Romans that people use as well.
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So I've learned four or five different ways.
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But this is just the one I thought was best to cover with you guys tonight.
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Romans chapter 10 and verse 9.
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It says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
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And a lot of times people will memorize Tim with that.
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For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
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So we've presented a lost person with, after covering the crux of the gospel, their great need of a savior.
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And then we've told them that Christ came to be that savior.
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That Christ died for sin.
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Now we tell them, at this point, assuming that the Holy Spirit is working in their heart, they're wanting to know, what do I do? And this tells us.
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Is this the verse that sometimes when Keith has told us that people will say, well if you'll just pray the sinner's prayer, is this the sinner's prayer? This is not the sinner's prayer, but this is a verse that would lead some folks to hatch such a diabolical scheme to lead to the sinner's prayer.
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And unfortunately, I can't follow that trail because I'll get so carried away.
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But yeah, some people will go from here and say that.
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And so we tell them essentially that repent and believe.
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Now this passage particularly doesn't have a lot in it that talks about repentance.
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This is one of those places where I want you to learn more scripture to add to your gospel presentation.
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This is what I was talking about.
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I'm not saying that just these five verses and that's it and we're done.
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Because people need to realize, you know, in a sense it is there because it says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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And, you know, we could talk about what it means that Jesus is Lord, that we obey him, right? A Lord is someone we would obey and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.
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But people need to hear about what repentance means.
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We're not trying to sneak anybody in the back door and then go, hey, by the way, now that you're a believer, we got all these other things we need to talk about.
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We want to give people a full gospel presentation.
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So that's Romans 10 in verse 9.
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And then finally, we would go back to Romans chapter 5 in verse 1.
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And Romans 5 verse 1 says this.
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Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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This is how someone goes from being a rebel and an enemy of God.
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By very nature, children of wrath to being at peace with God.
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It's by faith.
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They've been justified by faith.
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And so, again, there's much more scripture that would expound this that we would want to know.
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But this is a very basic presentation of the gospel.
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You know, this is where I want to go to Ephesians 2.
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You know, that explains that it's not a work that we do.
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It's not our works.
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It's all in Christ.
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We have no reason to boast.
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And various other passages.
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And I have a feeling that all the ones I'm thinking of, Keith is going to hit in the next nine weeks.
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He told me which one I couldn't cover tonight that he has planned for next week.
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You got to come back.
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That's a cliffhanger.
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Yeah.
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Same bat time.
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Same bat channel.
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Yeah.
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No, we're not done yet.
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So, that's the Romans Road.
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That's a version of the Romans Road.
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And like I said, there are versions that have seven, eight, nine verses from Romans.
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But there's five verses to start with.
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And really, that's, even if you put all that together on a sheet of paper and wrote it all down, it ain't much.
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That's a very manageable goal.
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That's why I didn't feel bad coming to you with five verses tonight.
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Because you can get those five verses in your head in the next week.
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Before you come back next week.
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And when you do that, that's going to wet your appetite.
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You're going to want more.
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So, some helpful tips to memorize scripture.
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These are things that I've used in my own life.
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Things that I've gleaned from other people.
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One that was extremely helpful, my first professor at seminary taught us this.
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Repeat the verse aloud, placing stress on a different word each time.
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So, for example, a short verse like Romans 3.23.
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And you don't have to, when you do this, you don't have to be saying it from memory.
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Pull it up in your Bible, look at it.
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And just like this, we'll say, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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And then the next time you say it, say, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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And then after that, say, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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And then say, For all have sinned and fall short of.
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You get the idea? Just move the word that you stress in the sentence down one word each time.
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And go through the whole verse that way.
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It's an amazing tool.
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If nothing else than this, it gets you to continue to recite it aloud.
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And just moving that stress just keeps your mind engaged is all.
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Because you're thinking about which word you're going to stress.
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But I can't stress to you again the importance of saying the verse, reading the verse out loud.
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I was doing some research and reading about different ways that people do this.
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And there was one gentleman who said that he learned early in his ministry from a guy whose practice was, before he preached on any book of the Bible or any large portion of text, he would read it aloud 50 times.
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And I've never done 50 times.
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I heard from somebody earlier, 20.
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And so that's kind of been my practices.
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Before I preach you something, I'm going to read through it 20 times.
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You'll find that automatically after 20, 30, 40, and especially 50 times, you've internalized and memorized much of what you're reading.
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Even if it's a long passage.
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Even if it's several chapters.
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You know, especially for shorter books of the Bible that are 3, 4, 5 chapters long, this is an outstanding thing to do.
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It's actually an outstanding thing to do devotionally as well.
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Because you start to contemplate and mull over what you're reading.
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And I don't mean to do this all at one time.
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You know, a 3 or 4 chapter book of the Bible takes you about 15 to maybe 20 minutes to read.
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If you do that once in the morning and once at night, the very same passage, and you continue to do that for a few weeks, 2 or 3 or 4 weeks, until you've read it 20, 30, or 40 times, you'll be amazed at the insights that start to open up.
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Because one thing I think we don't do in the church enough anymore is read larger portions of Scripture.
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You know, I appreciate how we break down small passages and extract every bit of meat that there is there to digest it.
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That's important.
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But it's also important for us to get the bigger picture.
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The thought processes that were flowing, the things that are being conveyed over the course of chapters.
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Because like we said before, remember, this wasn't written with those chapter numbers in there, right? When the letter was sent to the church, they didn't go, alright, we're going to read chapter 1, verses 3 through 5 today, and talk about that, and next week we'll see you all back.
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That's not how it worked.
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They stood and read the letter, right? And so there is a lot to be gained from doing that.
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Not only for memorizing, but just devotionally, meditating upon God's Word.
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The missing link in a lot of our study is that we don't meditate upon God's Word.
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We get up in the morning, maybe, we do better than a lot of people we think, because we read the passage, we read a portion of Scripture, we say a prayer, we go on about our day.
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Or maybe we do it at night, same thing.
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If you don't meditate upon God's Word, think about what it's saying, what it means, and how you can live in obedience to that.
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If you don't let that soak in, then it really doesn't have a tendency to change you as much.
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But as we continue to meditate upon the same verse, or the same passage, over and over and over, and think about it throughout the course of a day, it really changes our hearts.
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It's hiding God's Word in our heart.
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You talked about the chapter and verse, and one way that I've done this is by association.
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So I'll practice it like this, I'll say that.
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I'll say Romans 3.23 says that for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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And then I'll say for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God is Romans 3.23.
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Back and forth about ten times, back and forth like that.
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And you start to associate the reference with the verse in your mind.
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It's just a little trick.
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Cadence.
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When we're learning longer passages, cadence, or the manner in which we speak, how we say things, can be very helpful.
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So we break things down that are longer.
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And so, for example, like if I'm trying to learn Romans 6.23, as I look at it the first time, I think to myself, where are the kind of logical breaks? Well, a lot of times there's a comma.
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That's a pretty easy giveaway.
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In Romans 3.23, for the wages of sin is death.
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Just a few words, good stopping point.
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Can you learn that? For the wages of sin is death? Sure.
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But the free gift of God is eternal life.
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Again, short.
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In Christ Jesus our Lord.
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It's okay to break it up into smaller sections to learn it.
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Learn that the wages of sin is death.
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Then learn that the free gift of God is eternal life.
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Then learn that it's in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Put it together.
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Build it that way.
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So if it's hard to get it all together, like Psalm 23, we wanted to teach to Brendan.
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It would have been silly for us just to over and over and over again try and drill the whole thing.
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It's hard to chew all that up at one time.
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But as you learn it in little pieces and then focus upon the connections that take you from one phrase to the next phrase, it becomes much more manageable.
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Because the middle, our brains tend to assimilate the middle.
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If we can get start, you ever had that? Like somebody calls out a verse and you're like, ah.
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But if they start it, then you can finish it.
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Our brain gets the middle somehow.
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It's the start and the finish or the transition to the next piece that tends to trip us up.
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So focus on those things.
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Spend extra time on the parts that you know are going to be hard.
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Writing it down.
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This will make memorization for you much easier if you're anything like me.
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Now, people learn differently and things work differently.
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For some people, drawing a picture or an image that strikes their memory about that verse is very helpful.
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For me, that doesn't do any good.
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But if I write it while I'm reading it, so I look at my Bible and I take my pen and I write Romans 6.24.
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When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
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And I write it one time.
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And if I feel like it didn't click, I write it again.
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That act of physically writing it down for many people will engage their brain in a way that makes it sink in.
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So take that for what it's worth, but it's very helpful.
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Two verses I want to close with that I believe are the result when we invest time in memorizing Scripture.
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And hear this.
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Make no mistake.
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At the end of the day, consistency and discipline.
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It's a spiritual discipline to memorize Scripture.
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That means you have to invest time in doing it.
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There's no smoking gun.
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There's no silver bullet.
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You just have to do it and do it repeatedly.
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So Psalm 119 and verse 11.
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Psalm 119 and 11 says, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
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Meditating upon Scripture is a means of growth and grace.
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And it also helps us battle against sin.
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It is a tremendous help in times of temptation to recall a verse that deals specifically with whatever it is you're struggling with.
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It really is.
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I'm telling you from experience.
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If you can remember a verse in that time, and that's not always easy, but if you can call to memory that verse because you spent so much time memorizing it and meditating upon it, then you remember, resist the devil, flee temptation.
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You remember a chain.
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Sometimes it just sets off a chain of Scripture in your heart and you're able to withstand the temptation to whatever sin that might be trying to overtake you.
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So really, it's great for evangelism, but it's also a huge benefit for our personal walk with Christ.
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I mean, it is just an outstanding benefit.
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I can't tell you how much.
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There's an app, since we all use smartphones nowadays, called Fighter Verses.
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It comes from John Piper and the guys at Desiring God.
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The original intention of it were these are called Fighter Verses.
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You're fighting temptation with this short snip verse that is direct to whatever it is, and they have them on all kinds of things.
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But it's grown over the years, and so there's a verse every week now.
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And on this app, you can do several things.
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It's going to pop up the verse.
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You can have it read it aloud to you.
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Sometimes I'm riding in my car.
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I just have it play on repeat.
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You can do fill in the blanks where it'll blank out some of the words, and you can do that, various different things.
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But it's a very helpful app that will encourage you to memorize one scripture a week.
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That's 52 scriptures in a year.
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Some of them are two verses like they did Psalm 139, almost the whole thing over the course of several weeks.
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That was tremendously helpful.
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It's hard.
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I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I've kept up, but over the course of the year, I might have picked up 20 verses.
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I mean, it's really helpful.
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So if you have a smartphone and it's something that you use frequently, it's much better than wasting your time on Facebook or a game.
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I mean, it's a great tool.
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The last verse is one I preached from just a few weeks ago.
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It's 1 Peter 3, verse 15.
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And we all know, I think, the words in that verse that everybody keys in on so frequently that say that we're always to be ready to make a defense, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.
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1 Peter 3, verse 15.
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And as I preached, I focused on that part that says to sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.
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And I believe that is essential to doing this.
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But what it leads to is us being prepared, and being prepared is not something that happens, right? We live in Florida, so we know that occasionally hurricanes come by or tropical storms, and there's a possibility that we won't have power for a few days and you won't be able to run to the store and pick up, you know, you won't be able to go through McDonald's and get a Big Mac, and you won't be able to get water, other things.
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So we prepare, right? Most people have a kit in their home, a tub with some canned food and things like that.
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Those things don't just arrive at your home.
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You had to actually do something.
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You had to go out, purchase those things, set them aside with purpose and intention so that you would be prepared.
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And memorizing scripture is very much the same thing.
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This is how we are prepared to make a defense for our faith.
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We take time to memorize scripture because it's God's word.
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What could be more important to a believer whose desire is to serve God? First of all, we need to know it because we need to know him who wrote it.
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It's the means he's given us.
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It's how he's revealed himself through the word and through his son.
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And so we need to know both.
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It's critical to us as believers.
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But also if we want to go out and share the gospel with someone, if we're serious about sharing the gospel, about proclaiming the gospel to the lost around us, then we need to know scripture.
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It's as important as I could possibly make it out to be.
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Learning methods is nice.
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It helps you know how to approach people.
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But at the end of the day, you need to have something to say to them.
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And what you have to say to them needs to be founded upon God's word.
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So that's it.
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Anybody have any questions, anything? Yes, sir.
45:45
I can remember a helpful hint that I heard many years ago, 37 years ago, when I used to make some money to try to get to the maintenance of the seminary.
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And I was on the paint crew.
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You know, painting, doctors, roads, that kind of thing.
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But anyway, the foreman of the, you know, my boss in the paint crew, you know, who today, at that time he had gotten his bachelor's degree, his master's degree, and he was going for a doctorate.
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But anyway, today he's pastor of one of the largest churches in Dallas, Texas.
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But anyway, he said something that I really focused on when he said it.
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And I treasure that, that one advice that he gave all through these years and has been such an effect on what he said.
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And I don't want to get into a lot of scripture memorization.
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But he said, he said, he said, well, let me tell you one thing.
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He said, if you do not regularly review all the ones you've ever learned, they will go away.
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You know, you're right.
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You want to have courage.
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And I've been there so many times.
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If you don't do that, you know, you'll, you'll, if you ever do a memorizing fast, you won't be able to do it.
46:59
Yep, that's absolutely right.
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That's actually, I'm glad you brought that up because I meant to say that and didn't.
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But when you write them down, one of the helpful things about writing them down, try and do it all on one piece of paper, or a lot of people will build, like, flashcards, index cards, three by five, with the verses so they can review.
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Because Brother Richard's absolutely right.
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If you don't review it, in a couple of weeks' time even, much less months, if you haven't reviewed that scripture and haven't, haven't used it, it's gone.
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And you have to start over again.
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Some people set unrealistic goals.
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You know, I'm going to try and memorize 150 verses in the next three years.
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And if they don't achieve that, or what happens is, they memorize 150 verses for two weeks at a time.
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And at the end of three years' time, or whenever it is, they can't tell you 25 of them, or they can only tell you the last 25 they learned.
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And the rest are gone.
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It's much better to have reviewed 50 verses over three years, and know them, and know that you know them, than to have forgotten most of what you've learned.
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So, continue to review.
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The way the Master makes little keychain cards.
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So they put these on little three by fives, and there's one for every day of the week.
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And as you learn one, you assign a day to it.
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And they're on a little ring.
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And every day, that day of the week, you grab that ring of cards and you review them.
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So you can do different things like that.
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You know, ideally, there's 50 or 100 verses that we should all know, and have memorized to be prepared.
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And that requires you to constantly review.
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But say there's 100.
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You know, there's seven days in a week.
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That's a little more than 10 a day that you need to read.
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And if you've memorized them, it only takes a second to look at it, and refresh your memory on that, and stay current and stay fresh with it.
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It's important, right? I mean, I know I've said this time and time again, but it is important.
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This is the gospel.
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This is God's word that we're talking about.
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It's not all.
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We chase so many things that are irrelevant and don't matter.
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We invest so much time and effort in so many things that have no eternal consequence.
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And I'm as guilty as anybody.
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But stop all the distractions and all the things that we say that we allow to be excuses.
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Stop saying you're too busy to do this.
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If you're too busy to do this, you've got your priorities way out of line.
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Align your life to desire to serve God and to share the gospel.
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Yes, ma'am.
49:24
I think the most important to me that you said about memorizing it was writing it down, because many, many, many years ago when I was in school, I don't think they do it anymore, but that was one of the methods of learning.
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We did that not only in like shorthand, but we did it in history.
49:43
But it was repetitious, and you're reading it as you're writing it, and so it does stick with you.
49:49
Yeah, because I'm not a very intelligent man, I'm taking Greek and Hebrew right now at the same time.
49:54
And so having to memorize vocabulary in two languages, and one that I'm really, Hebrew's just been the hardest thing I've done in my life, I think, as far as learning.
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But having to memorize vocabulary, that's the only thing that has saved me, is writing it out and doing it over and over again.
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So it's, for me, and like I said, there are people who learn differently.
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Some people are visual.
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Some people are kinetic.
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I don't remember all those ways.
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But writing it down makes a distinct connection in my head.
50:29
And sometimes, you ever watch the spelling bee? The high school spelling bee that's on ESPN now? You ever see the kids, they take their little card and their pretend pencil, and as they call out a word, the kid's standing there, they call out a word, and you see the kid look up and to the left.
50:44
By the way, that's a memory trick.
50:45
If you look up and to the left, that will spark your memory a lot of times.
50:48
You'll see them write it out and pretend.
50:51
And it's because they've done the same thing.
50:54
For spelling, for saying the spelling back, they've written it over and over again.
51:00
Because can't you tell a lot of times, like if something's not right when you write it down? So it really does have a powerful connection in our memories.
51:06
It's a great tool.
51:08
So use it.
51:09
Use it to God's glory and for your good.
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Let's pray and we'll close.
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Father, we thank you for tonight.
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God, we thank you for your word.
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God, we ask that you would help us to see just how vitally important, how blessed we are to have your word, how precious it should be to us.
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God, help us to align our lives, to serve you, to share the gospel, to know you and to know your word.
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God, help us to clear our lives of the distractions and the things that hold us back from doing so.
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God, help us to see the things that are eternal and the things that are not, and to spend our lives pursuing the things that are eternal and of great importance.
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God, we desire to see your name lifted up among the nations, and especially here, right here at home where we live, where we work, amongst our friends and our families and our coworkers.
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God, help us to burn with a passion to share the gospel with them.
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God, to give them the words of life.
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But ultimately, to exalt and lift up your name.
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God, give us strength and wisdom and courage to glorify you in every situation we come into.
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In Christ's name I pray, amen.
52:28
Thank you, guys.