Book of Hebrews - Ch. 5 & 6

Park Meadows Church

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New American Standard, it happens to be the translation we have available, but if anyone needs one,

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I think I've caught everyone, but if anyone still needs a copy of the New Testament tonight, raise your hand and I'll get it to you. Thank you.

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Good evening. Oh, learn of me, learn of me.

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Someone said to me one time, said, You Jews think you're perfect. And I said, One of ours made it. Have a good day.

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Well, this side's doing well. I got to check this side now. You're sitting back and forth. I don't know if you ought to change sides or something's happened to the other side.

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I think the no side or the silent side shifts on me every once in a while. But it is a good day.

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It could have been worse. You heard the old saying, I used to complain and gripe about not having shoes until I met a man who didn't have any feet.

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You don't have to look far to find someone who has a more difficult lifestyle or perhaps more crises and tensions than we do.

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And so, you know, if you could just kind of hang on a little while longer, you'd be back for a long. You've been looking for him?

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I had a man tell me, he said, Man, I've heard that ever since I was a little boy. I said, We're 2 ,000 years closer to it than when they wrote about it.

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You know, I believe the next major event to occur on God's timetable is the coming of Jesus in the air.

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I believe that 1 Thessalonians 4, 16 could occur before this service is ever over. Bible says,

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We're for comfort one another with these words. This is our hope. If this is all there is to it, who wants it? I mean, you know, is this it?

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Just me and you hanging around, playing around church? I mean, is this it? Is this all he's got for us?

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No. Eyes have not seen, nor have ears heard, nor has it ever been recorded that which he has stored up for those that love him.

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And even though you and I are not perfect and we know we have problems, can we not tonight say in our heart, We do love the

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Lord? Amen. I mean, we love him. You know, in our heart of hearts, we love him. And the beautiful thing about it is, at this particular point, you are not required to be sinless.

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You are required to work on your life so that you sin less. You know, you're not going to be sinless, but you can sin less.

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You can sin less. We ought not to be doing the sins today that we did five years ago. That's the tragedy.

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That's the tragedy. Most Christians are still living exactly the same way they did the first year they got saved and they haven't grown one iota, haven't grown one bit.

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And so the apostle Paul, I believe, wrote the book of Hebrews. But if he didn't, whoever wrote it has some things to say about that.

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And so if you will turn me, please, to Hebrews chapter 5. Now, you know, there are 13 chapters in this book.

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And so consequently, one night, somehow or other, we're going to get a third chapter into that night in order to cover it.

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And so one of those nights, we'll just kind of shift gears and move along, and we'll just see where it fits in.

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It could be tonight. It could be tomorrow night. Hopefully, the Lord would do it before Friday night because I got to drive out Friday night.

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Boy, would I hate to be here till midnight on Friday night. So I'm glad the cafeteria isn't open at night so you'll stay.

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Most cities you go to, they got cafeterias open and you can just forget it. Boy, when the cafeteria door is open, you might as well close the service because they are gone.

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And they motivate out of a church in a hurry. But isn't it going to be interesting when we stand before the

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Lord at the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of our lives, won't it be exciting just to hear all the excuses that are given to Him?

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It is going to really be an exciting day just to hear all these excuses given to the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ. You won't need a tape recorder because you will know it all.

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And I've been working on some. I just can't find one that's good enough yet, but I've been working on them. And I'm thinking them up.

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And I know that you don't have to have any excuses because I know that you read the Bible every day. I know that you pray every day. And I know that you don't let very long go by.

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You win somebody to Jesus about every month, at least one a month, surely 12 a year. And I know that you give tithes and offerings faithfully to the

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Lord's work. I know you pray for the missionaries. I know you pray for the pastor. And I know you pray for the Sunday school teachers. You pray for the deacons.

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I know the deacons pray for you every single day by name. And I know all that's out visiting in the community.

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So I know we don't have any problems like that here. So if we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, we'd say, Lord, here we are. Blessed is heaven.

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We're here. You believe that? Didn't get any amens on any of that, did I? Well, the beautiful thing about it is the

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Lord knows exactly where we are and He loves us like we are. And He just says, work on it. Work on it.

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Be faithful. Be faithful. And that counts more. See, success, you can't ever be successful because you have to gauge success in human vein or in human value systems and you don't have to worry about that.

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God never says, be successful. He says, be faithful and He'll gauge that which is successful. But the trouble is we want to be successful and put it down into our little evaluation of that and our definition of that.

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And so this is a problem. And it was a problem with the Hebrews that he wrote about and wrote to in Hebrews chapter 5.

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Now, you recall in the first two chapters, chapters 1 and 2, the writer of Hebrews proves that the

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Messiah, Christ, was greater than the prophets and who? The prophets and the angels.

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No, no, no. Boy, I tell you what, you better be grateful I'm not giving the test now. I'm going to wait a little bit on the test. I'll put hold off test here.

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In chapter 3 and 4, he dealt with Moses, right? Yes, yes, you just see if I'm alert on you,

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I know. Chapter 1 and 2, he talks about the prophets and the angels and then he talks about Moses.

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Now, he's going to move to the next important character in Jewish life and that would be the brother of Moses, Aaron.

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He's going to deal with Aaron and he's going to show that Aaron who was the first, what?

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He held the office of the first high priest. Exactly right. The first high priest of the nation of Israel and he's going to show that Jesus Christ is even greater than he.

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Not only is he greater than Moses, but he's greater than the high priest and he's going to prove that and he's going to show them that Christ is superior to Aaron in any way you want to approach him and there are three basic ways that we approach him.

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He's saying here basically in verse 1, he's going to say, for every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God.

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Notice the word ordained. He's going to show that there is a higher ordination. Now, deacons are ordained, pastors are ordained, ministers are ordained and he's going to say here that there is a higher ordination or if you want to use the word that we mentioned in the first part of our time together, we talked about the word better and then you remember

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I gave you seven things he didn't say were greater, greater and this is one of those things that is greater.

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It is a greater ordination. It's a higher ordination and he's going to show that Aaron was ordained by men, but Christ had a better ordination than that and that's what he's going to deal with on a priest because a priest must be ordained.

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Now, Aaron was taken from among men and elevated to the position of the high priest of Israel at a time whenever he wasn't sure he was going to be that, he just went with Moses down into Egypt and he functioned as an encourager and as a helper and one who walked alongside

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Moses and helping him in his job. Then this was passed along, was it not, to Aaron's sons.

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It was sort of a thing that there was a lineage of priests and so the high priest passed it along to his sons and they would become high priest and that line would just continue along.

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Now, what tribe of Israelites did Aaron belong to? What was the priestly tribe?

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You know that well. Levi, exactly right. He was of the tribe of Levi and that tribe was set aside specifically for priestly duties.

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Now, when the land was split up amongst the tribes, you will remember, Levi got none. Levi received none because they were to be ministers.

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Now, what does a priest do? A priest, according to God's word, does two things.

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He goes before the Lord on behalf of the people, then he turns around and ministers to the people in the name of the

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Lord. He goes to seek blessings for the people and then he turns around and becomes an instrument of blessing to the people in the name of the

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Lord and that's why you and I are a kingdom of priests, the Bible says. We are to go before the

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Lord on behalf of people and to get our lives right and then turn around and minister to people in the name of the Lord and that's how we have a priesthood and this is exactly what he was to do.

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But now he says, but Christ ordination, Christ priesthood, Christ ministering is far greater than all of those.

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First of all, he was not just a man, he was God and he was man. He was son of God and he was son of man.

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Jesus' favorite term about himself was son of man. He uses it no less than 80 times of himself, son of man, son of man.

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That was his favorite term relating to himself and so we know that he had the honor of his priesthood and it was given to him, he did not take it unto himself in a selfish manner.

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It was not something that he tried to do. You recall the sons of Korah in Leviticus chapter 16?

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They were in the lineage of Aaron. You know what they did and they lost their lives, didn't they? They went and took some duties of the priesthood and did it of themselves in a very selfish manner and God killed them.

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God just killed them for playing games with him and abusing that which God had set aside for a holy order and Christ did not do that.

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God himself ordained his son. Now, there's an indication of this when

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Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptizer or John the Baptist. You can find many, many reasons as to why he was baptized but I believe the best reason is that Jewish law says that a priest was to be ordained for his priestly duties at about the age of 30 and Jesus had no sin.

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He didn't have to be identified with us. We become identified with him. He doesn't identify with you. You are identified with him.

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You become a part of him and yet he was setting out upon his high priestly duty. He was going to set out on his messianic office function and so therefore he went through the ritual of baptism.

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Baptism is not new to Christianity. Jews have been baptizing people for literally thousands of years. Mikvah. It is done and has been done and Jesus who perhaps maybe even been around the

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Essenes from where maybe John the Baptist came from that little group down in the Qumran area in the

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Judean desert who gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls. There is evidence that he had been down around them and of course they themselves were great proponents of baptism.

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And so what I'm saying to you is that the writer here says God ordained him to his high priestly duty.

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Now look at verse 6, please. Verse 6. As he saith also in another place,

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Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Now he is quoting from Psalm 110 verse 4.

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You remember we said that Psalm 110 is the key Psalm of the book of Hebrews. And here he is quoting from Psalm 110 verse 4.

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Now he relates that to the verse prior to that. Look at verse 5. So also Christ glorified not himself to be made a high priest.

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He didn't do it selfishly. But he that said unto him, Thou art my son, today have I begotten thee.

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And you've already seen that verse quoted two other times in the preceding chapters. That's from Psalm 2 verse 7.

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And so what he's saying is his priesthood is related to what he said about him in Psalm 2 verse 7, which is a

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Psalm that relates to the resurrection. His priesthood is dependent upon his resurrection.

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It is dependent upon him passing through death and becoming victorious. And so he is a greater priest in this particular order.

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Now we're gonna talk about Melchizedek later. Chapter 7 all the way to 10 deal with Melchizedek.

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He is an interesting individual. And so we'll not spend a lot of time with him now, but the name

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Melchizedek essentially means King of Righteousness. King of Righteousness.

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That's what the name essentially means. He also was the Prince of Salem, which is a shorter term for Yerushalayim or Jerusalem.

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So he was the Prince of Salem, which means peace. He was the Prince of Peace. Now he was the

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Prince of the City of Peace and he was the King of Righteousness. And this is what the writer is making an allusion to.

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Now Aaron was never a priest -king. Aaron was a priest, but he was never a king. Jesus, we say, is a prophet, priest, and king.

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And so here you come Melchizedek, this mysterious figure who also is a king and he is a priest.

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Now Christ is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

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Aaron was never seated, spiritually speaking. The Levites were never seated, spiritually speaking, because their job was never completed.

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They had to offer sacrifices morning, noon, and night. That flame on that altar at the tabernacle and the temple could never go out.

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It was to never be extinguished. And offerings just went on all the time and the priest had to continually, perpetually be on duty.

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That's why there were so many of them. 24 hours a day, they were on duty to minister on behalf of the people and in the name of the

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Lord. But yet the Bible says that Jesus Christ has been seated. Why? Because when he said it is finished, it is finished.

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He meant exactly that and he doesn't have to make any more sacrifices. And this is something that you and I know.

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Now, Jesus didn't come from the tribe of Levi, did he? He came from which tribe? Judah.

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Judah is not the priestly tribe. Judah is the kingly tribe.

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It's the tribe from which the kings come. So you have a king who is going to become a priest.

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He's going to become a priest and he's going to honor us by being our high priest.

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Now, Jesus would never die. His priesthood is forever. And Aaron was a priest over an earthly household and Jesus is the priest over a heavenly household and all the difference in the world.

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So God ordained him in a higher fashion than Aaron could ever be ordained.

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Also in chapter 5, verse 2 and 3, let's fill that in. Who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way?

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For he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason of this, he ought as for the people, so also for himself to offer for sins.

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And no man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.

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And then we go to verse 7 and 8. Who in the days of his flesh, reference to Melchizedek, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, he's comparing him here, unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared, though he were a son, yet learned the obedience by the things which he suffered.

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So we say here's another one of those identifying factors. Not only was Christ, the writer tells us, not only did he have a deeper, greater, higher ordination, but he is a priest with a deeper, greater sympathy or compassion for people.

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He had a compassion that no human being could ever, ever have. Not only must the high priest of Israel be chosen by God, but he must be a man who is sensitive to the people.

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He could not be calloused. Sure, that person, he may see him, Aaron may see those people every day. The priest of Israel may see the same guy coming in, the same woman coming in every day, offering a sin offering.

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They may come in every day, offering a trespass offering, but he must never be calloused. He must treat them the same every day, be sensitive to their needs, be sympathetic towards them, have some empathy for them and be compassionate in his heart.

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And this is what it is. And so Aaron himself was a mere man and he would know something of the weaknesses of his people.

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And also it was Aaron himself who had to offer sacrifices for himself and he had to offer sacrifices for his own family as well as for the people.

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Before he could ever offer anything for the people, he had to take care of his own sins. He had to deal with the sins of his family.

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Christ is able, of course, to enter into the needs and problems of God's people in verse 7 and 8.

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Notice what he says. This is a reference to the prayers that he prayed in Gethsemane when he was in the garden, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, and you recall what happened in the garden of Gethsemane.

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Well, in 7 and 8, you are told something of the, if I can use the word, the training of the Son of God.

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Now, as God, he needed nothing. But as man, he voluntarily put himself into a position where he would accept training and learning.

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How did he learn? Look at verse 8. Though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.

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When you and I have suffering that comes into our life, there is a reason for it, and there is a lesson to be learned from it, and there is a beautiful result that will occur after it is over.

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The problem is, you and I as Christians resist and rebel and despise any idea of suffering.

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And this thing that you hear on television all the time, that God never wants his children to suffer, God never wants his children to be ill, and God never wants them to have a problem with the

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Scripture, because Paul was physically sick all of his life. He had a physical problem called a thorn in the flesh, and three times he went and asked

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God to take it away from him, and God said, No, no, no. And you have never heard of anyone, nor have you ever read of anyone who had the faith of the

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Apostle Paul. Timothy was sick all of his life, and he wrote

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Paul and says, What am I going to do? Paul said, I don't know anything for you to do except take a little wine for your stomach's sake.

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Epaphroditus almost died. Why didn't Paul heal him? Because it wasn't within his power to heal him. And these people who come around and tell you this,

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I'm just throwing this out for your edification, dear people. Ask yourself some serious questions. Every faith healer and every one of those people on television that are telling you all that, every one of them has a hospitalization plan.

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Every single one of them does. Now, if you really believe that God will keep you well all the time and never make you sick or you'll never get sick, and if you do get sick,

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God will heal you, you tell me why you'd want a hospitalization plan. Every one of them have got them, and every one of them have doctors, and every one of them takes shots.

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When they get sick, their wives go to doctors just like you do, but you see, the Baptists and Methodists will send them that money, boy, and they'll send you the little cloth and the little rope tied to a knot, and they'll send you all that stuff.

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If Baptists and Methodists would quit supporting them, they'd be out of business. Dear people, you are responsible for where you send your money.

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Look at Paul. You want to follow them or Paul? I'd rather follow Paul. And the great evidence is that Paul had myopia, an inflammation and a disease of the eyes.

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That's where the evidence is from Scripture. It's the strongest Christian tradition. Oh, well, but God does it different today.

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God didn't do it for Paul, but He'll do it for you. You keep on thinking that. And the beautiful thing is that God knows us better than we know ourselves, but you know something about faith healers?

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They all die. They all die. Well, if God opens this up, the only thing that brings death is what?

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You get sick and die. You're quiet. I must be on a nerve.

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I understand. Well, it's in the Scripture. You watch them all. And isn't it amazing?

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After you watch them for a few years, they all start wearing glasses, too. But God wants you well all the time.

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God doesn't want anything wrong. You're on there. They all do. They all deteriorate. I ask myself, listen, they're not going to get my money, but I want to know where it goes.

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If I give it to my church, I find out where they spend it, too. I'm not just going to hand it to them and say, well, do as the

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Lord leads you. No way. I'm going to find out how God's leading them. Yeah. If they're not following along the

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Scriptures, they're not going to get mine. You're not supposed to give me any, either, if you don't know where it goes.

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Some of you didn't give me any anyway, so it don't make any difference. I understand.

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You love me anyway, though, don't you? Say yes. Well, we're going to put it to a vote.

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Verse 7 and 8. Keep in mind that Jesus Christ needed nothing. You and I know that.

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He needed nothing. But as the Son of Man, so that one day He might be the High Priest, it was necessary for Him to experience trials and suffering.

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Now, this is one of the major objections of the Jewish people in accepting Jesus as the Messiah. How could the

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Messiah, who is supposed to bring in an age of peace, do away with war and do away with calamity, bring economic stability, bring peace on earth, cause man to love man, woman to love woman, cause all the races to come together?

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How could He die, and how could He go through all that suffering if He really were the Messiah of Israel?

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Because they looked at one picture of Him and didn't look at the other picture of Him. And this is a confusing factor to the

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Jewish people, and they say the Messiah would never suffer in such a manner. And so they explain away, in many ways, those passages of Scripture that refer to His suffering.

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And yet, these sufferings are identical to the fact that He is the Messiah. They are signs of His being the

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Messiah. You recall John the Baptist, when he was in prison just prior to his beheading, he sent some messengers to Jesus, and he said,

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Are you He, or shall we look for another? Now, do you remember the answer Jesus gave him? Don't let it slip by your mind.

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Jesus could have said, Just tell him I am. If He had said, I am, and used the Hebrew words, well, we know

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He'd been using exactly those words that God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, and I am, and He'd have known immediately.

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But what did He say? You go tell John that you yourself have seen the lame walk, the blind see, and the dead raised, and he'll know.

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Because they were the signs of the Messiah. And all the signs in, watch this, all the signs in the

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New Testament are related to the Jews and not Gentiles. And wherever you find one sign in the

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New Testament, you'll find Jews were present, and there are no exceptions there. And once the Gospel got away from the

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Jews and went to the Gentile world predominantly, you find those books of the New Testament, and you'll find that the signs are missing.

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They're gone. They're not there. And you find the list of spiritual gifts in Romans chapter 12, and you don't find one sign gift amongst them.

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And that's the great book on Christian doctrine. Isn't that interesting? You see how you just slip those things in there just sideways, and they just fit right on in the message, and we just move right along, and you won't know it hit you until you get home and think about it.

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Verse 7, praying in Gethsemane, prayers and supplications, strong crying and tears.

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Now watch this. You know this well, but look at the bottom part of verse 7. It says, tears unto him that was able to save him.

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And the King James reads, from death. The literal reading of the Greek is, out of death. I do not believe personally that Jesus ever prayed one time for God to deliver him from death.

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He came to die. He knew he was going to die when he came. But I do believe that what he was praying for in the garden of Gethsemane when he said, remove this cup from me, take this cup from me,

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I'll let this cup pass from me, that cup that I believe he is referring to is the cup of sin of the world.

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And his holy soul was shrinking from the fact that he wasn't, my dear people, going to pay for your sins.

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The Bible says he became sin who knew no sin. And God poured into his holy being the sins and iniquity of the world in those dark moments on the cross.

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And that is the thing that his holy soul abhorred and detested and hated was sin with all that it was.

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And he didn't want to become sin in the sense that he knew the war that would go on inside of him and what it was going to do.

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But he was committed to it. And he says, but not my will. That was his humanity. Not my will, but thine be done.

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And he willingly went up on the cross. And God laid on him the iniquity of us all.

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He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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This is what he's talking about. Now, someone may ask the question, but how could he as the son of God know more about suffering and things like this than Aaron who was a human being because he was perfect.

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And everything he experienced, he experienced it perfectly. He was tested in all ways like us we are.

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As I mentioned the other evening, all sin falls into three categories. Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

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And he experienced them to the nth degree, if you want to say that. He experienced them in a personal confrontation with Satan himself.

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You and I, sometimes we confront Satan and don't realize it. Sometimes we confront demon powers and don't realize it.

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But sometimes it's the world. Sometimes it's just the flesh. Sometimes it's enemy personally working. But he experienced it as deep as it could ever go and in the perfect sense that it could ever reach.

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And he experienced temptation. He experienced the testing. He experienced the proving, whichever words you want to use there.

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He was tried and proven in a perfect way. And so therefore he was able to experience that.

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It is a fact, is it not? That a bridge, you take a bridge out here and you run a truck over it that weighs 50 tons, that bridge will show more testing power than one that just takes a two -ton truck over it.

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And so therefore Jesus was able to experience in a greater degree that which you and I would experience.

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And so therefore he is sympathetic to that. And then verse 3, And by reason of this he ought as for the people so also for himself to offer for sins.

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And then verses 9 all the way down to verse 14 to the end of the chapter, we'll find that he's talking about a sacrifice, that he would make a greater sacrifice than Aaron would ever make.

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He would make a greater sacrifice than Aaron can make. And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him, called of God and high priest after the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have many things to say and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing.

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Now that's interesting. The main ministry of Aaron was to offer sacrifices for the nation, especially on Yom Kippur, according to Leviticus 16, the day of atonement, the high holy day.

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The priests and the Levites, they ministered to the people all during the year, but the whole nation looked to one man once a year.

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All eyes focused on the high priest as he went in behind the veil into the holy of holies, into the very presence of the personal presence of God to deal with God on behalf of the people.

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And this is something that Aaron was to do. But Christ, being the sinless Lamb of God, only had to offer sin for sacrifice for sin one time.

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And it says, as he offered sacrifice one time, he entered in once and for all in the holy place.

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And we'll see that a little later on when we get over to chapter 9 and 10. He did it one time and it is sufficient.

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One drop of the blood of the Lamb of God is sufficient for the payment of all the sin in all the world by every person who has ever lived.

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One drop, that's how holy it is. It is holy because it has the life.

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The life of the flesh is in the blood, the scripture says, and it's the value of the person that's shedding the blood.

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A bull, it was of more value than a bird. Well, the Son of the living God is more valuable than anything that was offered by the human beings.

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And, of course, the blood of bulls and goats only covered sin and could not take away sin. Christ came and redeemed and took away sin once and for all.

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Now, in verse 11, you'll notice the writer, he wants to go a little deeper now. These are things we all know.

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He says, now, you know all of that, but I want to go a little deeper with you. He says, but there is a difficulty, there's a problem,

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I got a problem. And the problem is, it's not that I don't know what to say. It's not that I don't know what to write.

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It's not that you got a dull preacher. It's not that the writer of the Hebrews is dull. He said, what I've got is a bunch of dull listeners.

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He said, I'm dealing with some dull hearers. Look what he says. In verse 11, ye are all dull of hearing.

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He wants to go from milk and he wants to get into meat. Now, milk is the first principles of Christianity.

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Jesus died on the cross. He was raised from the dead. He paid for our sins. That's the milk.

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He said, now, I want to get into something else. I want to talk to you about what's going on in heaven. I want to talk to you about the priesthood of Christ.

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I want to talk to you about his function as a high priest, but you can't handle it. He said, you're still hanging around back over there.

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You can't get most Christians out of the Gospels and the book of Corinthians. They hang around Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the book of Acts and 1

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Corinthians. They never get into Hebrews. They never study Revelation. You never find them in Timothy. You never find them over in Thessalonians.

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You don't find them in Colossians and Ephesians, Galatians. Oh, they run to Philippians every once in a while because they find out it says rejoice always.

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You don't find them in the deep things of the word of God. And when you go to Sunday school classes, you hear the same thing over and over.

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The crucifixion, the resurrection, and there's nothing wrong with them, wonderful truths, but dear people, we ought to be moving on.

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Growing in the Lord, he says, you haven't grown at all. Look at verse 12. For when for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God and are become such as have need of milk and not of meat or solid food.

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Now, that is a very, very delicate statement. How many

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Christians do you and I know who are still living on milk, the ABCs of the gospel, what

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Jesus did on earth, the life that he lived on earth, what he went through on earth, what he accomplished on earth, and they know nothing and have very little understanding of what's going on with Jesus in heaven and what's going on in our lives because of what he is doing in heaven.

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They know him as Savior, but they have no understanding whatsoever or very little understanding of him being the high priest of his people.

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These people, he said, have been saved long enough, he said, you ought to be teachers, and it's my contention that most people in the church have been members of the church long enough to be teachers.

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But you know why you don't have many teachers? You know why the church has got to cry for teachers? Because you have never grown in the

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Lord. You're still hanging around talking about Jesus being born in Bethlehem and Jesus being crucified in Calvary and Golgotha and rolling along those same things and never growing to the point where you're able to share that which

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God has placed in his Word and wants to place in our heart to share it with other people. Now, I do believe that God gives a spiritual gift of teaching to some people, but I believe that many people have abilities that can be trained and adapted and can learn to share what they know from the

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Word of God, but you can't share anything you don't know, ladies and gentlemen. And so we're still sitting around, teach me, teach me, teach me, and we get in and say, man, that's handy.

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Well, man, I don't... And yet it's the basics. It's really the basics. And we sit around and say, man, that's deep.

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I don't understand that. Where'd you get that? And we're still hanging around those basics.

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See, I've been promising you a test. I've been holding off on that test. It's not very hard.

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Sometimes I'm reluctant to give it, though, and then call out the grades personally, you know.

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I usually do that when I give the test. You have to sign them and I read everybody's name and grade. You're talking about coronaries.

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How to know a number of the animals going aboard the ark? I'll give you an easy one. How to know a number of the animals going aboard the ark?

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Remember? Two by two. That's what we've been teaching. That's not what the Bible says, is it?

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That's what Dr. Zeus says. You read

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Genesis 6, but quickly move into Genesis 7. What God said was, you take all the clean animals that can be used for a sacrifice and the unclean animals.

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He said the unclean animals will go aboard two by two, but the clean animals will go aboard by the sevens, and all the fowls of the air will go aboard by the sevens.

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Now, you say, what difference does it make? Two differences. You teach your children that it's two by two, and they'll get off into a university, and some real sharp professor says they lied to you there, and maybe they lied to you somewhere else.

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If they don't know that, then how do you know this is true? And those kids will come out believing they came from apes and everything else.

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Now, what's the other teaching is? Let's just say they all went aboard two by two. You got two sheep. You got a ram and a ewe.

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The first thing Noah did when he stepped down off that ark, when you read chapter 8, verses 1 through 5, you'll find he made a sacrifice.

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That means you got no more sheep on earth. You kill a ram or ewe, one of the two, and you only got two. I don't care what you say.

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I'm not a farmer, but I know you're not going to have no more. Not the best way

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I can figure it, you ain't. God says without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, and you and I know that well, and what

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God was doing, he was making sure that man would have access to him through blood after the flood, before the flood.

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But we tell them it's two by two. Up that ark, they went two by two. The little animals, two by two, and that is a half -truth, and the

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Bible says a false balance is an abomination to God. And if God put that into Scripture, it ought to be taught, and we ought to know it.

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But you see, that's the ABCs. That's the simple thing. And there are all kinds of little things like this. I was talking to some people not too long ago in the church, and I asked them,

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I said, well, I know you remember the story. I said, does the name Simon the Cyrenian ring a bell with you? You remember

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Simon the Cyrenian? They said, you know, and then all of a sudden it caught. Simon the Cyrenian, yes,

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Jesus was going to the cross, and you remember there was a man standing over to the side, and they had beaten him, spit upon him, plucked his beard out, and scourged him, put that old crown of thorns on him, and an old robe over him, and they're making him go up the cross.

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And I said, well, do you recall the story of Simon the Cyrenian? Jesus fell on the wayside, and they called Simon the

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Cyrenian over and made him pick up the cross and carry the cross. Do you remember that story? Yes or no?

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Do you remember that story? Yes? Isn't that interesting, because it's not in the Bible? Isn't that interesting?

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Now, you weren't going to say anything because you knew I had another trap laid for you. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say Jesus fell one time.

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That is Roman Catholic theology, and Roman Catholic theology says he fell four times. And you go to the

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Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, and you'll find the stations of the cross, and you'll find four times Jesus fell, and there's no place in the

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Gospels that ever says he fell one time. And yet every Baptist church I have ever been in in my life teaches that.

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You'll hear them talking about it. He fell. That is not what the Bible says. That is Catholic tradition that has trickled down into the church.

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Why? We just don't say, well, Brother Rocky, don't get mad at me. That's what they told me. Whoever they are, you'll never find they.

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That's what they said. You won't be held accountable for what they said. God said, what does the book say? What does the book say?

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And this is what the writer of Hebrews is saying. You folks ought to have known that. He said, but you're still hanging around those little simple things, and you've never gone on in the

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Lord. Now, he's not being condemning or critical. He said, I'm trying to challenge you and move on in the things of God.

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Grow in the Lord. Move on to perfection. Move on to completion. Move on to spiritual maturity. Stop living on what you learned 10 years ago, and learn something new today.

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This is what he's talking about. The Word of God is unfathomable. You cannot plumb its depths. Dr. Donald Barnhouse, the great expository preacher, preached for 90 days.

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He preached three months on John 3 .16, and never repeated himself one time. I got two sermons on it.

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That's all I know. He preached 90 days every night, a new sermon on John 3 .16.

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Why? Because he walked in the Word. We walk around church. He walked in the

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Word. And he's called the prince of the expository preachers. He's perhaps the greatest expository preacher who ever lived.

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He has 14 volumes on the Book of Romans. Great. Oh, he wasn't a

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Baptist. Oh, God forbid. No, we got Baptist scholars.

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Me and you. That's some of it. We're not without us. The world's got us. Well, this is what he's talking about here.

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Sure. Well, these people have been saved long enough. What's he say about them? Well, look at verse 13. Here's the reason.

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For everyone... Now, watch this carefully. For everyone that uses milk is unskillful, is inexperienced.

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If you're still hanging around those basic things, he said you're inexperienced in the Word of God. Inexperienced, unskillful in the

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Word of righteousness, for he is a babe. Oh, my. If that statement is true, then you and I have to be honest, and we've got to admit that most of Christianity are babies.

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Because most Christians, you and I know, and many times ourselves, are still babes according to the things of the

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Word of God. We're still around those simple little stories, and that's where we live.

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And he says we're unskillful in the Word of the Lord and in the Word of righteousness, but meat, solid food, belongs to them that are of full age, that have grown in the

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Lord. Even those who, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

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How do you get it? By reason of use. The Bible, you've got to use it. Some of you come to church and you don't even have a

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Bible in your hands tonight. That's embarrassing to me. It is a psychological fact, ladies.

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I'm not being critical. I'm just telling you like it is. It's a psychological fact that you can remember 80 % of what you see, but you can only remember 20 % of what you hear.

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And that's why it's important that you see these things for yourself. Not just what I'm saying about it.

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That's immaterial. It's unimportant. I'm just trying to challenge you to get into the book. And he says, you use it, and that's the way you grow, is using the book.

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Instead of opening it up and... You know, you go in most homes, they got a big Bible.

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Got one of those big ones laying on the coffee table. And I've never... It's always open to Psalms. I don't care when you go, what time of the year, it'll always be open to Psalms.

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The pastor comes and knocks on the door and they run and get that wizard air spray and whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, squirt it around, you know, get all the smoke out of the air and everything.

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Then they open it up and dust it off. Like he won't know. And then he comes in, boy, this home is dedicated to the

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Word. That big old Bible, nobody could lift it, take three people in the family to lift that thing up. That thing's laying over on that coffee table.

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It hadn't been moved. Most husbands, when you see them come to church, and I'm not hard on men, but when you see them come to church, I'll guarantee you, most of them are going to say, where's my

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Bible? And wife's got to go get it for him. He don't even know where it is. He hadn't seen it since last Sunday. Comes in the house and tosses it over and she finds out where it is.

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He don't know where it is. She knows where the kids' Bibles are and he knows where the husband's Bible is and he knows not.

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But boy, he'll open that thing up to sons. Get that Bible. Where's that Bible? The preacher's coming. Oh, it's interesting.

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It's fascinating. Like he's some kind of idiot and doesn't know, you know. He doesn't know people. Well, what happened? It did just exactly those five warnings that we talked about.

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They began to drift through neglect. They didn't, it wasn't they hated the Word. They loved the Word. They loved the

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Bible. They just began to neglect it. Then they began to doubt it. They began to wonder about it.

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Well, is this true or that true? And then the result was they began to get dull to it. If you don't use it, your mind gets dull.

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If you don't use it, you get dull to it. And he says, you need to be using it. And they had not, according to chapter 4, verse 2, they had not mixed it with faith.

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They hadn't taken that usage and mixed that thing up with faith so that they might discern good and evil.

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Growing in grace depends upon knowledge. It depends upon knowledge.

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You have to know about the things of God in order to grow in grace. There are some churches that teach if you just go to the services, you get grace.

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But you don't get grace except through the Word of God and by the grace of God. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the

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Word of God. And the more we use the Word, then God's grace becomes real to us because it depends upon what we know about the

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Lord. And then, we have to ask ourselves the questions, are we babes?

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Now, let's move on very quickly to a very troublesome few verses in chapter 6.

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These are a problem. And all I can say is you just have to throw your mind open as wide as you can get it.

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And I don't profess to have all the answers concerning this chapter. I'm just going to tell you what I think it says. And then you can work it out for yourself.

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In verse 1, we said this is the key theme of the book of Hebrews. Chapter 6, verse 1. Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ.

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Now, he's not talking about forgetting Christ. He's talking about those basic principles, those first things that you learn.

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Let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God.

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You and I know that there are three stages of perfection. There is a positional perfection that we have in Christ.

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When you become a Christian, God looks at you as being perfect. He considers you perfect even at this point because you are in the righteousness of Christ.

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He just puts His righteousness down to your account. When God looks at the record of your life, He doesn't see this you didn't do and that you did do.

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He sees the righteousness of Christ. Then there is a relative perfection. That is our daily life.

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By obedience or disobedience, we are growing on in our maturity and in our perfection. And then, of course, there is that ultimate perfection when we shall be like Him for we shall see

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Him as He is. And so there are three stages of this. And you and I are in the second stage at the present time as far as our daily life is concerned.

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And then He goes on and talks about some things. And the troublesome verses are verses four through six.

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These verses have been thrown at Baptists. They've been thrown at some Presbyterians. They've been thrown at every person who believes in what we call eternal security of the believer.

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To use it in common layman's terms, it means once saved, always saved. Do I believe in once saved, always saved?

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I cannot believe anything else. I am compelled by Scripture because the only alternative to once saved, always saved, to use the common terms for that, or eternal security of the believer, the only alternative is a salvation by works.

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There are no other alternatives. It's either by works or it's by the grace of God. And you and I know

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I wouldn't need but one verse. I don't have to have a hundred. All I need is Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. That's sufficient for me.

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For by grace are you saved through faith and not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

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Well, that's simple enough for anybody to understand. But then I have a logical problem because I never met anybody who worked hard enough to get saved.

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And the Bible never tells me how many works to do to get saved and doesn't tell me if I don't do a certain number of works then I'm lost again.

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So when I go to John 14, 27 and Jesus says, My peace give I unto you not as the world giveth I unto you.

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Let not your hearts be troubled and neither let them be afraid. I can never know that kind of peace because I'd never know from one day to the other if I was really saved.

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Do you really believe the feeble efforts you and I put forth will get you saved when the blood of Christ can't get you saved? Can your works do for you what the blood of Jesus can't do?

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No, His blood's sufficient. You see, your salvation doesn't depend upon what you do or don't do, does it? It depends in whom you have believed.

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It depends in whom you have believed. You are obedient or disobedient, but you're still

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His child. Still His child. And a lot of things happen. And the basic misunderstanding as we move into this passage comes from a misunderstanding of what happens at salvation.

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My Bible very plainly says the first thing that occurs is that you are born again. Born again.

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The second thing it tells me is 1 Corinthians 12, 13. For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be bond or free,

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Jew or Gentile, we have been... You don't even know you've been baptized into it. The Bible just tells you you have. You've become a member of the body of Christ.

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Ephesians chapter 1 says that you have been adopted into the family of God. Ephesians 1, 13 says after you heard, you believed and you trusted and you have been sealed unto the day of redemption.

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In order for you to get lost again, you've got to get unsealed. You've got to get unadopted. You've got to get unborn.

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And you've got to get unbaptized and kicked out of the family of God. And the next time you get saved you've got to go through that every day.

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So every day you're going to get that. You've got to be born again every day. You've got to get baptized again every day. You've got to get sealed every day.

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You've got to get indwelt by the Holy Spirit every day. All these things got to happen every time you get lost again. How could you ever have peace?

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How could you ever have peace? Well, the accusation is, well, man, if you believed and once saved, always saved, you can just do anything you want.

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That's true. But you recall the comment that I made earlier in the week. It's what you already believe. There are things you don't want to do when you get saved.

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And a man that does those things, the Bible says he isn't saved. Well, I know a man that's saved, but he hasn't been to church in 40 years.

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Give me a verse of Scripture that says he's saved. Well, I know somebody hasn't been saved.

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Don't you believe in backsliding? I believe you can backslide, but you can't stay backslidden. You can sin. You can't stay in it.

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I was a child of God. You can stick a pig in the mud and you've heard sin. He'll sit there and wallow all day long. You can put a sheep in the mud and I'm not a farmer, but I know this.

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A sheep will cry and scream and bleat until you get it out. If you're in the mud and you like it, check it out.

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Pig or sheep. Got to be one of the two. Got to be one of the two. No. God has placed

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His Spirit within every child of God. And we may sin, but there's something inside that says I don't want to do that. I know that's wrong.

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And it may take me a day. It may take me a moment. It may take me an hour. It may take me two days. It may take me a week to get that conviction on my heart to where I'll turn and repent.

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But repent you will. Repent you will if you belong to the Lord. And if there is not a repentance in that life, the

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Bible says, there is no life. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things pass away.

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Behold, all things become new. It's just that way. Doesn't say you won't make a mistake. It just says you won't keep making the same one.

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The same one. So, in the light of that, we look at verse four. Five things occur in verse four that are troublesome.

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For it is impossible. That's a heavy word now. It is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the

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Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify unto themselves the

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Son of God afresh and put Him to open shame. The first thing you see is if this happens to somebody, it is impossible for them to ever come back to God again.

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That means loss forever. Whatever he's talking about. And then the five things he talks about is people who have been enlightened.

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Second one, they've tasted of the heavenly gift. Thirdly, they've been partakers of the Holy Spirit. Fourthly, they've tasted the good word of God.

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And fifthly, they have experienced or sensed or known of the powers of the world to come or the age to come.

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Now not one of those five expressions in verses four to six are the equivalent of partaking of divine life.

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Nor are all of them together equivalent to the partaking of divine life. Not one of them or all of them together is the same as partaking of divine life.

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A sinner, a person who's not a Christian can be moved in every single one of those five things and yet still remain an unbeliever.

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He can experience every one of them and still be an unbeliever. Alright, look at verse four. Four, it is impossible.

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These are professed believers who were still holding on to the old economy of the law and they were still trusting in the

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Old Testament sacrificial system and the rituals of the Mosaic institutions which were only shadows and types.

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And he said, those who fall away can never return. It is impossible to renew them again to repentance.

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And the scriptures clearly teach that these people who are described here, if they did depart, if they did fall away, they can never be renewed for that is impossible.

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So whatever they are, whoever they are, if they fall away, then God has nothing else to do with them forever.

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Forever. Whoever they are. So if they are Christians, then that means a Christian could lose their salvation and could never regain it.

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If that's a Christian. If that's what he's saying. Now, the writer is speaking of people that he warns of in verse one and two.

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In one and two. These are the people that he's talking to. Now, he's inferring here that people can become learners and they return again and again and again to basic rituals.

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Verse two. The doctrine of baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

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Going back to repentance from dead works. He's saying, you're hanging around dead things and you'll find every one of those things in verse two a major doctrine in Judaism.

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They are major doctrines in Judaism. Now, I know that there are people and godly men and women who believe this passage refers to believers.

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But I have difficulty with it. I believe they are professing to be believers but I do not believe that they really ever accepted

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Colossians 2 .10 which says, we are complete in him. We are complete in him. It says up there, though once, in verse four, for those who are once enlightened.

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Now, this describes, I believe, the general effect of the gospel upon the mind of a person who hears it.

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You find something like that over in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 32. It says, but call to remembrance the former days in which after you were illuminated you endured a great fight of afflictions.

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You learn things in your mind. The first place God ever speaks to you is your thought process. The first place

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Satan ever deals with you is in your thought process. Thoughts come from the heart and out of the heart come the issues of life.

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Words are simply verbalized thoughts. And God deals with the mind.

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The mind, the will, and the emotion, we say. And the mind, God gives us a mind. We have the mind of Christ.

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Philippians says, let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus. Peter said, first Peter, arm ye yourselves with a light mind.

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The mind of Christ. The mind of Jesus. And so, I believe this reference has to do with those who are once enlightened.

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That is, they had the illumination given to them by the gospel when they first heard it with the ear and they received it with the mind.

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Some preachers, when you hear them preach about this, they call it the difference between head belief and heart belief. Believing with the mind but never bringing it down into the practicality of heart belief or faith really takes over.

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And then he goes on, he adds a phrase. And having tasted the heavenly gift, now this is problemsome to some people, but eternal life is yours and mine not by tasting but by eating.

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If you taste it, you're just dabbling. You're just dabbling. It is eating. It's by assimilation.

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One may taste and never assimilate that which he tastes. But we receive the engrafted word into our lives.

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We actually assimilate the word which is spirit and life. Go to John 6, 63. The word comes to live within us.

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David said, Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. John 1 says that Jesus is the living word.

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And he says, I will come to live my life in you. John 15, he says, Now you are cleaned by the word which

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I have spoken to you. When the engrafted word comes in, it has a cleansing, purging effect within the life of a person.

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It doesn't just stay in the mind. It becomes an active part of the life. It becomes the divine energizer in the life as the

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Holy Spirit gives its power. And these Hebrews had tasted of the principles of the doctrine of Christ.

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That is, the word of the beginnings of Christ, the things that began Christianity, but they were still observing the typology of the

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Old Testament system and they were depending on Passover. They were depending on the Feast of Tabernacles. They were depending on all of these things to keep them right with God.

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Yes, Jesus might be the Messiah, but if we don't do these things, a system that man has a very difficult time shucking a salvation by works.

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He did then and he does today. Man still wants to have something to do with his salvation when God says, It's all of me and none of you.

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And they were experiencing the same particular problem. But he adds a phrase that seems to lead in that direction.

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And we're made partakers of the Holy Spirit. Now that statement certainly sounds like that it could be made concerning a born -again believer.

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But the problem is the Greek verb Metechu from which we get the word it means here to go along with.

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To kind of proceed alongside. To kind of just kind of go along with it. It doesn't have the connotation that you commit your life to it.

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It just kind of go along with it. You got people in the church do that all the time. Never been born again in members of a church.

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Do you know a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention said he believed that 80 percent of Southern Baptists were lost? Now I didn't say that.

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That's what he said. One of the pastors of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the world said he believed 60 percent of Baptists were lost.

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Well I wouldn't argue with him. I mean I don't delight in that. But I don't know that I'd argue with it. You can't find half of them.

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You can check any church role you want to. And we got non -resident members. I don't know what you know resident, non -resident. Some of them dead.

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Some of them never come. And out of those who come a fourth of them will never do anything. And out of that fourth that ever do anything probably a fourth of them ever give tithes and offerings.

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Most of them never do anything. And many of them you never can find. And my mother says a man that's saved, a woman that's saved, they're going to want to be around the

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Lord. They're going to want to be around God's people. And a man, a woman who stays away from the house of God and does nothing, doesn't read the

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Bible, doesn't pray, doesn't witness, and all these things going on for 10, 15, 20 years I can't find one verse of Scripture that'll let them be saved.

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But no, you and I try to make them saved. We try to force this and when God says no, where's the changed life?

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Where's the changed life? And this is the same thing. They just went along with it. They had become partakers in the sense that they shared in the benefits.

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You can find people in the church today who are members of churches of varying denominations who have never been born again, but they get in on the blessings of the faithful people who are doing the work.

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And your church is no different. I'm not saying you got a lot of lost people, but I'll promise you this. In your church, you got a few faithful people who do most of the work.

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It's that way in every church. You got the same people, some of them have to hold two and three jobs.

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I was in a church sometime doing a revival meeting and we were having a revival and I hold quite a few of those in a year and this lady came to me.

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I didn't know her, she just came to me and she said, I want to tell you one thing. She said, I'm the church librarian. And she said, you know what, they're going to take my job away from me and she said,

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I'll let you know this. If they do, I won't ever go back down to that church. I said, well, thank God. She said, what?

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I said, thank God. I said, dear lady, I don't know you. Well, that kind of attitude, if you went back down there, you'd quench the

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Holy Spirit until you changed that kind of attitude. So I asked the pastor about it. He said, she never keeps it open.

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She's never here. He said, so the nominating committee just wanted somebody else to get somebody in there to do the job. So I called her again and began talking to her.

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You know what her complaint was? She told me about a man in the church who held 26 different offices in that church.

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I found out he was a godly man. I said, have you ever thought about if you had one of them, he could only have 25?

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Get your family in there, he could only have about 20. Why do people have to do more than one job because nobody else would do it?

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Now, some people go after it because of power, but most of the people I meet, they'd be glad for somebody else to do it. But they don't.

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They just kind of go along. So these people, same way, they went along with Christianity to a point and then they turned back to Judaism and they began to mix law and grace.

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Law and grace. And this is what it means by partaking of the Holy Spirit in this particular passage of scripture.

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And then, it says, have tasted the good word of God. They've tasted the good word of God and it appears to mean that these

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Hebrews, again, enjoyed the advantages of the new dispensation and as I said, it is possible to taste without receiving

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Him by faith. Many unbelievers, even today, taste of the good things of the word of God.

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Every funeral service that you'll ever have in your church, you'll have godly people, you'll have Christian people, but you'll have non -Christians and this dear pastor or some other pastor or deacon or someone who participates in the service or the funeral director will read

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John 14, they'll read Psalm 23 and it brings comfort to the hearts of an unbeliever, but he is still an unbeliever.

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They are able to taste of the good things of the word of God, but they are not born again.

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They are not born again. And so, this is what's happening in this passage of scripture.

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Now, let me iterate that these five experiences are experiences that Christians do encounter, but they are also those that people who only profess to be

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Christians encounter and these activities actually fall short of true Christian experiences.

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If you'll notice verses 4 through 6, nothing is said of them having been quickened with Christ to new life in Him. It says nothing about them being quickened with Christ.

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It says nothing about them being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It says nothing about them being sealed by the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption.

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He just simply says that these have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come. They tasted it, but they did not embrace it.

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They did not embrace it. And he said these things declared to have been the experiences of some who might fall away and if they did fall away, it would be impossible for them to be renewed in repentance.

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There's not one word about the new birth in these verses of scripture. Not one place in it.

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And the words in verse 6, if they shall fall away, these are key words, to renew them again under repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the

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Son of God afresh. The word fall away is not the Greek word apostasia.

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Apostasia from which we get apostasy. An apostate is a person who has actually embraced the truth and committed to it, but because of confusion, because of neglect, because of doubt, because of unbelief, turns away and goes in another direction.

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I can name you people that I am convinced with all of my heart that they were born again and nobody taught them, nobody nurtured them and they got caught up in a cult.

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Some have come back out of the cults, but some have remained in. But yet I believe with all of my heart there was evidence that they were born again and because of their hunger, because of their desire to know more of the word of God, they found somebody who had loved them and teached them and guided them and they wound up in a cult.

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And yet it is the Greek word paraptikto, which means to turn away.

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It's just like when you repent, you turn away from sin and turn to the

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Lord. These willingly, by their will, turn away from the Lord to go in another direction.

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They just turn completely away and it does not indicate that they ever embraced it.

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And it says, seeing they crucify to themselves, literally, while they are still crucifying, they turn away while they just keep on crucifying the

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Lord. They crucify Him in themselves. They expose Him to reproach and mockery. And the falling away here indicates it is an utter falling away, it's a complete falling away.

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It's an utter abandonment of any kind of a life of faith. And this is, that's not the life of a believer.

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You and I might stumble and fall away, but we still, you know, somebody pins you down and you say, well, were you ever saved? Oh, yeah, yeah,

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I remember when I trusted Jesus. Well, why do you think you are like you are? Well, I hadn't studied the

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Bible, hadn't prayed, hadn't been worshiping. I just got away from godly things and, you know, but you'll sense a tenderness in that person.

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You know, they may be hard on the outside, but if you get it by themselves where they're not embarrassed, you can trace it back and there'll be a slight tenderness.

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And I've talked to them at every walk of life, from the oil fields to the desert. Profanity and everything on the sun, but I got them off away from everybody else and get them and talk to them by themselves.

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I said, was there ever a time in your life when you really believed you were saved? You know, tell me about it.

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And as they begin to talk, that softness begins to creep in. Those eyes begin to water a little bit.

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Strong man begins to just kind of water those eyes. Now, if somebody else comes in, they'll get a little hard again, see, because they're embarrassed.

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Man's pride, the two dominant characteristics in every man's life is pride and arrogance. Brother, we got a market on those two.

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Now, we can work on them, but those are ours. Women, they got their own, but those happen to be ours.

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And the writer says, a person in this kind of condition, and here's the key factor for me, it is impossible to renew them to repentance.

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And any child of God, if it were possible for you and me to be lost, surely God would let us come back.

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Why did Jesus die? But as many as received him, whosoever shall call on the name of the

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Lord shall be saved. Well, everybody can do that except these? No, no.

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What he's saying is, it's impossible to renew them to repentance because a person who has heard and then rejected the gospel of the grace of God, the reason it's difficult to bring them back to repentance or they cannot be brought back to repentance is simply because there is no other way to bring them back.

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There is no other gospel. There's no other road. There's no other direction. You can't bring them back to repentance over this way.

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You can't get them back this way. They've got to come one way, and that is through Jesus Christ.

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And that is what he's talking about. You cannot bring them to repentance any other way. It is impossible to get them there any other way.

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And yet, time and again, you and I as Christian people try to make a different way for people to get saved because we love them.

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We try to make an easy road for them somehow, and it is not easy. They're going to have to go through the turmoil of the battle of their soul.

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They're going to have to go through repentance, and any person that doesn't repent can never be saved. A person who doesn't know he's lost can never get saved.

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And yet, we try to make it that way. It is remarkable to me how close a person can get to the things of God and still fall away.

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How close a person can get to being saved and not be saved. I've seen people just stand and shout and shake and weep under conviction and say, wouldn't you just love to trust

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Jesus right now? No. No. Another time. Another time.

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Then on the other hand, have you not seen people who just didn't show a lot of emotion at all and you said, wouldn't you like to trust Christ?

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They said, man, I've been hoping somebody would talk to me about that. Man, wow, this is strange. Here's some guy wanting to get saved.

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Well, those are rare birds. They're not around, so you better shoot while you can, you know. Now, everybody has different methods, you know.

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I recall, when I think about this, I recall a pastor friend that I went to be with in a meeting.

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He pastors a church. They have 30 ,000 in Sunday school. And I went to be with him one time and we were out visiting together and I normally don't go to pastor too much and visit because people want to see him.

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They don't want to see me. And he said, I want to go talk to this guy. We went over and the lady was expecting a child and she had trusted

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Christ the week before. She had a little girl about 11, 12 years old and a little girl that trusted the Lord. But he never could catch the day at home.

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So finally, she called and said, he's home. So, well, we took off and we went over and this pastor was kind of bold, you know, 30 ,000 in Sunday school, you've got to have something going in a

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Roman Catholic city. And, so I went with him and I'd heard of his reputation. I didn't really know him that well.

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I'd heard about him, you know, and I had my eye on him, you know, I wasn't going to get in any trouble. And I knew something was wrong or something was up because he asked me to go with him to get a haircut that morning.

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And we went in the barber shop and went in there and he was in there and there was some guy sitting in the chair and this guy, every other word was a profanity.

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He was cursing and taking God's name in vain, every other word. And, you know, it just hurts your ears and hurts your heart.

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And we sat there, you know, and I know, I'm sitting there looking, you know, don't like it, don't know where to get up and go out or something. And all of a sudden this pastor, and he's not much bigger than I am, he just goes over and closes the door and locks it.

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And before he did that I said, oh Lord. Boy, something's going, and he got up in a chair.

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There was a chair that was empty and he stood up in that chair and he's looking down at this guy with this robe around him, the guy's working on him and he says, you!

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And points his finger down at that guy looking up and here's this guy standing up in a chair looking down at him. He said, for 20 minutes you've been talking about my

01:04:07

God and you've been cursing my God and now you're going to hear something foreign for 20 minutes. And he just kept pointing his finger at that guy and he began to quote him scripture and preach to that guy and it kind of, like he was shell shocked, you know.

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He just sat there looking at him. He said, now amen brother. And he just went over and sat down. I went over and unlocked the door and opened the door and that guy sat there and he was unmoving.

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He was as stiff as a board. Now he didn't trust the Lord but I'll tell you what, he heard more scripture in 20 minutes than he probably heard in his entire life.

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Now, I couldn't do that. You know, somebody shoot me. But I knew

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I was in trouble when I went visiting with him. And we went in to make a long story short. I'll never forget it.

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Went in and we talked to this man and the man was in the back room and he wouldn't even come out. So finally, he said, well go tell him if he doesn't want to talk to us we're in his home, we're guests.

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We'd just like to have prayer with the family and we'll leave. So the guy came out and had on coveralls and kind of dirty, you know, he'd been out working and so he came in and we stand there and he talked to him.

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I'll just say his name was Mr. Doe and he said, Mr. Doe, he said, this is your home. We're guests in your home.

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We came here to talk to you about the Lord. Your wife has trusted Christ and your daughter's trusted Christ and we'd like to unite the home and the

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Lord but if you don't want to talk about the Lord, it's your privilege. It is your home. I would just like for us to have prayer together and then we're going to go.

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Would that be all? He said, yeah man, yeah. So he just began to pray and he just kind of put his arm around that guy's shoulder and he said,

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Lord, would you help Mr. Doe to understand that Romans 323 says and Lord, if he could understand that Romans 623 says and Lord, if he could understand

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Romans 10, 9 and 10 and 13 and he just began to quote him those scriptures and so he just prayed him right through the plan of salvation and he just said,

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Lord, now Mr. Doe, while we're here praying with our heads bowed and our eyes closed, wouldn't you just like to trust Jesus? And I saw that man just sitting there just shaking, just shaking but boy,

01:05:52

I saw that will and he was just shaking his head and I saw this pastor just slide his hand down to his arm and was holding him on the arm.

01:06:02

He said, Lord, this man's heard your word and he doesn't want to be saved. Now Lord, I'm going to take my hand off of him and when

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I do, I want you to kill him right here. He said, Lord, if you'll just kill him right here, just take his life.

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He doesn't want to serve you. He's going to be a hindrance to his wife and kid. God, I'm going to take my hand loose now and I saw that pastor just,

01:06:18

I was watching him and I saw that pastor loosen his hand and I saw that man leaning on his hand.

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Boy, he wouldn't let him move. I mean, he was following his hand. He just kind of moving away. He knew what he was doing. Finally, he just slid his arm back on that man's shoulder.

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He said, Mr. Doe, you're not as hard as you act. He said, God loves you. Let's just kneel and pray.

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He just put a little pressure on him and I saw them both kneel right there. I saw that man just pour his heart out to God. Stumbling, stammering prayer.

01:06:45

A man who didn't have much of a worldly education but he poured his heart out to God. Poured his heart out to God and that week, they baptized that man and that woman and that little girl together in that church.

01:06:56

Now again, that man, he probably lynched me if I tried something like that but you know, if you don't tell them, how are they going to hear?

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How are they going to hear? Now, some would be critical of that man but I'll promise you this, when he gets out of his car and he walks to his church office every

01:07:14

Sunday morning before he ever gets there, he will know of 50 people who are going to walk the aisles for Christ that his people have led to the

01:07:20

Lord before he ever gets to his office every Sunday. Every Sunday. Something's going on.

01:07:26

Something, well, all these people making these professions. I understand. I understand and that's a good thing. They just keep growing and you and I keep complaining and criticizing them.

01:07:33

Well, let's turn along here. We got to get out of here by 10 o 'clock. Let's just move along here and look at verse 12 quickly.

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That ye be not slothful but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. He said, don't be slothful.

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Don't be dull in your hearing. Don't get dull towards the word of God. It's the same usage of the word over in chapter 5, verse 11.

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It talks about dull of hearing, slothful, same thing. Don't be that way. Be patient and inherit the promises.

01:08:08

And then he goes along and he goes on in verse 14 saying, surely blessing, I will bless thee and multiplying, I will multiply thee.

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And here he's quoting from Genesis 22 verses 16 and 17. That by, verse 18, by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie.

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We might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. And then he goes to verse 20 and opens up for chapter 7 where the forerunner is for us entered even

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Jesus made a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. I believe that he talks about believers and then

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I believe in chapter 6 he talks about people who have professed to be believers and they were Jews who had come close to being

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Christians but they were not born again. They went back and began to mix law and grace and began to try to hang around the things of the

01:08:55

Lord but they were going back to the rituals. And then here we are introduced and we'll cover this very quickly perhaps if we don't get through we'll pick it up again tomorrow evening but in the few minutes that we have here is this mysterious character called

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Melchizedek. Verse 1 of chapter 7 for this Melchizedek king of Salem priest of the

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Most High God El Elyon Most High God who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him.

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Now this begins the second section of Hebrews. The first section he talks about Jesus being greater than the prophets greater than the angels greater than Moses greater than Aaron and now he's moving in to the attitude of a priest.

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He's going to talk about this priesthood of Christ and how it is greater and it's greater than that of Aaron.

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And he's going to talk to us in chapter 7 about it having a better order of things. His priesthood is a better order of things.

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And then he's going to talk in chapter 8 he's going to say we got a better covenant that they had in the Old Testament. And in chapter 9 the sanctuary that we have is not made by hands we worship in a better sanctuary than they had.

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And then in chapter 10 he's going to talk about it's all because there's a sacrifice that is greater than all of that.

01:10:07

He's just going to follow right along in this argument. Now the key figure in this chapter is that mysterious king priest

01:10:13

Melchizedek. He only appears two times in the entire Old Testament. You find him in Genesis 14 verses 17 to 20 and you find him in Psalm 110 verse 4 and the other place that you find him is right here.

01:10:28

And that's the only time you can find this person mentioned in the 66 books of the Bible. So twice in the

01:10:35

Old Testament. Now here he is and Paul is going to nail three things about this man this individual relate them to Christ to encourage us and to show us how

01:10:45

Christ is better. The first thing he's going to do is cover a little history. So he's going to look at the history part of it and he's going to compare

01:10:52

Melchizedek and Abraham in the first 10 verses of chapter 7. And we don't have time to read all the verses but you look at them all when you find time.

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But in verse 3 he says without father without mother without descent having neither beginning of days nor end of life but made like unto the

01:11:09

Son of God abides a priest continually. And then he goes over to verse 15 let's add that one to that and it is yet far more evident for after the similitude of Melchizedek there riseth another priest.

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So he identifies Melchizedek as a type a picture a fore portrait a pre -portrait or a pre -painting of Jesus.

01:11:32

He said things that went on in this man's life he is similar to the high priest that is going to come on the scene.

01:11:38

There are similarities. We call that a type. He was a king priest as we said earlier and so is

01:11:44

Jesus. Now we said no priest in Aaron's line ever sat down on a throne. They never sat down because their job was never done.

01:11:52

But Jesus who is the king of peace the prince of peace and he did. And this man named

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Melchizedek the king of righteousness would apply to Christ as the righteous king who is coming as the king of kings

01:12:04

Lord of lords according to the book of Revelation and other passages. But also you'll notice his origin in verse 3.

01:12:11

He pictures Christ in his origin. Now as far as the Bible record is concerned there is no mention of Melchizedek's birth and there is no mention of his death.

01:12:20

Now this is not Jesus. This man is a Gentile. And this is not

01:12:27

Christ. It is not a theophany. It is not an appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament at all. He is a human being.

01:12:34

He is not an angel. He is actually a human being. This does not mean that he had no parents.

01:12:40

It just simply means that the Bible does not record his origin. It doesn't record for us his parentage.

01:12:47

It just means that it is silent on these matters. And he like Christ is without the beginning of days.

01:12:55

In like manner it doesn't tell us who his parents are. It doesn't tell us when he was born. It doesn't tell us when he died. But in the same confusing type manner as I mentioned last night when we come to the birth of Jesus it tells us he had an earthly mother.

01:13:08

It tells us he was born in Bethlehem but yet you and I know that he was never born. So there's a mystery about that too.

01:13:14

He always was with God yet we know Mary had a little baby in her arms. We know that Simeon in the temple said behold mine eyes have seen the salvation of the

01:13:22

Lord and yet we know that he always was the son of the living God throughout all eternity.

01:13:28

He always was, is and will be. He is the same yesterday, today and forever and yet he was a little child.

01:13:33

So there's a mystery factor involved in the birth of Jesus as it is with Melchizedek. And so we know that the

01:13:41

Aaronic priest they did have to have in the Aaronic priesthood they had to defend their office by their family lineage.

01:13:49

They had to be able to prove they were of the tribe of Levi. They had to be able to substantiate that. You can find that in Nehemiah chapter 7 verse 64.

01:13:58

That in order for him to be a priest he had to have the credentials. He had to have the family tree so to speak.

01:14:04

He had to have it to back up. And so every high priest who descended after Aaron had that lineage but the same thing occurred to all of them they all died.

01:14:14

Every single one of them died. Now having identified Jesus Christ with the order of Melchizedek he goes on and explains that Melchizedek himself is greater than Aaron.

01:14:24

Now this is strange because most Jews don't deal with that. He is superior to Aaron. Now look at verse 5.

01:14:30

What happened? And verily they that are of the sons of Levi who receive the office of the priesthood have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law that is of their brethren though they come out of the loins of Abraham but he whose descent is not counted from them receive tithes of Abraham.

01:14:51

Melchizedek didn't come from the children of Israel he was a Gentile but yet Abraham gave him tithes.

01:14:58

Abraham paid tithes to a king of righteousness who was a prince of peace. And he says the

01:15:05

Levites did that in the person of Abraham. And so this is where he's tying it in together.

01:15:12

He's saying Aaron actually typologically spiritually speaking paid tithes to Melchizedek in the person of Abraham.

01:15:20

He was in the loins so to speak going to be the seed of Abraham. Now look at verse 9.

01:15:26

He throws them and as I may so say Levi also who receives tithes paid tithes in Abraham.

01:15:33

They're receiving tithes now but they actually paid tithes to Melchizedek also in Abraham. And he's saying certainly the less is blessed of the better.

01:15:43

And so on earth the Jewish temple and the priest received tithes and all the way back into Genesis chapter 14 we find the priest gave tithes to Melchizedek how?

01:15:52

Through Abraham who was going to be the father of the faithful. Now that clearly shows their inferiority to the priesthood of Melchizedek because their priesthood they were going to collect tithes but they themselves had to pay tithes to him who was greater.

01:16:06

And so in a very real sense we imitate Abraham when we bring tithes to our high priest

01:16:15

Christ. You do not give tithes to the church. If you do you got the wrong motive.

01:16:22

If you give tithes to the church if you give offerings to the cooperative program or to anybody else to me or anyone else if you give it to the individual or to the organization that's the wrong motive.

01:16:33

You are giving because Christ takes it. He receives it and you give it unto the

01:16:39

Lord. Now you and I are also responsible where it's used and how it's used but we give it unto the

01:16:45

Lord not to individual or organization. But that's not what

01:16:51

I hear. Well I give to my church. Well I believe you ought to support your church. Don't misunderstand me.

01:16:57

I believe that the church depends, we are the church. This building isn't the church. This building houses the church.

01:17:05

We give to the Lord. But sometimes because we give to other organizations we just kind of think well I give to the church. I'm not going to give to the church.

01:17:12

When you hold back money you hold it back from the Lord not the church. When you give to the church you give to the Lord not the church.

01:17:18

It's just that way. We just don't think of it that way but that's exactly how we imitate Abraham whenever he gave tithes to Melchizedek.

01:17:24

The Levites and Aaron all of them were in the lords of Abraham and so we do the same thing we come to our high priest the

01:17:30

Lord. And so this is a historical argument that he's giving. He's just going back there and he's talking about history and he's arguing, debating bringing these things about to their attention because of history.

01:17:39

And then he moves on very quickly to another one verse 11. He says now there's a doctrinal problem that you're dealing with.

01:17:46

He said this is the history behind it. He said let's look at some doctrine. Verse 11 If therefore perfection were by the

01:17:52

Levitical priesthood for under it the people receive the law what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek and not be called after the order of Aaron?

01:18:02

He said if the Aaronic priesthood if the priesthood on Aaron can make you perfect why would you need another one? Now let me just mention lest I forget it.

01:18:11

Look over at verse 19. In verse 11 he says the priesthood made nothing perfect. Verse 19 for the law made nothing perfect.

01:18:18

And then you go to chapter 10 verse 1 we'll just glance at that real quick because I might forget it. For the law having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of things can never with those sacrifices and the

01:18:29

Old Testament sacrifices made nothing perfect. The priesthood made nothing perfect. The law made nothing perfect and the sacrifices made nothing perfect.

01:18:36

That's why you had to have a new one and a new one and a new one. And so he's saying the reason you got to have another priest is because the

01:18:42

Levitical priesthood couldn't get the job done. It didn't make anybody perfect. Now he is showing that Melchizedek is superior from this doctrinal point of view and he quotes from Psalm 110 verse 4 as the basis of it.

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And again he'll mention three things first of all in verse 11 and 12 he's going to talk about how Aaron is he says after the order of Melchizedek Aaron has been replaced now by Melchizedek.

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When God said to Christ in Psalm 110 verse 4 thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek he was actually saying the old

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Aaronic priesthood the Old Testament priesthood is now being set aside it's now being done away with.

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There's another one coming on the scene that is not after the lineage of Aaron. It's not according to the

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Levitical law. It is impossible for two divine priesthood to operate at the same time in the same location

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There can only be one divine priesthood at a time. Although there are different denominations that say they have those.

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The fact that God established the new order tells me that the old order is going out of the scene. Now consequently the priesthood made nothing perfect.

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The word perfect in this particular sense is not like the other. This one here means that whenever it stands before the

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God and it means having a perfect standing before the Lord. The word perfection on the other hand that we've been reading it means completion it means spiritual maturity.

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This one means to have a perfect standing before the Lord. The Old Testament sacrifices could never give a person a perfect standing before God.

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They only covered their sins allowed their sins to be passed over until Jesus would actually die on the cross.

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That's why nobody ever went to heaven until Jesus died on the cross. Right? Nobody ever went into the presence of the

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Lord until Jesus died. He being the first fruits of them that slept. That's why they went to paradise. They went to paradise awaiting.

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Why? Because their sins were only covered until he died on the cross. That made the atonement for sin. Then it says in Ephesians he led captivity captive being the first fruits of them that slept and he gave gifts unto men.

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And he led them into the presence of the Lord. But now what happens? Did not the apostle Paul say that he was caught up to the third heaven and he called that paradise?

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Now he says absent from the body present with the Lord. Why? Once you die now you go right to be with the Lord. Why? Jesus is there. Jesus is there.

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And so the location changed and this is the reason why. Because there was no perfection. The Old Testament sins were

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Passovered. They were covered until Christ died on the cross. So he's saying Aaron is being replaced by Melchizedek and he's saying that Aaron never was ordained by the vow or the oath of God.

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Verse 12 For the priesthood being changed there is made of necessity a change also of the law.

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For he of whom these things are spoken pertains to another tribe of which no man gave attendance at the altar.

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For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood.

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And it is yet far more evident for after the similitude of Melchizedek there rises another priest who is made not after the law of a carnal commandment but after the power of an endless life.

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And then we go and look at verse 19 For the law made nothing perfect but the bringing in of a better hope did by which we draw near unto

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God. Verse 21 For those priests were made without an oath but this was an oath by him that said unto him the

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Lord swore and will not repent thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Aaron you can search the scriptures as well as you want and God did acknowledge

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Aaron. He did acknowledge his sons. He acknowledged all his successors and all the elaborate ceremonies that you find in the

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Old Testament Exodus chapter 28 all the way over to chapter 30. All those ceremonies that went on God acknowledged that but you will never find anywhere in the scriptures a record where a divine oath of God sealed their priesthood.

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There is no such thing in the Old Testament. There was never a divine oath by God to seal their priesthood.

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Why? Because God knew their priesthood would come to an end one day. No divine seal divine approval but not the seal not the oath.

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But Jesus had the oath of the Father. He had the divine seal of the

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Father and so in verses 20 to 22 then we have where it talks about the oath.

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By so much more verse 22 was Jesus made a surety and there is that word better of a better covenant of a better testament.

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And then an unchanging oath. And then he talks about as Aaron and his those who followed him would die so Christ would not die.

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He would live on. Verse 23 and they truly were many priests because they were not allowed to continue by reason of death.

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They had had many of them because they kept dying and had to replace them. But this man because he continueth ever hath an unchangeable priesthood.

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Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

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Christ lives to die no more. He ever lives. Now many people apply verse 25 and I think that probably you could apply that to lost people but primarily it doesn't refer to lost people.

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Primarily it refers to believers. The confidence and the assurance. Jesus doesn't stand at the right hand of God the

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Father and ever living to make intercession for non -believers. He makes intercessions for those who have come to Father through him.

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And so it is a verse that gives oh you can make a secondary application but the primary context of this is basically giving you confidence and assurance.

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This is what he's saying. You have confidence and assurance in the priesthood of Christ as opposed to the Aaronic priesthood.

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He's talking about believers here. And he's talking to believers to encourage them. And this is the doctrinal point.

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Why is Judaism no longer effective? Why are the Old Testament sacrifices no longer effective? Because they had to be done every day and they were done by carnal commandments.

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They were done by people. But here this one is done by the Son of God himself and he only has to do it one time.

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That's a major doctrinal difference. And you go talk to a Jewish person it'll make all the difference in the world in your conversation with him.

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And then he simply closes it off by getting into pragmatics. He gets down into verses 26 and 28 and he just tries to drive a nail home.

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He says, how could all this be? You are my brothers and Paul was a Jew. Paul wrote this. Evidently the writer is a

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Jew, whoever he was. And he's talking to Jewish people. He said, now we're brothers and I've gone through the same thing you have.

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And I've kept those rituals. He said, how could all this be? He hits it in verse 26. Look at it. He says, for such a high priest was fitting for us who is holy, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners and made higher than the heavens.

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Never say that about Aaron. Never say that about you and me. He's holy, undefiled, separate from sinners.

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Oh, but he hung around sinners. That's what they accused him of. They said, he's having dinner with sinners over there. But how was he separate?

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He had no sin. He had no sinful nature. He had no sin. Human flesh but God in the flesh and higher than the heavens.

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Higher than the heavens. He is worthy because he has redeemed us by his own blood.

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He has purchased us and he's worthy of all the praise and the honor and the glory of the universe.

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And so he's higher than any ministering angel. He's higher than anything. He is God in the flesh.

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And as Aaron and his sons had to offer daily sacrifices for themselves first and then for the people, Christ is sinless.

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He needed not to atone for his own sins. He had none. He gave his life particularly, uniquely, and distinctly for other people.

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For other people. He was born and crucified. He was born to die.

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And every step that he took in this world was a step towards the cross in Jerusalem. Every day of his life he moved to die.

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You and I want to live. But he says you live physically but you die spiritually.

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You ought to die to yourself. You ought to die to yourself and stop living for yourself. He says you

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Christians ought to be living for me and expending your life for other people.

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And that is what brings joy. That's what brings joy. Other people.

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Serving the Lord and if you and I serve the Lord we'll serve other people. And you and I are in the world to be servants.

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Jesus said I did not come to be ministered to. I came to minister. And any

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Christian who's going to walk with God is going to have to learn to be a servant.

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That is not just for preachers. It's just not for Sunday school teachers. It's not for any one individual.

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It is for every child of God. We ought to be servants. And we'd have servants hearts.

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And that's why the Bible says in honor preferring one another. If we have a servant's heart we can rejoice when

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God blesses someone else. We can rejoice if someone else gets a position in the church or the community. And there'll not be bitterness and envy and jealousy and resentment in our hearts about it.

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We'll just rejoice in it because in honor preferring one another we just be willing for them. The Bible says gird yourself about with humility and serve one another.

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Serve one another. Jesus put a towel around and washed the feet. Peter said Lord you're not going to wash me.

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And Jesus said if I don't then you don't have any part of me. But you and I we like to have our feet washed.

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We like to have people serving us. We like to have people ministering to us. We like to have people visiting us.

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If we get sick we get a little cold or sniffle. We get a little drop of the eye you know. We get a little something in the eye we stomp our toe cut our finger trip and stumble skin our knee.

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We scream and cry and we get mad and bitter if somebody doesn't come and visit us. Say let me ask you when's the last time you've been to the hospital brother?

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Anybody on the hospital that you know that's sick you've been to visit them? You sent a card to them did you? Did you call them on the phone and say

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I just want you to know we prayed for you today? No what you do is like we do in most churches we call the church and say sister so and so is in the hospital would you have the pastor go by and visit?

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Would you have somebody go by and visit? They're your friends if you love them how come you and I don't do it?

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Well I don't know we just don't take time I guess. I have friends who go in the hospital all the time. They get in there and out and I don't even know they're there.

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That's the way I rationalize it away. I didn't know they was there. I didn't check up on them I wasn't close enough to them to even know they were there.

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It was my job to find out what's going on with my friends. I said why didn't you tell me?

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They said we just didn't know what was

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We didn't know what was going on. We didn't know what was We didn't know what was

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We didn't know what was going on. We didn't know what was going on. We didn't know going on. We didn't know We didn't know what was going on. We didn't know what was going on. I say things that are fairly pointed.

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But it is never my purpose beyond duely critical or condemning. It just isn't. I never speak to people from, in my heart,

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I'm never speaking from a condescending attitude. I never speak to you from a holier -than -thou attitude I'm working on my life just like you working on yours

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I'm amazed and stunned and appalled at why I'm not further along in my Christian life than I am and I'm growing every day hopefully and the more

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I study the Bible the less I see I know about it and I say that sincerely I can read the

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Bible in five different languages I before I was 12 years old I memorized most of the first five books in the

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Bible and much of the Psalms I can go back to those same passages and I look and I say man

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I've been studying that for years and I still didn't see that you know making this where you go you'll find something new always and ever in the scriptures and that's exciting thing about it and so that isn't my purpose but you know let me isn't it strange that we just like the

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Israelites they said well you know what Paul said some of you follow in first Corinthians 3 said some of you follow

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Apollos some of you following Silvanus some of you saying I follow Peter some of you saying

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I follow Paul and he said the problem is each one of you says I that's what he said now watch this in 1986 some people follow

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Oral Roberts some people follow James Robinson some people follow Bill Godfrey some people follow

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Billy Graham some people follow W .A. Crespo some other people on there God forbid you'd ever follow

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Rocky Freeman some people follow this something Paul says you better follow Jesus just follow

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Jesus now you and I respect a lot of people we esteem them for the work's sake and that's why it doesn't make a difference

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I'm not talking about doctrinal differences they are major doctrinal differences in a lot of people and we stand up on doctrine and I believe the

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Bible says Paul says be of good doctrine be of sound doctrine be a true doctrine be a pure doctrine be a strong doctrine doctrine makes a difference it makes all the difference in the world where you baptized by immersion or sprinkling makes all the difference in the world where you believe the virgin birth or not but what

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I am saying is you do not give 100 % allegiance to anybody except the Lord he reserves that for himself and if you and I would put as much energy in serving the

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Lord and studying his word and just letting him use us as we do giving our allegiance to people whether they be in the family or whether be some leader or organizations we would get an amazing amount of things done for the

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Lord in our communities we just would and brother I know how it is we got time to play dominoes we got time to sit in the cafe and have coffee we got time to talk about African violence at the garden club we got time to talk about sewing and recipes we got time to talk about fishing and hoeing and bowling we got time to talk about all that stuff but we don't have time to go down and talk to a guy about Jesus we don't have time to go down and talk to that lady about Jesus we don't have time to pick up a telephone and call someone and say you know

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I just want you to know that I love you and the Lord today and I was just praying and I trust that God will be real to you today we don't have time to just sit down and write a little card to somebody in the hospital as an encouragement to them we live a basically self -centered life and we talk about loving

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Jesus and we're all that way let's face it we all are from time to time and it bothers me when

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I'm around somebody that's really living for Jesus it irritates me doesn't it it kind of bothers me why because you get under conviction get under conviction about it so what you got to do is find something wrong with it either talk about the way they comb their hair the clothes they wear the way they talk or the way they walk find something about them and if you can't find something about them bring up their family find out something oh yeah he's got a brother that doesn't come to church ungodly guy because we can't prove them wrong by their love for Jesus we know they love the

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Lord so in order to lift ourselves up many times we have to tear someone else down Paul said don't do that the writer of Hebrews says don't do that Jesus said the one way the key way that people are gonna know that you belong to me it's not that you love the city but that you love one another do you closing question every person that is in this service tonight every if you remember this church every person that's a member of this church that you know personally do you love them as best you can can you look them in the face any member of your church can you look them in the face and say

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I want you to know that I love you in the Lord and they'll believe you if you can and before this night is over you need to make your heart right with the

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Lord not theirs yours and the same is true of me and my church but I need to be right with the

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Lord and then you have to go to that person and you have to ask for their forgiveness for the resentment and the bitterness you had in your heart towards me and the

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Bible says if they don't listen to you that's their problem not yours but if they do you have gained a brother you've gained a brother and you'll be closer than you've ever been in your life nobody can ever hurt your church from outside if your church becomes ineffective in the things of God it'll be from inside like termites that's the way it works love one another be close together and move and act as one and God will bless your life in a greater way even then he's blessed in days gone by father we thank you for your blessings and goodness again

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I thank you for the faithfulness of these friends Lord some have been here every night thus far and I know that father so many of busy schedules and men and women and young people they work go to school yet father they hurry home and they come and father

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I just thank you for the encouragement that it is to me that they come and others have talked about how they've invited other people to come and some have and some don't but father our job is just to invite them and whether they come or not that's between them and you but father help us to be faithful and invite them to come and then father

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I just thank you for what you've done in the life of this church in days gone by I thank you for what you've been doing in these days before our coming and I just pray that what we do this week together will lay smoothly upon the foundation of what has been done so that that which follows will be strong and stable and the superstructure that continues to go up father will be that which will glorify thee and honor thee and when people talk about this church and fellowship they will know they're talking about people who love you love your word who stay in your word and who love one another and who will love them if given the opportunity so father may we boldly and aggressively and yet lovingly and kindly spread the word of God throughout this community with people who don't know

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Jesus father I pray for that young man that we spoke with yesterday the

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Lord who doesn't know Jesus I pray Lord that you'd bring him to the services I pray father that if he doesn't come this week he'll come

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Sunday I pray somehow some way Lord that you'd touch his heart and that you'd bring him to the place

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I pray for those who are members of this fellowship who are sick and who cannot be with us but who would be if they were well father

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I just pray that you'd be close to them in a very personal way we know that you dwell within their hearts if they're your children but help them to know that we haven't forgotten them that we do care about them that we're interested in them that we love them in thee and father that according to your wonderful will we ask

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Lord that you'd heal them that father we are bold in asking that you'd raise them up that you touch them physically father that you keep a wall about them a great hedge and father that the enemy and his hordes would have no player in their life no manifestations against them and father for the work that we're doing here together

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I pray that you rebuke the enemy and bind his hordes that there can be no retaliation for that which we are going through in the word of God and our being ever protect our loved ones and all that which you give us and father tomorrow if you choose to give us another day may it be a good day indeed and may we accomplish those things you lay before us and we'll praise you for the privilege of letting us be christians and letting us serve you and live for you and we anticipate with a keen awareness the soon return of our blessed savior