Galatians 1 (Pastor John Franklin)

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Now I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel. It wasn't their military gods.
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It wasn't the type of people. We're going to be in Galatians chapter 1 today.
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Galatians chapter 1. You know, seeing Melanie up there with the little tambourine,
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I'm thinking I'm in a Pentecostal church or something. And then she gets so into it. If you guys didn't realize, that whole, the mountain.
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So, now I do want to thank everybody who does get up here and help us and lead us in worship. Guys, today we're going to be in Galatians chapter 1.
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I don't know how many of you have actually studied Galatians. I'm hoping all of you. But it's a little different than Paul's other letters.
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There's a little different opening than what he normally uses.
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You know, normally Paul will praise God in his letters, and then he'll commend the church for something, and then he'll go into about the correction.
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Galatians is one of Paul's letters that he does not praise the church before he gets into his lesson for the church.
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Let's read, starting in verse 1. Paul, an apostle not for men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the
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Father, who raised him from the dead. And all the brothers who are with me to the churches in Galatia, grace to you and peace from God our
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Father and Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of God and Father.
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To whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Now that's normal and that's typical for Paul's normal opening of one of his epistles, one of his letters.
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But then he goes on. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.
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Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.
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As we have said before, so I say again, now say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
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For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trying to please man?
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If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Let's pray. Father, right now as we get ready to study your word,
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I ask that you come into this house, come into this gathering of your people. Father, let not words come from my mouth or from me, but words that come from you to edify your people.
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Father, give us the ears to hear, not what is said, but what you want us to hear.
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Because Father, you are the glory and the honor. You are the holy one.
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I thank you and I love you. Amen. You see, we're missing that praise.
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If you look at his other epistles, Ephesians, he praises them for all their love that they have towards the other saints.
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In Philippians, he's praising them because of their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
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In Colossians, Romans, all of them are praising them, but here it's different.
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You see, if you haven't studied Galatians, here he's talking about a group of people called the
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Judaizers coming in. And these Judaizers were taking the message of grace that God gave his son for our sins, and all you have to do is believe in that.
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And they added to it back the rules of Judaism. So he gave a grace plus works.
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But he didn't give a gospel. That grace plus works.
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And they quickly ate it up. And why'd they quickly eat it up?
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Why'd they quickly run to it? Because that appeals to man. We like being the ones in control.
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I don't know if you guys know that about me. I like being in control. Right? We have a desire for that.
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You see, because problems happen when I'm not the one in control. Problems happen when we say,
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I'm going to rely on somebody else to do that because they inevitably let us down. So this teaching appealed to them.
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Look, Jesus saved us by grace, but as long as I keep doing these things, everything will be okay.
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Because how many of us like just relying on somebody else? You see, we have this inherent sense of justice too.
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Even atheists share that inherent sense of justice. They want things to be right and fair across the board.
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So this works -based salvation was one they readily grabbed hold of.
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I can control that and say, yes, this person deserves to be saved. This person doesn't.
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This person meets my criteria. This person, oh no, they're an evil... And they allowed them to put them into categories.
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Right? But guys,
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I'm here to tell you, nothing that we can do, no matter how good we are, will ever warrant our salvation.
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Isaiah 64 .6 says, all of us become like something unclean and all righteous acts are like polluted garments.
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All of us wither like a leaf and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.
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No matter how hard we work at it, it doesn't matter because it's like filthy garments.
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Menstrual rags is what that actually translates to. That's what your good works and efforts do.
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That's the same level the scripture puts them on. And Galatians continues on in chapter 2 and tells us why.
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Because I do not set aside the grace of God for if righteousness comes through the law, then
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Christ died for nothing. Because Christian, if you could do it all on your own, then
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Jesus didn't have to die on the cross. So what they were doing is they were accepting these false teachers rather than calling them out.
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And Christians say, it's time to call out false teachers. It's time to stand up for what
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God says is right. We just read in Galatians, if they preach another gospel, even if it's an angel himself comes down and stands before, if they say something besides salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, let them be accursed.
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So it's time to start calling these people out. It doesn't matter who they are.
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It doesn't matter if they make you feel good. It doesn't matter if you like what they're saying because it fits with what your moral or your ethical standing at the time says.
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It doesn't matter if they agree with what the realm of society says is okay. It's time to call them out for what they are and let them be accursed.
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People like Kenneth Copeland. Let me read you a quote from him.
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Hold that. You don't have God in you, you are one.
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Kenneth Copeland teaches that you are God. Isaiah 43, 10 says,
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You are my witness. This is the Lord's declaration. My servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.
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No God was formed before me and there will be none after me. You are not
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God. You never were God. You never will be God. He teaches that God needs you to be saved.
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God doesn't need anything from me. He can have the ground cry out and worship him.
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He doesn't need anything from me. You have the
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Joel Osteen's that say, Jesus loves you just the way you are. Smile. Everything's good.
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No, Jesus loves you despite the way you are and he wants to make you more like him. Where his wife said,
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We worship not for God but for ourselves because God takes pleasure when we are happy. That God's whole purpose is for us to be happy.
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No. 1
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Corinthians 10, 31 says, Therefore whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for God's glory.
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Not for yours but for God's. You got Benny Hinn who prophesied numerous times about false things to come.
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Economic collapses, a female president, Fidel Castro. He said
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Fidel Castro was going to die in the 90's. He actually died in 2016. He teaches
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Adam could fly and would go into space. You have
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Jesse Duplantis that says, He had to comfort Jesus and forgive him. You have
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Joyce Myers who's trying to take the role of a man and pastor a church.
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The minute that blood sacrifice was accepted, Jesus was the first human being that was ever born again.
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Now it was sealed. Now it happened when he was in hell. That's what she teaches.
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One, Jesus had to be saved from sin. He had to be saved from sin. Right? The one who knew no sin became sin for us.
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That he went to hell. Nowhere in scripture does it say that Jesus went to hell. She's adding to it.
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She teaches, I didn't stop sinning until I got it into my thick head. I wasn't a sinner anymore.
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1 John 1 ,8 says, If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
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If we declare we have no sin, we make him a liar and the truth is not in us.
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Yet she said she stopped being a sinner. Guys, it's time we call out false teachers.
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And it's time we realize some of them come from claiming to be within God's church. It's not the ones that are claiming they're outside of God's church you need to worry about.
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It's the ones that are inside his church teaching you false messages. Because you know the ones that are outside of his church that don't claim
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Christ are already telling you falsehoods. It's the ones who are claiming them.
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Claiming Christ, yet living like the world. 2
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Corinthians 11, 13 says, For such people are false prophets, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
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And no wonder, for Satan decides himself as an angel of light. So it is no great thing if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.
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Their destiny will be according to their works. Guys, if you're listening to any of these false teachers, you need to stop.
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Well they said this one good thing this one time. A broken clock is right twice a day. That doesn't mean
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I'm going to rely on it to get me on time when I need to be some place. I'm not going to look to it for the answer when
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I'm trying to figure out what time it is, if I know it's broken. But there's reasons we don't call out these false teachers, isn't there?
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Well they know more than me. They have pastor behind their name, or in front of their name, or wherever you want to put it. They have apostle, bishop, deacon, reverend, elder, whatever you want to add to it.
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The same Holy Spirit in me is the same Holy Spirit in you. The same one that teaches me is the same one that teaches
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Pastor Jeff, Pastor... All of us are taught by the same Holy Spirit. But there is a difference when you say, well they know more than I do.
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The difference is we trust that he's going to teach us more than you do. Ow, that one kind of hurt, didn't it?
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I can't memorize scripture. Yeah, you can. Where's Richard McGee?
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That man for years said he couldn't memorize scripture. That man can quote it to you now because he finally believed what
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God said and let God pour into him. You don't need to have reverend or pastor attached to your name in order to understand the
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Word of God. What you need to do is actually get in it and study.
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Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, correctly divining the
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Word as truth. Study to show yourself approved, right?
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Luke 639, Jesus said, can the blind guide the blind? Won't they both fall into the pit?
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You want to follow these false teachers, they're going to lead you straight into the pit. We don't call out these false prophets because we don't want to offend somebody who either listens to them or we don't want to offend them if we know them.
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We're more worried about what they think than what God has commanded. My question for you today, guys, is who are you trying to please?
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Going back to our original text in Galatians 110, it said, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God or am
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I trying to please man? If I was still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
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You see, you can't please man and please God. Christian, you have to choose.
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You can't continue to live the sinful lifestyle if you claim to be in Christ.
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You want to win the world's favor. What's scripture say in James 4? It says, adulterous is, don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility to God.
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You cannot be the world's friend and say that you love the
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Lord. Yes, Jesus sat down with sinners and prostitutes, taxed, but when he stood up they weren't the same.
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He didn't become like them, they became like him. Because it doesn't matter if everybody likes you.
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It doesn't matter if you have all the wealth and success that this world says that you need to have.
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You can have your best life now. You want to follow the teaching, you're going to have your best life now because the one to come is going to be torment for eternity.
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I don't need the fancy house, the fancy cars, the wealth, the power. What I need is
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God. And I need to trust that he's going to provide me with what I need. And that may mean
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I'm driving around in a truck that has 300 ,000 plus miles on it. Okay, I can still praise
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God in that 300 ,000 mile truck the same way I can praise God in, I almost stole, if Lowell would have left his new truck, he might not have had one when he came back.
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I was a little covetous. He got him a new taco, I got the old one.
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Jesus said, what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his life?
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What can a man give in exchange for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the
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Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes into his glory. You're worried about offending man, you're worried about maybe losing a friend or two because you're saying,
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I can't live my life like that anymore. Is that friendship worth your eternal soul?
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There have been people that I've loved in this world that I've turned my back on because of Christ. Because no matter how much
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I pleaded with them to come with me, they loved self more than God.
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My own brother was one of them. After my father died and he had gotten back in touch with some of the family,
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I told him when he called me, Howard, I'm there for you.
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I love you. This is what I believe and I laid out what I believe.
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But as long as you are living the life you are living, you have my phone number but you will not have my address.
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I will be there if you call me and say that you are ready to come and get right. But I'm not going to let you touch my family.
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He never met Katie. And he decided to live in that lifestyle until the day he injected one too many times into his arm.
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And I grieve for the loss of my brother but the torment that he is enduring today is one he deserves.
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Not because I'm better than him but because he denied God. I could have said, yes, let's be best friends, let's go do things and hang out but I can't because I'm supposed to be different.
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Because you say, well, it's just a little bit, right? It's just a little bit of sin.
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Well, that little bit turns into a lot more. Read Romans. Romans chapter 1.
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They deny God so God lets them carry out the passions of their heart, right? And because they carry out the passions of their heart, they deny
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Him more. And they worship other things other than Him. It's a good thing we don't worship things like sports idols or music icons or television shows.
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I can't memorize scripture but I sure can't memorize the lyrics to that song. Or I sure can,
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I might be showing my age. If I say this, how many of you guys can repeat, my baloney has a first name?
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You can remember that but you can't remember scripture? But there's so many people that say they can't.
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Well, it's impossible for me to memorize it. No, it's not. You can remember stupid little jingles from your childhood.
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Some of you can quote literally almost the entire scripts of some movies but you can't remember that Jesus gave up His Son for you.
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Guys, we can't strive to please man. We are called to be in the world.
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Go therefore, right? Go ye therefore. I have to go into the world but I'm not supposed to be part of it.
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I have to go in and proclaim that Jesus is Lord. I have to interact with the world on a daily basis but I don't have to be like the world.
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I have to be set apart from the world. I have to choose rather than to worry about what man thinks of me, live my life to make
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God proud of me. If we try to please man, we cannot, cannot please
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God. Hebrews 11 .6
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says, now without faith it is impossible to please God. For the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek
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Him. I have to seek after God.
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I have to have a desire to study about God and learn about God and try to figure out how can
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I be more like God. I must decrease so He may increase. And guys, it needs to be a daily choice.
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And it's beautiful. It says to pick up our cross daily because you're going to stumble and going to fail, right?
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And that way when you stumble and when you fail, tomorrow morning guess what you get to do? Pick up your cross and follow
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Him. Jesus says in Matthew 6, no one can be a slave of two masters since either he will hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other.
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You cannot serve yourself and God. You cannot serve your friends and God.
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Who are you trying to please today? If you're in Christ, you have to try to please
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Him. The apostles found this out.
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They were arrested so they called in Acts 4 .18, so they called for them and ordered them not to preach or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
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But Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than God, you decide.
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The Sanhedrin had called Peter and John in. Look, you guys can't be going out and preaching about this
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Jesus guy who we killed. If it's right in the sight for us to preach that or obey you, you decide.
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Do we obey God or do we obey you? We can't.
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Please both. Peter said we must obey God rather than man.
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And it goes a step further. It's hard to tell a friend from your past,
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I can't go hang out with you anymore. It is. I've been there.
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I've done that. When I decided to quit drinking those many, many years ago, and those people kept saying, come on back.
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We won't try to give you a drink. Yeah, for a week or two you might not. But then you will.
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So I had to turn my back on what I thought was an entire group of family and friends to seek what was right.
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It's hard to do that. But it's right to do that.
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But it's even harder when there's someone that claims to be in Christ. And you know that's not.
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They claim to be a Christian and they sit next to you in church every day. Yet as soon as they walk out that door, they're living just like the world.
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You know it and they know it. Yet you sit in church with them every week and say, oh, smile,
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Jesus loves you. Paul wrote to the
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Corinthian church, I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.
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Otherwise you would have to leave the world. But now I'm writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer who is sexually immoral or greedy and idolater, verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler.
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Do not even eat with such a person. For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders?
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Don't you judge those who are inside. But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves.
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Guys, if you know someone who is claiming Christ that is living a life of the world, it says don't even eat with them.
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Dang, that's hard. Right? But it's right.
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Because hopefully by you telling them I cannot associate with the lifestyle you are living, they will see the truth and come back to Christ or come to Him for the first time.
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Christ is the source of our strength. That's why I need to please Him. So when you're thinking about where do
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I sit on that spectrum, am I pleasing myself or am I pleasing God? Because ultimately that's what each of us have to do.
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Who am I serving? Remember you are a slave to something. Yes, we all have free will.
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We all can do as we please. But by your actions, whom are you serving? Romans 6 .16
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says, Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, either of sin which leads to death or obedience which leads to righteousness?
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Who are you serving today, Church? We're all sinful.
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That's not what I'm talking about. We all need repentance. If it's been years since you've been down here, to ask for repentance is probably time again.
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Quit being afraid of what someone's going to say because you come pray at an altar. But having a momentary lapse isn't living a life of sin.
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Allowing it to continue is what leads you down the life of sin. We've all been redeemed by the blood of Christ.
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If you're in Christ. Romans 6 .17
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continued on, I've been redeemed.
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Christian, you've been redeemed. I no longer have to go live like the world. I can find joy in the midst of trials and fears.
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Because what happens to me here doesn't matter. Because my inheritance isn't here.
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It's with Christ in heaven. As musicians come forward,
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I'm going to finish up here soon. Guys, we need to be willing to look at ourselves and figure out who it is we're serving today.
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If I'm more worried about losing a friendship because I want to live for Christ, than I am about being obedient to my
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God, it is time for me to repent. If I'm more worried about standing up for truth and righteousness because it might make somebody else feel uncomfortable, it's time to repent.
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When we leave this place, we need to choose this day whom we will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the