08-30-2020

Park Meadows Church

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So let's review a little bit. Remember, we learned about foreknowledge. It doesn't mean what we've always maybe thought it meant.

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If you use Webster's Dictionary, you get it incorrectly. It doesn't just mean to know something.

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It's not the same as God's omniscience, which means he knows everything now. He knows everything now, everything about the past, future, and present, now with him, right?

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That's omniscience. Foreknowledge is not the same thing. And what you find out is in the

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Bible terms, and there's a couple of great verses that show the idea, the Bible word for to know someone means to know them with affection and love and have an intimate relationship with them.

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So when God says that he knew you before the foundation of the world, he knew you like that. He knew you as his own child before the foundation of the world with love and affection.

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And we know that from studying everywhere the words found in the Bible. It's always used that way.

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And another interesting thing is it's never used in connection with events or actions.

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Now think about that because that's new to some of us. It's not, foreknowledge does not mean

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God looked out there and saw people doing things or believing things. It doesn't mean that.

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It never means that. What it always means is it always is a reference to a person that God knew.

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Do you see the difference? It's not that God knows what you're doing. It's he knows you. You see the difference?

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It's huge difference because in the Webster's dictionary, foreknowledge just means to know something in the future or ahead of time.

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It doesn't mean that in biblical usage. It means to love and have a relationship with a person.

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It's not knowing stuff about the person. Obviously, God being omniscient would cover that, right?

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He knows everything about us, even our thoughts, even the deepest things in our hearts, right? But that's omniscience.

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So that's an interesting study, I think. Also, Arthur Pink made that beautiful statement at the bottom, but we went through a lot of scriptures a couple of Sundays back and showed that he was absolutely correct.

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We looked at every scripture that has the word in it, and they all have to do with persons.

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And then we talked about the calling. The Holy Spirit has to call a person before they can be saved.

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And if you remember, there are two kinds taught in scripture. You can only tell by the context because the Greek word's the same, but you have the universal calling, which is basically the gospel going out to the world and that's for everyone, every individual, every person.

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And then you have the effectual call. And the effectual call is different, and you can only tell by the context, but the effectual call is when the

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Holy Spirit comes to a person that God has known before the foundation of the world and predestinated that that person would be his child.

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And in time, the Holy Spirit comes and calls that person and awakens them and quickens them.

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While we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us? That's the calling, and it's also regeneration at the same time, two different things, but related, obviously, and they happen at the same time at the moment you're justified.

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Now, so what we learned was, the scripture says, those who were foreknown were predestinated, and that all happened before time began.

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And so it's not in any particular order, it's just now with God. Both are just true with God. You were foreknown and predestinated, boom, it's done.

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Then you come into your life and two things happen in time. You're called by the Holy Spirit on your spiritual birthday, and you are justified at the moment you're called because you're regenerated.

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One of the things that happens in your regeneration is you are justified. We studied that, it means just as if you'd never sin, right?

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We're still sort of on that topic. And then the same group that's justified is glorified, goes to heaven, lives forever with the

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Lord and so forth. Same group all the way through from before time. So every single person who is effectually called by the

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Holy Spirit is also justified and glorified without exception because Jesus said, I know my sheep and of them

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I shall lose nothing, but shall raise it up at the end. It's his responsibility, not ours. His responsibility to make this happen, and he's 100 % accurate.

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In his blood, every person for whom his blood was shed shall be saved. Every person for whom his blood was shed will have the calling.

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And at the calling, what we'll find if we get far enough into today's lesson is you're going to find out one of the big things

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God does at the calling is he changes your want to and makes you have a will to receive Jesus as your personal

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Lord and savior. All of a sudden you want to for the first time you never did before you would have done it. You didn't want it. You didn't want it.

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Now you do. It's because the Holy Spirit called you and regenerated you. And so every person who will be in heaven on this side of the cross will have personally received

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Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and savior because they wanted to. So your will has an important role.

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But the problem is your will never wanted him. And we'll talk about that more as we go.

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But we've covered this thing. So it's the same group of people from before eternity or whatever you want to call it, eternity past, whatever you want to call it, into time and out the other side into eternal future.

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And here are two verses that we're studying. Romans 8, 29 through 30. For whom God did foreknow, he also did predestinate who he preached.

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Same group that he predestinated, he also called the same group that he called. He also justified the same group that he justified.

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He also glorified. And that's past tense from God's viewpoint. So the father already sees you as glorified.

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Think about that. That'll make your day. Because you try sitting over there before you preach and think about the fact that you're not a perfect human.

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Only my wife knows that. Y 'all don't know it, but I'll confess. Not a perfect human. And I have to get up here and preach the holy word of God.

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And I can do it with freedom and with joy because every sin I did in my whole life up till the moment

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I was sitting there and every sinful thought I would have here, I don't think I'll have one here. But if I did, all of those are covered and removed by Jesus because God put them all on him the day he was on the cross and he took them to hell and he put them lower than the lowest ocean.

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And as far as the east from the west, away from me. They're not on me. So from the father's eyes,

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I'm glorified so I can preach. Now, does that excuse me to live a bad life and get up here and preach? No. No, because the same

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Bible says that if you do that, the Lord Jesus will smite you.

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He will chasten you. He will bring you to your knees. And you don't want that. So if you're really saved and you're trying to live for the

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Lord and do whatever ministry each of you are doing, you won't do it in the midst of a on -purpose sinful life.

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You will strive to be a good person. And so we're always striving, but we're never perfect, are we?

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But we keep getting up using 1 John 1, 9 because he's faithful, which means he'll do it every time.

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And just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, even the ones you didn't think to ask for, and you can get up and go again.

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And that's what we do. Even for preachers, that's what we do. And all of us have to remember, because Satan will come to you and say, you're not worthy to do anything for the

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Lord, right? And he may do that. He may whisper that to you at any time. It may be right before you're about to do something for the

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Lord. He'll whisper that and discourage you. So we understand that. I'm kind of getting ahead of myself because I'm talking about the glorified part.

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But I want you to notice it's ED. That's past tense for my English teachers in the room, right?

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From the Father's view, you're already glorified. You can serve him. Isn't that great? So we serve through our positional righteousness because it never changes.

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You can't do or think anything that will change it, all right? But we also need to have experiential righteousness, which means we need to try hard.

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With all the equipment God's given us right now, we need to do the best we can every day. All right.

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So we looked at the scope of predestination, foreknowledge, election. It's unto salvation and it's also unto service.

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You're predestined to be saved. You're predestined to serve God when you're saved. Number two, the breadth of it.

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God starts from eternity past, comes into time. You're foreknown and predestinated in eternity past, comes into time, you're called and justified.

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It goes out the other end of time into the eternity future and you're glorified. But God sees us that way already.

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Isn't that cool? All right. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, then he also called.

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And who he called, he justified. So we've been talking about justified now, especially last Sunday in greater detail.

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Remember from last time to be justified, the Greek word, the literal meaning is to regard someone as if they're just or righteous, to regard them just or righteous, to render them just or righteous.

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So it's in the passive tense, which means it's something only someone greater than us could do, which is God. Only God could make us righteous.

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That's positional righteousness. He gives us the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which we know that that's kind of like an accounting term, isn't it?

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It's called imputation. God imputes that to us. The very definition says it. So it doesn't take a whole lot of study to figure these things out.

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It's just, we have to do the study. We've got to look at the words, what they mean, exactly what they mean.

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Otherwise the world will tempt us with false doctrine every day of our lives. So the only way you do that is look at the truth enough.

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If you keep this old book right here and you stay in it enough, you will recognize the counterfeit when you hear it and it will burn your ears.

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There's even some information in the sermon, depending on how far I get today, that tells us how to treat people that tell us false doctrine if they try to sneak into this church, what we should do.

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And the Lord tells us what to do and how to deal with it. Getting a little ahead of myself there. So justified to render righteous.

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It's something God does to us. And then we looked at these couple of verses where we see the word righteous.

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Let's look at 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For the father has made Jesus to be sin for us and Jesus knew no sin of his own that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

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That is imputation. God takes our sin, puts it on Jesus and he is crucified with it and buried with our sins as if they're his.

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God counts it as if the debt is paid and it is paid, but it's as if we paid it, but we didn't, he paid it on our behalf.

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Then when he rose from the grave, we came out of there with him and guess what? We had on new robes when we came out of that grave.

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We had on white shining robes of righteousness positionally. We had Jesus's righteousness and that's why the father sees us as glorified right this minute.

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All of that happened 2000 years ago. So what role did you play in it? Nothing. So you're saved by the work of God plus nothing.

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You didn't do it. He did it to you and for you. But what's interesting is we look at these, it's all about the work he did, right?

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So if you look at these two, I gotta get this fixed real shy on that thing somehow. It'll take me months to not do this because I've taught all over the country pointing at the screen.

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All right. So the word righteousness in 1st Peter 2 .24

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and in 2nd Corinthians 5 .21 and now you see the word justified in Romans 5 .9.

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We did a little word study on that last time and what's cool about it is that the root Greek word is the same for both words.

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So when you see that God justified you, it means he made you righteous. Or if you say that the

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Christian has righteousness, it means it's because he's been justified. And if you remember, justified means just as if I'd never sin.

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See it over on the far right. So there's some good review. All right. Now we're done with the review.

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So let's move forward with vigor as President Kennedy would say. So we've looked at a word study on justification.

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Let's now look at a doctrinal study. John Calvin said this, justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns.

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Now remember a couple of Sundays ago, I mentioned how salvation is a big word that has a past tense, a present tense, and a future tense.

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And we don't call ourselves Baptists now. I guess we're biblionarians at this point, but I grew up Baptist and we used to say

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I'm saved. And what we should have been saying is I'm justified because that's what we mean when a

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Baptist says I am saved or I've been saved. It's the point in time when we were regenerated. You could just say

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I'm called, but it'd sound weird, wouldn't it? When did you get called? Wouldn't that be weird?

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But that's how we should talk. But we say it wrong because I'm saved. Well, you can't be like you're not totally saved.

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That sound weird? You're not totally saved. You know how I know that? Because your body is not saved yet, but it will be at the rapture, you see?

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So salvation is a bigger word, but you can say, well, I'm called. And when did you get called? Well, I got called when I was 24 in my car driving to work one day.

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I could also say I got justified that day. There's a lot of things I could say that happened that day that all have to do with this big topic of salvation.

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So it's a huge topic, but John Calvin said everything to do with that topic of salvation hinges on justification.

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Isn't that something? All right, so let's go to the scripture. Romans 3 .23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ.

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Now, we're gonna talk about justification for a while because it's the second thing that happens in time.

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Remember before time began, you were foreknown. You were foreloved, all right?

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You were chosen. You were predestinated to be God's child out of a fallen race.

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That happened before time even began and God did it and no man can change it. Then in time, you're called by the

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Holy Spirit out of darkness into his marvelous light. That does not sound like something

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I can do or you can do. It sounds like something God did to me, don't you think? And that's called the calling and regeneration happens at the same moment.

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And then at the same moment that happens, about 33 things are done to you by the Holy Spirit are given to you and one of them is justification.

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You are made righteous. You're given the righteousness of Jesus. Christ. Your sins have been removed at that same moment, by the way, and placed in the body of Christ 2 ,000 years prior.

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God doesn't have to deal with time, remember. So at the moment in time when you are called and justified, your sins are removed from you forever and have already been paid for by Christ and they're gone.

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Even the ones you're going to do are already gone from that viewpoint. Jesus will deal with them in time and spank his children when he needs to, but the father doesn't see them.

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Isn't that wonderful to know? Because you stand as justified and glorified already.

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That's called positional truth because you can't change it. God did it to you. Now, this starts to talk about some of this.

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All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, have we not? Therefore, there must be salvation. There must be regeneration.

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There must be a calling because a sinful race, the Bible says, of them none seek God. So how are you going to get saved?

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If the Arminian slash modern gospel viewpoint were true, where it's just the gift is just offered, now you decide what to do with it, no man would be saved if that's all there were.

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No man would be saved. I'm not the only person that believes this. We'll look at it today. You can go back to Augustine.

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What was he, like 350, just a few hundred years after Christ. You can move forward to Luther.

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You can move forward to Calvin. You can go back again all the way past Augustine to a couple of early church fathers at around 88

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AD, and then all the way past to Paul, the apostle Paul, and then from him to Jesus who taught it to him. So we have fallen short of the glory of God, and a fallen being cannot climb a stairway to heaven.

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That's what the Arminians want you to think. That's what the churches we grew up in taught us. Here's the gift. Just reach out and grab it.

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You don't have any hands to grab it with. Your hands are filthy. Your mind is not right.

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You don't want it. Not in the flesh, you don't. And if the Holy Spirit didn't call you and bring you from darkness into light, you would never receive

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Christ ever in a million years. You didn't do it before that. Two seconds before it, you didn't want to. A day before you didn't.

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A week, a year, a whole lifetime, you didn't. And now all of a sudden you did. And anyone that's had that happen knows it was

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God that did it. Except a brand new baby Christian may think he did it because some preacher falsely told him so, right?

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Some of us had that happen. Oh, you took the gift. You're saved. Shake my hand, right? We've had that. But as you study, you understand, wait.

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It was something that happened before I ever got out of the pew down to that. I never even made it to the altar. I was already saved. God's saying it was one -on -one between me and him.

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It always has been, even before time began. It's always been just between me and him. The preacher got in the way, if anything.

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But guess what? God's made it where even they can't mess it up. Even the people, even the ministers can't mess it up.

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They can't unsave you by telling you the wrong thing once you get down there because you're already saved. Because it was the calling is where you got regenerated.

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The stuff he tells you to do may be fine. But those are effects, not the cause. And we've been through all that.

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But look at this. You have sinned and come short of the glory of God. You cannot climb a stairway to heaven and save yourself.

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It is impossible. Bill, your Sunday school lesson was excellent as always today. One of the things you discussed was the rich young ruler.

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And they said, well, you know, Jesus said it's so hard for a rich man to be saved. He's like a camel going through the eye of the needle.

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And the people standing around listening were not wealthy, not from their own viewpoint. But you know what they said? Very interesting.

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They said, well, how can any man be saved? And Jesus said, well, with man, it's impossible, right?

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Not just for the rich man, but for any man, it's impossible. But then he said, thankfully, he didn't put a period there.

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He said, but with God, all things are possible, right? It's of God. Man, I like preaching this stuff in particular.

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All right. Now look at verse 24. See, I'll stay up till two. I got like 55 slides.

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I won't get past verse 24 probably today. But no, all right. So being justified freely.

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We're talking about justified. You know, part of the definition of the word is it's free. So that's redundant.

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Because the word justified means freely made righteous. So when you put freely in front of it, it's like God is saying, being freely justified freely.

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And guess what grace means? Free. It's a gift. So now God says, being freely made right with God, freely by his free grace.

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Do you think he's trying to get something into our heads that is not by works, perhaps, in one verse?

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We're not done with the verse yet. I have four or five words. He said it three times and it's free.

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That's the definition of justification by grace. So we're justified freely by his grace through, the word through is dia in the

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Greek. And it's like a pipe. Picture a pipeline with, I like picture oil going through it. All right.

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So you got a pipeline with oil going through it or water or whatever. And the way that we're justified by his grace is through the pipeline of redemption that's in Christ.

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And what does redemption mean? To be set free by a price that is paid.

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That's the pipeline through which your salvation flows. It's all Jesus and the

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Father and Holy Spirit to make all of it happen. None of the work is done by us. Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.

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Now, propitiation is part of Jesus' work on the cross that he did for someone besides you.

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In fact, he did it for someone besides any human or no angel. He did it for God, the

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Father. When Jesus died, one of the things that he accomplished, that the work that he did accomplished on the cross is it satisfied the

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Father that the sin debt had been paid. Charlotte, it's your birthday.

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If you want to make it warmer, you can do it anytime you want. All right. Because I see people freezing around here.

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But you know, you think about this propitiation. Okay. We've already been freely justified freely by his free grace, right?

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Now, the way that happens as far as the method, the methodology.

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God not only predestined who would be saved and whose children would be. That's no doubt about that. People ask me, do you believe that?

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I say, nah, I don't believe John 3 .16 either. I just pick and choose which parts of the Bible I want to believe. Then I wink at them and I go, what?

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You know, I say, well, it's in the Bible. Of course, I believe it. So, I mean, you're freely justified by his free grace.

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But not only does God predestine who will be saved, he predestines the method by which they will be saved.

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And it's through the channel, through the pipeline of redemption, which means Jesus had to give his life, give his blood to buy us from the slave market of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and set us free with the price that he paid.

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That's called a ransom, ladies and gentlemen. And by the way, a lot of times when you see the word redeemed, if you look up the

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Greek, you'll see it translated ransomed. So, if you think Jesus died for everybody, here's a rabbit trail.

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But it's okay. I'm at home, right? We're all at home, right? So, like you think Jesus died for everybody, like your preachers have told you your whole life, then it defies the very definition of ransom, which is the same

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Greek word here. It defies the definition of ransom because when a man pays a ransom, it's just for his kids.

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If that kidnapper has other people's kids, they don't get set free. Only the one for whom the price is paid, right?

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So, everyone for whom Jesus paid the price is set free because he said, out of them, I will lose nothing, but will raise it up the end day.

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So, Jesus died for the same ones that we've been studying. You go back before time began, and God foreknew who would be saved.

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God knew them with love and relationship as his own, and he sent his son to die for his own.

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The scripture teaches it through and through. That's why it says he died to save many. It doesn't say all. It says many. Now, there's a couple places where it sounds like it says all, like five in the whole

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Bible. There's hundreds that don't, but there's five that sound like it means that, but if you study them in context, they don't mean that because they can't contradict the 200, but that's for another

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Sunday, not today, to study that. We'll do it because I've had some of you friends out there ask me, could you do a study on the five difficult passages?

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I will. I mean, you guys have already heard it, but I'll do it for these guys if you don't mind sometime. It might take four

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Sundays to do it, but we'll do it. Anyway, so now here we are. The pipeline through which all of this happens is through redemption, and that is only in Jesus Christ, the only name named under heaven whereby men may be saved, and verse 25 says whom

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God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. Now, once you have faith in his blood, notice it doesn't say through doing all this other church stuff and doing all of the

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Roman Catholic, and I don't pick on them. I have wonderful friends that are Roman Catholic, but we do like to have friendly debates, but my viewpoint is that the authority of the scripture is higher than the authority of the tradition of the church, but I notice that doesn't mention the

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Pope. It doesn't mention the church. It doesn't mention the Baptist church either or the Billionaire Church like ours, whatever that is,

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Pauline, Augustinian. We're trying to figure out what to put on the side. Everything we put will run people off, so we're not going to put anything.

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We're just going to let Park Meadows Church. All right. But anyway, so here God has set

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Jesus forth, and his blood, and people have faith in that blood are the ones who are under the propitiation of God.

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It doesn't mention anybody that goes to Methodist church, Catholic church, Church of Christ, water.

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None of that's mentioned because all of those are effects, not the cause, and that's where the churches are so messed up, and that's why there's so much division because they're thinking that the effects are the cause of salvation, and the only cause of salvation is the regeneration of the

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Holy Spirit at your calling, period. He saves you. He regenerates you. I shouldn't use the word save.

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It's too big, but he regenerates you, justifies you, and 33 other things in a moment of time.

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But one of the things is you come under this wonderful thing that Jesus literally did for the Father, and it's called propitiation.

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It means that he satisfied God's wrath, God's justice, and everything about God's law that's against sin.

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Jesus satisfied that on the behalf of the believer, the one who believes in his blood.

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On the behalf of that believer, God the Father is satisfied that your sin debt is paid. Satisfied is the best

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English word to mean what propitiation means, but it's the Father that's satisfied, not us. But it helps us, doesn't it?

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Do you think we could stand before a righteous king if he hadn't been satisfied that we're his, that we belong to him and he loves us?

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Whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in Jesus's blood to declare Jesus's righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God.

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So now it speaks a little bit of the Old Testament saints. They're saved by the same method as we are.

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But the point is, what is the method? It's all listed here, and it's all the work of Jesus Christ, the

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Father and the Holy Spirit. But don't you think it's interesting it says it declares his righteousness?

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And I notice that. You see, this starts to border on going back to our definition of justification.

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Justification means that God gives you his righteousness.

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You see it right there in the middle of verse 25, to declare his righteousness. And remission means the forgiveness or the covering or the doing away of sin.

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It's because he gave you the righteousness of Christ, and at the same time, your sins were removed. It's all right there in that verse.

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Pretty beautiful. To declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier.

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So Jesus is not only the justifier. Now, remember our word study that we did last Sunday. The Greek word for justify and the

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Greek word for made righteous is the same word. So now it says, verse 26, that Jesus is just to be the justifier.

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So he is the one who made you righteous and gave you God's righteousness. And now the

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Bible says he was just to do it. It was right with the Father. Why? Because the

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Father is propitiated. He's satisfied that it's right. That's the only reason it's right.

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God has already been propitiated, and now his blood is placed on you by the

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Holy Spirit at the calling. That's one of the 33 things he does. He sprinkles the blood of Christ on your soul at the calling.

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You are now made righteous by the blood of Jesus. And Jesus Christ is both the altar and the blood of the altar.

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When the Old Testament saints sprinkled the blood on the altar, it made the altar holy. Then when you put the animal on it, it made the animal holy because the altar was holy because the blood already made it holy.

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All of that pictured Jesus. So he's not only the altar that is holy. He's the blood that makes the altar holy.

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And it's all pictured. And so it's all about what Jesus has done for us. I declare to declare,

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I say at this time, his righteousness, that Jesus is just to be the justifier of who?

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Someone that goes out and does the rosary or keeps the communion or gets baptized in Church of Christ water.

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And I'm making fun of those, but I make fun of the Baptist too. Come down and pray a little prayer. Did you just come to my heart and say amen? It's all wrong.

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And I'm not standing here saying I'm the only one that's right and all that's wrong. And I'm the one that sees it. Listen, go back and read.

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Go back and read Calvin. Go back and read Luther. Go back and read Augustine 1400 years before Calvin.

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Go back and read Chrysostom 88 AD. Go back and read Paul. Go back and see what Jesus said.

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That's what I'm talking about. But I know it sounds foreign in this world because we're in the end times and Jesus said to be many false preachers.

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And I'm going to tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, if you have listened to them long enough, when I tell you the truth and I'm not even telling you anything,

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I'm just reading to you. I'm reading scripture to you. And you see that and that will confuse you because of all the false stuff you've heard about how it works when it doesn't work the way they say it works.

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So don't worry about that. Just erase all that and get with scripture and let it say what it says.

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And you won't be confused, I promise. There's nothing confused. This is crystal clear, plain scripture here.

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To declare, I say at this time, God's righteousness, that Jesus is just to be the justifier of every person that believes in Jesus.

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Now, how did you believe in Jesus? Well, we'll talk about that a little bit because you didn't want to and you couldn't.

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But then you did. But you did do it, didn't you? You chose to believe in him, did you not? You exercised your will and you believed in him with all your heart and now all of this stands as yours.

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The very righteousness of God, the free, free, free grace of God, the justification that comes with the grace of God, the act of propitiation that God looks down at you and satisfied that your sins are totally gone, all of that just because you believe.

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But you didn't believe by yourself. We'll get to that later. Now, if all you had was that scripture, you might think so and that's how it's kind of taught, but we know better.

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We know that this thing starts with verse 23. You see, nothing starts with John 3, 16.

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It starts with Genesis chapter 1 and 2, the fall of man. Even this beautiful passage, and I popped in verse 23 just so you understand, in the context of this beautiful passage, if I had just started with verse 24, you'd think, well, just,

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I just believe in Jesus and say, pray the little prayer. And I'm fine. Not unless you got called.

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The Holy Spirit had to make you want to do that with all your heart, not just to be religious. Do you see the difference?

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And you can't fake that. The Holy Spirit has to do it to you. And you will know it when he does it because you really, really, really will want

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Jesus when he does it. So, but it started with all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

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The depravity of man, it always starts with the depravity of man. You can't just believe. You have to be called out of your depravity.

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You have to be called out of your sinful state. He brought you out of darkness into his what?

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Marvelous light. And in a less than a second of time, you found yourself wanting

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Jesus for the first time in your life. And you did receive him by faith as your personal Lord and Savior.

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And you had to do that, but you did do it. And every elect person will do it because the Holy Spirit will call you to do it.

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And he is very persuasive. The Holy Spirit is amazingly persuasive. He's totally persuasive.

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And he doesn't even cause you to do anything against your will. Like the protagonist will say, well, you'll be like puppets.

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God just makes you love him. No, he doesn't cause you to do anything you don't want to do. Holy Spirit hangs around you enough where all of a sudden you want to do it.

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He can't help it if he's magnetic. He's not twisting your arm. So he just calling you, hey, you want to come with me?

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See, there's a shepherd. You're a sheep. You've been hungry your whole life. You've been falling off cliffs your whole life.

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He won't let you do that. What do you think about him? Look at him now. Look right in his eyes. This is the Holy Spirit.

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Look right in his eyes. What do you feel like doing? Well, I feel like going with you guys. Well, then you just made the choice, didn't you?

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But the choice was an effect of the calling. You see it?

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You didn't grow up seeing it. But the regeneration, the calling takes place and the regeneration takes place.

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And then your eyes are open during that process. And then you believe and you are justified.

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All of this takes place. It's very beautiful the way God has done it. And you know, verse 27 proves that Augustine and Luther and Calvin and David Mitchell are right.

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It proves it because look what it says. Where's the boasting then? Did you have any role in any of this?

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Most of it happened 2 ,000 years before you were born. You played no role in it any more than a baby plays any role in his own birth.

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That's why Jesus said to the legalist Nicodemus who thought he could save himself. He said, no, you must be born again.

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And Nicodemus can figure out how to make that happen. Jesus said, well, it's like the wind. It blows where it wants to.

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So apparently God predestinates and is in control of who gets saved. We don't like that, do we? But would you want sinful men and women to be in control of that?

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That's the other choice. So where's the boasting then? It's excluded.

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Why? Because you're not saved by law. You're not saved by works. Of works, nay, but by the law of faith.

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Wow. Someone come up to me and say, well, that's confusing. And I'll say, what in that passage is confusing?

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And they'll say nothing. Well, what confused you? I listened to the wrong stuff too much. That's what it is.

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Therefore, we conclude. Here you have a perfect logical statement.

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You have presuppositions that are true. You have a logical chain that's true.

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And it ends with the conclusion it's true. And logic always will do that if all the previous is true. If the presuppositions are true, it will do it.

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So here's our conclusion. A man is made righteous. That's what justified means, right?

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A man is made just as if he's never sinned by faith without the deeds of the law.

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And it even gets better. Because if you go out and you look at the little word. Every little word is important.

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You look at a little word without in the Greek. It's the same word where the sinner, the rich man was in hell.

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And asked father Abraham, you know, to come over there and help him. And keep his loved ones from coming there.

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And father Abraham said, there's a great gulf between you and those that are in paradise. Remember that?

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Great gulf that you cannot pass. And they can't come here. Same Greek word. So there is a great gulf between faith and works with regard to salvation.

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When you're talking about being justified, it's by faith only.

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And then there's a huge gulf and works is way over there. It has nothing to do with it. It can't get to this.

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It can't get to the faith to help it. And the faith can't get to it to help it. It's over there on the other side of the gulf.

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Works is. So with regard to salvation, it's only faith. The Greek word without proves it.

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Now, works is important, but it's a result. It's an effect. It's not the cause. This is talking about the cause.

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So there's a great gulf between works and faith. And works ain't part of it. Works isn't here. It's over there.

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It can't come here. It cannot get here because it plays no role in the justification.

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Do you get it? It comes along with it as an effect later. It's important though, but not in the justification.

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So now here's what's fun. What time is it getting to be? Wow. We got all kinds of time, don't we?

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See that little passage? Do you realize in that passage, there are seven things that you have to understand if you're going to ever understand what it means to be justified.

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Seven. God's perfect number. The first one is you must understand the fall and depravity of man.

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That's verse 23. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You're not going to get there on your own.

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You're not going to do one thing to get there or to help get there. That's the first thing to understand about justification.

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It has nothing to do with what you do. Nothing to do with what you do. Nothing you do can cause it.

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Is that a better way to say it? Number two, you need to understand the meaning of grace.

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Being justified, which means freely made right with God, freely by his free grace.

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You need to understand that. So you got to understand the definition of grace or you cannot understand how to get justified or how you got justified.

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You won't understand the workings of it if you don't understand that it's by grace. The passage we're reading here says it's through grace.

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So you have to understand grace. The third thing is you must understand the meaning and cause of propitiation.

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The meaning is that God is satisfied that your sins are covered. The cause is that Jesus caused it.

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You didn't. You see what I mean? So you got to understand that to understand what it means to be justified.

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Number four, you've got to understand imputation. Who God set forth to be the propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sin.

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God has to put his righteousness on me or I can't be saved. He has to take my sin and put that on Jesus or I can't be saved.

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And that's called imputation. It's in the counting term. He took the sins of me out of my account and credited that to Jesus' account.

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And he took Jesus' righteousness and credited that to my account. The father did that and he can do it.

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And it's just for him to do it because Jesus paid the sin debt. So he's just to justify me, which will come up here in a minute.

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Not yet. All right. The fifth one is you must understand what positional righteousness means. To declare,

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I say at this time, his righteousness. So if he has placed his righteousness on you and me, that is a position that we stand in that we and the things we do or don't do cannot change.

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That's what positional truth is. It's truth that you can't change by what you do or don't do in time in your life.

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What you do from this day forward or don't do won't change the position that you stand in.

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Some people call it a standing. I call it the position. It's positional righteousness because it's

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God gave it to you and he counted you as righteous. He counts you as righteous.

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God the father does. It's positional. So you need to understand that to understand justification. Number six, you need to understand what it means for Christ to be just and the justifier.

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Well, why is he just to make us right with God? Why is it okay for him to do that?

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Why does God say it's within my law for you to do that? Because he was our substitute.

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It's a substitutionary death. He died for us. Isaiah 53 talks about it so beautifully.

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All right. Romans 6 .23, that's 3 .23, but 6 .23 says the very thing that he died for us.

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All right. Now, we need to understand what it means that he's just. It's right for him to save us.

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And he is the justifier, which means it's passive from our viewpoint. He does it to us. We can't do it.

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He does it to us. All right. And then number seven, understand why justification is without the deeds of the law.

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Therefore, we conclude that we are justified by faith with a great golf fix that keeps works away from that process until it comes along with it as an effect later.

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But it doesn't play a role in the cause of it. You see? So you got to understand those things to even begin to understand justification.

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So now we begin to understand it a little bit. And justification, it's kind of a light that turned on in the head of Martin Luther when he saw that the

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Roman Catholic needed to be reformed, church needed to be reformed, but he couldn't do it, so he had to pull away from it and start something new that was with the

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Bible as the authority. John Calvin saw it. Augustine, 1400 years before Calvin, was, if you read the life of Augustine, it's amazing.

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He was sort of a rebel. He was a playboy. He literally was a playboy.

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And the Holy Spirit called him, and he just changed over, just like light and darkness.

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The darkness was removed, and he was light. But guess what scripture it was? We're going to cover the scripture that it was, but it's a man must walk by faith.

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That he separated the works from it. He put the golf there, and everything made sense to him for the first time in his life.

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Same with Luther. Same with Augustine. Same with Calvin. Same with all of us, actually.

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We had to realize this. So it's pretty cool.

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So we started out, the point, first point is that we must understand the fall of the fragility of man to understand it, and I'll touch on this, and we'll stop because we're getting tired, but it starts with that, and that was verse 23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

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So let me just ask you this, where in the Bible, don't tell me if you know, and don't look it up with your phone, please.

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Don't cheat. No looking it up with your search engine. Where do you think this verse is? He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten

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Son of God. So this person hasn't believed yet, so he's condemned to hell. He came into the world that way.

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That's called the depravity of man, ladies and gentlemen. It's a discussion of the depravity of man, but it gets worse, and this is the condemnation.

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This is why the person is doubly condemned who hasn't believed in Jesus, because the light has come into the world.

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Who's the light? That's Jesus. The light has come into the world, but men love darkness.

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Why? They are depraved. They are sinners. They're born with a sin nature. Romans 8 says they hate

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God. They're the enemy of God. We didn't feel like we hated him, but scripture says different. You know why?

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Because we love self. We were God, and we had to be convinced by the

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Holy Spirit at the calling, and even before that as he worked on our life for maybe years before the moment of the calling, he had to convince us that we're not

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God, that God exists, and we're not him. God is God, but here's the condemnation.

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Light came into the world. Jesus was born into this world and lived here and walked a perfect walk and kept the law and healed the blind and raised the dead and fed the starving and gave the gospel to the poor, and men love the darkness rather than him, even in his midst.

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Why? Look at the next phrase. You tell me why. Because their life was evil.

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Their deeds were evil. That is the depravity of man, isn't it? So the light comes in the world, but the humans love darkness, and they love their evil deeds in the life that they're living, and they don't want someone to tell them how to live a righteous life.

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They want to live that way. So why would they accept Jesus?

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Well, let's keep looking. For everyone that does evil. Now, let me ask you this. Remember verse 23 that we read earlier?

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Romans 3, 23, what did it say? For how many people have sinned? All. All have sinned and come short of what?

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The glory of God. All. So all humans have sinned come glory of God, and look what verse 20 says.

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Everyone that doeth evil. How many people is that in the race? Every single human being hates what?

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The light. And who is that? Who is the light of the world?

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Every single human being hates Jesus is in this passage, this mysterious passage that we don't know where that is in the

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Bible, but it's from the Bible, I promise you. So all men are depraved.

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All men come into the world condemned already because Adam and Eve sinned, and we were telescoped back into their loins. We're responsible too.

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Biblically, I know it sounds illogical, but the Bible says it's true. God said it's true. And then we do evil deeds when we're old enough to do it, right?

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And then we just keep doing them. In fact, we like them so much that we hate the light.

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Every human hates the light. That's the depravity of man. It's as clear as you can teach it.

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Paul taught it maybe a little more clear when he said, there is none that seeketh God, not one. Why?

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Because of the darkness we're in, and we love it. We do what we want to do, and we love the darkness. We're born that way.

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We have a nature that loves it. I wish I could get every parent to understand that, all parents everywhere in the country.

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Spare not the rod. Bible says if you spare the rod, you'll send your child to hell. Do you believe God when he says something? So you got to spank him, but you got to love on him too, don't you?

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Got to hug him, got to pray with him. Then you forget about it and move on.

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There's a whole method in the right way to discipline children, and it's all right there in the Bible. For everyone that doeth evil hates the light, neither comes to the light.

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So they don't get saved, do they? See, we didn't get to that phrase yet. Do you see that phrase?

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Neither do they come to the light. Now, you weren't taught that your whole life. You were taught

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Jesus died and paid a price. Here's a gift. What will you do with it? If you choose to take it, you'll determine your future.

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But that verse says no one takes it. No one comes to the light, because all of sin comes short of the glory of God.

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But everyone that does sin or evil hates the light. Neither do they come to the light, because then their deeds would be reproved.

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Their evil deeds would be a spotlight on their evil. So even the reason why they won't come to the light is there.

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There, now, that's amazing information. Where in the world is that? Is that in Genesis? In the first chapter right there where Adam and Eve sinned?

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Is it in Isaiah where the prophet is rebuking the whole nation of Israel because of their sin?

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Is it in the book of Revelation where when Jesus comes, he comes with a sword out of his mouth and slays the evil?

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Where is this? Well, let me ask you, how many do evil? All of sin comes short of the glory of God.

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So that's everybody. So how many of the human race hated the light? That's everybody. Everyone.

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How many come to the light? No one. All right. Where is this? Looky there.

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John chapter 3, verse 18. Guess what's right above that in the passage?

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The verse that more people misunderstand than any other verse in the Bible, because they don't read beyond verse 16.

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For God so loved the cosmos, his created orderly creation, not just the people.

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He loved his orderly creation that was put out of balance when

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Adam and Eve sinned. Even the nature itself groans waiting for the

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Lord to come back and fix that, right? But guess what? He's really already fixed it because he fixed it on the cross.

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He loved his orderly creation so much, his cosmos so much that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

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But if you go down and you read verse 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, how many will believe in him?

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How many will come to him? I'm talking about natural people. None.

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So I'm going to leave you with that. And you got a whole week to figure out that. How does it work then?

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Well, you might want to just go back and look at some of the archives from two or three Sundays back. It has to do with the calling out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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Has to do with the fact that he does that to us and that he regenerates us.

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And then our want to changes which we'll get into later. But I think we're out of time. So let's have a word of prayer and we'll be dismissed.

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Lord, thank you so much for having a day ordained for us to come together. Thank you that we can meet physically again and protect us from this virus as we meet together.

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Thank you for our online group and all of their lives and bless their lives.

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Hear their prayers, Lord. And may you bless the study of your word in their hearts and ours.

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And Lord, we just pray that you go with us, protect us on the way home today. Lord, be with a little bit of fellowship we get to have before we leave.

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And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. You are dismissed.