A Christian Response To The Pope's Death

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Alright, well I like to recommend books on Sunday nights and try to encourage you to read. You know a man once said, the man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read at all.
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Mark Twain was right when he said that. If you don't read good books, then why know how to read?
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And so I want to encourage you to read good books. Don't buy into all the advertising when you walk into a store, whether a
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Christian bookstore or not, and this looks like a great book to buy. It is the advertising specialist's job to get you to look at that book and want to buy it.
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So you want to make sure you buy content over what it looks like. I picked this book up for two bucks. There's all kinds of different covers.
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This is CBD. The book I'd like to recommend tonight is Here I Stand, The Life of Martin Luther. I read this on the plane coming from Milan to Boston.
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I just thought I just want to be reminded again about the Reformation and what Protestants actually protest and how
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God used Luther. It was very, very helpful to go through and to see the hand of God in Luther's life.
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He certainly had many problems and he was very... He was certainly less than God, but God used that man.
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One of these days we're going to sing the
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Luther song. I'm trying to remember the title. Mighty Fortress. We don't sing the lyrics that he wrote.
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These are some of the lyrics that he actually wrote. For by our own strength and nothing won, we court at once disaster.
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There fights for us the champion whom God has named our master. Would you know his name? Jesus Christ the same.
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Lord, sabbath is he. No other God can be. The field is his to hold it. And though the fiends on every hand were threatening to devour us, we would not waver from our stand.
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They cannot overpower us. This world's prince may rave, however he behave.
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He can do no ill. God's truth abideth still. One little word shall fill him.
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Just some excellent things. I thought we need to sing the real lyrics. Certainly Mighty Fortress is our
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God from Psalm 46. We can sing in our hymnal, but it's something about the original ones that really take us back to the heart of the issue.
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This is probably the easiest biography to read of Luther outside the evangelical press book. So I just wanted you to read it.
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Has anybody read it? Better than the movie? Okay, the
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DVD for the old black and white fifties Luther movie is out,
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I think, through CBD for about $3 .99. $2 .99, something like that you can get.
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All right. Well, tonight for those of you that saw the sign and didn't get to come this morning, an update from India.
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We won't be doing that tonight, an update to India. I want to address the topic, how should a Christian respond to the
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Pope? Even this week I have some evangelical friends and some Catholic friends and some atheistic friends.
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And as I was typing to them in my little email group, my Roman Catholic friends were telling me, why are you down on the
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Pope, as it were, because all the evangelical leaders are all saying nice things. Why are you, certainly not some big -shot leader with a national following, why are you saying these bad things?
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And I wasn't saying bad things about his person. I was saying bad things about the doctrine. The issue tonight is not going to be, is a man nice or is a man a good leader or is a man anything else?
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What does the man teach? I want you to evaluate everything by what is said. And if you walk out of here and say, what
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Mike said tonight was right based on the Bible, that's a good critique. You must do that kind of judging. If you say, well, he taught the wrong things and he's a real jerk too, then
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I refer you to Jesus' words in Matthew 5 about saying fool or raka, and you can deal with that on your own.
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But why can't we analyze truth? We are to be discerning. We are to be like the
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Bereans and to study to find out if things are true. And so tonight, I wanted to remind everyone, if all the world is saying the
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Pope is a great man, what should be your response? Because I want you to think biblically, and if we're not careful, we're just going to fall right into what everyone else is saying, and we won't be protesting
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Rome anymore, we'll be a part of her. And it's very, very important because you either evangelize your Roman Catholic friends or you affirm them and join them in their endeavors, right?
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They're either Christians or they're not. And either the Catholics are right and we're wrong, or we're right and the
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Catholics are wrong, or we're both wrong, but we cannot both be right. So that's the topic I want to talk about tonight.
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Next Sunday, we won't have the India update, just to let you know that'll be in two weeks, just because the
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Indian members of our church are not going to be here next week. So why have an India update without the Indian chefs, cooks, swamis, babas, and anyone else who would be here to help us?
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We'll wait for two weeks to do that. Next Sunday night, if we could please, Kim, have the dessert pot
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Providence only. Okay? Well, let me tell you some of the comments that you may have heard in the last few weeks.
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To set this up, responses from Protestant evangelicals in the last couple weeks about the
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Pope's death, and then we'll propel ourselves into the Book of Romans. And I want to remind you how you can know what's right and wrong, and how you can evangelize your
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Roman Catholic friends. These are all by Protestants. Family research council leader,
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Tony Perkins, said, quote, Pope John Paul II helped win the Cold War and was a champion for cultural issues throughout the world.
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With the loss of this amazing figure, the world is missing one of the greatest men of our time. But for all of us touched by his time here on earth, we are consoled in the knowledge that we are strengthened by his legacy.
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Evangelical Protestant Chuck Colson, by the way, who's married to a Roman Catholic, said that this man,
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Pope John Paul II, was one of the truly heroic figures of the 20th century. He will be remembered not only as a great leader, but as one of the handful of people singularly responsible for the collapse of the
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Soviet Empire. Ray Pritchard, evangelical pastor in Chicago, said,
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Pope John Paul II not only advanced the cause of his own church, he advanced the Christian cause around the world.
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As he slips from this life into the next life that has no end, we can be grateful for such a man at such a time as this.
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He defended freedom, he helped bring an end to communism, etc. I have no doubt that he is the most beloved pope in history.
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Now, see, some of these statements are true. Because of the media, he is probably the most beloved pope in history.
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He did help get rid of communism, but that's not the issue at all. President Bush said, the world has lost a champion of human freedom and a good and faithful servant of God has been called home.
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We are to respect President Bush, and I love President Bush, but he needs some better theological advisors.
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Billy Graham, unfortunately, said, quote, Pope John Paul II was unquestionably the most influential voice for morality and peace in the world during the last 100 years.
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His extraordinary gifts, his strong Catholic faith, and his experience of human tyranny and suffering in his native
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Poland all shaped him. It was my privilege to meet with him at the Vatican on several occasions, and I will always remember his personal warmth to me and his deep interest in our ministry.
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I've been invited to attend the funeral service for Pope John Paul II, but I will not be able to go for health reasons.
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I have asked a member of my family and one of my longtime associates to represent me at that service, and then when he said this, he started to try to help himself get out of that.
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He said, quote, may his death remind each one of us that someday we, too, must die and enter into God's presence, and may we each commit ourselves afresh to Jesus Christ who died and rose again for our salvation.
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That part was good. The bad part was later when Larry King asked him, quote, did he actually say to you once that you are brothers?
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Graham, that's correct. He certainly did. He held my hand the first time I met him in 1981.
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Went on to say that I was an evangelist. Larry King, there is no question in your mind that the
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Pope is with God now. Graham, quote, oh, no. There may be a question about my own, but I don't think about the
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Pope. I think he's with the Lord because he believed. He believed in the cross. That was his focus throughout his ministry, the cross.
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No matter if you were talking to him about a personal issue or an ethical problem, he felt that this was the answer to all our problems, the cross and the resurrection, and he was a strong believer.
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My heart just breaks because I want to love that man. I do love that man, but why are people saying these things?
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Baptist leader Denton Lotz of the Baptist World Alliance said that John Paul was, quote, devoted to Christ, end quote.
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John Armstrong said basically the same thing. I mean, I could go on. I have the list. I'm kind of sick of that already, aren't you?
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Over and over and over. Timothy George, who was a big shot in evangelicalism, a dean of Beeson Divinity School, he changed evangelicalism without knowing about it to all kinds of quotes, and I just think, what is going on?
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Mr. Netto, a Protestant leader, wrote an article that was called He Was My Pope Too.
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So it goes on and on, and so my question to you tonight is this. What should your response be?
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If somebody put a microphone in front of you tonight and said, what do you think about the Pope's death, what would you say?
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What would you say? For those of you who haven't been here on Sunday mornings, the questions are all rhetorical.
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Sunday nights, you can actually blurt out, but as the Proverbs talks about, it's always good to think before you speak.
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Okay, okay, good.
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Let's just build on that. Thank you, Bill. Yes, well, it's interesting.
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It's a great comment because Satan is known even by his name as a what? A deceiver, right? He's a liar, and he wants us to think this way.
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There is certainly nothing wrong, and maybe I've taken all these out of context. I've been quoted in newspapers before, and they don't quote everything, and so it makes me look bad, but in terms of the context here, if you were going to do a eulogy, even
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I've done eulogy for unbelievers, and eulogy just means to speak well. You is good.
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Ology is a word to speak well about, but the second I get done talking about, he had family who loved him.
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He was, you know, a good worker at work, and all these other kind of things, and he has 15 grandchildren.
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The second that's over, and we move to the gospel, we're not talking about that person anymore. We're talking about the truth of God, and so I don't know what the explanation could be except certainly satanic.
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It could be the lack of maturity in evangelical churches today, which is about a mile wide and an inch deep.
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We don't have mature people who know the doctrines, and they just buy into everything, and somehow unity comes before truth, and so it's very, very alarming to me.
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Let's keep building on those two comments, both good comments. Dave, that's right.
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Okay, anybody else want to make a comment? Steve? Well, I think that's a good point.
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If we're going to say something about him, and we say something warm, and we commend him for his hand in getting rid of many abortions, or whatever it might be,
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I think we need to say, but the real issue is this, right? This is what he was, and how
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God even used someone who was saved or not saved. That's not the issue at the moment. We'll get to that in just a minute, but how does
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God use a person? How does God use Winston Churchill? That's what I was kind of trying to work on. How is this man used in history, saved or unsaved?
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I don't think he was saved based on what he has said. We'll get to that in a minute. Then let's get to the spiritual issue, because it's always about the spiritual thing.
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It's about the leader of how many people? 1 .6 billion people. That's a lot of people.
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I was just in India, and I didn't see very many people in that 1 billion of India, but there were a lot of people in Bombay and Pune.
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It seemed like 1 billion, all on the same road. There's a lot of people, 1 .6 billion.
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If I have to stand before God on Judgment Day with Dave, and Steve, and Mark, and other men, and give an account,
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Hebrews 13, 17, how would you like to be standing before God on Judgment Day for 1 .6
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billion people when you didn't give them the gospel that saves? Tonight the question will not be, are there
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Roman Catholics who are going to heaven, because of course there are, but it's in spite of the system, not because of it. How can
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I attack all those different issues? What does Rome teach? Let me just tell you a few of the things that Pope John Paul II said.
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These are all quotes. If you want the documents, email me. Muslims worship the one true God. We Christians joyfully recognize the religious values we have in common with Islam.
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Today I would like to repeat what I said some years ago in Casablanca. We believe in the same God, the one God, the living
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God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection. And I have a picture of him kissing the
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Koran. Jews are our elder brothers in the faith. Now that one might be a little debatable.
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Certainly there are, you know, we're grafted in, and there's a long lineage of how
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God has used the Jews, and he still will in the future, but if he talks about non -Christian Jews today, that would be another error.
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Buddhism is a great religion. Christ's miracles do not prove his messianic dignity.
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May Gandhi live forever. When 150 false religions all got together, he said, quote, they prayed with one voice to the
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Lord. One can be saved outside the church by a moral life.
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I mean, what do we do with those? If I got up from this pulpit and started saying some of those things, how long will I last? That's right.
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And I need your husband as my bodyguard, but he would turn against me. He'd turn against me.
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Beloved, 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is a love chapter. And this love in the Bible does things.
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And the Bible says, love rejoices with and in the what? Truth. If you love someone, you'll tell them the truth.
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And that's what we want to do. People say, well, you're Catholic bashing. I'm not Catholic bashing.
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I don't have in my stock doctrinal statement like Rome does that I'm damned if I don't believe in their view of baptism and justification.
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We want to tell them the truth. If you lived in Utah, would you think it strange if I got up and talked to you about Mormonism to try to encourage you to evangelize the
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Mormons? So why is it so strange when we're here in New England? 80 % of the people either attend
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Roman Catholic churches or ascribe to that by family, by tradition, by something else. We need to make sure we treat the gospel of them.
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Let me just give you a reminder. If you don't think we need to teach the gospel, let me tell you a few things that Rome teaches. Number one, let me tell you three.
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Number one, Rome teaches that a person is saved through the Roman Catholic church and her sacraments quote from their catechism.
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1129 the church, not that not the year, but the number in the catechism. The church affirms that for believers, the sacrament of the new covenant are necessary for salvation.
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The fruit of the sacramental life is that the spirit of adoption makes the faithful partakers in the divine nature by uniting them in a living union with the only son, the savior.
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Is that true? Is this a small issue? Tell me the seven sacraments. By the way, let's have a show of hands.
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How many people here came out of the Roman Catholic church? Stop coming to this church and go back home to Rome.
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How would you like that message? We should be the most aggressive ones. We don't hate
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Catholics. My grandmother was a Catholic. I loved her. I wanted to tell her the truth. You can't be saved by the seven sacraments.
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Has anybody known by the way? Has anybody memorized them? Yes, Kim. Okay. Very good.
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And penance or indulgences. That's exactly right. Let me tell you more about the Catholic. We'll get to the
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Bible in a second. So hang in there with me. 1263 by baptism, all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins as well as all punishment for sin.
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Is that the gospel? 1257, the Lord himself affirms that baptism is necessary for salvation.
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1265, baptism not only purifies from all sins but also makes the neophyte a new creature. 1267, from the baptismal fonts is born the one people of God on the new covenant.
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And you'll listen to that a lot if you go to a Roman Catholic funeral. And where will that trust be from the priest to the people that that person is in heaven?
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Because he was, because she was what? Baptized. That's exactly right. By extension, number two,
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Catholics believe that no one outside the Catholic church can be saved. Now, even though the Pope may say things not ex -cathedral, ex -cathedra, ex -cathedral.
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I just was in this huge cathedral in Milan. Maybe that was why I was thinking about that. They have not rescinded these
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Vatican decrees. And it's also in the new Catholic catechism. Quote, for it is through Christ's Catholic church alone, which is the universal help towards salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.
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It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the new covenant.
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846, basing itself on scripture and tradition, the council teaches that the church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation.
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All grace comes through the Catholic church. 819, Christ's spirit uses these churches and ecclesiastical communities as means of salvation.
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And lastly, number three, the Roman Catholic church teaches that Christ's death was not sufficient in and of itself to save.
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That's why we need the sacraments. That's why we need purgatory. That's why we need penance. That's why we need indulgences.
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And Rome condemns those who oppose the very idea of indulgences. Did you know the Catholic Vatican Council, too, said that they teach and command that the usage of indulgences, a usage most beneficial to Christians and approved by the authority of the sacred councils, should be kept in the church.
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And it condemns with anathema those who say that indulgences are useless or that the church does not have the power to grant them.
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So my question is this. Everyone's talking about Rome and Roman Catholicism and what does the church of Rome believe.
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So when you have a Roman Catholic friend, what would be a good book of the Bible to talk about Rome? Romans. Let's turn to Romans.
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Instead of doing kind of a Romans road, I want to kind of just take you through a way that if you were my Roman Catholic friend,
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I would work you through the Gospel of Romans, the Gospels in Romans. I would work you through this epistle so you could help them see the truth.
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And these days you will find, I think by God's common grace and mercy, Roman Catholics who will open the
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Bible more often than their predecessors. After all, lots of Catholics weren't even allowed to have
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Bibles for years and they were told not to read them. But let's go through the book of Romans and see this message to and from, to Rome and from the
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Lord. Now, I wish I had a marker board up here. Who could give me the outline of Romans?
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Very easy outline of Romans. Remember when we jump into a book, we always want to know why it was written, what the outline was. If you had a test, if you were going to be ordained into the ministry and they said, what's the book of Romans?
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What's the outline? What would you tell me? Very easy way to remember it. And once I learned it, I have had it stick through alliteration.
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So I always try to teach it so it'll stick to you as well. The book of Romans. Anyone? All S's.
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This is worth the price of admission tonight. If you write it down, all S's for the book of Romans. So when you jump into chapter 12, you'll know where you are.
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1, 2 and 3A, sin. 1, 2 and 3A, sin. 3B, 4 and 5, salvation.
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Sin, salvation. 6 and 7, sanctification. 8, security.
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So you see how logical it is? Sin, salvation, sanctification, security of the believer in chapter 8.
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9 through 11, what would be another word that would describe what was going on in chapters 9, 10 and 11?
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It starts with an S. Sovereignty, the sovereignty of God. So sin, salvation, sanctification, security, sovereignty.
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12 through 15, service, how we're serving in the local church, how we should relate to people who are above us.
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And then chapter 16, you get to do one of two ways. Salutation, sayonara, stuff.
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It's a variety of things. He commends lots of people. So sin, salvation, sanctification, security, sovereignty and service, salutation.
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So that's a good way to remember that. And we're just going to kind of jump in at 1, 1 and just talk about this a little bit.
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I'm almost going to treat you as if you are Roman Catholics as I try to urge you to believe by going through Romans 1, 1.
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Paul, he says, a bond servant of Christ Jesus, called him his apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
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And here this gospel of God is the good news of God himself, not man -made, but God himself, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, who was born of a descendant of David, according to the flesh.
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So he's fully God and he's fully man. And then you see in verse 4, the clear demarcation and the clear distinguishing factor that he's the son of God and no one else is because God raised him from the dead.
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According to the spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Then you jump down to chapter 1, verse 16 and 17.
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We see the passage there that you all know, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the
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Jew first and also to the Greek. And then that verse from Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 4, that Martin Luther could not get over for in it, the righteousness of God may be better translated from God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written as it stands permanently written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.
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The righteous man shall live by faith. By the way, when Luther was going to Rome, when he was still a
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Roman Catholic and he went there and he knew if he ascended those sacred steps on his knees and he could get all the indulgences for his family members,
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Luther was sick in his heart, not because he disagreed with scaling these on his knees and doing the
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Hail Marys and the Our Fathers, but he was mad because his mother and father were still alive.
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And if he could get that many years of purgatory knocked off somebody, if he could go up on his knees, he was mad that his mother and father were alive because he could have applied it to his mom and dad.
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He had to do it for his grandparents. And he just kept thinking over and over the just shall live by faith, the just shall live by faith, the just shall live by faith.
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He shows up at Rome and he says, Holy Rome, I salute you. He was crying. He fell down to his knees and then he showed up at that spot called the
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Scala Sancta. And this is the spot supposedly where Christ had climbed up on the steps to be confronted by Pilate.
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And it was claimed that if you went up these steps, by the way, the steps got to Rome, they were transported by angels from Jerusalem to Rome was the story.
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If you crawled up these 28 steps on your knees, many, many years in purgatory are gone. One particular step was marked with the cross.
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This was supposed to be the step that Jesus had stumbled upon and fell down. He started to crawl slowly.
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He stopped to say the Lord's prayer. He began to kiss the stones. He moved his way up, but what he couldn't get out of his mind as he would kiss and he would say, and our father and hail
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Mary was the just shall live by faith. What a haunting reminder, the just shall live by faith, the just shall live by faith.
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And can you imagine kissing those steps? When I go to places, Catholic shrines, especially I see the places that have been kissed over and over and over.
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The feet are kissed off of statues. The old rusty things aren't rust anymore because they're just so polished from all the kissing.
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That's why this is a side note, but when I go to Bethlehem, I don't want to go anymore. Why go to Bethlehem?
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There's nothing good in Bethlehem really. It's a, it's a very Arab place and you go downstairs. We're supposedly the place where Jesus was.
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And instead of a little tiny manger with all the hay and everything else, what do you have? This big, huge, gaudy shrine with the place where everybody's getting down, kissing the place where Jesus was born.
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I wish I could just put a little sign down there in Arab, in Aramaic.
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The just shall live by faith. Luther left that city.
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And he said, I got to Rome with onions in my mouth and I left with garlic.
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He said, if there's a hell Rome's built over hell, the just shall live by faith.
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Well, if it's a book about the just shall live by faith, how's a man made right in God's eyes? Well, let's go to that first outline point sin starting really down in verse 18.
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Contrary to most evangelical presentations, Paul did not talk about God's love. God certainly does love and I'm glad he loves, but you don't need to know about God's love until you need to know your condition.
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That's how the gospel always starts. It deals with the condition and you hear, see in verse 18 for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.
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Matter of fact, Martin Luther was lectured many, many times because he would confess his sins so often, so many little sins he'd go in a other priest where he was at, would only confess sins for five minutes, 10 minutes, hour after hour, after hour,
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Luther would confess sins because he knew he was sinful and he wanted to get that weight and that guilt off him as he was confessing.
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Finally, they said, Luther, don't come back anymore until you've committed adultery or something else and having some big sin to commit.
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But Luther knew God is angry with the wicked every day.
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We don't hear that anymore. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. We don't hear that anymore. It doesn't pack out churches.
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By the way, this church is growing too much. I think I better start turning up the volume because we're growing. I don't know if we want that.
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Just kidding. I praise God for people who will come and say, we want expository preaching verse by verse.
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Give it to us all. We don't want anything else except God's word. I praise God that God has put together a group of people here at the church and it is wonderful for me to be able to stand up and just say, you know,
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I'm going to preach on this important subject and not have a huge church split tonight because I said something about Roman Catholics.
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I praise God for that. Well, God is not wrongly angry.
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He's rightly angry because this wrath is directed. Do you see it in verse 18 against all ungodliness, unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
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You see all those words, unrighteousness, unrighteousness, and God's so righteous, there's a big problem there.
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And then we know what it says here about creation and how we see some of his attributes in creation.
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You see consequences to the sin in verse 24. God gave them over to all kinds of things. If you look at chapter two, it goes the same for the moralizers who were
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Jews, critical Jew moralizers in chapter two verses, verse five, because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.
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There it is again. Do you see the refrain, wrath, judgment, wrath, righteousness. And I'm glad the
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Bible keeps going. We don't stop there. And he says both Jews and Gentiles in verse nine of chapter three.
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What then are they better than, are we better than they? Not at all. For we have already charged that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin.
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You know the verses in a tenant following there's no one righteous and not even one. So if God is righteous and we're not righteous, something has to happen.
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And that's the book of Romans So what does happen? Well, let's go to chapter three verses 20 and following.
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And let me give you some keywords. If you're going to talk to your Roman Catholic friend, let's build upon four or five keywords that you could talk to them about to help them understand salvation.
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Sometimes if you say to someone, you just need to get saved, we need to kind of help them understand what that means.
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What do you mean saved? Saved from what? Saved to what? Saved from whom? What does it mean to be saved? So these are some words that you can help them understand what the
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Bible teaches. And I'd encourage you to use these keywords and the good news is they're pretty much right here in the text.
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Some keywords so you can walk through the book of Romans with your friends.
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They don't even have to be Roman Catholic. Anybody who's not saved. By the way, Romans road, you know the
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Romans road. I need to figure out what these keywords are in Romans with something else. Romans, key words.
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What's a synonym for key that starts with R. I need to find out the source of word that's a key for, uh, you're all sitting there just going, okay, forget it.
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I want to think of something snappy, the Romans road, but here are some key words so we can preach the gospel. The first word is justification.
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Justification. Now let me tell you what Rome teaches. Seventh session Canon four.
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If anyone says that the sacrament of the new law are not necessary for salvation, but without them men obtained men obtained from God through faith alone, the grace of justification, let him be anathema.
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The Roman Catholic church teaches that if you believe you're justified by faith alone, you are damned to hell.
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By the way, I think Rome is unloving. We would never put that in our statement of faith, would we? Even when we looked at the 1689
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Baptist confession, I said, let's take the part out about the Pope is the Antichrist because that was something in the time of the
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Pope is certainly the small a Antichrist, but I don't think he's like the main Antichrist. We don't need that in our doctrinal statement.
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Can you imagine the visitors come? Can we have your doctrinal statement? Here you go. The Pope is the Antichrist. Oh, thank you.
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But that would get rid of all the lookers. Those that are, uh, swayed in by the cookie ministry.
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They're the ones that say anathema. They're the ones making a formal curse on you. If you think it's justification by faith alone, excommunicating people.
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Well, let's see how justification is explained. Look at three 21, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God, there's that term again,
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God's righteousness, God's perfection. God does the right thing all the time because he is right. It's been manifested.
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It's been shown being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Certainly in the old Testament was talked about. Let me ask you a trick question.
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I would ask the men in India this when I was teaching them a true or false. The God of the old Testament is a God of wrath and the
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God of the new Testament is a God of love. Why is that false? He's the same
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God. God doesn't change. By the way, can you think of the earliest illustration of grace in the old Testament?
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Can you think of an early one? Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Even earlier we could look at when
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Adam and Eve sinned. God could have just smashed them right away and God provided some, uh, an animal that was killed by God and some covering for them.
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I think about, uh, Noah. Why did God pick Noah by the way? Let me just tell you, uh, you can just, uh, listen, let me give you
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Noah's pre salvation testimony. We looked at Solomon's testimony earlier today.
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Let me just read you Noah's testimony and you tell me if God in the old Testament is a God of love, grace, wrath, justice.
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What describes God in the old Testament? Here's Noah's testimony.
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Then the Lord saw that Noah was wicked and his wickedness was very great on the earth and every intense, every intent of Noah's thoughts were of his heart were only evil continually.
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And the Lord was sorry that he had made Noah on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. Is that from the
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Bible by the way, or did I just make that up? It's a synergistic view.
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Listen, Noah was not chosen by God because he was righteous and blameless because apart from God, no one's righteous and blameless.
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Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And after that you find in Noah, in Noah, in Genesis chapter six, verse nine,
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Noah was righteous man, blameless in his time. Noah walked with God, but verse eight is, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the
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Lord and Noah somehow earned that Noah somehow made it up. You think Noah was born sinful?
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Do you think the first sin that Adam committed, God imputed that and credited that to Noah's account or did he not?
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Was Noah by nature a sinner? Was Noah sinful? Of course. So God just said, you know, you're the best sinner of the bunch, let me pick you.
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Or did God grace him and favor him and give him love and show that, change him and Noah responded like we all do to grace and should have righteousness and were upright.
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The God of the old Testament is the God of the new Testament. And the thing about all these issues, when it comes to salvation, if you don't understand the depths of sin, you won't get salvation, right?
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That is to say, if you have a wrong view of salvation, I know something about you. You have a wrong view of how good or bad man is, right?
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You don't realize the depths of the depravity because we all have friends and family. And my grandmother,
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I love my grandmother. And I wouldn't look at her and say, I can't believe she's a God hater because she's my grandma.
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I love my grandma and she makes apple pie and she has me over. And we just have these people that we think, you know, how could that happen?
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When we realize the real problem is the depravity of man. My grandmother was nice, not because she was a
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Christian, but she was nice because of the common grace of God and how God could even use an image bearer who did not believe in him to do good things.
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So when you have a problem with salvation, you always have a problem with sin, but Paul just nails it here. Romans 3, 21.
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Now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God had been manifested. Very important. Verse 22, even the righteousness of God.
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You think that's a theme in the book of Romans? Through faith in Christ Jesus, for all who believe Jew or Gentile, there's no distinction.
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For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All sinned. And now that's past tense.
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We've all sinned present tense and keep falling short of the glory of God. We've sinned past tense.
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We are sinning now by falling short of God's glory, falling short of God's glory manifested in his righteousness.
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We fall behind, but we're being justified as a gift by his grace.
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Who could tell me what justification is? I have to tell you when we had those 18, yes, we had 18 new members and they all had to give their testimony verbally.
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And then by writing, I was so happy. I think
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I've said this before. We have a little question. Why do you have a right to go to heaven? What right do you have to get into heaven?
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And I think four or five said, I don't have any right. Well, they all said I don't have any right, but particularly four or five said
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I don't have any right. The only right I have. And then they went to explain the doctrine of justification on the new member handout.
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I thought, praise God. These people are listening. Who could explain what those new members explained the doctrine of justification.
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And if you were in this pulpit yesterday for my preaching lab, you may not do it because I already know, you know, we had about 12 men stand up here yesterday, knees knocking white faced.
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I didn't go to sleep sometimes that night. Some got up at three o 'clock in the morning. Did you get a nap today? Just kidding.
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Who could tell me the doctrine of justification? How are you made right in God's eyes?
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Anyone? Yes. Well, it's music to my ears.
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When you say things like he declares us guilty, he acquits us. And when I make a pronouncements pronouncement as I am a pastor and there's a man and a woman here by the authority vested in me by the gospel of Jesus Christ and by the
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Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now what's the next word pronounce? Do I change those people by the way, when
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I do that, do I change them on the inside? Do I kind of pour in some kind of marriage ties to them and I kind of infuse into them the sacrament of marriage?
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No, I don't do anything except pronounce the man and wife and God like a superior court officer pronounces with legal forensic declaration without changing them.
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They do get changed by regeneration, but that's a different term. And then the other word you said that I really liked is in our place.
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So God treats us as if we've sinned. God treats Christ as excuse me. God treats us as if we haven't sinned because Christ lived a perfect life and he sees us in Christ.
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God treats Christ as if he sinned even though he hasn't and punishes him in our place on our behalf in our stead.
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Right? I like that. So that's what Paul is saying. So how can you get the righteousness of God when you're not righteous?
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Well, God says my son lived a righteous life in your place and now his life, since he's God, by the way, ask yourself the question, why did
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Jesus have to be God and why did Jesus have to be man to save people? He had to be man to save people because he had to be a perfect sacrifice.
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But why particularly man? Why wasn't he like an ostrich or something to show us that we could do it?
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Anybody else? He was a substitute for man. He had to be man to be a substitute for man.
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He couldn't be something else to be a substitute. He had to be a perfect substitute for man as a man. If man are to live righteous to be in God's presence, a man had to live righteously.
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Now, why does he have to be God? Sinless sacrifice.
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A man couldn't be sinless more than that. Yes. Okay. Because his life and his death have infinite value because he's divine.
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So it could be applied to all those who would ever believe. Good. He had to be both God and man as a substitute.
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Andrew, his a nitrous husband just went, yeah, honey, I praise
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God for doctrinally adept women. I love it when women study the word and get into the marrow and just kind of suck out all the juice of God and say,
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I'm just going to just study those things. That wasn't in my notes.
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It is a legal term to declare righteous. Doesn't make us righteous.
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Let me tell you what the Roman Catholic church says. The Holy Spirit in their catechism, 1995,
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Holy Spirit is the master of the interior life by giving birth to the inner man. Justification entails the sanctification of his whole being.
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So see, they mix justification and sanctification. That's why they say infused instead of imputed.
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Let me say this. Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Canon 30. If anyone says that after the recept, well, let's just, let's just make this more powerful.
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How many people believe that you have to be justified in God's sight to get into heaven.
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And that justification entails God declaring you righteous based on the work of Christ and God declaring you not guilty because someone else has borne your sins.
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And then he has confirmed that by raising God from the dead and God justifies you and treats you as if you've never sinned based on the perfect life of Christ.
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How many people believe that? Okay. I have a, I have a note from Rome to you.
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If anyone says that after reception of grace of justification, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be open, let him be anathema.
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If you believe in what we just taught on justification, you are damned. So how can we get up and say the guy was a great leader when the leader is teaching this, the
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Pope John Paul II has never rescinded the councils of Trent. So what are we thinking? I mean, we first word justification, second word, we gotta, we gotta get going.
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It always happens when you preach. If you have five points, the first point takes like 35 minutes and you just have to go super fast after that.
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I probably have a thousand sermons that I could preach with just points three, four and five because you never really do them justice.
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Second word redeemed. The first one justification, the second one's redeemed. What I would probably do if I were you is
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I would just circle those in my Bible and put like a little one or two right to the side in the margin there.
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So I'd remember when I go to talk to a Roman Catholic, let's talk about the righteousness of God. Let's talk about justification.
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Let's talk about redemption. Let's see this word redeemed. Who could tell me what redeemed means? Yes, Bruce bought back.
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Okay, good. Anybody else want to elaborate on that? Redeemed?
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How I love to proclaim it. What's it mean? Oh man,
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I think I know what we're singing after this. Yes, Jack given worth is, uh, okay.
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So in, in terms of the, the man who redeems, he's not going to redeem you because you'd be a good working slave.
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He redeems you out of his love and his mercy and that. Okay, good. What I'm thinking about is remember redeem is to buy out, but what we've forgotten is it's to buy out at a price, right?
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As a ransom. So it costs you to redeem out. It costs you money to buy a slave out of the slave pit.
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So now if it costs, we know what that cost is and if you see it in Romans three 24, he has been, uh, we have been redeemed as it says here through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus.
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We are emancipated out of the slave market of sin because of Christ. Well, we've got to go faster.
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Let me give you a third word propitiation. I love to say this word. There are a couple of words in my life that I love to repeat on a weekly basis.
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One is propitiation and the other one is sacerdotalism. Those are just two words that I love to say and I guess they both are applicable for tonight propitiation.
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By the way, should we just take words that are in the Bible like justification, redemption and propitiation and change them because you know, they're too big.
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They're, they're polysyllabic and we don't want to deal with these big words. Let's just dumb everything down. Romans for dummies.
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It's a yellow book. You know, is that what we want? No. If God is going to teach us at this level, let's rise up to that.
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Rise up. Oh, church of God, let's do that. You all have words that you use in business, don't you? You have certain kinds of technical gadgets and things and code words.
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And, and, uh, I learned some of these code words from Steve after 21 years on the sheriff's department.
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He has all these kind of things that they say, you know, his big words and cop talk and stuff. And so I don't know how that fits in being a tender, loving shepherd, but we're all a work in process.
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So we'll just deal with that propitiation. What's the difference between propitiate and expiate propitiate expiate.
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And does it even matter by the way, if you want to have a practical application of this tonight, how about when you go home, you say,
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God, I praise you today that I've enjoyed this wonderful day. I've been able to enjoy it as a Ecclesiastes said.
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And tonight I want to thank you for being so good. And the death at Calvary has made me justified. You have redeemed me.
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You have propitiated me and just rehearse these things to God as a praise. That's wonderful. It's good.
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If you're a kid and you sing, Jesus loves me this. I know for the Bible tells me so. And as you grow, you say, Jesus loves me.
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Let me count the ways justification, redemption, and propitiation, all these words. And it just makes things as I talked about in our lab class today, the pixel rate just becomes greater.
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And you see the depth and the imagery and the Christmas and the, and the, and the look of the, the, the salvation that we have our great salvation.
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It just looks better because we understand it more deeply propitiation expiation. Who can tell me the difference
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Bruce. Okay.
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It means to remove guilt. I'm just saying it. So people get here, but propitiate means okay.
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Very good. So God is God's wrath has been assuaged. Somebody else has taken that punishment.
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Not just sins are forgiven. Good. We'll see the passage right here in Romans chapter three, look at verse 25, whom
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God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his, there's that word again.
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What's the word righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed.
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God propitiated. God's wrath was propitiated on Christ. Christ satisfied the wrath of God.
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All right. I think there's one other word I want to get to, but I don't know if I have time. Yes, I do have time.
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Okay. This morning I made a mistake by the way, IST is not Indian standard time, India standard time.
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It's India stretch time. That's what I was told. So I understand. Corrected.
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By the way, do you see this propitiation it's in his blood and it's through what, what is the instrument that grabs hold of this as it were faith?
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Is there anything else? Faith plus works, faith, plus sacraments, faith, plus anything else? No, it's faith. Are you sure?
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How many people believe that it's faith, uh, that we're supposed to, it's by faith that we come to salvation.
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It's by faith that we believe in the propitiation in his blood. It's through faith. How many people think it's through faith?
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How many? You sure? Okay. You've just condemned yourself again. Sixth session, Canon nine. If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, let him be anathema.
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If you don't believe in faith plus sacraments, you are anathema. Who can tell me the picture of propitiation that's found in the old
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Testament when God propitiates sin, what's kind of happening? And the guys who are in my class today, I don't want you to jump in.
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What's the picture of propitiation? Propitiation is a synonym for propitiation is mercy seat.
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What happened at the mercy seat of God? Okay. What is the mercy seat? First of all, it's the lid.
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Most people that don't know anything about it until they saw the Indiana Jones movie, unfortunately, right? So you have the Ark of the covenant.
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This is not the big Ark, right? The big Ark is only used two places in the Bible, Genesis six through nine and in a little basket called the
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Ark in Exodus, where Moses was put into a, the word is actually
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Ark, but it's basket, a little basket. He wasn't put in that big old thing, but the same kind of deal. This is a different Ark.
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And it was made of what? The top was, was gold, right?
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The mercy seat was the top. What was inside of it? Okay, good.
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What was the significance of having the blood be pouring out, maybe have been poured out on the top of that mercy seat and the death that those who have broken the law of the tablets deserved instead of them dying, the lamb died.
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By the way, when you preach the gospel, go right back to talking about lambs and substitution. People don't get it anymore.
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They don't believe that if you sin, you have to pay. They don't believe that if you sin, you have to be punished. They believe if you sin, you get a holiday.
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That's what I think these days. I'm having a nervous breakdown. I'm having all kinds of things in my life. I can't function anymore.
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And all these things, I won't acknowledge God as real as God is true. So my whole life is being shut up by the common grace of God to make you realize that there's a
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God in heaven and you shut everything up. And then all of a sudden they give you medicine and then you get to have a holiday off leave with work.
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Happens all the time. I just don't, I don't have to go to work now because I've had a breakdown and I can't handle it. But here the wages of sin is death.
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And there's just something to me. I love little animals. And I remember when we'd find dogs and stuff in California and you know, it's the whole, you know, you have a wife that can really understand you and we find some dog on the street and you know, can we just keep him a day?
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No, get that dog out of here. It's a strange old mangy mutt of a dog talking about Roxy.
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I don't want to have that dog feed some dog for a day in my backyard. Day goes by.
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It's kind of nice looking dog. Another day goes by. Give the dog a name. Another day goes by.
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That's my dog. There's just something about animals, you know, and I, you just love these animals. And so imagine you have this little lamb, one year old little lamb.
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It's a perfect little lamb. There's no spots and there's no blemishes. Wonderful little lamb. And you have that lamb the first day.
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Just imagine your kids, imagine a little four year olds just with that lamb. What would your little girl do? What would your little boy do?
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You got that lamb in the house? Lamb. Second day, probably give that little lamb a name.
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What would be a good name for a little lamb? I don't know. Fluffy. Little fluffy.
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Come here, fluffy. You feed little fluffy. Day three. Oh, little fluffy.
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Can fluffy sleep inside tonight, dad? Day four, down to the priest.
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Dad lays the hands on the head. The priest cuts his throat. There's blood all over because sin is costly.
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That's exactly why when we preach, we should be like John the Baptist. Behold the lamb of God because people today are so biblically illiterate.
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They don't know that they're supposed to be a sacrifice, that they're supposed to be a substitute, that somebody has to pay when they sin.
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Can you imagine? True or false? Every sin that has ever been committed will be punished.
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True or false? If it's not going to happen, then God is unjust. Every sin that has ever been committed will be punished and will either be punished on people in hell forever or Jesus will bear the punishment in our stead.
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True? God just doesn't somehow not punish. And so God has provided the lamb. And you remember
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Genesis chapter 22. And here Abraham is told to go there. Some people say, well,
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Genesis 22, Abraham just gets up early in the morning because he can't wait to just get up and obey God. I like R .C.
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Sproul better where he says, I don't think he slept all night. It wasn't a matter of getting up early.
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He did obey God, but he didn't sleep all night and had to take Isaac there to Mount Moriah. And then only in the way that R .C.
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Sproul can. He was talking about how God then 2 ,000 years later brought his son, his only son, the son in whom he loved, to Mount Moriah.
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And when it comes to raise the knife to kill the son, this time nobody yelled, stop. And then
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R .C. just walks off the stage. Somebody has to die.
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And it can't be the way Rome has been teaching it. I have so many things, I can't cover them all.
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Here's what I would do. I wanted to do this earlier, but I'll just do it now. If you have friends who are in the
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Roman Catholic Church, would you, number one, teach them Romans? Number two, would you teach them that you can have complete forgiveness of your sins, past, present, and future?
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It's good news to tell somebody you have complete forgiveness. And people in the Roman Catholic Church don't have that.
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Their lives are so burdened because their Catholic Jesus won't give them past, present, and future sin forgiven.
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It's only past and original sin and other things. So teach them about complete salvation.
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And lastly, would you teach them about assurance, that you can have assurance? How can we have assurance? Well, we have assurance because if God has justified me by having all my sins past, present, and future already paid for by Christ, we can have assurance.
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Romans 8 .33 says, who can bring a charge against God's elect? And so teach them that. John MacArthur says this, there's a crucial point on which
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Protestants have historically been in full agreement. Sinners are not justified because of some good thing in them.
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God can declare them righteous because he first imputes to them the perfect righteousness of Christ. Again, this is owing to no good thing in us, not even
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God's sanctifying or regenerating work in the hearts. That's the gospel. And so we need to tell people that Christ is sufficient.
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When I was in a sacramental church growing up, I never was told you must be born again. That's what
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I always tell my friends. You must be born again. And it's not baptism. You must be born again. Secondly, I was never told that Jesus's death was sufficient enough for all my sins.
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And lastly, I was never told that I needed to be saved. I never was told
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I needed to be saved. I never was told that there was false teachers, false professions of faith. Were you ever told when you were younger, maybe you were, maybe you weren't, but there's a faith that doesn't save?
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That's exactly what Dave was talking about. Many will say to me on that day, you have a faith, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can be saved.
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And I think for us tonight, we should just be reminded that God has been so gracious to us to save us.
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Are you better than the Roman Catholics? I'm not, but in God's graciousness, we can believe we have believed.
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Imagine for a moment that you're living in the age of Roman emperors. You've been captured by Roman soldiers and dragged from your native country.
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You've been sold for a slave, stripped, whipped, branded in prison and treated with shameful cruelty. At last you were appointed to die in the amphitheater to make holiday for the tyrant.
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The populace assembles with delight. There are tens of thousands of them gazing down from the living sides of the
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Coliseum. You stand alone, naked, armed only with a single dagger, a poor defense against gigantic beasts.
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A ponderous door is drawn up by machinery and there rushes forth the monarch of the forest, a huge lion.
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You must slay him or be torn to pieces. You are absolutely certain that the conflict is too severe for you and that the sure result must and will be that those terrible teeth will grind your bones and drip your blood.
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You tremble. Your joints are loosened. You are paralyzed with fear, like a timid deer when the lion has dashed it to the ground.
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And then Spurgeon goes on to say, but what is this? Oh, wonder of mercy, a deliverer appears.
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A great unknown leaps from among the gazing multitude and confronts the savage monster. He shrinks not at the roaring devourer, but dashes upon him with terrible fury until, like a whipped curve, the lion slinks towards his den, dragging himself along in pain and fear.
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The hero lifts you up, smiles into your bloodless face, whispers comfort into your ear, and bids you of good courage and you are free.
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That's what God has done for us. And if it wasn't for his grace, you'd be thinking it was rosary beads, patterned osters, hail
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Marys, and the Pope could intercede for you this moment. Let's pray.
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Father, thanks for this day. And so many things to say, Lord, yet we would just ask that you'd give us a desire to be evangelistic in our heart.
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And Father, we might not remember some of these words, but help us to remember that without the preaching of the gospel, there's no salvation, no salvation in the moon and the sun and the stars, no salvation in rain coming down.
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Yet in your goodness and in your kindness, you've given us your word. Help us to tell the word to other people. Help us to be evangelistic.
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Father, we want to see our church swamped full of people that have been saved out of the clutches of all kinds of false teaching, including
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Roman Catholics. And Father, we know this is your church to build, but we would just love to see new people saved and baptized and rejoicing in this fellowship that you've created here.
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Give us courage. Help us to be compassionate. And Father, help us that it's only by your grace that we know what we know and that we're no better than anyone else.