Systematic Theology (part 20)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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So, last week we looked at truth and faithfulness. We saw how

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God is true in His character, how He communicates truth in His word, and we saw how

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He is true to His promises. He is faithful to His people. And then we looked at this as a communicable attribute and saw how we ought to be true to who we are in Christ, how we need to be not lying but speaking the truth in love, and how we ought to be a faithful people.

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We didn't really work out the application as much. We left here with a charge to reflect upon it, how we ought to be a people who are true to God, true in our communication, and faithful in our relationships with others.

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Let me just leave that there. We'll open with a word of prayer, and then we will begin our session this morning.

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Our loving and gracious Father, we thank You, Lord, for giving us Your Word, that You would reveal

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Yourself to us through the pages of Scripture, that You would,

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O Lord, open our hearts and eyes, that by Your Spirit we can understand these truths, that we can worship

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You, that we can be transformed by You. I pray,

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O Father, this morning as we study You, that You, O Lord, would transform us so that we would reflect

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Your character in our lives today. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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All right, so does anyone want to share your thoughts on how we as Christians are called to be true, truthful, and faithful?

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Maybe even if you have some examples of times where the Lord helped you to be truthful or faithful when on your own you may not have been so.

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Amen. And I think you just hit the nail right where it needs to be. When we think about truth, the standard of truth is

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God. We always have to look at our reference point as being God, who is the true one, who decides what is right and wrong, and we need to always examine what we do, what we say in light of that.

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And you also brought the other aspect, which is we want to be faithful to God first and foremost.

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We want to please Him first and foremost before we get caught up in the relationships around us because it's very tempting to do what the world wants us to do or what would make them happy, but we want to make sure we please our

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God. So that example kind of covered both. Thank you. Any other thoughts on truth, truthfulness, and faithfulness in our lives today as Christians?

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So you could be among unbelieving friends or coworkers who do not know

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God and may speak ill of Him or speak Him mockingly, and you want to always examine, as a child of God, we want to represent

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God faithfully to people. We want to love them, to tell them the truth about who

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God is, and to represent Christ well. So thank you.

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Let me just read the definitions once again on truthfulness and faithfulness before we move to the next couple of attributes.

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Truthfulness. God always represents things as they really are, and I think the foremost thing is when we think about the definition of God, we looked at Jeremiah 10 last time, people are making idols for themselves and saying, these are our gods, we will worship them, and they will do what we want, and in contrast, the

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God of heaven and earth, the Lord God in the Bible, He is the true God.

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He alone meets the standard that is Himself, which is almighty, all -powerful, able to accomplish what

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He promises, and He does promise good to His people, and He delivers on them, and His word where He speaks is true.

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And then the definition continues. All of God's knowledge and words are true, and the final standard of truth.

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So that's for truthfulness. The second definition we saw was faithfulness. God will always do what

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He has said. He will always do what He has said and fulfill what

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He has promised. So everything that He has said, He will accomplish because He is faithful to His people.

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He is true to His word. Alright, with that, let's go to the next set of attributes.

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As you can see, how truth and faithfulness work together as we source applications from the word.

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Today, we're going to start something. It's the goodness of God. The goodness of God.

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And there are many child attributes, if you will, that actually come out. This is one of those big attributes that has many aspects to it.

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I'm just going to read the definition for goodness, and then we'll pick the others as we go along. The definition goes, all that God is and all that God does is worthy of approval, and He is the final standard of goodness.

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All that God is and all that God does is worthy of approval, and He is the final standard of goodness.

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So we're going to be turning to Luke 18, so feel free to turn there. But as you're turning there,

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I want to ask us a few questions to get us thinking before we enter this text.

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This is one of the attributes that is a communicable attribute, which means that this is something that is an attribute of God, that we can reflect an image and live out in a created being's capacity.

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So while God is the absolute good, we can reflect goodness because we are made in such a way as to reflect

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God's character in this particular attribute. So let me ask you this question.

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If you look back at this week and you had to reflect upon your life, how would you answer this question?

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Did I do good this week? Did I do good this week?

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Because most people ask you, how are you doing? I'm doing good. You know, that's the common response, and we mean something when we say it.

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So thinking of God as our good God, and we as His beings who are made to reflect this attribute, did

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I do good? Thoughts? Okay, on our own, even our, we are not good in and of ourselves, and our acts, our deeds of righteousness, apart from Christ, are completely worthless.

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So there is no good in and of ourselves apart from Christ. Good, excellent. So as a believer, you may actually do good in the sense of the world where people can see and appreciate and be thankful for, because maybe they benefited from it, from our actions, or they could just see something that, like what

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Becky was saying, maybe you took a high road and did something that most people wouldn't do. But only we know in our hearts whether we did this to please

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God, whether we did this out of good motive in order to honor Him, or whether we did this for other reasons, maybe to look good in front of other people's eyes, or for whatever ill motives we might have.

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So even the actions that were beneficial, that were good in a common sense, may not be good in God's eyes if they were not done with a true intent, okay?

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And I think Mary and Martha is a great example, Martha being flustered with all the activity and forgetting that what

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Mary had chosen was a good choice. And I think you brought up this aspect of living in this world and having to fulfill our responsibilities, but doing them in a way that keeps

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Christ in the center of it all, rather than being...this

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is one of the attributes, hopefully next week we'll get to this, which is peace, where there's many a time when

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I have so many things juggling up in the air, and all I can do is just barely keep up with one and the other, and God is nowhere in the picture.

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How can Christ be in the center of our hearts, our devotions, our worship, while we are doing those things that God has called us to, or maybe setting aside those things for a season that we might, or a period of time, that we may fully and wholeheartedly give our attention to God?

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So these are good questions. And therefore, in all of these things, we want to ask ourselves, you know, how does

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God see me in the things that I have done this past week? I myself know there are some things that I've done that are not good, and even some of the things that the world may see as good, only

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I may know, or even my heart may deceive me, and I want to be conscious before God for His approval, that He would be pleased with the things

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I do, that I would do it for His pleasure and for His glory. So with that in mind, let's now get to Luke 18, which is a passage which is very interesting.

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There was many, many texts, and hopefully after this we'll cover some of them, talking about good.

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And I like this particular one because it gives us some insight into both the nature of God, as well as the nature of man, when it comes to this aspect of goodness.

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So if someone can read Luke 18, let's read the whole section, although we won't be covering it all.

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Let's read from verse 18 through 30, if someone can read it loud and clear. Luke 18, 18 through 30.

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Thank you. This is, we have parallel passages of this in both Matthew and Mark, Matthew 19,

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I believe. And there is a little bit of a variance in that text, where Matthew adds, what good must

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I do to inherit eternal life? And so I think we can look at three things from this passage.

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One is, who is good, when he addresses Jesus as the good teacher?

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And then, what must we do? What good must we accomplish? And then, finally, looking at the nature of the rich young ruler and the disciples, how can we be good?

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Or thinking of the communicable attribute in terms of reflecting God's goodness itself.

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So let's begin with the nature of God. He calls, this rich young ruler calls

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Jesus a good teacher. And the response in verse 19, Jesus says, why do you call me good?

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No one is good except God alone. We can, we know a few things about the rich young ruler.

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He was probably not a Sadducee because he's concerned about eternal life.

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You know, the Pharisees would legalistically follow the word, but they believed what the word said about eternal life.

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But the Sadducees said, you know, this is all there is to life. So if I need a good life, it is now. You know,

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I die and I'm no more. So he was concerned with what happens after, eternal. So he was focused in the right place.

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But he did not know certain things about Jesus. So he calls him good, and Jesus asks him, why?

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What do you think he called Jesus good? What might have he known about Jesus to call him good?

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It's not a trick question. Yes. Excellent.

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So Jesus has been ministering to the people. He has done tons of miracles in the land.

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So he has done good to people in terms of healing them. He has taught them from the word.

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He has taught them truths that nobody knows. He spoke with authority. So he knows that this is a man who both teaches good things, does good things.

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And so he calls him teacher. And the word used for teacher there is one,

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I think in, I'm sorry, in Matthew 19, it says master.

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And I think it is the one who is like a teaching master, not like a ruling master. You are one who's good at teaching.

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And here, the word is teacher. And the idea there is we know that you teach good things.

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And you are good in a, I think what Becky was trying to tell us, there is in a worldly sense, you've done much more than anybody can do.

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And we see this as good because we benefit from this. But Jesus switches the attention to something much more important.

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And he says, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. In light of what

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Pastor Steve is teaching, do you think Jesus is saying, hey, you need to call God good.

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Don't call me good. I'm not God. Is that what Jesus is saying here, you think? I'm asking the wrong crowd.

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Anybody want to? Yeah. Amen. And this is not just a relative goodness that we're talking about, but we are talking about the absolute perfection of goodness that is embodied in Christ.

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And he's going to push the young rulers' thinking to the point where he needs to ultimately bow down to Christ.

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And I think the passage will draw out the rulers' ignorance of his own depravity and his need for absolute commitment in the absolute good.

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So and so the issue is moving from this idea of relativistic goodness to the absolute goodness that is

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God and God alone. And so the statement that Jesus makes here, no one is good except God alone, would be very clear to everybody in the

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Jewish culture. Oh, yes, we know in the absolute sense there is nobody who is good. And here the rich young ruler is challenged with the identity of the person and the use of his words as well as he's talking to Jesus.

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Now let's maybe take a little break from this text to talk about the goodness of God.

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If you look at the Old Testament, so when Jesus says there is no one, no one is good except God alone, what texts of Old Testament do you think that this rich young ruler may be thinking of?

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What Old Testament verses come to your mind about the goodness of God? Excellent.

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Genesis 1. Why Genesis 1? Perfect. So in terms of his actions, all that he made is good.

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And those of you who have a concordance or something in the back, you can just see if you look at good. There's plenty of places in the

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Old Testament that talk about goodness. And Genesis 1 is like every day, what he did was good, what was good, what he did was good.

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And then in the end, everything was very good. And there is something about the term good that is just like truth.

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It's a little abstract, so we may not really get it. Good we can think of as an adjective.

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The earth was good. The water and the life teeming in it was good.

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And it is actually used as a noun in terms of,

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I'm not a very great grammarian, but there are various ways in which this term good can be used, talking about both the nature of the thing as well as describing that it meets something to its fullness.

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So we'll see more about that as it applies to us. But when we talk about good,

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Genesis 1 is a good example. What God made was good. There was no flaw in it.

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There was no defect in it. It didn't come out apart from its design, what God intended for the creatures.

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They came exactly as they were intended to be. They were made 100 % the way they were designed.

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So that's Genesis 1. What else can you think of as good? And we have many verses like that.

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You are good and you do good. So God is the standard of goodness.

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There's another psalm that talks about he is good, talking about the Lord. I think

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Nehemiah 9 talks about the spirit is good, the good spirit, talking about the

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Holy Spirit that God gives to his people. And so in his essence, in his character, just like we say God is love, we have

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God is good as one of those attributes that define who

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God is. He is, now let me, I know you're probably still, it's early in the morning, good is still a little bit abstract.

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Better way to think about what, how good God is, is to think what he is not.

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What do you think is the opposite of good in the context that we just looked at?

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Evil. So God is good in a righteous sense, in the sense that he is not evil.

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In fact, many of the verses in the Old Testament, when you look at it, you will see those verses contrasted.

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Good, not evil. Good, not evil. In later, maybe next week, we will look at righteousness and we're going to see maybe a nuanced aspect of this, where we talk about holiness and righteousness of God.

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But there is another aspect in which good can be contrasted. What's another way in which you can think of good versus something else?

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Flawed, that I was thinking of bad. You know, you think of good and bad. We think of something that is, you could think of like a fruit, you know, the fruit that is good and a fruit that is bad.

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What we mean by that is it's not full, wholesome. It is something defective or flawed.

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And when we think of the nature and the character of God, he is absolute in his goodness.

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He is the sum of all good. We will see this right at the very end. He exemplifies everything that is good, because he himself is the standard of goodness.

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You know, today in the world, when you go outside and ask what is good, people will have various standards about what good is.

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You know, good means tolerating X, Y and Z that has changed in our culture or, you know, this is the new good because we never knew, you know, it's

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OK for same sex marriage. Now that we figured this out, you know, this must be the good and that is bad.

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You know, people who say it's only a man and a woman. And in contrast to all that and basically our nature itself, you know, there are people who would revel in pain or revel in other biblical standards, evil and say, you know, this is how we are meant to flourish, which the

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Bible would would call as not good as as bad. And so when we as a

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Christian stand out here and look at look and ask what is good, we need to go back to God as a standard of good.

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He is good in and of himself. He has made us in his image so we can be good, reflect his goodness.

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And as we look at him through the pages of scripture, we say, I now know what is good because God is the one who gives me that standard.

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Excellent. And that would be a very good lead in for us to move into the very the other attributes of God. And that was if you remember, would you mind if you have it, can you read it?

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Yeah. The other attributes that follow through. Thank you. In a few of the attributes are what we're going to be looking at as we see the the various dimensions of the goodness of God.

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One of the things was loving kindness. We're going to see love as maybe the chief chief outpouring of God's goodness to us in his in his love.

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We're going to see his mercy. We're going to see his grace, his patience or long suffering.

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These are all various aspects of God's goodness that work that are his attributes that work toward us as well.

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But keep this in the back of your mind. Now, we have some things to think about when you think that God is good.

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And then let's come back to Luke 18. So here in Luke 18, we we said no one is good except God alone.

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And so this is basically what should be running through the rich young rulers mind. All these things about God, you know, he has been good to his people,

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Israel, rescuing them out of Egypt. He was good in providing for them during the 40 years in the wilderness.

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He took them to a good land and a land flowing with milk and honey. And he provided for them even when they were faithless to him.

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And he was good even in his judgments upon them because he maintains his holiness and he would not let the land become corrupted and polluted.

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And his name be defamed in this world.

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So so those these are the things that the rich young ruler should be thinking of. Now, let's come to verse 20. And you want to be thinking of the question that the rich young ruler asked, what must

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I do or what good must I do in order to inherit eternal life?

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And Jesus gives the answer in verse 20. Do not commit adultery, murder, steal, false witness on the positive side, honor your father and mother.

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This has five of the six 10 commandments relating to people. And if the rich young ruler did this or had done this, like he says in verse 21, all these have kept from my youth.

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Do you think he could have inherited eternal life? Excellent. And the law is here to reflect the character and the holiness of God.

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And the law was given. Galatians talks about how it is like a teacher, a guide until perfection.

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But in this particular instance, it is to showcase that we are incapable of keeping this.

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So God's standard is absolute goodness. And that's what Jesus first told him. You know, God alone is good.

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You need to understand what you mean of that by that word good when you when you talk address me and you need to know who

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I am. And at the same time, when you talk about what must I do, you know what the law says and the law demands perfection.

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And this young ruler, when he looked back at Jesus question, completely failed to understand what

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Jesus was talking about. That was a that was a culture that he was from Pharisees, you know, legalistically make up these rules, ways in which you think you can interpret the scriptures, accomplish these things.

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And if you accomplish them, then, you know, God must be pleased with it. They had completely missed out the heart intent as well as the perfection that is required in order for us to be right with God.

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And here Jesus gives him the standard and he fails it. And Jesus, I think many of you mentioned this here.

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His purpose was to get to the heart of the issue of this particular man who had who was, in one sense, ignorant of the righteous demands of the law.

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He had read the law. He thought he could just whatever he was and maybe he had a good upbringing.

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He was not the kind that would like a tax collector go and defraud people.

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So I'm not stealing and that's good enough. And yeah, you know,

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I have not committed adultery in my in physical and as a physical act.

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And here maybe he had not heard about Jesus. Matthew 5 talking about the heart attitude that goes with it.

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You know, so these are things that Jesus gets to in verse 22 when he says, one thing you still lack, sell everything, distribute to the poor, you'll have treasure in heaven and come follow me.

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Sell everything you have. You think that you're he's rich. You think this is good.

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Your treasures that you own, really, these will be corroded by rust and moth and they will be taken away.

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You're not going to take them into eternal life, sell them. So then you will know what is good. Is your treasures good or is there something much more good than what you have been considering as good distribute to the poor?

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You think that you have been good and benevolent as a rich young ruler, you know, who has authority over the people.

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Uh, how about this do good in the way God demands of you, the way

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I demand of you show good to all the poor by giving them all that you have. The second one.

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And the third one is, he says, by this, you will have treasure in heaven. You want to know eternal life. Here is how you can, uh, you can demonstrate the goodness of God who gives freely.

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And then you will have an inheritance in heaven. And then the, the climax of this all is come follow me.

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You want good. I am good. And you need to follow me with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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And, um, obviously this is not a general command for everyone. I'm, I'm not saying here as a proclaimer, every one of you sell all your money, you know, distribute everything to the poor and come follow

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Jesus. Come follow Jesus. This is a general command. Um, but here Jesus was dealing, doing surgery in the heart of this rich young ruler to show him where his heart was.

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When he says good, he didn't even understand what good was in terms of the nature of God, in terms of what a good action ought to be and what was good for his own self.

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He was hoping for something, but didn't know what it was. And here, Jesus typically like a surgeon puts that light and then does that, uh, cut through his hardened heart to showcase where he truly was.

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He said, I've fulfilled all of these things. And Jesus says, well, you do not know me. And, uh, and so, uh, when we think of the gospel, this is summarizing what the good news really is.

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Why is the gospel good news? Because it rescues us from the damnation that we are heading toward ignorantly like this rich young ruler was, he was not a blasphemer.

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He was a good man in the world's eyes. He was doing all the kinds of things that he needed to do, but he was completely unaware of the absolute goodness that God demands at who

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God is and the radical kind of surrender that you no longer treat anything else as good, except God and God alone, that you would put aside your sin and follow him wholeheartedly.

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And that's essentially what Jesus has done here in exposing the state of man.

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And sadly, in verse 23, this man walks away, uh, very sad because when he counted the cost of following Christ and the cost of the life that he had been blessed with, he found that his earthly treasures were worth more.

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They were good in relationship to the goodness of Jesus Christ. And, um, and then

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Jesus says how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven. Maybe for us today, it's not wealth.

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Maybe it is something else. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's, uh, something else we treat as good, even as believers in relationship to the

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God whom we worship, who is absolute good. Amen. And, and isn't that true for all of us?

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So if the Lord were to just expose, that could be no area in our life that is unblemished that we can say,

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I've done this, fulfill this completely a hundred percent, even the smallest of areas where maybe the Lord has gifted us with, uh, uh, with, without having that much temptation to sin.

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And even that would be flawed. Like we've talked earlier with the motives with which we were doing those things. And, um, and yet the

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Lord goes exactly for where this man needed to know. And that's how the Lord probably saved many of us as we were convicted of those areas in our lives where the spirit of God opened our eyes.

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And we said, you know, I love my money more than I love my God, or I love this in more.

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Certainly this is a message for everyone else. In fact, the disciples in the very next verse completely get it.

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They're like, Oh, and actually, if you think about it, Jesus is teaching more than just the issue with, uh, the love for wealth, because he actually teaches them that wealth is not merely a sign of God's blessing as the people were looking at it at that time.

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So at that point in time, if you were a wealthy man, it was because you were, you found favor with God that he would bless you with all of these material possessions.

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And so this rich young ruler must be not just from his exemplary lifestyle that they probably have observed, but more so that, you know, this is

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God's favor upon him. And, and then Jesus turns the whole thing around and he says, how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Wait, you know, that's not what we were thinking all this time. And Jesus kind of shifts that thing around as well, but you're right that the people around get it because verse 26, who then can be saved?

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They're like, okay, that's, they can't be saved. What about the poor rest of us? And then

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Jesus makes it absolutely clear. Salvation is of God alone, impossible with men, but possible by God.

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And then Peter and his desire and the, and the others, uh, recognize that this is what they have done.

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They weren't maybe conscious of the fact that they gave up everything, dropped their nets and followed, but because they love

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Jesus so much, they knew that Jesus was good. They had committed their lives to him and these things no longer mattered.

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It was no longer that thing, you know, the balance sheet, I gave up this and I got these, but they were already followers of Christ.

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And Christ says, you know, you follow me, you will be blessed. And what this rich young ruler was looking for eternal life that will be provided with all of the benefits that comes.

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And even here on earth, um, you know, not to get into a full exegesis, but you have the church, you have the brothers and sisters that you have in Christ as even as you've been cast away from your homes.

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But let's go back to this aspect of goodness. God is good in his essence.

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And I think when we talk about the standard of God being good, um, before we get into this, how must we live?

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We want to just say, this is God. He is good.

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And because of that, we just revel in him. We worship him. We enjoy him because he is good in and of himself.

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Like last week, we talked about truth, uh, more before we actually say, you know, we need to know the truth and live by the truth.

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We first want to know the true God. We want to know the good

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God. He is the embodiment, the essence of all that is good.

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Um, as we understand him and his character through the pages of scripture, um, it then comes our, ourselves, the world would like to say that, you know, everybody is good and we sometimes do bad things.

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The Bible says since the fall, all of us are not good.

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We are bad. We are depraved and we, um, can never do anything that is good and pleasing to God of our own.

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As we began this morning with, and, um, but we do have a new nature as believers that God would turn our, our wicked hearts, our evil hearts, our bad hearts, give us, take away the heart of stone, give us a heart of flesh that we, and he would take away the consequences of the evil that we have done.

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He would, uh, put the sin upon Christ, our sin bearer.

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He would pay the penalty of that sin upon himself. So he doesn't see us no any longer as the perpetrators of evil, but rather as those who are covered with the righteousness of Christ.

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So what we could not do, uh, in the righteous demands of the law, God does it for us and treats us as righteous.

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We're going to see the righteousness, uh, later, but, um, we can enjoy the goodness in our relationship as children of God, because God now gives us a new heart.

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And now we can also do those things that are good. Now think in terms of the new

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Testament, um, the more in the new than in the old, you see good as an adjective. Uh, what are some of the good things you think believers are called to do or have, uh, in the world?

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So as a Christian, as one who is, uh, counted as righteous before God, uh, what are some of the things that are good that the

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Bible says about how we must live our lives? What good things must we have or do?

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Look, love one another, um, and Bible says do good to one another. Um, especially to those who are the household of faith, uh, which is believers.

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Um, what, what other things are good that we must do? Excellent. So you give the good news, evangelize, tell other people about what you have received freely.

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Why would you just have a good testimony? Uh, you know, live your life in a way that glorifies

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God. Um, Hey, maybe that's a good exercise. You know, if go home and just, you know, search good in the new

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Testament and you will see it's used in a multitude of ways, the way that we ought to live our lives, because God now enables us to have the right motives because he's given us a new heart.

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He gives us the spirit by which we have the power to do these good things, which we didn't have before. And as we do these things, we, we reflect

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God's attribute of goodness, not just among the believers, but more so among the unbelievers that they can see

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God and glorify a God in heaven, uh, by the love that we have for one another and the good that we accomplish here.

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So let me stop there. Um, any thoughts on goodness? Does it make sense?

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The nature of God and the way we are called to live. Now, let me maybe ask you one more question.

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I thought we'll get into a few more of the sub attributes, but we'll probably do it next week. If you think carefully,

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I'm sure some of you at least can give some examples. Um, I think Becky, you started off with one good example where, you know, you're tempted to do something that is maybe not good when your friends ask you something and not being truthful.

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Um, maybe you can think of some examples where the Lord enabled you to do something good this week, where you want to give glory to God for his goodness being reflected in your life for his glory.

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Can you think of any examples where the Lord was pleased to help you, um, live a life that was pleasing to God?

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When you see, especially in the life of the next generation, that the Lord is working, changing the way they think and the way they live out their life or do things as a consequence of that.

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And, um, even in our own lives, the more we read the word, the more we understand the goodness of God, the more we are passionate about doing those things that are pleasing to God in our lives.

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And maybe I should have asked the question that way, because it's, it's hard to say, Oh, I've done this good thing this week. I should have asked, maybe, you know, have you observed another believer?

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And that'll be a lot easier to answer. But, um, yes, excellent.

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And actually there was one of those, when I was talking about the new Testament, the, one of the chief verses that I had was, uh, from the sermon on the

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Mount, where Jesus says, uh, do good to your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, because that is a demonstration of a heart that is actually reflecting the goodness of God.

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It's impossible on our own to be able to do good to those who do evil to us.

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And, um, and that's precisely what God does. You know, his creation turns away from him and God blesses us with his goodness.

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And we, as a people who are blessed by God have tasted his goodness.

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The Bible says, taste and see that the Lord is good. We have tasted his goodness and we ought to be a people that, uh, reflect

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God's goodness, especially to those who hate him and hate us. So thank you.

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I think with that, we'll, we'll close. Let's pray. A loving and gracious father. We thank you,

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Lord, for revealing yourself to us as good. We thank you that many of us here have enjoyed your goodness, have tasted you and seen that you are good.

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And Lord, I pray that you would re -impress upon our mind the absolute good, who you are and the absolute call you have on our lives.

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May we not treasure any competition to you in our hearts and may we live our lives and reflects your goodness to this lost world in Christ's name we pray.