1689 London Baptist Confession (part 51)

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Our great God and Heavenly Father we come before you this morning thankful for who you are
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What you do how you even Preserve our lives each and every moment you give us breath
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You cause our hearts to beat you are in control of every single organism everywhere
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There is literally nothing in the universe that Is not subject to your will and that does not
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Bow to it father we Are not just your creatures we are
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Your chosen people your people that you have set your affection upon and called and redeemed and You've gathered gathered us here today to study your word to see what it says about You and about how we ought to worship you and how we ought to think about you and How our focus should be about you and not about ourselves
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We are surrounded by a world that is consumed with self Or teach us to put that off and to focus on our
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Redeemer our Savior and our God in Jesus name we pray amen well, so we've
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Been Studying the statement of faith the confession of faith for a while, and I thought for just a minute
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I would talk about one of the reasons why I think it's important Pastor Mike, and I were doing a radio show this week, and we talked about some things that people
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The Christians believe that are wrong and and I brought a few of those but I discarded most of them, but but it's interesting to me that as I get these papers in order
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Because there is no order there is no method to the madness okay, anyway one of the most common commonly held heresies is that You know, but I put it in here is that Some 73 % of Professing Christians believe that Jesus is the first created being
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Is there a problem with that? What's the problem created?
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Now if somebody said to you well, I believe that Jesus was created. How would you disprove that? John one would be good
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John one is fine. I mean you could also run Colossians Colossians chapter one, but I think it's interesting
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Why do you suppose though the 73 % of professing Christians evangelicals would say something like that he was born a baby maybe it's because they read things like in Colossians 1 where it says that he is the firstborn and So therefore they conclude that he is
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Created right one of the reasons that I wanted to tie this to having a confession of faith is because This is something that has been resolved in church history
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For nearly let's see. Let's do the math here real quick almost 1700 years Right.
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This is something called the Aryan heresy the idea Propagated by areas that Jesus is a created being and if we know church history, how many of us know church history?
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almost nobody Right. I mean, we don't really study it a lot one of the things that a confession of faith is good for is it ties us to Truths that have been proved over centuries
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So that every generation doesn't have to come along and sort of reinvent the wheel.
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We have a wheel. Let's use that wheel Let's not reinvent it Ever wonder why we have to reinvent the wheel.
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Well, that's why we don't need to How about this one? 51 % of evangelicals say that God accepts the worship of all religions.
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Is that a problem? Yes, and that's one of the areas that we're gonna go to this morning, but I wanted to just real quickly
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I don't even know if it well, I'll just quickly mention this Because we talked about alcohol a little bit just the numbers of Christians who drink and whatnot and I thought this was interesting.
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Let me see if I can find the stat here About talking about different denominations and Unsurprisingly It was people like Which denominations do you suppose would drink the most?
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Well Probably Catholics would be way up there among Protestants.
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Who do you think it would be? Lutherans were way up there Yeah, so And who do you suppose was at the bottom of the list?
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Baptists, that's right I'll burn you at the stake if you do that, so I Decided was it?
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Oh, well, you know and the Bible does talk about Drinking because I found it what
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I what I found was kind of Disconcerting was that there were some who didn't think that drunkenness was a problem
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Let's look real quickly at 1st Peter chapter 4 We talked about Ephesians chapter 5 18 quite a bit about you know
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Do not be drunk with wine for that is dissipation or that is whatever the ESV is
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But 1st Peter chapter 4 verse 3 and if somebody would read that please Because this really leads right into where we're going this morning.
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Anyway, 1st Peter chapter 4 verse 3 Now, why is that significant when it comes to?
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The topic of alcohol it's categorically wrong not the drinking part so much as what
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The drunkenness the being out of control, you know and those kind of things because that's how pagans handle alcohol
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That's how unbelievers handle alcohol In fact that word drunkenness there means bubbling over with wine
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Which creates kind of a you know, if you've been around people who are bubbling over with wine
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It's really not a pretty picture ultimately Romans 13 in fact, that's the only place
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I think I found in the New Testament where that word is used Romans 13 Verse 13 says let us walk properly as in the daytime not in Orgies and drunkenness not in sexual immorality and sensuality not in quarreling and jealousy
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Different word here just indicating drunkenness intoxication But it kind of it shows, you know when it lumps when
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Paul lumps it there with orgies and sexual immorality and sensuality and quarreling fighting
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Jealousy gives us some kind of idea what drunkenness is all about and why
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God does not Why he condemns it But there are other passages that talk about Drinking Well, I'll just say that do not condemn it
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But there are plenty that do even in Proverbs one is a mocker strong drink a brawler and whoever is led astray by it is not wise
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Anyway, I think the key thing and we talked about a few weeks ago is just not letting it control you not letting it change
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The way you think and act But we're on to chapter 22 of the
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Confession of Faith Which is of religious worship and the Sabbath day and when
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I first started that I just thought well It's gonna give us a real good insight into the
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Sabbath day But I sort of missed the first part of religious worship
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Because it's I I've I've got seven pages of notes and I haven't even started on the
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Sabbath day yet It really why do you suppose it's important to understand religious worship before you start talking about the
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Sabbath day And I think that's exactly right if you talk about the
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Sabbath day first, it's gonna turn into Simple legalism just a list of rules
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Whereas if you kind of set up the whole topic by saying this is
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God, this is how he Prescribes that we worship him then it's going to kind of put a
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Put the Sabbath day under the umbrella of proper religious worship and it will make a lot more sense to us when we get there
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Okay, so let me read the the first section of this of the confession here
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And by the way, sometimes I change the King James English into my own English like I'm not gonna say shoes
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Because if I say shoes you'll think no so the light of nature shows that there is a
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God who has lordship and sovereignty overall is Just good and does good unto all and is therefore to be feared loved praised
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Called upon trusted in and served with all the heart and all the soul and with all the might
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But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted and here's the important part by himself and So and it and so is limited by his own revealed will
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That he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men nor the suggestions of Satan Under any visible representation or any other way not prescribed in the
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Holy Scriptures Now if I were to put that in shorthand, what could
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I call that? When it's talking about worship and it says, you know, you're only allowed to do what is prescribed in the scriptures
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What would we call that? The regular well that you're thinking governmental the regulatory system
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Know the the rig, but you're close the regulative principle, right? That simply means that we only do what is prescribed what is commanded by God in the scriptures so we've talked at length about general revelation revealing that God exists the universe basically in Psalm 19 says or shouts his glory and So we have an obligation as human beings to worship our
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Creator however, instead of worshipping The Creator mankind has consistently worshipped what?
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the creation Romans 1 verses 20 to 23 And I'll read those just basically review because we've read this many times but something that should be like emblazoned on your brain by now
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For his invisible attributes namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived
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Ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made So they are without excuse talking about mankind has no excuse not to worship
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God For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him
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But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things in Other words forget worshipping the
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God who is we're going to create our own idols and worship those things RC says we take the honor that belongs to God and give it to creatures and If you think about it, it doesn't take long to think.
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Okay. This is really dumb. We're going to Worship the things that God has created instead of the
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Creator himself That's idolatry and RC says it is the primordial sin of mankind
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Rejecting the revelation of God right if you go back to the Garden of Eden, what do they do? You know did
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God really say and so God tells us what to do and our attitude is thanks for the advice
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God, but We're gonna do what we want. One of the great myths of humanism is that all religions are equally valid That could only be true if they are all equally
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Invalid equally false. This is an RC's arguments here. What does he mean by that if everything is true then?
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Nothing is true, right? I mean I I say that in a different way
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Somebody will say I'll somebody will tell me what they believe and I'll go. Well, what's your what's the source for your?
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view of that and They'll tell me what? Something like that's just what
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I believe So then if I say, okay, there are seven billion people in the world and every single one of them
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Can have their own view of who God is how we get to be in heaven
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Can all seven billion people be right and I've actually had some people say yes It is possible for all seven billion people to be right, even if they don't all agree and that's what he's saying here.
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That's absurd, right? Everything can't be true because if everything is true, then it's equally
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Probable that everything's false we also hear from The world.
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I mean, this is a common thing, right? There are great religions of the world Islam is a great religion.
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Judaism is a great religion. Hinduism is a great religion Buddhism is everything is a great religion
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You know seventh -day Adventists, you know, everything's great and you'll hear this
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That if somebody is zealous and they're sincere about their religion then that makes it valid That that religion that that faith must be valid and it doesn't matter ultimately well, except for the guy who just went over to this little island off of India and Was killed by the natives because everybody knows that that was dumb
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I mean after all he went over there to declare Christ to people who don't want to hear about Christ Therefore that's stupid.
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I mean you don't you don't hear people on the news saying well he was He was zealous and he was sincere.
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Therefore it was valid Probably not but even
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Christians want to give some kind of credit to those who are sincere about their faith I've had
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Christians tell me that they knew Jehovah Witnesses Who are very sincere about their faith and therefore it's hard for that Christian to believe that that Jehovah's Witness Didn't go to heaven because they were sincere about what they believe.
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Can you think of? people in the Bible who sincerely believed in in false religion
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They were sincere about it, I mean we read about Well, anybody have any examples that they can think of?
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Yes. Okay.
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I think you're talking about in in Athens They certainly believed they had all these
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Idols throughout the whole city, right? In fact, Paul comes into it in Acts 17 and he is provoked
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He's irritated by all these false gods But he says to them I see that you are a religious people he didn't say
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Good for you. We're all going to heaven together Right. Let's just walk up to heaven together.
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No because they were worshipping of false religions Simeon, okay
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Good. Yep, the prophets of Baal and what did they do to show their sincerity they?
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cut themselves So you can be sincere and it's one of my professors used to say be sincerely wrong
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John Calvin believed that the church needed Reformation particularly in the area of worship
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He believed worship had degenerated into superstition and idolatry around or Because sound doctrine had been neglected and I read that and I just thought
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Why do 73 % of professing evangelicals believe that Jesus Christ was a created being
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It's because sound doctrine is not taught in churches if you go to a church where the most important thing on Sunday morning is how good the music is and That when you leave you think
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I really like the pastor He was really nice He said things that I could really relate to But you can't tell me anything from the
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Bible that was talked about you can't tell me anything about the Lord Jesus Christ That was talked about well, then what did you just engage in I?
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Don't know, but I'll tell you what it wasn't It wasn't worship it wasn't worship today's evangelicalism
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RC says has been turned off to churchiness and ecclesiastical traditions think about it
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I mean if you think about some of the things that we do here, and I'm gonna And I'm gonna just go over the top here, and I'm gonna say they're stupid
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Why are they stupid who sings hymns? I mean we had some of these
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Sunday night services the fact I have to say I just ordered some Spanish language little they they haven't done the whole hymnal, but they did some 32 page
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Little things that we'll have for the next time we have a Sunday night thing Where they've taken some of the hymns and put them into Spanish and printed those up But some of the
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Spanish folks here When they visit this church in the evening, they're like they don't sing hymns.
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They don't know a lot of them You can say that about Americans. They know amazing grace and maybe two or three others, right?
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How about scripture reading during services? I guarantee if you go to most big evangelical churches
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They don't sit there and read a chapter of Scripture during the service why not?
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What why wouldn't they do that? Because it's boring
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Right scripture is boring who wants to hear that read how about?
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Expository sermons just getting up and reading in the Bible and explaining in the Bible Who wants to hear that That's not what you do
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You do surveys you do marketing you find out what people want and then like I said the other day
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How many of you are familiar with Ray Davies I See one hand
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Ray Davis Ray Davies being the the main dude from the kinks And he wrote a song in the late 70s and it was called give the people
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What they want it's a fantastic song But that's what churches do
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Give the people what they want Or she says the minute we begin to pander to the audience rather than to God we are in serious trouble and if you think about it, it makes sense from a
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Christian perspective if we're to worship God in the way that he wants to be worshipped and we say well, you know what?
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Here's the most important thing. The most important thing is that when you come in you are a comfortable right be entertained and See above all else you must not be
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Bored Right, and I guess we could put you know
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C prime You shall not be made to feel guilty
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At any point we don't want that you must be affirmed in all your sinfulness
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In fact, I just thought you know If they had a hymnal and most of these churches probably page one would be the old song by Billy Joel They'd change the words.
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God loves you. Just the way you are, you know, don't go trying to don't go changing to try to please me
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You don't want to do that RC says
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I don't want to be cynical or harsh, but the Old Testament worship service where people were the most enthusiastic and energetic
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Consisted of the singing of praise songs by an overflow congregation while dancing around a golden calf, right?
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He's like that was the biggest biggest Explosion of praise and all the
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Old Testament and I put this I thought this was so profound I put it on Facebook listen to this and think about it if we worship by doing what we enjoy
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Right if we if we structure our worship service around what we like Rather than by doing what is pleasing to God our worship will gravitate toward Idolatry, what do you think he means by that if we just think about what a lot of services get to and we think about how they are the the songs the sermons
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Everything that goes on through there. What is the goal? Is it to exalt
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Christ or is it to exalt the people who are there? And I think that's it right and what is that?
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That's nothing but idolatry As Christians it is our duty as much as possible to learn what true worship is supposed to be like now
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During service, especially when it gets warm in here. Have you ever found yourself? Hey, wait a second
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Wait a second. I have to do a confrontation here. Just hang on for a second. Okay now we're done with that She's repenting in sackcloth and ashes ever find yourself
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You know during the warmth of service Starting to fall asleep or maybe getting a little bored.
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Maybe you stayed up till I don't know 2 a .m Last night playing Xbox or you stayed up and watched
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Saturday Night Live or something, you know, you stay up late last night and now you're kind of getting a little little wobbly or maybe you get bored or You know the infamous as you're leaving
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You say well, I didn't get anything out of that RC asked this question
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What did we put into it? What did you put into it when he came into worship? Says to worship is to actively offer a sacrifice of praise and glory and honor to him to attend the proclamation of his word and to celebrate the ordinances of The church that's why we gather here this morning, you know people
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I think a lot of times I think for most of us we come in here this morning because this is what we do on Sundays How many times do we think
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I'm going to church and I'm going to offer a sacrifice of praise to the
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God who saved me? That's why we're here so it's about Getting our minds right before we come in here, you know, what did you get out of it?
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Well, what did you put into it when
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God prescribed worship in the Old Covenant? The very first commandment he gave was what?
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Exodus 20 verse 3. I knew you were thinking that which is you shall have
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No other gods and we normally say it what how do we say the rest of it before me?
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RC kind of tweaked it a little bit and I and I found it helpful You shall have no other gods in my presence
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Why is that helpful Okay, we can't help but have other
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Why because our hearts as Calvin said our hearts are idle factories, we're always finding something to What is an idol first of all?
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I? mean other than you know, the carved image that people fall down and Worship and whatnot.
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What is an idol best definition Charlie? Okay, anything that receives more attentions
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Attention or allegiance than God and if we just think of it this way Jesus gave two great commandments. What do you say?
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The first is Okay, love the
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Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength Now, how often do we do that? Probably never right.
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We like to think we do but probably never because there's always something, you know that comes before that and thankfully our salvation isn't based on our faithfulness, but In our faith because Christ perfectly did that but I don't want to go down that road
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It was this idea of no other gods in my presence is ultimately, it's a prohibition of idol worship
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Because God's presence is Everywhere, but Israel build up places of worship to idols.
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You know what they're called in the Old Testament Anybody know You are high places
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You shall have no high places it'll say from time to time well Why or tear down the high places because those are ultimately altars set up to worship false gods
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You would climb up those things maybe on your knees like a good
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Penitent and Worship, but all those things were forbidden.
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In fact God Ordered through the prophets would order the kings of Israel and Judah to tear down those high places
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The second commandment was not a prohibition of art you'll have no Make no image of me, right?
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But a prohibition of attempting to represent God by the effort of any artist
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I mean I just as an aside I really get there are a lot of reasons why
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I get uncomfortable when people have pictures of Jesus Can you think of some of the reasons why we should be uncomfortable about it?
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Well, I'll tell you reason number one is I don't think he sat down for any portraits What do
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I mean by that? I mean, it's kind of a funny thing to say, but it's true. So any picture you see of Jesus is
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No, it's not accurate It's just something somebody made up and I grew up in a religion in the Mormon Church where?
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There were pictures of Jesus all the time, but I'm like he looked remarkably of Scottish I think
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I Don't know maybe You know, maybe his folks kind of but I I mean he just did not look
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Like we would expect a Middle Eastern man to look and that's true of a lot of the pictures and some of my find, you know, just really you know if you know what a
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Carpenter did back then this was not some weak guy And when I when I see pictures of him, you know that are
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I get offended for that I get offended when he's too white I get offended for a lot of reasons
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But ultimately here's the problem the problem is nobody knows what he looks like but they want to have these pictures of him why because it's in our heart that we need to have some kind of Icon some kind of picture and I think it's probably wrong to do that But in both of these
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Commandments the first and the second God set up guardrails to establish limits As to what proper worship was and was not
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God not only commands worship, but he regulates it and that's what we're talking about it the regulatory principle
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He regulates it through his word now again talking about Bethlehem Bible Church Why is it that we don't have a drama ministry on Sunday morning?
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Anybody who was here last year can remember the the Laguna which family could probably give us, you know these dramas
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Week weekend and week out. Well, why don't we do that? It's not prescribed in the
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Bible. Why don't we have?
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You know, there are churches where? lovely Women will come dancing down the aisle and throw confetti or throw whatever they're doing, you know, they just throw stuff at you
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Probably, you know Nerf balls or whatever. Why don't we do that? Because again, it's not in the Bible Why don't we have why don't we let women preach?
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Because the Bible says they won't they shouldn't let's turn to Leviticus chapter 10
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Leviticus chapter 10 and if you want to know ultimately, you know how not to do things or why you should pay any attention
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I mean, this is a good one Mike will refer to it all the time
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But I don't know that we read it often enough to just kind of give us a sense of the seriousness with which
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God takes worship and if somebody would read the first three verses of Leviticus chapter 10
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I mean maybe some of the toughest words in all of Scripture right there at the end of verse 3 and Aaron held his peace didn't say anything.
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Why those were his sons and He said absolutely nothing
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Why because he knew that they had done what they ought not to have done They chose to kind of worship
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God in their own way unauthorized fire Now that doesn't happen today.
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We haven't heard about Anybody being consumed when they do dramas or they do any of these that but it shows us
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One thing and that's that God is serious about how he will be worshipped
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Rc says the most important ingredient of worship is that the holiness of God is made manifest
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He says there should be an atmosphere of fear and trembling in our worship we don't get that out of plays or out of I I've just seen some really bizarre things.
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I mean even like there was a church in New York that did ballet during Communion. I Don't understand that Now what's the number one reason
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I found this interesting? What's the number one reason given in polls that people go to church? I bet nobody will get this one
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I'm not gonna bet a lot. But what's the number one reason given in felt in polls? You're no fun fellowship socializing, yeah
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Very good Right after off the bat got it right. It is terrible.
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I Guess he was the person they talked to for the poll. I don't know Now our
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C says I typed him up as RD But he's RC still There's nothing wrong with fellowship and there certainly is a place for it.
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However Our primary purpose for being together in worship is to come into his presence with thanksgiving and praise giving honor and glory to him
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That's the main reason we're here. I Mean I do kind of in in my mind.
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I'm a little bit concerned for people who come in I Won't say when they come in but they come in they they sit through the service and then they're you know, like Running out to the parking lot and I'm like I in some churches in Southern, California I sort of understand it because you know
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If you don't get out there early, there's a 25 or 30 minute wait to get out of the parking lot But we don't typically
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I don't think it takes that long to get out of our parking lot. It's not that big of a deal And One of the reasons we come here is to do the one and others right to come alongside one another and encourage one another all
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These things but that's after the service or before the service not during the service During the service we are worshiping him now
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Let's go to the second part of this section of the statement of faith the confession of faith
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Religious worship is to be given to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit and to him alone
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Excuse me, not to angels Saints or any other creatures and since the fall not without a mediator
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Nor in the mediation of any other but Christ alone and again,
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I think it's important to realize that this confession of faith is written in the aftermath of the
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Reformation So what we see here is As somewhat in response to the
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Roman Catholic Church, and it's amazing to think about how some of our
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Christian leaders have fallen when we think about some of the things that are said today Think about this this question with the
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Apostle Paul commend the leaders of Islam Hinduism Catholicism or any other religion would he know?
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Acts 17 16 I referred to it earlier where He's Paul's in Mars or Mars.
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He's he's on Mars Way before the Rover shows up He's in Athens on Mars Hill and Or he hasn't got a
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Mars Hill yet to preach but he's he's in the city In Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city was full of idols so when we think about evangelical leaders who say positive things about the
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Pope say positive things about Islam say positive things about different religions and then we compare that to what
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Paul was feeling while he was in Athens Why was he provoked in his spirit? It's wrong
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He sees these idols that are set up for people to go and worship them and he says to himself.
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I'm provoked He's provoked because he knows that worship only belongs to God To the
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Father to the Son and to the Spirit not to these false Idols What the rest of the world applauded is high culture all this art and everything like that Paul saw it as idolatry and he hated it
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He hated it because God hates it the point of Romans 1 acts 17 and this section of the confession is that a person can be exceedingly religious and At the same time be completely alienated from God separated from God in Romans 1
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We trade the true God for an idol mankind does that? We don't trade the true
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God for no God RC says for atheism But for a false
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God, I mean, I love it when people tell me that they're atheists and I say no you're not You're worshiping something and what you're worshiping it if it's not the
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God of the universe It's an idol and the truth is most of the so -called atheists
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Worship their own minds the delusion of their own minds They think they're smarter ultimately than God is like Romans 1 verses 22 to 25 says this claiming to be wise doesn't that sound like Today's atheists.
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They're too smart for all this Claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling Mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Oh, they don't worship little creeping things.
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They're too smart for that. They worship Stephen Hawking and other brilliant people who don't know anything.
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I was reading Job here this week and just thinking about you know, when God kind of undresses
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Job and says were you there and tell me if you can and all these things
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About the basics of the universe and the answer is we don't know these things You know people act as if they're too smart to believe what the
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Bible says Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and Worshipped and served the creature rather than the
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Creator who is blessed forever. Amen, you know, the universe is magnificent Well, that's true
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Where did the universe come from stop worshipping the universe Worship the one who created it
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What are some other idols that humanity worships today, what's that work?
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Money Self Sports Rituals puku right here.
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Yeah, I think self -worship is a big one, right? I mean, I think it's I think it's yeah well, I think an amazing number of older people do too
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Yeah, sure Comfort is a big one. I mean there aren't any number of things that people
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Ultimately pursue with a passion that if they pursued Christ with this kind of perfection
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They would be among the preeminent theologians. I think in the world well
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Close here in a minute, but how about this idea even the God of the
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Bible can be reshaped into an idol? What do I mean by that? You could take the truth and just sort of repackage it a little bit and you wind up with a
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Lie here's one that I find that people absolutely Worship They'll say that they believe in the
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God of the Bible. They'll say that they love the Lord Jesus Christ but they will like Cut my heart out if I say you don't have free will and it doesn't matter
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How many scriptures you know you bring up? It's just like well, I don't care I have a free will and if God takes that away from me
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Then he's not the God that I believe in I'm like, well
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God didn't take that away from you Adam did Doesn't doesn't matter how upset you are about it free will unfettered unconditional free will doesn't exist
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How about this? How about God of the Bible? I love the God of the Bible But God is love and that's all
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God is I agree that God is love and Because he's loving then what he's too
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Loving to send anybody to hell. I saw there's an evangelical is making the rounds on Facebook now
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Who she's a popular singer? she's not the greatest singer of all time that would be
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Amy Grant, but She's a popular singer and she said
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This week apparently that she doesn't know if homosexuality is a sin because She's not
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God and I can buy the last part Right.
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She isn't God But what about the first part if you're a professing Christian you say well,
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I don't know if homosexuality is a sin What's your response to that?
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Crack your Bible open Let's do let's do a little study It's not hard to figure out
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But ultimately, what does that tell us about her? She doesn't want to trust the
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God of the Bible because the God of the Bible has said what he said but it's like well, maybe he's changed his mind because I know some homosexuals that are really nice people and I don't want to think that the
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God of the Bible the God that I worship would send those people to hell just for Being who they are It's huge man.
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Policing is huge, right and if you've got a platform like that, you don't want to Cut people off, you know your favorite verse becomes
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John 3 16, but Let's we'll close with this here John 3 16 and verse 17 as well for God so loved the world that he gave his only
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Son that who? Whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life
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For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world But in order that the world might be saved through him will save from what?
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If you start asking people, what do they need to be saved from? what is it the people need to be saved from the just wrath of God and He's wrathful with people because of sin and when he enumerates sin and he says that he doesn't change his moral laws don't change
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Certainly, and he says that homosexuality is a sin and that can't change.
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Well, then people need to be saved from the sin of homosexuality, but there is a
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Condemnation of the world there is Sin in the world and we don't like to talk about those things because of what
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Charlie was saying They're unpopular and if you go to a church service, you're not gonna hear, you know, your typical church you're a bigger church a
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Church that if you go to their website They'll talk about all the things that they do for you and how wonderful it is and all that What they won't do when you go in there.
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There's gonna be a six -part series about Lifting others up. There's gonna be a eight -part series about you know taking all the obstacles out of your life that preclude you from being successful, but there's not going to be a four -part series about Sexual sins in you know, the
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Christian world or those kind of things. They're not going to talk about Homosexuality and pornography and all these other issues
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They're gonna talk about things that are just Positive God will be worshipped how he wants to be worshipped and when we as a church when we veer away
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From those things then we are ultimately committing idolatry Why do we have the regulative?
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Principles because we God has told us how he will be worshipped and we try to stay between those lines
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We need it close father Thank you for your word. Thank you for the confession of faith
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Thank you for the way that it ties us To the past in the sense that The men that you have given to the church for centuries that you have given insights into your word that we can look and see what they've said and not try to Come up with novel interpretations of our own in fact when novel interpretations come up we look
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Askance at those things we are highly suspicious of those things because we know that you would not withhold any good thing
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From your people you have granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness.
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We need not stumble around in the dark You have granted us all that Can be said with regard to how you will be worshipped and how you will be honored and how you want us to treat your son
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Father teach us to come to church to come on Sunday mornings with hearts filled with a desire to sacrifice
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To worship to honor you To never leave here thinking.
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What did I get out of it? But rather what did I? Contribute to the worship of the