4 Reasons to be Thankful

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1 Samuel 15:14-31

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Colossians, chapter 1, and hold your place at verse 13.
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This week, people are going to be celebrating, they're going to be feasting, they're going to be spending time with family, and they're going to be giving thanks, they're going to say how thankful they are for family and for health and prosperity, and all those things are things that we should be thankful for if we're experiencing good health, if we're experiencing family and prosperity, then praise the Lord, we give thanks for those things.
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But as we consider this week, as we go through our study of Colossians, we come to a place in the text where we are reminded that we have more to give thanks for than often we consider, and often our thanksgiving is very anemic because it is so focused on the here and the now.
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Paul has given his introduction to this letter, he has introduced himself in verses 1 to 2, he has given thanks for the Colossians in verses 3 to 8, and in verses 9 to 12, which we finished last week, he explains how he prays for them, as Brother Mike just said, praying for them always, that he prays for them always as he prays, and this culminates in a description of what God has done for the Colossians in Christ, and ultimately I would say what God has done for every man who is in Christ.
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And he's launching today in verses 13 and 14 into a statement about who we were and who we are.
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And he gives us four reasons why we should be thankful.
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If you notice in the previous verse, verse 12, he says we ought to be giving thanks having been qualified.
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And we talked about last week what it means to be qualified and why we ought to give thanks for that.
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But the idea of thanksgiving continues into verse 13.
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As he continues this concept of giving thanks, he gives us four reasons, or four concepts about which we ought to be thankful.
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And those four things are that we have been delivered, that we have been transferred, that we have received redemption, and that we have received forgiveness.
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And so today as we consider those four things, my prayer is that we would all recognize that as we sit and give thanks, we have these four reasons for which to give thanks.
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So let's stand together and read the text.
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Again Colossians 1, 13, and 14, and I'm reading from the English Standard Version.
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Speaking of the Father, it says, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray even now that you would, as I seek to preach your word, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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For Lord God, you know that I am fallible, I am capable of preaching wrong.
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I know, Lord, my own propensities for selfishness and for pride.
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And I pray that you would empty those things, Lord, and I pray that I would be a fit vessel for the preaching of your word.
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I pray that you, Lord, would by your Holy Spirit fill this place and these people.
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And Lord God, that your Holy Spirit would be the teacher, that Christ would increase, that I would decrease.
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And Lord God, for those who know Christ, that they would understand that they have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of your beloved Son.
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And Lord, for those who are yet in the kingdom of darkness, for those yet who are still under the power of sin, that you might today set them free by the living hope that we sang about earlier, Jesus Christ, the only one who can give life to a dead soul.
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And it's in his name we pray, amen.
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The more you study the Bible, the more you realize the importance of grammar.
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The Bible is God's written word, and therefore when we want to understand something that has been written, we have to learn how words work together.
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Our Sunday school that I teach with Brother Mike Ward is teaching our children, not children, but teenagers, we're teaching our teenagers hermeneutics.
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That's what we're doing in our class right now.
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And by the way, if you're a young person who hasn't been coming, you're welcome to come to our class.
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We are going through the rules of how to study the Bible, because that is foundational to be a believer.
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It's foundational to understand how to handle this book.
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The Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
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And it begins with grammar.
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It begins with understanding how words work together.
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And what's interesting about this week is, and I will say this in somewhat of a sort of a personal note, I'm happy that we're out of Genesis in one sense.
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I loved preaching through Genesis, but the whole time I was preaching through Genesis, the last few chapters, it was so much text at a time that it was hard to deal with the minute details of grammatical differences and distinctions.
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And plus it was in Hebrew, which is my Achilles heel, unfortunately.
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Greek is much more where I enjoy studying.
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But this week, as I got to do the text, as I got to spend time with the text, I took just big sheets of paper and I began to write out all the words and I began to draw a map and I taped them up in my office.
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And if you would have come in about halfway through the day on Tuesday, you'd look like one of those conspiracy theory guys who's got the lines drawn from here to there.
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And anyway, it culminated in a chart of this text.
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And so I brought the chart with me, I put it up on the screen.
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Now I realize that my eyes are having trouble seeing it, and I imagine some of your eyes are too.
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So I apologize for it being so small.
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But I do want to sort of just help you understand that this entire passage, chapter one of Colossians verses 13 and 14, sort of revolves, this section sort of revolves around some ideas grammatically.
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You'll notice in the middle, it's the he and the us.
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The he is speaking of God the Father.
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The us in context is referring to the Colossians themselves, those who Paul has already addressed as the Colossians.
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But we could easily fit ourselves into that category because Paul is speaking not only of the Colossians, but in that sense of all believers.
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And this particular text really revolves around that idea of God and us and what he has done.
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And we find two prepositions.
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Now, for those who don't remember from school, and maybe you don't, what a preposition is, a preposition is a word that shows a relationship to another word, like with, in, out, over, on.
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Those are prepositions for, at, by.
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Those are prepositions and typically that shows a relationship to something else.
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And the two prepositions that are in this particular text, and by the way, I'm nerding out on grammar, but I'm going to show you why this is important in a minute.
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So forgive me if this sounds sort of nerdy.
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Because the two prepositions that make the biggest impact in this, or make the impact of the text, are the prepositions ek and ace.
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Ek in the Greek is the preposition which means out of.
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And we can think, easy to remember because our exit comes from the Greek preposition ek, which means to go out of.
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So exit, it comes from out of, right? And ace means into.
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And this should be somewhat familiar with us if you're Bible students because you've heard of exegesis and eisegesis, eisegesis depending on how you pronounce it, but it's the idea of reading out of the text, what's there, that's exegesis, that's good hermeneutics.
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Or reading into the text, something that's not there, that's bad hermeneutics, right? So ek is out, ace is in.
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Now if you notice again the chart, he, that is God, has done something for us.
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He has taken us out of something, he has placed us into something.
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And so we see in our mind's eye this picture of what God has done.
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But let me just stress the most important thing that we should never forget, that it is God who has done it.
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Notice the top of the chart, he, he is the one, as Jonah says in Jonah 2.9, salvation is of what? The Lord.
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You see, God is the one who has taken you out of the domain of darkness.
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God is the one who has placed you in the kingdom of his beloved son.
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It is God who did the work.
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You are not responsible for having saved yourself.
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Now you are responsible for having been a sinner.
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As one old theologian says, everything that is bad in me, I can blame on me.
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But everything that is good in me, I can give thanks to God.
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Because it was he who took me out of, and it was he who placed me into.
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And so what we find there, is we find the juxtaposition between, and this is two kind of odd words, maybe you've heard of them, maybe you haven't, the juxtaposition between what's called monogism and synergism.
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Monogism is the idea that God is the one who does the work of salvation.
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And he does it without my approval or my input.
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God saves me by his power, monergos is where monogism comes from, his power alone.
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Synergism and if you've ever worked in corporate America, you maybe have heard the term synergism or synergy, it means to work together, it means to come together and work as a team.
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Well some people see salvation as a team effort.
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That God did his part and I did my part and together we were able to arrive at my salvation.
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And most people who believe that will give God the lion's share.
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God did 99% and I did 1%.
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But let me tell you this morning, that when it comes to your salvation, you didn't do 1%.
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You didn't do 1 point of 1%.
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God has done it all and you say, but wait a minute, I believed.
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Yes you believed, but guess who opened your heart to believe? Yes you had faith, but guess who gifted you that faith by his grace? Yes you repented, but the scripture says God is the one who gives the gift of repentance.
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So yes you have done things, but you have not done anything in and of yourself.
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It is all because of him.
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He is the one who delivered you and he is the one who translated you out of and into.
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And so understanding that, we now come to these four ideas because we're going to look at four words from this text.
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Again getting back to the grammar, we're going to look at two verbs and we're going to look at two nouns.
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The verbs that we're going to look at are the verbs delivered and the verb in the ESV, it is translated transferred, but I actually prefer the King James, don't get too excited.
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But I do prefer the King James says translated because I'm going to talk about the history of that word and how that word, we often think of translation as a language thing, but the history of the word translated actually means something else.
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We're going to talk about how that means and why the King James translators chose that word.
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So we're going to look at two verbs and by the way, the person doing the action in the verbs, God, God delivered, God translated, then we're going to look at two nouns.
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The two nouns are the result of those things and the two nouns is that we have received redemption and forgiveness.
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And as I said, when we're done with all of this, my hope is that we can look at those four things and say this week, if I don't have anything else to get thankful for, if I ain't got a turkey on my table, if I ain't got a pecan pie in my fridge, oh, what a day.
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But if I, but if I don't have anything, if I have deliverance, if I've been translated, if I've been redeemed and I've been forgiven, then I have reason above all men to give thanks.
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So let's look first at the first word, the first verb, and that is the word delivered in the ESV.
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Now in our modern language, when we hear the word delivered, we often think about something being taken from one place to another.
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And that's the idea we think of like UPS delivers us packages, especially since the advent of Amazon, most of us become very fascinated with how quickly UPS can take it from them to us.
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And we think about that as the idea of being delivered.
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And that idea is certainly present here, but this word does not simply mean that.
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Because that is, that is probably the most innocuous definition of the word delivered is the idea of simply taking something from one place to another.
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No, the idea of being delivered here actually speaks of the connotation of being rescued from something.
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So deliverance here is not just, I'm going to take a package from, from place A and take it to place B.
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No, it's the idea that, that you're in danger and there is a rescue.
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Turn in your Bibles with me to Daniel, way back into the book of Daniel and go to Daniel six.
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Now this is in the Hebrew, but it's the same idea, the same word as is in the Greek.
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In Daniel chapter six, you'll remember that Daniel was caught in a difficult situation.
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The king had made an edict that no one could pray to any other God.
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And Daniel could have hidden in his house and prayed all he wanted to, but Daniel chose instead to go out onto his patio and pray before all the people.
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And that put him in a situation where he was now, has committed a capital crime.
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But the king did not want to kill Daniel.
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The king was held under oath because he had made this decision somewhat impetuously under the leadership of his advisors.
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He had made a bad decision.
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And so the king does not want Daniel to be killed, but he has to follow through with this rule that he has established.
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And therefore he places Daniel into the den of lions.
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And that's where we're going to begin in verse 16 of Daniel chapter six.
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It says, then the king commanded and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions.
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The king declared to Daniel, may your God whom you serve continuously do what? Deliver you.
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And he goes on, it says a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den.
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The king sealed it with a signet and the signet of the Lord's and nothing might be changed concerning Daniel.
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Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting.
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No diversions were brought to him and sleep fled from him.
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Then at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions and he came near to the den where Daniel was and he cried out with a tone of anguish.
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The king declared to Daniel, oh Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you serve continually been able to deliver you from the mouth of the lions.
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Then Daniel said to the king, oh king live forever.
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My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouth and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him and also before you, oh king, I have done no harm.
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So we see twice in that passage, we see twice the use of the word deliverance and that gives us a better picture of going back to Colossians, what Paul is talking about, because Paul is not simply talking about moving us from one place to another.
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He's talking about rescuing us from a place of danger.
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And so we have to ask the question, from what then were we rescued? If it says that he has rescued us out of, well what is it that he has rescued us out of? Well he has rescued us according to the text in Colossians, he has rescued us out of the domain of darkness.
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The word domain there is exousios and it means the power of darkness.
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And it's darkness because it represents evil and I did this, I don't have time to sit here and read all of these to you today, but I sat down and I went through, not everyone because it was just too many to fit on a single sheet, but these are all the places and it's very small type.
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From here to here are all the places in the New Testament that reference the distinction between light and darkness.
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And how light always represents that which is good and holy and pure and that which is related to Christ.
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And darkness related to that which is evil and hidden and dangerous and that which would be related to Satan and his demons.
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I'll read just a few passages, I don't want to read them all, but I'll just read Ephesians chapter 5 verse 8.
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You can turn there if you want, but I'm going to go ahead and read because I want to get through these.
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It says, for at one time you were darkness.
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Notice he didn't say you were in the darkness, he says for at one time you were darkness.
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Now can you feel that? That it's not just being in something, but that's who you were.
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At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
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That's powerful thought.
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He says, walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and is right and is true.
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That's what light represents.
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Good and right and true.
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And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
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Take no part in the unfruitful works of what? Darkness.
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Darkness.
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But instead expose them.
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For it is shameful even to speak of those things that they do in secret.
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But when anything is exposed to the light, it becomes visible.
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For anything that becomes visible is light.
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Therefore it says a waco sleeper arrives from the dead and Christ will shine upon you.
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That's what Christ does.
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He brings light into the darkness.
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And he exposes our sin.
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And that's the most important thing that we can know, is we can know that we're sinners.
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Because if you've never come to the place that you understand that you are darkness, you don't understand why you need the light.
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And the light shines in the darkness.
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And men love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were what? Evil.
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See, that's the scary thing, is we love the dark.
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We loved the darkness.
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You see, it's not just that he saved us, beloved, by taking us out of the domain of darkness.
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He changed us.
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He changed us from being those who dwell in the dark to those who dwell in the light.
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Beloved, we love the dark.
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According to John chapter 3 verse 19, we were unsaved.
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We were in the dark.
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The Bible says we were blind and we wanted to stay blind.
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There are those who look at this passage and they connect it to Satan.
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Because they say, Satan is the one who rules over the domain of darkness.
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And that, for instance, John Gill, if you're interested when I say there are those who, John Gill is one who would tie this specifically to Satan.
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But I want to say something about that.
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While I think that that's fine as a broader scope, to say the domain of darkness is the domain of Satan himself, I mean, he's called, you know, in the Bible, it talks about his kingdom and his angels and those things, so there's no problem with that.
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But Christ, when he came and we were delivered, you have to understand, we were dark enough on our own.
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People who always want to say, oh, the devil made me do it or devil this, you go to a lot of churches, you hear more about devil than you hear about God.
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You understand the darkness that you were delivered out of, the power of darkness was in you.
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Because you were a fallen child of your father, Adam, who brought darkness into this world when he fell and he gave that darkened spirit to every single one of his descendants.
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So the domain of darkness that we've been drawn out of, yes, is Satan involved and yes, he's one of, we talk about the three great enemies of the soul are the world, the flesh and the devil.
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So yes, certainly we can say the world, the flesh and the devil are there.
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But the domain of darkness was the domain of the wickedness of our own heart.
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We have been delivered from the power of evil.
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That's what that means.
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When it says the domain of darkness, the word domain means power and the word darkness there is a metaphoric example of evil.
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You've been saved from the power of evil.
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The power of evil was drowning you, was dragging you, was killing you, was going to take you to hell.
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Just like brother Mike prayed earlier, it was a deep ditch, it was dragging you to hell and you were delivered out of the mouths of lions.
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You were delivered out of the power of evil.
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You know, there are some faiths that try to balance good and evil.
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When I was growing up, I did martial arts, there was a season in my life where I began looking at different Eastern philosophies.
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One of the Eastern philosophies that's very popular among martial artists is like Taoism and Shintoism and things like that.
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And one of the symbols of those religions is the yin and yang symbol.
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The yin and yang symbol is based on this philosophy and it is the philosophy of Eastern religion and that is that we are not trying to eliminate the darkness, we are trying to balance the darkness.
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So that's what the yin and yang symbol represents.
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It represents a balance of light and darkness, good and bad.
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The Bible doesn't say Jesus came into the world to balance light and dark.
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It says he came to drive out the darkness and it starts in our heart.
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He delivers us out of the power of that darkness.
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And you say, but wait a minute, I still struggle with sin.
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Yes, you do, but it does not have power over you.
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You might say, it sure feels that way sometimes and yeah, it do.
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It does feel that way sometimes.
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This is why the Apostle Paul tells us to take every thought captive.
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This is why the Apostle Paul tells us that there's no temptation that's overtaking you that's not common to all men.
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And with every temptation there's a way of escape.
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This is why we are told to be holy as he is holy, because we've been delivered out of the power.
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Some of us are still paying taxes to a king we're not under.
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We've been taken out of that.
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We've been delivered out of the power of darkness.
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And now we'll move to the second thing.
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We've been translated into the kingdom of his beloved son.
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Now the word translated there, as I said, I like the word translated and I like the word translated because we think of translation as going from one language to another.
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If you were moving to Germany and you were beginning, you guys lived in Germany, Rick, you know, you had to translate from English to German, right? That's what we think of when we think of translating something.
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But the older use of this word, the concept of being translated, was taking a people out of one place and making them fit for a new place.
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To translate a people out of one area and move them into another area.
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And what's interesting is the Colossians would have understood this.
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Because there was a Jewish population, and I forgot to mention this in my early introduction to Colossians, there was a Jewish population that had been, as it were, translated into Colossae many centuries before the time of Paul's writing.
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And they would have remembered from the history of their parents telling them the story that they had essentially been migrated, if we think of how our modern use of the word.
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They had migrated there.
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And they had been translated into that place.
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And so Paul is here taking that idea, you have been delivered out of the power of darkness and you have been translated into a new kingdom.
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And by being translated, it's not just being moved.
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That's why I said it's more than just being delivered like a package.
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No, you've been fit for the new one.
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You've been translated.
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Just like a word, if I say an English word, it doesn't fit in the German language, I have to make it fit by changing it into the German language.
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You have been changed into a citizen of this new kingdom.
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I want to read from Albert Barnes on this.
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He says, the word rendered translated is often used in the sense of removing a people from one country to another, and he cites Josephus as having made that connection.
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And it means here that they who are Christians have been transferred from one kingdom to another as if a people were thus removed.
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They became subjects of a new kingdom, are under different laws, they belong to a different community and this change, listen to this, I love what Barnes says here.
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This change is made in regeneration by which we pass from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, from the empire of sin, ignorance and misery to one of holiness, knowledge and happiness.
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No change therefore in a man's life is so important as this and no words can suitably express the gratitude which they should feel who are thus transferred from the empire of darkness to that of light.
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He said there's no greater thing that you can be thankful for than the fact that God regenerated you because when he regenerated you, he took you out of the darkness, he put you into the light.
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And I want to point something else too.
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These verbs are in the aorist tense which means that both of them are an action that is completed and need not be repeated.
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It's done.
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You've been delivered and you've been translated.
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This isn't something that happens over and over and over.
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Do we get better at, well let's say get better, do we grow in our Christian life? Yes.
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Does sanctification occur every day as we grow in our Christian life? Yes.
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But you only get regenerated once.
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You only go from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light once.
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And that's the moment that he's talking about here.
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Having been delivered out of the domain of darkness, transferred, translated into the kingdom of his beloved son.
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Now let's just for a moment make a distinction here.
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I found this when I was creating my little chart, I was a little, I looked at it and I said, man it would have been great if he said delivered out of the domain of darkness and translated into the kingdom of light, but he didn't.
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He says into the kingdom of his beloved son.
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I mean that's great, don't get me wrong, I'm just thinking for symmetry's sake, when you're making a chart, you like for things to line up.
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But I realized why.
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Because one verse earlier, he says we've been qualified to be part of the inheritance of the saints in light.
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He's already mentioned the light once.
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And remember there's no verse numbers in the original.
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So he's already got the idea of the light.
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And that's in verse 12.
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And then he brings in the idea of darkness at the beginning of verse 13.
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And then he wraps it up all in the person of Jesus Christ because that's the one in whom we have been delivered.
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We've been delivered into the kingdom of his son.
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And the ESV says his beloved son, I think the King James says his dear son.
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What's interesting about that, it actually, in the original Greek, it's much more emphatic because it says it's the son whom he loves, or his son in whom he loves.
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So it focuses here that God has done this, he has done this miraculous deliverance, he's done this miraculous translation through his son because he loves his son.
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And God loved his son so much that he sent him to be our savior.
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So we have this beloved son who is the centerpiece of all of this.
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The beloved son is the focus of all this.
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By the way, salvation isn't about us.
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Salvation, we get the benefits of it, but it's not about us.
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It's about what God has done in Christ.
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That's why throughout eternity, you're not going to receive the glory of having made the decision to follow Christ.
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Christ is going to receive the glory for having come into the world, died, buried, resurrected, and living forever to make intercession for you.
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Christ gets the glory, not you.
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Christ is the center of the story, not you.
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God delivered us out, he translated us in by the power of Christ, and through Christ, and in Christ.
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And because of that, we get two wonderful blessings.
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The blessings of redemption and forgiveness.
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So let's look now at redemption.
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The idea of redemption, and remember, this is because of what Christ does.
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It's in his beloved son in whom we have redemption.
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Now the word redemption has within it the concept of being purchased.
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And probably a good way for us to think about this is when we think of, and I don't know how many of you have ever been to a pawn shop, I don't go that often, but I have been in my life where you go and you offer up something, and they give you a little money for it, and then you go and use that money to pay a bill or whatever, and then later you want it back.
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Maybe it was your favorite guitar, or maybe it was your, you know, a ring, and you need it back, and so you go in and you have to pay to redeem it.
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You have to pay to get it back.
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And that's the idea of something that's been redeemed.
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Something that is held under the bondage of a payment and is not able to be purchased unless the proper amount has been paid.
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We think about also slaves who are redeemed.
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Slaves would be put in the market, and the market would set a certain price, and the person would come to purchase the slave, and some of them would come with only the one idea, and that was to set the slave free.
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But they would pay the purchase price so that the slave could be given to that person who purchased them and then come out free.
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Redemption is something that we have now.
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Our purchase, and by the way, this is also a verb, but this one's in the present tense, and the idea is we have redemption now.
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Some people think that we're waiting for that.
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That we're waiting for our sins to be paid for.
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In fact, if you study Roman Catholicism, they don't have their sins paid for because they're constantly having to go back to the altar, and they have to go back to the Mass, and they have to continually be forgiven through the Mass, and even that, they can die unsaved, or rather, we'll say their sins not completely paid for, and thus they have to go to purgatory.
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What is purgatory? It's a place where you continually have to pay.
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Excuse me.
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The idea is payment has not been made in full.
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That's my biggest problem with Roman Catholicism, and outside of the Pope, who I think is dangerous, and we affirm against the papacy, amen? So the Pope is bad, Marianism and all the dogmas surrounding that, that's bad, but the most dangerous thing in Roman Catholicism is not that stuff.
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The most dangerous thing is they do not have a gospel that pays for sin, because in some way, shape, or form, you've got to make your payments.
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Whether it's going to Mass, or whether it's ending up in purgatory, the payment has to be from you.
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When Jesus Christ was on the cross, and most of you know this, but I'll say it anyway, when Jesus Christ was on the cross, he said a very important word, and that word was tetelostai, and the Greek word tetelostai was a word for financial transactions, and it was the word which means to pay in full.
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So if you owed a debt, the debt was completely paid, and we translate that in our Bible as it is, what, finished.
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Payment made.
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He didn't put it on a credit card, he didn't kick the can down the road, he made the full payment, taking in himself the wrath of God for sin that we deserve, filling up his cup, drinking it to the very last drop, he paid it all.
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We sang it earlier, Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe, my sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.
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And we have this, we have redemption, have redemption, verb, present tense, we have it.
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Redemption's a noun, but the verb is in the present tense, we have redemption.
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Now I have to make note of something, and I don't want to fall out of the momentum that I feel in this text, but I have to take a step back and say, this is a point where some of your Bibles is going to read a little bit different.
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Because some of your Bibles will say, we have redemption through his blood.
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Other Bibles will simply say, we have redemption, and go right into the next statement which is the forgiveness of sins.
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Now what we have here is we have what's known as a textual variant.
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And the textual history of this particular variant, the phrase through his blood, is debated by many scholars, some believe it should be there, some believe that it should not be there.
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But here's the thing that we need to understand.
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Some people have seen translations like the NIV or the ESV, and they've seen the removal of the phrase through his blood as an absolute assault against the blood of Jesus.
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I've heard people say, the NIV is a bloodless Bible.
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The problem with that argument is that if you go to the parallel passage in Ephesians 1-7, it says we have redemption through his blood, in the NIV, the ESV, and everything else, because there's not a textual variant there.
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So no one's trying to rob the blood of Jesus from the Bible, we're just trying to be honest about the history of the text.
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But let's just talk for a minute about what that phrase means, that we have redemption through his blood.
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Because it is in the Ephesians passage, so I can parallel it here and make the argument that even if it's not supposed to be in the Colossians passage, we do have redemption through his blood.
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But I want to say something, and this may get an email for me, this may get some questions, but buckle up, because it's okay.
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There are those, one of my favorite professors in school was a sweet man, and he would say this, one drop of Jesus' blood was enough to pay for the sin of all the world, and he would cite passages like this, redemption through his blood.
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Understand this, as good as that sounds, that is not the truth.
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Because it's not one drop of Jesus' blood, it's the death of Jesus, which comes through the shedding of his blood.
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It wasn't that Jesus could just come and prick his finger on a rosebush, drip one drop of blood into a glass and say that redeems the world, no.
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The blood that's being referred to here is his death.
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He died for us.
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So when we think of redemption, it's redemption through his death.
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He poured out his blood, a sacrifice for sins.
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Understand that as sweet as that sounds, one drop of his blood, it's not the point of the text.
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The point of the text is that Christ died to pay the penalty for our sin.
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So we have been delivered, we have been translated, we have been given redemption, and we have Number four, fourth thing, forgiveness.
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Is there a sweeter word? I mean, maybe love could be considered to be a sweeter word.
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But the word forgiveness, when really and truly applied, have you ever offended someone or sinned against someone and had them forgive you and know that they were being honest? Was there not a sweeter moment of fellowship when a person looks at you and says, yes, you did break my heart, but I forgive you.
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Yes, you did.
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You did sin against me, but I forgive you.
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And that transaction of not only being given forgiveness, but receiving forgiveness happens.
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That's a blessing and a wonderful idea because the idea of forgiveness is the idea of the removal of debt.
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You say, but wait a minute, redemption, you just said redemption was paying the debt.
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Yes, this is two sides of the same coin.
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In fact, in the King James Version, it says we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, because what the King James translators are doing there is they're tying together redemption and forgiveness because they both go together.
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The debt is paid, therefore the debt is done.
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Because it was paid by Christ, your ledger, which was filled with the red crimson writing of sin after sin after sin after sin has now been made clean because Christ paid it all.
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The redemption was paid and therefore the forgiveness was given.
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Again, quoting John Gill, he says this, all sin, original and actual, of heart, lip, and life.
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I just like that phrase, heart, lip, and life.
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He says of heart, lip, and life, secret and open, past, present, and to come, which lies in a non-imputation of sin, a remembrance of it no more, a removing of it entirely out of the way, a covering and blotting of it out of sight, so as to be no more visible and legible.
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Your sin is washed away.
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No more visible, no more legible.
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It's not like a whiteboard where when you write on it and then you go back over with it and you try to erase and you see the mark behind because the eraser just doesn't do the job.
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No, this is completely wiped.
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Wiped and clean and perfect.
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No more traces of that sin left behind.
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Forgiveness, complete forgiveness, amen, and thank God we've been forgiven.
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Paul is painting a picture in our minds.
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You were in the domain of darkness and God, through Jesus, has delivered you into the kingdom of light.
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And in that kingdom you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
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On the day Jesus was led to the cross, there were two men who were also there.
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There were actually three.
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There was Jesus, there was Barabbas, and there were two unnamed men.
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Barabbas was the one that traded places with Jesus, which is interesting because the name Barabbas means son of the father.
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Bar Abba means son of father, probably meaning he didn't know his father.
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He wasn't the son of Jim or the son of John, he was just the son of somebody.
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Barabbas, the son of the father, is traded for the only begotten son of God.
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And he goes up Mount Calvary and he's hung on a cross between two men.
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And the text tells us at the beginning of the day, both of the men reviled him.
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Both of the men reviled Christ at the beginning of the day.
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But at some point, one of those men was translated from the power of darkness to the kingdom of light.
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And he looked at Jesus, actually looked at the other man.
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Remember what he said? Don't you fear God? Don't you know that we deserve this? But this man has done nothing wrong.
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And he looks at Jesus and he said, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
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Beloved, that man was delivered, translated, redeemed and forgiven in an instant.
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And Jesus said today thou shalt be with me in paradise.
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If you are in Christ, you have the same blessing and the same promise as that man.
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And you have every reason to be thankful.
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If you are not in Christ, you are still under the power of darkness.
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And I would call you today under the authority of the almighty God who wrote his scripture and told us to command all men everywhere to repent and trust in Christ.
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And know this, if you repent and trust in Christ, in him, you too will be delivered from the domain of darkness, translated into the kingdom of the Son, whereby you will have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for taking us out of the domain of darkness, delivering us into the kingdom of your Son.
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I thank you for the blessing of redemption and the promise of forgiveness.
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Lord, now as we come around the table to be reminded of these things afresh, I pray, Lord, that these very words of Christ would be on our heart.
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We pray it in Jesus' name.