The Christian Worldview

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We have been, this is our fifth week, in our study of Bible memorization for evangelism.
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And we've looked at four verses so far.
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And each week, I like to be encouraged to see how many of you have memorized what we have done, because this is Bible memorization for evangelism.
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What was the first passage that we looked at in this series? What's that? Nope, that was the second one.
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That was the second one.
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The first one, 2 Corinthians 5, 21.
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And it's actually on our table throw back there.
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We wrote it across the front.
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He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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That was the first one.
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We said that was the gospel in 15 Greek words.
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The second one was Hebrews 9 and 27.
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That's right.
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He's appointed unto man to die once, and after that is judgment.
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Number three was what? Ephesians 2, 8.
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No, that was last week.
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Yeah, Acts 17, 30, which was God has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
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Last week was Ephesians 2, 8.
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My favorite verse, the verse I used to have on my bracelet when I wore jewelry, but I don't wear it anymore.
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But on my bracelet it said Ephesians 2, 8, which is what? 4, 8.
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Yep, absolutely.
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Well, tonight we're going to move to a lesson that I have entitled the Christian worldview.
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One of the things that I enjoy doing, and I don't do it every day, but I try to make it part of my daily devotional time, is I like to listen to something called the briefing.
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The briefing is an online program put out by Al Mohler.
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Al Mohler is the head of Southern Theological Seminary.
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He's the one, that's where Aaron is going to school.
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Al Mohler is, in my estimation, one of the smartest men in Christian leadership today.
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And he puts a lot of good information out.
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And the tagline for the show, the briefing, news and events from a Christian worldview.
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And I just like that term because years ago I realized, and I hope most of you know this, that worldview, how we see the world around us, becomes the presupposition for how we take in and interpret information.
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If your worldview is that there is no God, and my worldview that there is a God, that's a completely different way that we're going to look at and interpret all that goes on around us.
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The person who says there is no God, looks at the world and everything, has to have some type of naturalistic understanding.
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There can be nothing that is outside of the natural.
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We call them anti-supernaturalists, because that's what they are.
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They reject all things supernatural.
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And they are the atheists, and the agnostics, and even now the rise, and I don't know if you've heard this, it was recently put out in one of the big magazines, there is a rise in what is called the nuns.
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I don't know if you know what that means.
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Well, it's not nuns like, just for the recording sake, because you all saw me write, it's not nuns like N-U-N-S, like a Catholic nun, but nuns is N-O-N-E-S.
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There is a rise in this, and what it is, when people are asked on surveys, what is your religious affiliation, they put none.
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None.
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And the rise that we see going on in society, is that there are more and more people, in some places 20-25% of the people, that when asked, what is your affiliation in regard to anything spiritual, none.
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I'm not an atheist, I'm nothing.
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I don't care.
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It doesn't bother me, it doesn't affect my life, it's nothing to me.
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It's not important, I'm not an atheist because I don't care enough to be that.
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I'm not a believer in Christ, I don't care enough to be that.
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I'm not a Buddhist, I don't care enough to be that.
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I just don't care.
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It's nothing.
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And that is it's own world view.
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That there's nothing worth time or effort in regard to anything spiritual.
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So, having mentioned all that, the reason why I mentioned that is because tonight we're going to look at a passage which I think is, one, I think it's often misunderstood and it's misapplied, but two, I think it's so important that we understand world view significance in this particular passage.
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And hopefully it'll make sense as I go along why I have brought this up.
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The passage that we're looking tonight is 1 John 2, verse 15.
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As we do each week, we read the passage in three different translations, then I'll read it to you in the Greek and allow you to see what the words mean in the original language.
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And the purpose for that being that when you decide what translation you're going to memorize, I just want you to make sure that it's faithful to the original language.
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Unless you want to memorize it in the original, but that probably won't help you in witnessing.
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It says in the ESV, Do not love the world or the things in the world.
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If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
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The NASB says it almost exactly the same way.
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Do not love the world nor the things in the world.
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That's a stylistic difference, doesn't really change the meaning there.
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If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
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Same exact sentence as the ESV.
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The King James Version says, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
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If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
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The great thing that we see in these three English translations is there's no wiggle room.
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There's no, this is not a difficult passage to interpret.
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And even when you get to the Greek, That's do not love the world.
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Cosmon is from the word cosmos.
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And we're going to talk about that in a minute, what that meaning of that word is.
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Or the things in the world.
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That is, if anyone loves the world, not is the love of the Father in him.
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It's interesting that the word not comes at the beginning of that clause.
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We would say the love of the Father is not in him.
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But the first word in the clause in the Greek construction is uke, which is the negative.
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It's the not.
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The love of the Father is not in him, but not comes first.
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Not is the love of the Father in him.
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So, let's break down the meaning.
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Because I actually spent some time this week, Really kind of digging in to the idea of the word world.
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Because it tells us very simply, don't love the world.
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Don't love the things in the world.
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It's pretty simple.
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And yet, when we read scripture, we come to passages like John 3, verse 16.
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And what does it say? In this way, God, what? Loved the world.
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So, God loves the world, but we're not allowed to.
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So, that can be confusing.
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So, what we need to understand is the word world is in the original language.
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From the word, where we would get the English word cosmos in Greek.
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It is cosmos.
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So, it's cosmos in Greek.
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Cosmos, that word, means various things.
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In John's writing alone.
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Some linguists have indicated up to 11 different meanings of cosmos in the Yohannine corpus alone.
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The Yohannine corpus is the writings of John.
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You have the gospel of John.
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You have the three epistles of John.
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And you have Revelation, which was also penned by John.
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So, you have five books of the New Testament, which were written by the apostle John.
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And again, some linguists have come up with 11 different nuances of meaning for the word world.
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So, I spent some time finding those for you.
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Not because I want to make things confusing.
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I'm hoping to make things make a little more sense as we seek to understand this passage.
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Let me just ask this real quick.
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When you think of the word world, what do you think? Okay.
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You know where I'm going.
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System.
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Huh? Globe.
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We think of world very much in terms of we've seen it.
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The people in the Bible time had never seen a satellite image.
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So, we've seen the world.
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We know the big blue thing with the green stuff.
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You know, we know what it looks like.
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So, we say world.
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That's what comes to our mind.
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And it's very contextualized to us.
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That's what the world is.
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You said system.
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And we're going to get there in a minute.
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Because that's one of the major meanings of it.
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And obviously, the meaning here is related to that.
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What else? The earth.
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The globe.
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Okay.
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Culture.
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That would be in line with system.
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Yep.
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Anything else? People.
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The world.
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People.
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When we say the whole world came out to see the Beatles.
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We are the world.
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We are the world.
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We're part of this mankind.
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So, you can see even in English, that word can be used various different ways.
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And so, understanding that.
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Yes.
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Well, we're a very popular world.
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Yep.
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And there you have really two different meanings of world there, too.
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And so, there's any...
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And I like to think of John 17.
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The high priestly prayer of Jesus.
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Jesus said, I do not pray for the world.
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But I pray for those whom you have given me out of the world.
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So, he uses the word world there in a little different way than he does in John 3.
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When he says, for God so loved the world.
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And so, if we look at a lexicon.
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A lexicon is a tool that is used by linguists when they look at a word.
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A lexicon gives various meanings of words.
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Little deeper than a dictionary might.
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Sometimes dictionaries and lexicons work together.
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But a lexicon like Mouse's Greek lexicon has eight different understandings of just this word cosmos.
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The first one, and almost always, this is the first one.
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Orderly arrangement.
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The opposite of cosmos is chaos.
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The opposite of an orderly arrangement.
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The opposite of cosmos is chaos.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Yeah, I'm looking at it.
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I'm looking at it broad.
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We're going to narrow in on what is meant in this passage.
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I'm sort of doing a word study just to kind of help us understand what it doesn't mean.
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Okay.
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Cosmos and chaos is just how you divide the two words.
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And this is what's interesting if you look at like Carl Sagan.
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Carl Sagan was one of the most famous scientists, atheists of the last century.
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Many of you know him.
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He had the show.
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What was the name of the show? Hmm? No, no, not that.
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The name of the science show was Cosmos with Carl Sagan.
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Cosmos.
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You've heard of it? Yeah.
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It's interesting and ironic that he would call it cosmos.
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Because the atheistic worldview is that the system of the universe is random.
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And yet, how does that which is random produce that which is orderly? It doesn't.
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If you take all the parts of a 57 Chevy, put them into a big blender.
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I don't know how big it'd have to be.
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But it'd be a big blender and just blend them all up.
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How long would it take for you to spit out a fully formed 57 Chevy? It wouldn't take long.
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It wouldn't happen.
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No matter how long you mixed up the parts, it would never ever happen.
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It takes order.
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Order produces order.
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Chaos produces chaos.
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Chaos doesn't produce order.
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Now, order can break down into chaos when it's not given the right stewardship.
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But chaos doesn't become order unless intelligence is introduced.
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If you have a chaotic situation, intelligence comes in.
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It can take that which is chaotic and make it orderly.
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I'm kind of going off the rails here.
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But my point is the first meaning of the word cosmos is the orderly arrangement of things.
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The orderly arrangement of the universe.
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The orderly arrangement of the world.
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The orderly arrangement of you.
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You are orderly arranged.
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Is that what we are being told not to love? No.
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That has nothing to do with what John is saying here in 1 John 2.
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And that's my point.
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When you understand what this word doesn't mean, you start to narrow down what it does mean.
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What is John talking about here when he says, Love not the world nor the things of the world.
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We go on.
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I'm not going to spend that much time with each of these.
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The aggregate of sensitive existence would be another definition.
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Don't try to write these down.
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I'll be happy to give you a copy of it when we're done.
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There's just too many.
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The material universe.
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The earth or the lower world.
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The aggregate of mankind, meaning all mankind.
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Somebody said that earlier.
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The world makes up people.
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I think that was one of you guys.
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The public would be another for world.
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Like we said, they came out of the world and into the home.
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They went out from the public and into private.
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So we say the world is the public.
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That's another way it's used in Scripture.
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The human race, external to the Jewish nation.
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The world is that which is outside the Jewish nation.
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We're the Jews and everybody else is the world.
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That's the way that it's used in Scripture.
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The world external to the Christian body.
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So we have the world and the church.
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We talk about that.
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And then the world or material system of the Mosaic covenant.
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We see that in Galatians 4 and other places.
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Where it talks about the material system and the spiritual system.
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That which is the world and that which is God's sanctified part.
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So all of that being said.
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The part that none of that really is related to John's.
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What's related to John's is this meaning.
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The world system.
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And you already beat me to it.
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So I'm going to go back.
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The world that we're being told not to love.
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And this particular passage.
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Love not the world nor the things in the world.
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Is the world system.
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Which is by its nature secular.
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Now what does secular mean? Not of God.
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Anybody else want to take a stab at it? The word secular is actually from the 1300's.
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It's Latin and it means worldly.
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That's what the Latin term secular meant.
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It means to be worldly.
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And then you have the sacred.
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Which is to be godly.
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That which is of God and that which is of the world.
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Now when we think of secular today.
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We don't often think of worldly.
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We just think of that which is not of God.
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Right? We think of what's something secular? We think of music.
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We think there's secular music.
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And there's sacred music.
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And then there's really bad Christian music.
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No.
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You have the secular entertainment.
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You have that which would be considered Christian or sacred entertainment.
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You have the secular world.
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Most of us have.
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I'm going to say us because I don't.
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Most of you have secular jobs.
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I don't.
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Well I guess I do.
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I substitute teach.
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Oh boy is that secular.
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That's a tough.
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That's tough.
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That's a tough road to hope.
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I tell you.
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But that.
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We make that distinction.
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That which is of God and that which is of the world.
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That which is of the world is what we would call secular.
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Falls into the world system.
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Now.
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When the apostle is writing these words.
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Love not the world.
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He's not saying.
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Number one.
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That we're not supposed to love people.
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Because we are.
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We're even supposed to love our enemies.
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We're supposed to love people who are not Christians.
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We're supposed to love people who don't love us.
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We're supposed to love people who hate us.
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We're supposed to even love people who do what? Who persecute us, despise us, who hate us.
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So when he says love not the world.
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Somebody could go back to John 3 and say.
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Well Jesus said for God to love the world.
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That was all people.
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That was talking about people in John 3.
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So I'm going to apply that context to here.
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And I don't have to love anybody.
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John told me.
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I don't have to love nobody.
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Because he said love not the world.
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Obviously that's wrong.
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But when he says love not the world.
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What's he talking about? He's talking about the system.
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Which has abandoned God.
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He's talking about the system.
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Which lives outside of the commands of God.
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He's talking about the system.
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Which lives in opposition to the commands of God.
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He's talking about the world.
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Which lives with a different world view.
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He says don't love that.
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And then he goes on to add.
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Don't love the world.
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Neither the things of the world.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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But let me tell you how easy it is.
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For us not to obey this.
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We become infatuated.
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With the things of the world.
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What did you say? Star Wars.
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I thought you said Starbucks.
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I guess they both work.
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I said star something.
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The idea.
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That I guess I'm trying to get across to you.
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Is that we have allowed.
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And we have seen.
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Especially in the generation which preceded mine.
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And in my generation.
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It's exploded.
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We have seen secularization.
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Or worldliness.
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Make its way.
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Like a tidal wave.
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Into the church.
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And now.
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What we see.
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Is a body.
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Which calls itself the church.
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That cannot be distinguished.
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From the world.
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Has the same qualities as the world.
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The divorce rate in the world.
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And the divorce rate in the church.
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No distinction.
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The rate of premarital sex in the world.
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The rate of premarital sex in the church.
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No distinction.
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The rate of child abuse.
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Sometimes higher.
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In the church.
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And I could go on.
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Listing.
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List after list after list.
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So what has happened? What has happened is simple.
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The church is made up by unbelievers.
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And because the unbelievers don't abandon.
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Their unbelieving world view.
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All they do is add Christ language.
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Add Christianese.
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Into their vernacular.
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And they come in as unbelievers.
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Into the church.
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And they bring that world view.
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That secularism.
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Into the church.
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And what happens? The church ceases to function like the church.
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And it begins to function just like the world.
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And thus we give up eldership.
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And we put everything in the hands of what? Corporations.
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We turn from biblical leadership.
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To business leadership.
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We turn from biblical models of how things are supposed to happen.
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Deacons and the way they are supposed to operate.
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What do we do now? We have the business model.
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One of the words.
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And I don't mean to slam anything.
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Because this word is not necessarily bad all by itself.
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But what happened when the church started having committees? Everything became a business.
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It's always about the business.
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Years ago we started adopting the word ministry.
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Rather than the word committee.
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Because we are just trying to abandon the concept.
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The idea of this business model.
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Where everything is trying to adopt.
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Churches now have.
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They have what's that thing called? Where businesses have this statement.
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Mission statement.
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If you are a church.
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And you don't know what your mission is.
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Come on now.
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Do we have to create a crazy mission statement? Doesn't the Bible tell us what our mission is? Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
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Baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Don't we know what our mission is? Don't we know that our mission is to seek after Christ in all things? Do we have to put that on a plaque? Amenities.
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And basically what my point is.
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I found this.
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I thought it was very interesting.
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I want to share.
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17 ways.
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17 ways the church has become secular.
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This is by Matt Slick.
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Matt Slick.
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If you have never been to CARM.
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I recommend this site.
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CARM.org That is the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.
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Are you familiar with Matt Slick? I can't endorse everything he has ever written.
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Because I have not read everything he has ever written.
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He has written a lot.
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So if you come across something and you say, Hey, I don't like this.
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I might not like it either.
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That's fine.
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But a lot of what he has to say is good stuff.
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I think he is a Reformed Baptist guy.
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But he might not be totally like us.
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But anyway.
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He wrote this and I liked it.
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I want to share it with you.
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17 ways a church becomes secular.
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Number one.
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Teaching that the Bible is not inspired or inerrant.
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Now a lot of churches don't say it that way.
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A lot of churches will say the Bible is inerrant.
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But they won't teach it.
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They would rather teach anything else but the Bible.
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So it might be inerrant and inspired in their statement of faith.
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But it is not presented as inspired or inerrant in their presentation.
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Using books instead of the Bible in Bible study.
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Now I want to clarify that one.
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Because he clarifies it in his little statement too.
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That is not to say that we are never allowed to study anything outside the Bible.
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I mean we have done book studies here before on things like the holiness of God and things like that.
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But ultimately what he is saying is when we abandon Scripture for all of these other things.
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And we don't make Scripture the focus of our study.
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That is the problem.
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And that happens in a lot of churches.
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They never get around to studying the Bible.
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All they do is study little snippets of Scripture that come out of these big study books that they get.
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They get their Sunday school quarterlies or whatever.
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That have these little snippets of Scripture.
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They never get around to ingesting and imbibing whole passages of text.
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They only get the little what they call our daily crumb.
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You know.
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It is not our daily bread.
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It is our daily crumb.
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You know.
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Teaching that there is more than one way to God besides Jesus.
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That has become very popular.
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Being embarrassed to say that Jesus is the only way to salvation.
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A lot of churches will say in their statement of faith again that Jesus is the only way to heaven.
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But they won't make that stand.
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Andy Stanley who is the son of Charles Stanley who is very negative.
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I do not recommend listening to him.
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And I will call him out publicly because of some things that he has said recently.
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One of the things.
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He is very soft on a doctrine.
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He even said recently that preaching verse by verse is not right.
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You should not do that because that is cheating.
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He is ridiculous.
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But the reality is in this.
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I remember him teaching recently.
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I heard something he said.
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He is like well we believe that Jesus is God.
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But it is okay.
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It is not a big deal.
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That is a huge deal.
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That is a very big deal.
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It is not something we just believe.
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This is what we proclaim as to who Jesus is.
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He is the second person of the Trinity.
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He is God in the flesh.
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He is the almighty incarnate in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Yes this is important.
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It is hugely important.
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It does matter what you believe.
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So anyway.
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Teaching that there is no absolute right and wrong.
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That is what we call relativism.
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Being careful to not offend anyone at the expense of biblical truth.
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That has become huge.
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Pastors.
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Well I can't say that.
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Because it is offensive.
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Well what have we adopted with that? We have adopted the worldly model.
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Because if you go to a worldly corporation and you get a job.
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One of the things they make you do now is sensitivity training.
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Because they don't want you to offend anyone in your classes.
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Your training that you go to.
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So the idea is we do this in the church.
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We adopt this worldliness in the church.
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And what do we say? Well I can't say that.
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It will offend the person.
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We have to soft pedal everything.
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I hope that one thing that you understand about this church is we don't really soft pedal a lot.
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We try not to anyway.
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We try to tell it like it is.
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Even if it is hard.
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Pastors preaching moralism instead of Christ centered messages.
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That is very common.
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Approving of homosexuality.
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Approving of women elders.
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Not condemning the sins of society.
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Psychology as an authority on human nature.
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That is huge.
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Pastors have become Dr.
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Phil.
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Instead of Spurgeons and Luthers and Calvins.
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They are Dr.
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Phil and others.
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Use of politically correct terms from the pulpit.
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Where those terms replace biblical values and truths.
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That is huge.
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Like when we talk about marriage.
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We don't talk about the man and woman's roles anymore.
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What do we say? It is a partnership.
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We don't talk about the man's role as the leader.
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The woman's role to be submissive to her husband.
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We don't talk about that because that is offensive.
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Oh my goodness.
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I can't believe he said the word submit.
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Oh he is going to get struck by lightning.
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Why? We don't talk about partnership.
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Why? Because that is the world's language and we adopt that.
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Going to church is a social habit.
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Prayer is a last resort.
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Missionaries not sent out or supported.
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And I would add to that evangelists in the community not sent out and supported as well.
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Divorce statistics is common in secular society.
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And not condemning or taking a stand on the subject of evolution and creation.
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So that is his 17.
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That is not inspired.
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But that is his 17 things that he says have happened in the church.
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And I can walk you through every one of them and show you where I have seen examples of this.
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Huge examples of this.
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And what are we seeing? We are seeing that the world now has infiltrated the church.
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And so the church looks like the world.
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And now when you read 1 John 2.15 it doesn't make sense.
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It says love not the world nor the things in the world.
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And the church is going but we are just like them.
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Isn't that what grace is all about? We can live just like the world.
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Wait no.
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But that is what we think.
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That is what we think.
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And that is the problem.
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And this is why it is important for evangelism.
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Because you are going to come across people in your life who are there.
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And you are sharing your faith with them.
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And they are living like the devil.
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And they will look you in the eyes.
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And they will say but I am saved.
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I go to ex-Baptist church in ex-Water Georgia or whatever.
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And you will say but you love the world.
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You love the things of the world.
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You are obviously living in unrepentant, habitual, unconvicted sin.
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And the man will look at you and go so? My pastor said I am saved.
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That is why this verse becomes so important in evangelism.
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That is how this verse is important in evangelism.
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Because of the second clause.
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You have love not the world nor the things of the world.
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For if anyone loves the things of the world, what is not in him? The love of the Father.
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Now, that is an interesting phrase.
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And it is not all together clear what John is saying a thousand percent.
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I mean obviously we know what he is saying in a sense.
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But there are two ways to take it.
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Either the love of the Father, my love for the Father, the love of the Father is not in me.
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Or God's love for me, the love of the Father in me is not present.
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It is like who is the actor who is the person receiving the action in that.
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The love of the Father is not in him.
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Whether it is my love for him or the love that he has for me is not within me.
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Either one of those says the same thing.
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I am not saved.
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I mean do we have to make it any clearer than that? Sometimes we try to make the vernacular very hard.
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It does not have to be.
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If the person is in love with the world.
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And by that I mean this.
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The person is in love with the world system.
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In essence what you said earlier that love with his sin.
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He is in love with the sinful world system.
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And that is the way he wants to live perpetually.
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And that is the way he is choosing to live perpetually.
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Then the love of the Father.
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The love by which conversion takes place.
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Is not there.
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It is absent.
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So what does that person need? He needs five steps to a healthy life, right? He needs two steps to how to fix his marriage.
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No, he needs the gospel.
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He needs to be converted because he is not saved.
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That is the point of this passage.
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It is a difficult passage to deal with.
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Because every one of us, I imagine.
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I do not know this.
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I guess I would have to say for me.
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I know there are times when you fight a battle.
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With the things of the world.
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What is the three things that we fight against? Well, I would say the world, the flesh and the devil.
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Those three things that the scripture talks about.
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And you are right, lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, pride of life.
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But the world, the flesh and the devil are the three enemies.
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That is what I was trying to say.
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The three enemies.
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And as I have said many times.
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And some of you have not been here for this.
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So I like to use this illustration.
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If you imagine a person.
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It is a poorly drawn person.
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We often think of the world, the flesh and the devil.
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As three enemies.
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It is not how the bible describes it.
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The way the bible describes it is this.
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The flesh is the immediate enemy.
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It is influenced by the world.
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Which is being influenced by the devil.
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The flesh is influenced by the world.
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The world is influenced by the devil.
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So it is not as if I am dealing with three different enemies.
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I am dealing with one major enemy.
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Who is getting to me through my flesh.
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Which is influenced by the world.
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I sat with family this last week.
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I had a family reunion.
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Those are always fun.
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And we were talking about conspiracy theories.
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Because that is what my family does.
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I am talking about government and conspiracy theories.
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And I have one cousin or something.
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Who wants to talk about all this bad stuff.
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And I turned to him and said.
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I believe in conspiracy.
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Because there is a conspirator.
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There is one great conspirator.
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Whose purpose it is to rise up against God's people.
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And God's church.
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And that is the devil.
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So I believe.
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I don't believe that necessarily it is the Illuminati.
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Or it is any of these little crazy groups.
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Or whatever.
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That are out there.
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I don't know enough to know anything about that.
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But I know there is a conspirator.
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And I know it is Satan.
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And I know his desire is to see this world continuing to rebel against Christ.
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And it is his desire to see this world influence me.
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Not to follow Christ as I ought to.
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And to seek after things that would be opposed to Christ.
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Yes sir.
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Initially.
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Yes.
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We are born in sin.
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And we are born worldly.
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We are born with a desire for the things of the world.
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Even we see it in little babies too.
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We don't like to think.
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Oh look at the perfect little baby.
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They are not perfect.
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They are vipers and diapers.
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Is what they are.
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God makes them small.
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So they won't kill us.
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God makes them cute.
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So we won't kill them.
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But they are sinners from birth.
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John MacArthur said it right.
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He said if they were big and strong enough to kill us they would.
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In their rage they would destroy us in their madness.
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Well I think of them that way.
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Because oh it is my precious little baby.
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Or my precious little grand baby.
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They are little sinners.
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Is what they are.
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From birth.
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Well I think of it that way.
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But from birth we demonstrate our fallenness and Adam.
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So that is absolutely true.
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Well I took a lot of time.
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Let me at least read the context to you.
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And give you these blanks.
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Because the context is important here.
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Context begins all the way up in verse 7.
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The context of John really deals with whether or not a person is truly in the faith.
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The context of John uses the word no over and over.
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By this you may know that you are sons of God.
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That you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The word no is throughout 1 John.
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And he says.
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Beloved I am writing you no new commandment.
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But an old commandment that you had from the beginning.
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The old commandment is the word that you have heard.
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At the same time it is a new commandment that I am writing to you.
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Which is true in him and in you.
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Because the darkness is passing away.
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And the true light is already shining.
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Whoever says he is in the light.
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And hates his brother.
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Is still in darkness.
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Right there I just want to stop and say.
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See we are not told to hate everything.
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We are told to love some things.
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We are told to love our brother.
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So when it says love not the things of the world.
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It is not talking about our brothers and sisters in Christ.
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We are supposed to love them.
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This is where context is important.
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Whoever loves his brother abides in the light.
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And in him there is no cause for stumbling.
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But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness.
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And walks in the darkness.
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And does not know where he is going.
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Because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
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I am writing to you little children.
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Because your sins are forgiven for his namesake.
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I am writing to you fathers.
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Because you know him who is from the beginning.
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I am writing to you young men.
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Because you have overcome the evil one.
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I write to you children.
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Because you know the father.
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I write to you fathers.
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Because you know him who is from the beginning.
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I write to you young men.
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Because you are strong.
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And the word of God abides in you.
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And you have overcome the evil one.
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This in some of your Bibles is offset.
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As if it were poetry.
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I do not know if that is in all of your texts.
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But in some of them you will see it is offset as if it were poetry.
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It seems as if John is writing something that is meant to be memorized here.
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A little phraseology is used.
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Where it would be easy to remember this.
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As a reminder of how things ought to be.
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And what we are seeing is different levels of spiritual maturity.
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Those who are fathers.
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Those who are young men.
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Those who are children.
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This is not talking about physical fathers.
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Physical young men.
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Physical children.
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It is just talking about spiritual maturity.
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And we see that here.
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Verse 15.
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Do not love the world or the things in the world.
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If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.
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For all that is in the world.
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And that is where you got what Mike said earlier.
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The desires of the flesh.
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The desires of the eyes.
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The pride of life.
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Is not from the father.
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But is from the world.
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So what are the things that we are supposed to not love? We are not supposed to love those things which entice the flesh.
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To do what God would have us not do.
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That would entice the eyes.
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To have us look at things that God would not have us look at.
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Thus imbibing those things into our spirit.
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Because the eyes thus are the windows of the soul.
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They are bringing it into our soul.
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And of course pride.
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Pride is the ultimate of all sins.
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Pride is the sin.
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Because everything that we do that is a sin.
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Ultimately extends from our belief that our knowledge is better than God's.
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Our pride tells us that we know better than God.
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It's the only reason why we would do anything opposed to Him.
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Because we think at that moment we are smarter than Him.
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And it goes on.
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And the world is passing away along with its desires.
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But whoever does the will of God abides forever.
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That is not teaching justification by works.
40:02
But it is teaching this.
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The faith that justifies is a faith that works.
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So let's look at the blanks.
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One of the things we learn from this section of text.
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Is that every believer is at a different level of spiritual maturity.
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Every believer is at a different level of spiritual maturity.
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Why do I bring that up? Because when Bobby Joe or whoever rolls into the church.
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Having come from an utterly...
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And I don't know Bobby Joe that's why I mention it.
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If you know Bobby Joe, I ain't talking about the one you are thinking about.
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Whoever, person X, comes rolling up into the church.
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And they've had nothing but sin in their life.
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They've known nothing but opposition to God.
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And they roll up into the church.
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And they come to know Christ.
41:04
The Bible says they are a new creature.
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The old things have passed away.
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The new has come.
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But what does not automatically happen? Spiritual maturity.
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They are babes in Christ.
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This is one of the things that bothers me.
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Is when a celebrity gets saved.
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Not because celebrities ain't supposed to get saved.
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I'm thankful that celebrities get saved.
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But what's the first thing they do when a celebrity says he comes to know the Lord Jesus? Put him on a speaking tour.
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Why? He knows nothing.
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Don't put him on a speaking tour.
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Shut him up.
41:40
Put him in a church.
41:42
That will train him in the word.
41:44
That will disciple him.
41:46
That will help him to learn.
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To turn from his lust.
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To turn from his sin.
41:50
And to turn to Christ.
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To avoid those things which have formerly enslaved him.
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Give him brothers and sisters in Christ who will encourage him.
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That's what he needs.
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He doesn't need a speaking tour.
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He needs a shut up tour.
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So, the idea of spiritual maturity is in this text.
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And I think that's why it builds right into that do not love the world or the things of the world.
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Because as we come out of the world into the church.
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We're bringing into the situation an entire lifetime of loving the world.
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We're bringing an entire lifetime of worldliness with us.
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And it is going to take maturity for us to begin.
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Or it's going to take growth for us to mature in our faith.
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And thus we see the expression of the fathers, the young men, and the children.
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What's the role? Titus 2.
42:41
The older ministers teach the younger men.
42:43
The older ministers teach the younger women.
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That's not just age.
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Age has something to do with it in regard to teaching certain things.
42:51
But primarily it's spiritual age.
42:54
Those who are mature teach those who are immature in the faith.
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Second, as the Christian matures.
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The more cognizant he will be of his own sin.
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And the sin of the world system around him.
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The closer you get to Christ.
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The more you're going to feel like you shouldn't be there.
43:28
Because the more you're going to understand who he is and who you are.
43:32
Think of Isaiah.
43:33
Probably the holiest prophet in Israel in his day.
43:37
And when he saw the Lord seated upon his throne, what did he say? Woe is me.
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This man was probably the closest man to God in the history of his age.
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And yet when he saw God and His holiness, he was struck with reverent fear.
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Because he understood his self and his sin.
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The immature Christian.
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The immature Christian is the Christian who doesn't really understand the depth and weight of that which he does.
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Which is displeasing to God.
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I had this conversation recently.
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Why is it that I feel like if I'm growing, I feel worse? It's because you're understanding more about your sin.
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You're understanding more about yourself.
44:30
You're understanding more about God's holiness.
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And there is a sense in which that will give you peace.
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But there's also a sense in which that will give you pause.
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Because you'll say, woe is me.
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Yes sir? Older Christian.
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Yeah.
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Number three.
44:54
A person who remains committed to the same worldview he had prior to conversion.
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Demonstrates his lack of conversion.
45:08
If a person comes to Christ and they maintain the same view of the world that they had prior to Christ.
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They haven't come to Christ.
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It all comes back to that idea of worldview that I mentioned earlier.
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If we love the world system.
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We all did at one point.
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We all loved the world system at one point.
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But upon coming to Christ, we are called to turn from that and love Christ.
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And when we love Christ, we see a world system that hates Him.
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We see a world system that persecutes Him.
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We see a world system that is absolutely in opposition to Him.
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And yet we are supposed to embrace that and love it.
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We can't.
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We couldn't.
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It wouldn't be possible were we truly in Christ.
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So let me end with this thought to consider.
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Many people claim to be converted but their lives tell a different tale.
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They continue to live in rebellion to God.
46:10
Doing that which is evil and approving of those who do evil.
46:14
While God loves the world, that's His special creation.
46:18
And mankind which bears His image.
46:20
He does not love the world system which is constantly in rebellion to Him.
46:26
Those who love that system demonstrate their absence of love for God.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I pray that this has been an encouragement to us to understand what John meant when he said, Love not the world, neither the things in the world.
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And Father, I pray that we would take this passage and apply it to our hearts.
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That we would memorize it.
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That we would use it as a shield when we begin to see the world, the flesh, and the devil try to influence us.
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That when we see ourselves succumbing to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
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And I pray that this passage would glow in our minds as a reminder.
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That love for God means that we hate the world system.
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And love for the world system means that we do not love God.
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We thank You, Father, for Your Word.
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We pray that it be applied to our hearts tonight in Christ's name.
47:34
Amen.