Rich Pierce Clarifies, then John Samson Concludes His Series Today on the Dividing Line

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Good afternoon, good afternoon.

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Welcome to the Dividing Line. John Sampson's on the other side engineering things. Bring number nine down there,

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John, nice and easy. Very good. All right. I am Rich Pearson.

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In my comments on Tuesday, I referred to a new song by Phillips Craig and Dean titled

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Jesus, Only Jesus. And I would like to clarify some things. As I pointed out on Tuesday, that morning was the first time that I had heard that song.

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I also want to state that if it were not for not that song not being sung by Phillips Craig and Dean, I probably would have just chalked it up as just another example of songwriters who care more about emotionalism than theology.

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Hence my lack of discernment charge towards Christian music in general, as well as the stations that play it.

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In the process of defending my remarks on social media over the last two days, it was brought to my attention yesterday morning that Phillips Craig and Dean were not the authors of this song.

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That in fact, the song was written by professing Trinitarians. I don't know these men, so I can't speak for their understanding of the

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Trinity one way or the other. I have known far too many who profess to be Trinitarian, but when you inquire of them further, they respond with modalism.

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In either case, this information just muddies the water even more when it comes to Phillips Craig and Dean's involvement.

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Let's set that information aside for now. Who am I and what is my role here? Years ago,

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I would periodically sit in for James on this show. After a time, I realized that I had no business doing so.

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I am easily distracted and cannot keep focused in the face of things that frustrate me. If you didn't notice,

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I was a bit frustrated on Tuesday. If you are a regular listener to the show, you might have noticed that the periodic distractions around here are usually caused by me.

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Focus, however, is one of James's most notable gifts. I am just a layman.

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My primary role here is the administration of the ministry. I am not a backup quarterback by any stretch, and I am instead more akin to the water boy or the equipment manager, which is why

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I no longer fill in here and why I don't contribute to the blog. I know my limitations and I know my place.

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I know my gifts. With that said, in almost 30 years of doing this, I have been paying attention.

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What I didn't do and what I should have done on Tuesday was unpack the lyrics of this song to explain why

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I react the way I do to them. First, let me lay the groundwork for my thinking.

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There are three central points in the Christian faith that define it. These are essential and bare minimum.

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Who God is? Theology. Who Christ is? Christology.

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What salvation is? Soteriology. If you're not Orthodox on any one of those, you're not a

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Christian. You've fallen into some other system. The Trinity is essentially a part of all three of those.

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But what is the Trinity? Let's take a look at that for a second in brief. I promised John that I would only take about 10 minutes of his time.

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This is his time today, and I'm impeding on that, and I appreciate him giving me that room.

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The Trinity, we have the person of the Father, we have the person of the Son, and we have the person of the

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Holy Spirit. These three persons make up the one being who is God.

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They communicate with one another. They show emotion for one another. This is not one person behaving in various roles, or as the

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Phillips, Craig, and Dean statement says, manifesting themselves in various roles.

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These are three persons who make up the one being who is God. With that understanding and that knowledge, let's unpack the lyrics.

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Let me read them for you. By the way, my version that I found online is attributed to Matt Redman, but others have told me that there were others involved as well.

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Again, I don't know these people. Who has the power to raise the dead? Who can save us from our sin?

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He is our hope, our righteousness, Jesus, only Jesus. Who can make the blind to see?

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Who holds the keys that set us free? He paid it all to bring us peace,

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Jesus, only Jesus. Holy King, Almighty Lord, saints and angels all adore.

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We join them and bow before Jesus, only Jesus. Who can command the highest praise?

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Who has the name above all names? You stand alone, I stand amazed,

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Jesus, only Jesus. You will command the highest praise. Yours is the name above all names.

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You stand alone, I stand amazed, Jesus, only

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Jesus. This song asks specific questions and all of them, well, almost all of them begin with who, at least the ones

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I'm keying on. I can't say that I disagree with all of this song, but there are key points that I'm about to bring out that this is where the problem lies.

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Who has the power to raise the dead? The Holy Spirit raised

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Jesus from the dead in Romans 8 .11. It says, if the spirit of him who raised

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Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.

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Are we talking about one person who manifests in various ways?

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Or are we talking strictly about the second person of the Trinity? Either way, you've got a problem here because the second person of the

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Trinity, Jesus, only Jesus, the spirit raised him from the dead.

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There are other resurrections in scripture. Are they only by the power of Jesus, the second person of the

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Trinity? Are we to focus in that tightly in our

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Trinitarian theology? Let's look at the second person of the

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Trinity. Jesus points to the father over and over and over in his role.

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In John 14 .6, he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.

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Where's the goal? The father. Jesus, we talk about as reformed people, we talk about John 6 .37

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through 45 all the time. What did Jesus come to do? Jesus came to do the will of the father.

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Here's one that really troubles me. Who commands the highest praise? Now, I'm told that I really misunderstand this and the point that they were trying to make.

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Who commands the highest praise? In John 12 .23, we find the son glorifying the father.

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In Philippians 2 .9, the carmen Christi, sit down, read it. This is one of the earliest hymns of the church.

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We're talking about music, right? God exalts the son. And in John 8 .54,

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the father glorifies the son. I'm limited in time here. I could go on and on and on.

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The point is that the Godhead commands the highest praise.

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There's not an exclusive Jesus only here. The Godhead, and I'm going to bear that out here in the next one.

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Saints and angels, we join and bow before Jesus only

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Jesus. Revelation 5 .13 and 14, and I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and unto the

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Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever. The four living creatures said, amen, and the elders fell down and worshiped.

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I'm nearing the end of my time here. I'm going to skip that point.

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Please understand that I am not denying the exclusivity of Christ. Jesus is my

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Lord and my Savior. I'm saying that we need to be more discerning in our music and our lyrics need to express a fuller theology than what we're getting in Christian radio and in Christian music.

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It's not discerning. And when unbelievers come to listen to this, what are they being taught?

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Do we not recognize how many believers out there get their theology from their music?

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Now, I said earlier that I would come back to the Phillips, Craig, and Dean issue of their involvement. Is this the smoking gun that I made it out to be when

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I said they have come out and stated it plainly? No. No, it's not.

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But the fact is that this was written by professing Trinitarians and then recorded by Phillips, Craig, and Dean.

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In tennis, there is a play that you never want to do.

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It's called a spoon feed. It is where you respond with the ball and you serve it up to your opponent in such a way that he has the entire court to choose from in his volley.

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You spoon fed him. This was a spoon feed.

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Now, Phillips, Craig, and Dean have the ability to take all the objections that we've been making all these years and now take that muddled manifestation of muck.

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Look, the Trinitarians are with us too. They even wrote our songs. They wrote our

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Jesus, only Jesus song. How can you say we're not

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Trinitarians now? How can you say there's even a difference? I'm getting a lot of criticism over this stand.

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But as you can tell, yeah, I was wrong on a few points. My point about the song still stands, folks.

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We need to discern and we need to require those who present theology in song to do so with discernment.

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Thank you. John and I are going to switch places here now and he is going to take his place if he can get the curtain to switch.

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He's working on it. He's working on it. Oh, I think we're just gonna go ahead and switch here. Come on in,

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John. It's live.

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It's live. Definitely live. Thank you, Rich. And I appreciate not only

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Rich, but his behind the scenes work and also his pastoral heart. And that's where he's speaking from.

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And the sound theology that flows from this ministry is seen in everyone around it, including

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Rich and so appreciate that. And of course, my reaction is it never was my show.

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I'm a guest host and I appreciate any moments here on The Dividing Line filling in for Dr. James.

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Please keep praying for him. He's out in Germany, back soon. And we're excited about him coming back, letting us know all that's been taking place for the glory of God over in Europe.

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I'm going to continue talking about interpreting the Bible. And I'm going to put these headsets on because they'll hide my ears, which is always good when you're in front of a camera.

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Someone told me I had a face for radio. So there we go. In talking about these rules that I've been addressing,

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I probably started with eight or nine or ten years ago and then over decades of ministry added these other components that have helped me.

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And as I've explained here on the shows, it was working through specific texts of Scripture and applying these rules that brought me out of gross deception.

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I was a pastor in the Word of Faith movement, trying for dear life to hold on to orthodoxy.

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Now I look back and just realize how deceived I was. But God used the means of correct interpretation to one by one, verse by verse, passage by passage, show me my own error.

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I found that many are not willing to expose their traditions to the light of Scripture. Many people just say, well,

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I don't need to do that. They may not voice it in those terms, but that's the reaction. They don't want to look at John 3 .16

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again. They know it. They can quote it because they can quote the verse. They think they know everything to be said about the verse.

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And I was in shock and just absolute angst when

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Dr. R .C. Sproul first addressed John 3 .16 at a conference in Scottsdale, Arizona in the year 2000.

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And I realized the shallowness of my own interpretation in the light of him just taking two or three minutes to look at the text in its context.

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What I'd like to do here on the show is look at some passages of Scripture applying those rules.

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So this fourth session on interpretation is application. Let's look at some passages of Scripture and see what the text actually says.

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And hopefully it will be a blessing to you as it has been to me to study these things. So let's go to John chapter three for a moment.

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If you have a Bible, you can look on with me and close the laptop.

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Okay. Excellent. That'll work. That works great. Excellent. Excellent.

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Excellent. I appreciate Rich so much. And that took a lot of courage to get out in this side of the camera and appreciate all he does.

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John chapter three. And as you turn to it, if you're driving along listening, don't do that.

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Stop by the roadside if you can. But if you can open up your Bible and follow along,

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I think it'll be more helpful than simply listening. But John chapter three, we look at this text and this passage.

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And where do we begin? We first ask this question, who's doing the talking?

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Who is the author? Who is the one who is writing? And of course, being the Gospel of John, it is the

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Apostle John. And when he introduces a gentleman called Nicodemus, we ask, who's he?

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Where has he come from? And the text is clear to tell us who he is. He's of a

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Jewish nationality, just like John. And so we have two Jews talking. And that's significant for us as Gentiles to assume that the words they're using are

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Gentile -ized. What I mean by that is we take our own preconceptions about what certain words mean and then read them into the text.

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That is actually eisegesis. What we need to do is take a step back and ask this question. What would the words that we're reading him have meant to the original audience?

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And the original people in conversation were two Jews. And that's significant because as Jews, they knew their

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Old Testament. John certainly would. How much more Nicodemus?

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Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews as we read in John chapter three. Now, again, we need to look at this passage and ask questions about the context.

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And I would suggest that although the chapter and verse divisions in our

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Bible are very, very helpful, it means that we go to John chapter three and it doesn't take a long time to find a particular word or phrase, especially if we say go to verse 36 or go to verse 16.

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We can find a text very easily. I believe chapter and verse divisions are just wonderful blessings, but also terrible curses, because it often means we go to the text, look at the verse and do not even contemplate or doesn't even come to our mind what the context might be.

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I believe if we had it all over to do again, I would start chapter three at chapter two, verse 23, because that seems a more legitimate place to make a break between the end of verse 22 and the beginning of 23.

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For this reason, Jesus is exposing the fact or revealing the fact that he knows what is in man, because verse one of chapter three says now there was a man.

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And so in revealing the fact he knows all men, he's now dealing with a particular man by the name of Nicodemus.

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So let's pick up the story in John chapter two, verse 23. Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the

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Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

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That again is the context for us reading now verse one of chapter three. Now there was a man of the

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Pharisees named Nicodemus. We know a lot about Nicodemus just by this understanding that he was a

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Pharisee. He was not just a casual looker into religion. To be a

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Pharisee meant that he had gone through amazing hoops theologically to be given that status.

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It was incumbent upon a Pharisee to not only know the

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Bible intimately, what we would now call our old covenant, our old testament, but know it intimately at a level that the common layman wouldn't understand.

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He had to be beyond that. And we know that young males could quote the five books of Moses very early on in their life as a

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Jewish male. So to know the scripture more than that would be meaning he knew his

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Bible very, very well. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the

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Jews. So he was not merely a Pharisee. He was a ruling man amongst the people of Israel.

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He had authority. He was a ruler of the Jews. He had high rank.

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His knowledge was not infinite because he was a finite being, but it was vast. This man came to Jesus by night.

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I remember hearing a preacher saying we can shorten Nicodemus's name to Nick and with verse two in place, we could say this is

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Nick at night. That'll mean a lot to American viewers, but we've just lost you.

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We have just lost you. But Americans might be laughing at this point. Nick at night. There we go. Nicodemus, ruler of the

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Jews, came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

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Let's just stop for a moment. That's good theology. To do the kind of miracles Jesus was doing was an attestation of the fact that he was empowered by God himself.

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It was impossible for him to be doing this, the kind of signs he was doing unless God was with him.

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This was no charlatan. This was not some superficial, shallow kind of miracle that if you just look beneath the surface proved to be fraudulent, like many of the claims we hear even on Christian television today of a miracle taking place when you actually go behind the scenes, look at x -rays and see if there has been a legitimate miracle taking place.

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Oftentimes, there is just a shallow fact in place that and a brutal fact, a hard fact in place that there was no actual miracle.

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I believe God can certainly do miracles, but the amount of miracles and the types of miracles that Jesus was doing was so vast and so amazing and so able to be scrutinized that even those on the other side, even those who disbelieved in Jesus, recognized

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Jesus did miracles, authentic miracles, and Nicodemus had right theology to recognize

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God was with him. To be able to do the kind of things Jesus was doing, it took

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God. You cannot just make this a, you can't forge this.

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This is the real stuff. This is the real McCoy, and that cannot happen unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, and it's interesting because it's as if he cut through all of this religious red tape and just went right for the jugular and said, truly, truly,

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I say to you again in English, it reveals the fact that in our way of talking,

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I'm going to tell you something true, but it's more than that. It's an affirmation that is absolutely true, even if you don't believe it.

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It's as if how we end our prayers oftentimes by saying amen, which means so be it.

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This is true. Let it be so. May it be. Jesus began his sentences with the word amen.

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In Greek, it's amen, amen. I say to you. In other words, this is true.

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I affirm it, even if what I'm about to say, you won't believe. Jesus begins with the amen.

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Doesn't get there in the end. He already starts with the amen. Everything I say is true, but this is true. This statement is true, even if you don't believe it.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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This is priceless information. This is information that is speaking of the fact that an imperative is here.

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This is a must situation for someone to enter the kingdom of God.

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He has to be born again. And without being born again, or literally born from above, he cannot see the kingdom.

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He's blind. This goes right along with what the apostle Paul wrote in 2nd Corinthians 4.

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The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. These people are not merely short -sighted.

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They can't just see it at a distance. Blind people need more than light.

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They need new eyes. If you have a blind person who is totally blind, shining a flashlight, shining a torch, as my

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English listeners would understand, shining light in front of them doesn't help them. They need a miracle.

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They need a guide dog. They need help. They need a lot of things if they're totally blind. But one of the things that will not help is light.

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Light by itself doesn't help a blind person. They need a miracle.

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And unless someone has a miracle of new eyes, they're blind to the kingdom of God. What a statement.

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Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

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I don't believe that Nicodemus was just making a crass statement here and saying, how can it be that I need to crawl up into my mother's stomach again and go through the birth process?

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I think what he's driving at here is, I'm already a grown man, and you're talking about being born again.

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That's beyond me. And you know what? That's the point of what Jesus is saying.

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You have to be born again, and you need to be born from above. You need a heavenly birth.

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You've had a physical one, and he's about to explain that in the verses that follow. How can a man be born when he is old?

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Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? And the obvious answer to that question is, of course not.

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No, he's too big. He cannot do that. And Jesus didn't back off.

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In fact, he made it even more emphatic in verse 5 regarding the point that he was making.

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Jesus answered, truly, truly, amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the

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Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. So, unless born again, he cannot see the

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Kingdom, and unless born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom. We need to ask the question, what does it mean to be born of water and the

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Spirit? Again, bearing in mind, we have two Jews talking.

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That helps us in our interpretation. I've read a number of commentaries, and they are immensely helpful many times.

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But when we come to these verses, there's a great irregularity. I've read commentaries that speak of these verses in terms of water baptism and the fact that that's what it means to be born of water.

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And there are some heresies that would result from that, which would suggest or even say explicitly that you have to be water baptized to be saved.

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That's not in this text. And that is our Gentile preconceptions being thrown onto the text.

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That's not in the text. Two Jews, and I remember hearing a Jew explain this as he was an

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Orthodox Jew now having received the Messiah, he said, two Jews understanding this in a conversation would understand that to be born of water would mean to be born of the water of the womb.

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It's talking about a physical birth. If that's true, then

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Jesus was saying that to enter the kingdom, you need both a physical birth and a spiritual birth.

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And I believe that is a correct interpretation because of, again, the verses that follow that explain this verse that we're looking at.

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To be born of water and the spirit, I'm saying it means to be born physically and spiritually.

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You need both a physical birth and a spiritual birth. Now, here's what I'm going to say about that.

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I could be wrong because I'm not absolutely sure. And I've read many good theologians on this verse, and they suggest it could be this, it could be that.

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And then at the end of all of their theories, they say, we really don't know what these verses mean.

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Absolutely. I think I've got a good understanding of it. I think I've understood the text, but I cannot say with absolute certainty that that is the correct interpretation.

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I love it when theologians are that honest. It doesn't sell books as well because to sell a book, you need to be saying, it's this, it is this, and everybody else is wrong.

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Well, on some things, you can be dogmatic because Scripture is emphatic and has made explicit statements.

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But this particular verse, I've read Dr. Sproul, I've read a number of different people, and I enjoy it when someone of that caliber say, you know what,

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I'm not absolutely sure what that verse means. I happen to believe it's speaking of being born physically, and then you need to be born spiritually.

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But I could be wrong, and I'm comfortable saying that. Let's move on to the next verse.

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That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do you see why

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I believe the next verse that we're reading just now lends credibility to the argument that he's talking about a physical birth and then a spiritual birth?

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Why? That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That's physical birth. And that which is born of the spirit, capital

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S, is spirit, spiritual birth. So, I believe in context, there's at least that affirming attestation regarding Nicodemus, you need to be born physically, and you need to be born spiritually, born again, born from above.

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That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that's of the body. That which is born of the spirit is spirit.

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The human spirit has to be born from above if you're ever going to see or enter the

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Kingdom of God. Verse 7, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.

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Again, an imperative, you must be born again. There's an essential in place here, it has to happen.

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You must be born again, born from above. Now, you and I would expect, wouldn't you, to be then reading in the text of Jesus saying, now here's how you are born again.

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Do these three things, Nicodemus, and you will enter the Kingdom of God. It's a great thing that I'm with you.

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You do these three things, and you then will be born again. I remember

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Billy Graham wrote a book called How to Be Born Again. It's interesting. There's probably a lot of good material in there, but Jesus never answers that question or goes there except to go more into mystery the more we read.

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He does not articulate to Nicodemus, do these things, because there's nothing he can do.

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Because to be born again is to be a recipient of divine activity, and hear this, divine activity alone.

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It's where theologians get the word monergism. Mono meaning one, and the word erg, which means power, force.

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One power working is the word monergism. Your resurrection from spiritual death is an act of God, and an act of God alone.

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Monergism. It's one power working. It goes right along with the but God of Ephesians 2 verse 4.

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You were dead Christians. I'm writing to you in Ephesus, and it's true for the Christians there in Ephesus and every other place.

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Has he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also at one time walked, fulfilling the lust of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, just as the others.

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What's the next two words? But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead,

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Greek word nekros, which means dead like a corpse, even when we were dead, he made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show forth the exceeding riches of his grace towards us in Christ Jesus.

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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

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Verse four again, but God, God acted when you were dead. Verse five again, even when we were dead, he raised us.

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It's all his activity. And in John three, we have Jesus testimony to the exact same thing.

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Regeneration, when God works to regenerate the spirit of a man, the soul of a man, he makes them alive by his activity alone.

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That which is born of the flesh, Nicodemus's flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel.

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Don't be astonished that I said to you, you must be born again. And then verse eight, the mysterious nature of all of this is highlighted even further.

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Verse eight, the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who's born of the spirit. Really, Jesus? You're saying that unless I'm born again, born from above,

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I can't even see or enter the kingdom of God. And the only thing you're going to tell me about this is it's, it's like the wind.

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Don't know where it comes from or where it goes. So is everyone who's born of the spirit. But what a help is that to a guy who's not been born again?

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You know what? It's all the help in the world to realize we're dependent on the mercy of God alone.

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You and I need to recognize that in both

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Hebrew and Greek, the word for wind, breath, and spirit is one word in Hebrew, ruach, and one word in Greek, pneuma.

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And Jesus is making an obvious play on words here. The word ruach or the word pneuma means the same in both languages, wind, breath, or spirit.

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And he says the wind, the ruach, the pneuma, blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes.

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You and I don't see wind. We see its activity. We see papers flying through the streets, trees swaying.

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We see often the adverse effects of the wind with buildings crumbling under the weight of wind pressure, but we don't actually see the wind.

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And we don't know with certainty in spite of future casts out there, exactly where the wind's going to go.

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We do not know that it will arrive at 19th Avenue and Peoria at four in the afternoon on Saturday.

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We don't know that for sure. It could just take a detour. It goes where it wishes. You hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it's exactly come from, and you certainly don't know where it's going, not with certainty, even in our sophisticated day.

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How much more was that the case back then in the first century? But even with our satellite technology, we don't know where it comes from or where it goes.

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And then Jesus says, so it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit. Jesus takes all of the control regarding salvation out of the hands of man and puts it right where it should be in the revelation he's giving to us in the hands of the

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Holy Spirit. He blows where he wishes. He moves invisibly.

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And unlike wind that can have a devastating result, when the

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Holy Spirit comes, he comes invisibly and works like an expert surgeon to remove the heart of stone from an individual, put in a heart of flesh, so that they now want what they didn't want before.

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They now are alive towards God in ways they were not four seconds before.

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Some people in time can locate the time when they were regenerated or born again. Some people can say it was

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March the 18th, 1958. Others can say it was somewhere between the ages of six and eight, sometime in my childhood.

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It may not be clear to us exactly when it happened, but if you are alive spiritually, it did happen.

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And God knows exactly when it happened. I remember the great theologian from Down Under, Crocodile Dundee.

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He was asked in the movie, you can get a PG version of it, watch it.

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He was asked, in fact, he asked the tribal chief, when was I born? And the answer came back in the summertime.

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He didn't even know which summer it was. He just knew it was sometime in the summer. Didn't know which year, just knew the season.

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Could we look at that man and say, he's not really born because he doesn't know the day or the hour? Not at all.

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What we need to do is not, I remember saying, unless you, a preacher saying, unless you can mark out the exact time you walked the aisle, you're not really born again.

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Really? No. If you're alive spiritually, that's the test. That's what Scripture tells us to do.

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Test yourself to see if you're in the faith. If you're alive, it means you've had a birth somewhere down the line.

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Only people who are born are alive. And those who are alive spiritually have been born again.

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You may not, I hope that helps you. So is everyone who's born of the Spirit. When someone is born of the

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Holy Spirit, God has been exceedingly merciful. He has not wrought havoc like some wind displays do.

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He has brought redemption. He has brought regeneration. He's made us alive spiritually so that we now want what we didn't want before.

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And Nicodemus, I'm telling you this, you need this more than anything you need in life.

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You need spiritual life. You need to be born spiritually from above, and it's all in the hands of the

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Holy Spirit. Notice there's nothing in the text that Jesus tells

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Nicodemus to do, other than the fact that he has to be born again. You must be born again.

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You've got to be born again, Nicodemus. And then he says, it's all the Holy Spirit's activity.

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I think one of the things we can say to an individual who recognises his need of regeneration is to say, as some of the old timers used to say, get under the spout where the glory comes out.

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What I mean by that is, get under the sound of the Word of God. You're more likely to experience this new birth, hearing the

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Word of God, than going down to the local bar. Why? Because that is the means

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God uses to recreate the human spirit, to cause spiritual birth.

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The New Testament says, He brought us forth by the Word of Truth. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the

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Word of God. And to hear the Word of God is the right thing to do, even if you're going there with a dead human spirit, not actually wanting all that God is seeking to give you, not wanting

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Him. Yet, that is the means God uses. God uses the preaching of the

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Word, as Romans 10 makes very, very clear. How shall they hear without a preacher?

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Nicodemus said to Him, How can these things be? How can it be?

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Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, amen, amen,

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I say to you, we speak of what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen, and you do not receive our testimony.

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If I told you earthly things, and you do not believe, how can I, how can you believe, if I tell you heavenly things?

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No one is ascended into heaven, except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the

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Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have everlasting life, or eternal life.

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For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

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It's interesting, we do not know for sure if this is the continuation of just this dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus.

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It could well be that that's the case, or else John is giving commentary on this situation, and verse 16, which is the most famous verse in the

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Bible, is an isolated attestation of God's love for the world, and for the proclamation of that gospel in the

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Christ of Nazareth, the Lord Jesus Christ, whoever believes in Him should not, or will not in any way perish, but will have eternal life.

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Perhaps that was Jesus' continuing discussion with Nicodemus, we're not absolutely sure, but certainly it is the case that John 3 .16

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stands as a testimony to God's love for humanity. God's love for humanity is seen in the giving of His Son for the purpose, not that everybody will be saved, but that the one who believes would in no way perish, but have eternal life.

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For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, that was not the purpose, but in order that the world might be saved.

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We've already taken time in these sessions to talk about the fact that John uses the word world in at least 10 different ways in his gospel alone.

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He sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.

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Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only

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Son of God. And this is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.

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For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

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But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it might be clearly seen, so they may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God, wrought in God, one translation says.

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It's not works that saves us, but when you see works of coming to the light, it's the fact that God has been at work.

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He has been working behind the scenes. The physical things you see have come out of the invisible things that are unseen.

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The activity of God, the activity of God the Holy Spirit, who is working just like wind.

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Oh praise the Lord. I didn't know, but in 1980 I was in a little metal shed like building in Chester, England, where I was born and raised, and at age 14 went to a meeting.

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Didn't really want to be there. My dad had asked me to go, and I remember not wanting to be there.

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The service had just started, and I was wanting it to be over. The music was elaborate as far as I was concerned, loud and happy, and people clapping, and I didn't like it, and yet I was a little bemused by it.

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Preacher got up, he started preaching, and I didn't want to listen to him. I had no real interest. I wanted to be a soccer player.

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I wanted to, that's what I wanted to do with my life. Didn't want to be there, looking at my watch, thinking seven minutes, this is probably going to go on for an hour.

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Well, it went on for over two. Halfway through the sermon, something happened.

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That is, I became interested where I wasn't interested before, and this

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Jesus that I'd heard about all my life became attractive to me in a way that I hadn't experienced before.

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When the preachers started talking about sin, I realized he was nailing me. I thought, how does he know?

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How does he know? And he looked right at me. You know, you've probably had the same thing happen. You think the preacher's just looking at you.

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Well, I think there were only about four visitors that day, probably was, but God used that man, man by the name of Clifford Beasley.

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That name will always be welcome in my home because through the preaching of the gospel under the ministry of Clifford Beasley there in Chester, England, you know what happened?

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Something amazing happened. The Holy Spirit came and did divine surgery on my heart.

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He took out a heart that didn't want to know him and forever

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I was changed. I wanted to know this Jesus. I repented. I was convicted of my sin.

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I realized I desperately needed a savior and I wanted the savior for the first time.

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That was many years ago and I still want the savior because when God does a work, he actually changes the heart and it was all

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God's activity. I didn't see the Holy Spirit. Didn't have a vision. Only now do

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I realize the Holy Spirit blew into that little metal shed, but he did so, so graciously and he did it for me in a way that decades on I'm still marveling at the grace of God.

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And if you're born of the spirit, if you're born again of the Holy Spirit, we can celebrate what the reformers called sola gratia, grace alone, which means not merely that it's grace that is the mechanism that saved us, but it's grace that has awakened us from spiritual death by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. God did the exact same thing for you. That doctrine, that teaching of sola gratia, grace alone expresses in doctrine what

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God has done for his people in experience. It is God and God alone who saves us.

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All the credit, all, every bit of the credit goes to him because of ourselves, we would never want the things of God or the

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God who is at the end of all of these things. We would want the benefits of God without God.

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Oh, eternal life, I'd say yes to that. Oh, heaven rather than hell. Oh yeah, I don't want to be punished for my sin, but do you really want

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God? For the Christian, it would be unthinkable to go to heaven and not see

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Jesus. We want to see him. That's it. If a message was conveyed to us,

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Jesus is a way creating other worlds and galaxies for the next thousand years, but we've got plenty of entertainment for you, the swimming pools and luxury yachts and golf courses.

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That's not it. That's not what we want to go to heaven for. We want to see him and it's God who's been at work so that you want him.

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Praise the Lord. It wasn't our intelligence whereby we somehow worked it out that Jesus is the

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Christ, the son of the living God. No. When Peter said that in Matthew chapter 16,

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Jesus made it clear. You're blessed. You're blessed, Peter. You didn't get that from CD of the month.

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You didn't get that from latest Christian magazine. My father in heaven has revealed that to you.

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And on this rock, I'll build my church. Everyone who comes into the kingdom, it'll be on this rock of revelation.

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Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. It wasn't our intelligence.

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Somehow we worked out who Jesus was for ourselves or our humility. Having conquered our own pride, we're now able to humble ourselves before God and respond in faith with the gospel call.

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No, a thousand times, no, a thousand times, no. We're Christians because of the all conquering power of the mighty spirit of God who graciously stormed our hearts and worked his sovereign will.

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The Holy Spirit moves as he wills.

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How often do you hear that? You must be born again. And for it to happen, it's going to be because the

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Holy Spirit wills. He brought us forth by the word of truth, causing us to find delight in the presence of God for both now and eternity.

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That's why we can look at other passages like John chapter 11, that talks of Lazarus being raised from the dead and have a commonality with him because like him, we were dead.

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His sister in the King James Version said, he stinketh after four days. We were stinking.

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We were dead. Necros, Ephesians 2 tells us, other places, Colossians tells us, we were dead in our sins.

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There's no hope once you're dead, really dead. There are not degrees of deadness.

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This guy's dead, but this guy's really dead. Look at him. We were all, Ephesians 2 .1,

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you has he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. I once preached a sermon.

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I think I mentioned it earlier. What is it about dead do you not understand? Recognizing we would, in our free will, never have come to Christ because our will is so connected to our heart and affections.

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Unless God works by taking out the heart of stone, stone, nothing you're going to get out of it.

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Unless he does that, we can free will and we will and we would have free willed our way to hell.

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But God in his grace stopped us and said, nope, you're mine. When Jesus raised

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Lazarus, he didn't have to ask for his permission, didn't get him to sign legal forms so they wouldn't be sued once he was raised.

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I need to have your permission. I can't do this by myself. I need to have your cooperation, Lazarus.

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That would be pointless. You know why? You know why? Because he was dead. It took a miracle. It took a miracle of resurrection.

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And that is what John 3 teaches us. When we apply the rules of biblical interpretation, when we look at the text, we realize salvation is of the

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Lord. And that's the point. The point is it's out of our hands. It's the work of the sovereign spirit.

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God brought a putrefying corpse back to life, namely

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Lazarus. No one was more thrilled than Lazarus for the divine mercy he received.

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Let me quote the Prince of Preachers, C .H. Spurgeon. He wrote this, the great king, immortal, invisible, the divine person called the

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Holy Spirit. It is he that stimulates the soul or else it would lie dead forever.

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It is he that makes it tender or else it would never feel. It is he that imparts power to the word preached or else it could never reach further than the ear.

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It is he who breaks the heart. It is he who makes it whole. He, from first to last, is the great worker of salvation in us, just as Jesus Christ was the author of salvation for us.

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That's from a sermon called Things That Accompany Salvation. You can find that at spurgeon .org.

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Amazing grace. Do you know the writer of Amazing Grace knew this? Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

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Some people hear this and they say, that doesn't sound sweet, if you ever understand sovereign grace.

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It is because God has not only worked in your heart, but he's allowed you to see what you were blind to see before.

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Not only the beauty of Christ, but the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation. I believe it takes a work of grace for us to even see this because many who are inside the kingdom try to squeeze a little bit of the component of man, a cooperating part.

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We call it synergism. Any kind of synergism that says

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God has to have my approval for him to work. He didn't with Lazarus and he didn't when he raised you from the dead.

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If he needed your cooperation, let me ask you this, how much cooperation would a dead man give?

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Not a lot. The only thing we bring to the table of salvation is our sin and God raises sinners from the dead.

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This is more powerful than any physical miracle. It's much more of a creative act of God than to have even physically new eyes being put in your head.

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When Paul writes about this in 2 Corinthians 4, it confirms this exact thing.

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It's God, it's God who has done this. In fact, let me just close with a quote of Paul from that passage.

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2 Corinthians 4, you he made alive who were dead.

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2 Corinthians 4 says, even if our gospel is veiled, verse 3, it is veiled only to those who are perishing in their case.

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The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

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For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

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For God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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What's the message here? Paul is alluding to Genesis chapter 1, the initial act of creation when

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God said, let there be light. And the same God who said, let light shine out of darkness, he's quoting

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Genesis 1 there, has shone in our hearts. It's a creative, active miracle of God where God says, one day in the hearing of the gospel,

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Lucy, let light shine in your heart. John, let light shine in your heart.

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Malcolm, Teresa, whatever your name is, let light shine in your heart.

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And immediately you are made alive and you want what you didn't want before.

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That's what John chapter 3 is teaching us. I love the word of God.

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I hope you've enjoyed this brief journey as we've gone to John chapter 3 and looked at a couple of other passages too, but I hope that your thirst for the word of God is increasing.

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I hope with these 18 rules we've talked about, you'll embrace them and apply them in your

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Bible studies. It's been a joy to come to you. I've written these 18 rule lists at my blog at effectualgrace .com,

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E -F -F -E -C -T -U -A -L grace, all one word, .com. You can look at them there.

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It's been a delight to come and be able to host this show and let's welcome

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Dr. James White back next week. It's been a joy. I hope I get to do this again sometime.