WWUTT 662 Fight the Good Fight?

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If you follow false doctrine, what will happen is you'll be deprived of the truth and become depraved in mind.

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But if you follow the true gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, you will become a man or a woman of God when we understand the text.

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You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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And don't forget our website, www .utt .com. Here's our host,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We continue our study of 1 Timothy 6, and today we'll be looking at verses 11 through 16.

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The Apostle Paul writes, But as for you, O man of God, flee these things, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

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Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

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I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time. He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the

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King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.

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To him be glory and honor and eternal dominion.

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Amen. Boy, what a high and lofty paragraph that we just read there.

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Paul begins by addressing Timothy as, O man of God. He says, as for you,

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O man of God. Now, this is not only a great compliment that Paul makes to Timothy, calling him a man of God, but there is also a load of responsibility in that title, because Paul is equating

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Timothy with the prophets of the Old Testament. That's exactly what he means by calling him that, because it was a common title for a prophet in the

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Old Testament, to be called a man of God. Moses is the first one to be referred to as man of God.

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In Deuteronomy 33 .1, this is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the people of Israel before his death.

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Samuel is referred to as a man of God multiple times in 1 Samuel, and the place where we see this title come up the most is in 1 and 2

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Kings. Over 50 times is that term man of God used, and it's pertaining to a person who is a prophet of God, to whom the word of God has been revealed that he must speak to the people.

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And so the word of God has been given to Timothy. It is what we have in the scriptures.

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He has been entrusted to take this word as spoken by the apostles and build up the church in Ephesus.

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And so having been given this charge, Paul calls Timothy man of God. You have every bit as much responsibility in that church in Ephesus to speak the word of God that has been given to you by the apostles as any of the prophets in the

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Old Testament were responsible to speak the word of God that he gave to them to his people.

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That's what Timothy is supposed to do. And by the way, my friends, that's what I do. Any person who is in that position as a pastor to communicate the word of God to the people of God, they are a man of God.

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And likewise, you, as you go to the world with this word, so that those who hear the gospel would repent of their sin, they would know about the impending destruction that is coming upon the world because of unrighteousness.

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And they are warned and told if you turn from your sin and you worship Jesus Christ, you will be saved.

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And they respond to that message and they follow it. You likewise have become a man of God in your testimony of that message or being a woman, a woman of God, if you have proclaimed this message to the world.

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So as men and women of God, we are responsible to live in godliness, live in a godly way.

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If we are going to be called the people of God, we must live as God has called us to live.

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So addressing him as man of God, Paul goes on to say, flee these things.

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Flee what things? Well, the things he just talked about. We were talking about what develops in a person when they do not have the sound gospel of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. If they follow any other different doctrine, they're a conceited person. They have no understanding for the knowledge that they have is worldly and is going to pass away with the rest of this world.

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They have a craving for controversy. They quarrel over words. They are envious.

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They are divisive with one another. They're slanderous.

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They have evil suspicions. They think little of who should be their brothers and sisters in Christ.

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And there's constant friction among them and the other people that they mislead, depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

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Imagining that godliness is a means of gain. I have this faith so that I can gain of the world, so that I can gain the world's goods.

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And if anybody desires to be rich, they fall into temptation, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

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So Paul warns Timothy, flee from these things. Instead, pursue this.

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This is the godliness that results from pursuing the gospel of Jesus Christ, from believing the gospel, obeying it, responding to it, growing in it.

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Then you will be a person who pursues righteousness, godliness. Godliness is just very simply being like God.

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You desire to be like God. Jesus said in Matthew 5, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

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Yes, that's a tall order, but you want that, do you not? Because you love

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God and you are pursuing God? Then you want to be like God. It doesn't matter to you that becoming perfect is unattainable as long as you are in this flesh.

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And perfection only comes when we are made to be like him because we will see him as he is, as talked about in 1

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Timothy, or I'm sorry, 1 John 3, 2. And as Paul said to the Philippians, our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like his glorious body by his power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

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This is when we will truly attain that perfection, but you still pursue that perfection because Christ who is perfect has made me his own, and so therefore

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I desire to be like him. You are pursuing those things even though the perfection will not come until the end, but we strive for it, fixing our eyes on Jesus.

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As I mentioned yesterday, the author and the perfecter of our faith, we pursue righteousness, and as I was helping my kids understand what righteousness is, so we've been going through the

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Beatitudes and memorizing the Beatitudes. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

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So I asked my kids, what is righteousness? Well, the best way to understand righteousness is that first word, the first part of the word there, right.

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So what is righteousness? It's doing what is right. What God has said is right.

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Pursue righteousness. Pursue godliness, desiring to be like God. Faith, growing in your faith.

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It wasn't enough that you simply professed a belief in Jesus Christ, but that faith and repentance are ongoing in the life of a believer.

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Love, you are growing in love. This is something that the Apostle Peter said in 2

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Peter 1, is a confirmation of the calling that you have received in Christ Jesus.

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When you are growing in brotherly love, steadfastness, you are all the more sure of your faith today than you were yesterday, even more certain of the promises of God tomorrow than you were today.

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You are growing in steadfastness, with an unshakable faith.

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And the more you grow in this steadfastness, the less and less things are discouraging to you.

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You will still mourn as you live in this flesh, but you are not discouraged and your hope is not shaken because it is hidden with Christ in God in glory, where you know you will be on the day of redemption.

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And then finally, Paul mentions gentleness. And in the next letter, when we get into 2

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Timothy, which, God willing, we'll start next week, in 2 Timothy, Paul says to him there that the

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Lord's servant, speaking of a man in the context of this that would be a pastor, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting opponents with gentleness.

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And so even here, Paul encouraging Timothy to pursue gentleness.

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Yes, we're going to have disagreements. Yes, we must call out false teachers, point out their errors so that we might point them and others who have been misled to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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But when we do that, it must be with gentleness. We cannot be name -calling, we cannot be reviling, we cannot be putting down.

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And there's a lot of that going on. Even when it comes to calling out false teachers and preaching the truth,

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I'll see those who claim to be big on discernment putting their opponents down and name -calling and bashing them over the head with even slandering their opponents and accusing them of things that they actually are not guilty of and think that they're completely justified in doing that because, hey, the opponent is a false teacher and I need to call them out.

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Reviling cannot be the weapons of our warfare. We must even correct the false teacher with gentleness.

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For as Paul goes on to say there to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 .25, it is God who grants repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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If a person's going to feel like dirt because of the truth that we proclaim to them, let it be because the

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Holy Spirit convicted their hearts, not because we called them bad names. So, Timothy must be gentle in even his correction of the false teachers that he's being sent to Ephesus to call out and even remove them from their positions so that no different doctrine is being taught.

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But he does this with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3 .15, Be ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you, but do this with gentleness and respect.

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Paul goes on with Timothy to say, verse 12, fight the good fight of the faith.

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Fight the good fight. So, once again, this is a battle that we are fighting, but the weapons of our warfare, as Paul says in 2

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Corinthians 10 .4, are not of the flesh, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds.

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In Ephesians chapter 6, you know about putting on the whole armor of God. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood,

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Paul says, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

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Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm.

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Have that called a steadfastness right there once again. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

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In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

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Praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. You kind of get the sense that as Paul is instructing

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Timothy in these things right here, he's calling to mind the whole armor of God that he had already written to the

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Ephesians about in a previous letter. And so here he's reminding Timothy of those things when he tells him to fight the good fight of the faith and that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but it is the sword of the spirit.

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It is the word of God that we use to fight the devil and his evil schemes.

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We fight against temptation by clinging to Christ and we fight against false teachers by pointing others to Christ all according to the word of God.

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Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

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Take hold of it. This isn't a foreign thing. This isn't somebody else's deal.

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This is yours. This is your faith. This is your belief.

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Take hold of it. Own it. Make it your entire life. There is not an aspect of your life in which the truth of eternity in Christ has not infiltrated and affected you in every part of your being and every single thing that you do.

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Let it be your all in all that nothing of this world will satisfy you because your heart longs for eternity.

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Make the most of the opportunities you have but use the things that God has given to you, your opportunities and even the stuff that you have been given to glorify his name and advance his gospel.

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Let everything that your heart desires be eternity where Christ is.

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No passions of the flesh. No material goods. Not money. Not the love of money.

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Not craving the stuff of this world or fame or acclaim or popularity or anything else.

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But let the longing of your heart be the eternal kingdom that we have been promised in Christ Jesus as an inheritance if we endure to the end.

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That's Paul's encouragement for Timothy and I say that even in the present tense because it would be my encouragement for you as well.

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Take hold of eternal life to which you were called. When you heard the gospel of Jesus Christ you were called to it, to believe it and you believed it because the

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Holy Spirit had affected that calling in your heart. Everybody who hears the gospel has an external calling of the gospel upon their lives.

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It's that external call to turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ and follow him and you will live.

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Everybody who is within earshot of that has an external calling of the gospel but it is only the

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Holy Spirit that effects that calling in your life. The effectual calling of the gospel that causes a person to actually turn from their sin and believe in Christ affirming that they were elect from the foundation of the world to hear this gospel and believe it and be called out from the world to become part of the people of God.

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Timothy was called and made the good confession. He affirmed that in his life he was predestined for salvation in Christ in the presence of many witnesses.

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This is what baptism is supposed to be in the church. Baptism is that confirmation in front of many witnesses that I have made the good confession of the faith.

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It's not by coming down front and responding to an invitation to come pray a prayer.

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The location of your body has nothing to do with whether or not you are saved.

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Just because you move from your pew to the front of church or from your seat to the front of the crusade or whatever it is that has not saved you.

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It is because prior to hearing the gospel your heart was in sin and it was in damnation and after hearing the gospel you have turned from all of that and instead want to pursue the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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That's your salvation because the Holy Spirit affected a change in your heart to respond to the gospel where previously you were an enemy of God by faith in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross and resurrection from the grave you have been made into a friend of God.

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And many witnesses affirm that this was the case for Timothy just as in baptism before a church the entire church affirms this confession in the life of a believer.

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Verse 13, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession.

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Very simply, Jesus proclaimed the truth to Pilate knowing it would cost him his life and so like Christ we must also proclaim the truth of the gospel though it may result in our persecution.

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We must keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Meaning that we ourselves and in our conduct we must live in godliness so that we show with our lives that we practice what we preach.

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We believe what we are preaching so much that it has changed our lives so let our lives be a reflection of the gospel that we proclaim.

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Keep it unstained and free from reproach. And the gospel is a commandment by the way.

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Verse 14, keep the commandment unstained. The gospel is a commandment because there is a call to obedience when the gospel is proclaimed.

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Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand as Jesus himself said in Matthew chapter 4 beginning his earthly ministry so that call to repentance is a command of the gospel.

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Show in your very life that you have repented of sin and you are a follower of the

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Lord Jesus Christ who will return again at the proper time he who is the blessed and only sovereign the king of kings and lord of lords who alone has immortality.

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Referring to Christ here who is God and as God he dwells in unapproachable light whom no one has ever seen or can see but it is

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Christ who reveals God the father to us and we will see him as I mentioned before 1

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John 3 2 when we are made to be like him and then we will see him as he is.

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To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

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Christ reigns forever and the promise that we have been given is if we endure to the end we will reign with him.

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Revelation 3 21 Jesus said the one who conquers I will grant him to sit with me on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne.

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Fellow heirs of the kingdom of God and we will reign forever with him all who believe in his name and again

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I say Amen. Thank you for listening to when we understand the text.

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Pastor Gabe is the author of several short books on the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Topics include the deity of Christ, original sin, resurrection,

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Christ's incarnation and many more. Find these books in our bookstore when you visit www .utt

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.com Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in God's word when we understand the text.