1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (Pastor Jeff Shipley)

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1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (Pastor Jeff Shipley)

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (Pastor Jeff Shipley)

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Now I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel. It wasn't their military size.
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It wasn't the type of people. I hope today that you're not a church
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Christian. I hope today you have a reality of what it is truly to be saved, to be converted, and to know what the peace of God that passes all understanding.
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Today's sermon we're going to be in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.
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And we're going to be talking about consecration. Consecration. I screw this up every week.
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Make it work or I'm going to blow it up. Alright. Y 'all figure it out.
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Alright. Ashley. I saw Stephen in here. Where's Ashley? There's Ashley.
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You're so cute. Hey baby. How long have you been married? I'm sorry.
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How long have you been disappointed now? That's my girl.
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October? Is that when you got married? Has it really been since October? Wow. Wow.
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All the time. You know, Ashley, I married Ashley and Stephen.
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I didn't realize it's been that long ago in October. And Ashley, I've got to say, you were a beautiful, stunning bride.
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You really were. You were absolutely beautiful. Stephen, I'm glad you were there. Ashley, what were you wearing that day?
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A wedding dress. Now, have you ever worn a dress before that? Yeah.
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You've worn dresses. You've probably worn multiple dresses. Have you ever worn a wedding dress before?
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So you've worn dresses, but that particular one was separated and it was used for a specific service.
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Do you plan on wearing a wedding dress again one day? Guys. Sanctification.
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A lot of people are sitting in church and you pray and ask Jesus Christ your heart, Lord and Savior.
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A lot of you have sat in a church and you're sitting in a building and you're thinking that it's going to somehow sanctify you.
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And you say, well, Pastor, I'm not really even sure what sanctification is. Obviously, your life shows that.
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But in reality, what we don't understand is we're not called to be saved. We are called to be separated.
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Come out from among them and be ye separate, sayeth the Lord. Let me ask you a question.
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You can mark the reality and the maturity of your Christian life not by what you do only, but what you don't do.
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You can mark it by the separation gap that you have between you and the world.
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How much do you look, act, talk, smell, and walk like the world? Is there any difference in you?
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Is there people when they see you, when at your jobs, do people go, man, there's something just off about him.
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There's something weird about him. There's something, I don't know, he's a holy roller, he's a religious nut, or something like that.
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If that's what they say about you, amen. Because you have separated yourself so much from the culture there is something marked different about you before you even open your mouth, right?
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1 Thessalonians 4, verse 23 and 24, it says this,
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Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept, oh
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I love this part, blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful.
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He will surely do it. First of all, I want you to understand something about sanctification.
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It is this. It's where God calls you to be separate from your sin, from the world, and the destiny,
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Christian, of the world. My destiny is separate. We are taking a wire road.
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Me and this culture that lives, not just here in Bartlett, not just here in America, but the entire world,
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I've taken the off ramp. Jesus Christ put me on a completely different path, and the path of this destiny is not destruction.
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But I want to tell you something. God Himself is the one who did it. Jeff Shipley was incapable of sanctifying myself.
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Now, you say, well Pastor, what's that mean? How many of y 'all struggle with a private, secret sin?
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Okay, the other half of you are liars. Okay, look right here. The first thing you need to do is quit lying to yourself and everybody else for confessing your faults one to another that you may be.
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So if you want to keep playing church in 30 years now, still be sitting in a church and still be in the first grade of Christianity, keep it to yourself.
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If not, get you a little bit of what I like to call a backbone. Confess your fault to a brother, if you're a brother, and to a sister if you're a sister, and get someone to get all up in your business kicking your butt, getting ready for the coming of the
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Lord. But understand this, that first and foremost of all, separating yourself, it's going to take
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God. If you keep thinking that you're going to overcome that sin because you just had a nice little spiritual feeling while they were singing up here, or you're just mesmerized with a majestic interlude of peace because you hear my voice of course, that's going to last as long as you're in this room.
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Tell me I'm lying. How many times have you prayed the prayer, Dear Jesus, I know
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I'm a sinner. How many times are you going to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result?
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You see, what needs to happen is a complete separation. Well, Pastor, I've tried.
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That's the problem. You're trying. You're trying.
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You're not having faith in the finishing work of God Himself. There is no question in Scripture who does the sanctifying.
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Well, Pastor, now I'm confused. I know you're from Mississippi. Hang on. You see, your salvation, your justification, and your sanctification, and your glorification is initiated and completed by God Almighty.
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You know why? Because if I want something right, I've got to do it myself.
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I mean, let's be honest. Have you ever, that phrase ever gone through your head? Moms? Moms?
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Kids, go clean up your room. You come in there. There's like toys moved, but none of it put up.
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Now, personally, as a father from one parent to another, you need to tune up that rear end. But, most of the time, here's what happens.
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You just end up doing it yourself because you have a vision and you know what's right. Do you really think
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God saved you? Gave you the gift of salvation and said, Good luck,
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Skippy. I hope you make it. Because heaven would be empty and hell would be full.
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Guys, God Himself is the one that does it. And look what it says. Now, may the
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God of peace Himself sanctify you. Once saved, always saved.
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Perseverance of the saints. Assurance of a believer. All that other stuff that you try to memorize instead of actually memorizing
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God's Word. I am sanctified completely.
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What's that mean, Pastor? It means this. Though I am faithless in the justification of God, God is faithful in my sanctification.
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It means this. You will bow to the will of God or He will continue to tap -tap.
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Let me do some gentle parenting. He will tap -tap. Not spank. Tap -tap. Whatever that sissy crap is today.
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He's going to keep tap -tapping you. Or, for some of you more stubborn individuals, He's just going to take you home.
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Just going to take you home. That's He done. The lights come on. You go out.
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You're coming home. God will continually work in your life.
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If you feel like God's done with you and you and God are this far apart, that is in your mind. That is not in the
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Word of God. God will do it completely. Notice what it says.
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It says, and here's a big key for some of us, And may your whole spirit, soul, and body
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What is that called theologically? Trichotomy. I love my church.
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Trichotomy. Remember God said, Let us, in Genesis 3, He said,
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Let us go down and make man in our own image. God said, from the word go,
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A plurality of pronouns. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We are a reflection of that triune nature in our trichotomy.
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I have a mind. I have a body. Smoking. Right? I have a spirit.
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Right? I have a spirit. Now here's what most of us don't comprehend.
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In the reading of that text, May your whole spirit, soul, and body.
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You know what's amazing about this? Notice where the body is.
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Sorry, I forgot to flip the page. Notice where the body is. It is last. But most of our efforts in our life now focus on our physical nature.
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We are so enmeshed in stupid carpeting. Does this look good on me?
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Do I look fat in this? Good answer. None. Guys, we are so focused.
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We put the least important thing as the most important thing and put the most important thing in the least important spot.
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You want to know what the sanctification of God is? Understand that He is trying to sanctify your soul before anything else.
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He is pulling you and He is urging you to come and to interact with Him.
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Look at this next thing. He is God Himself who is faithful. Have you ever wondered what it's going to be like when you die?
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If you don't, wait until you're about 55 and done way too many drugs and been hit in the head too many times and have a pain in the back of your head and going, oh
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God, it's a tumor. I'm fixing to die. And you will immediately start obsessing about the reality of mortality.
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Okay? Matt, can I get an amen, right? Bill? Oh my God, Bill stays in that thing.
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I mean, Bill is like dust. Guys, I know that wasn't nice.
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I'm sorry. Guys, I sit and I worry sometimes.
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But here's what my mind does. The flesh side of me sits there and says, when
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I stand before God, I immediately start thinking of, well,
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I don't do that anymore. Or I have done this. I've done this good.
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I haven't done that bad anymore. And I immediately revert back to a religious understanding of what it takes to get to heaven.
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Did anyone else do that or is that just me? Okay, good. Good, good, good, good. I thought it needed therapy. Notice where you are in these verses.
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Is there any action of you in these verses? Or are you the recipient or the object of everything that God is already doing?
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I love it where it says there, it says, he who calls you is faithful.
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Absolutely faithful. I think about the guy on the cross.
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I mean, have you all thought about him? I know I've preached this before, but it's so perfect here.
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There were three guys. And I know church has taught you that there was a good sinner and a bad sinner.
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That is not true. If you read the Gospels, Jesus is hanging on the cross and both of them are like punk.
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Where are you at, man? If you've got to get yourself down, get us down too. And they're both making fun of them.
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But one of them, their heart changed when Jesus said this, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
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And that other thief on the cross all of a sudden went, oh man, there's something different about this dude.
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It wasn't the miracles. It was the love that changed his mind. And he sits there and says,
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Lord, with all the humility, says, Lord, now remember, you want to know about faith?
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There wasn't no smoke machines and fancy sermons and music. Right? He saw his God dying.
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And he chose to believe. He said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
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Not if, but when you come. What did Jesus say? Truly, truly, amen, amen.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, that today, you will be with me in paradise.
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And then if you read the Greek, it says immediately, the Roman soldiers came and took that man off the cross.
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They baptized him. Took an offering in which he gave money. Joined the local
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First Baptist church. And enrolled in a Sunday school program. And walked down the aisle and asked
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Jesus. Can you imagine that dude getting to heaven? I mean, think about it for a second.
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That guy gets to heaven, and if there is something there, why are you here? What church do you belong to?
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What's your view on this theological subject? Do you understand vicarious substitutionary atonement?
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No. How much money did you give? Right? How many gold stars do you have on your
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Sunday school report? Or for some of you old bats in here, how many times were you offended by someone wearing a hat or something inappropriate?
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Because that's holiness too. No sarcasm. You know what
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Dave said? The guy next to me said, I could be here.
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You see, he is faithful. That day. Nothing else had to transpire except the acceptance of that person by faith for the atoning death of Jesus Christ.
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You know what sanctification is? It's coming to a point where you realize you have nothing and are hopeless without Christ.
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Number two. Sanctification is this. It is without faith.
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Nothing but theology. Look with me if you will in Hebrews 11 .6. And I wrote it up here on the screen for you.
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Hebrews 11 .6 says this. But without faith, it is impossible to please
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Him. How many of us spend our lives trying to do X, Y, and Z to please
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God when God says the only thing you need is to have faith? Well pastor, how do you have faith?
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It's real easy. You'll know it when you're obeying God's Word. Because you can't have obedience without faith and you can't have faith without obedience.
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That's what James says. Faith without works is? So here.
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Faith looks like this. Number one. It commits. When Paul wrote this.
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You have to understand this was about 4950 A .D. This is probably the first letter that we have that Paul wrote.
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You have to understand that this is only about 16 to 17 years after Jesus ascended.
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That's it. I always laugh when I hear atheists say well those are all late letters in the 300.
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No dummy. This was written. There are things that are mentioned in here that are historical time stamps.
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We know at this time that Roman Emperor Claudius was dispelling Christians out of Rome.
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We know that. We know that in that Diaspora some of those traveled to Thessalonica and Ephesus and Jerusalem.
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But when they got there because they'd been expelled by the Roman Emperor they were all kind of like oh man don't touch them don't mess with them they're nasty.
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And so they were persecuted there. Paul sits there and he tells them they're under affliction.
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But you see these folks had something in common. They committed to something other than just believing.
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Here's why some of you are going to go to hell when you die. Here's why.
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And it's not because you smoked a cigarette or you burned a fatty for Jesus or whatever you did.
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That's not why you're going to go to hell. It's not because you didn't believe the way I believe or it's not because of any of that.
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It's because you did not put faith in the only thing that will get you to heaven and that's
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Jesus Christ. Oh but pastor I believe. Answer me this question. Do you understand what faith really is?
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Do you understand what faith really looks like? Have you ever done that trick where someone will stand up here and I say fall backwards and they just fall?
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You ever seen that? Yeah trust fall. You know what kind of trust person
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I am? I'll do it as long as I can pick the six guys that are going to catch me. Right?
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Because I ain't going to have sunshine and bubbles over here doing it because I know what will happen. Entropy.
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I'll have my broken neck. Right? Right? But you put Artie and some other hefty dudes up here.
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I'll fall. With God you just fall. And if it means your death fall anyways.
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How committed are you? Are you hedging your bets? Do you really?
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Some of you guys are so wigged out about the government. Why? They've come and gone for 6 ,000 years.
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Where are the great temples of Greece? They're tourist attractions. Where is the mighty throne room of the
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Roman Caesar? It's in dust. Where are the great powers of the earth?
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For they have faded. For God's Word says look unto Me for I am God and there is no other.
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Do you want that sanctifying faith? You've got to commit. And then this last one is this.
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You've got to rest. Man. Some of you folks, your spiritual lives are so dry because you're constantly vacillating between I'm a good
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Christian or I'm a bad Christian this week. And you just vacillate. Some of you all hear God's Word and you hear you're manipulating mommy's guilt tripping you into doing something.
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That's not how it works. Relax. What's it mean to rest in God?
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It means this. Yeah, I'm working. Yeah, I'm messing. Yeah, I'm repenting. But at the end of the day,
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I ain't worried where I'm going to end up. Someone could point a gun at my head right now and I don't want to die.
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I don't. I want to see my grandkids grow up. Right? I want to marry some of these kids that are here today.
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That's one of my dreams. I want to marry them, you know. I want to see little Ava walk down the aisle.
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Right? But even if I die before I finish this next sentence,
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I 100 % know where I'm going to be. Because I don't base it anymore on what
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I've done or haven't done. I base it on the faithfulness of God that sanctified me completely.
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Last thing and I'm done. What does sanctifying faith look like? Turn back to 1
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Thessalonians 1. Turn back to 1 Thessalonians 1. Oops.
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I screwed it up again somehow, so y 'all fix it back there. What does sanctifying faith look like?
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First of all, I want all of you in here to look at me. Real quick. Just look at me. And the sermon's almost over.
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Okay? Now some of you in here, you think you're a Christian because you asked
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Jesus into your heart. That's found nowhere in Scripture. Some of you think you're a
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Christian, and I'm looking at some of my seniors, you think you're a Christian because you're a good moral person and you asked
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Jesus into your heart 40 years ago and you hate everything that isn't a white Anglo -Saxon 1950s mentality.
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That ain't going to work for you either. Okay? Some of you know that you're a
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Christian because you have a daily interaction with Christ. But there's a lot of people in here that don't know.
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You don't have the confidence I just talked about. I need a litmus test, Pastor.
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Well, I'm about to give you one. What does sanctifying faith look like?
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Well, it's real cool. We actually read our opening text was the final prayer of Paul to a people he just defined had sanctifying faith.
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And if you look, I'm going to give you five examples of what sanctifying faith looks like.
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Chapter 1, verse 3, Paul says this, Remembering before our God and Father.
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That is a really cool sovereignty verse there and a try you nature verse. But anyways,
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Your work of faith and labor of love. Do you know what sanctifying faith looks like?
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It don't look like sitting in an air conditioning room with a Bible in your lap going amen and then nothing changes when you walk out the door.
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That looks like church religious crap. That's the same faith the
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Pharisees had and Jesus said, How will you escape the damnation of hell? It's not you believing in a church.
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I grew up Catholic. That didn't do nothing for me. My wife grew up Baptist.
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Didn't do nothing for her. It's not religion. Faith is this.
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It is a faith that works. You need to exercise that faith, church.
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If you have sanctifying faith, you're going to love your brothers and sisters in Christ. You're going to look at this group of people right here and go,
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Oh, I love these people so much. You know, and it's not just the cute fat babies like DJ or Artie.
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It's, it's, he's cute. Come on. It's, you just look at them and your heart is different and you want to serve them.
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Second thing, you push through persecution. Chapter 1 verse 6 says this,
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And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction.
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I won't do too much on this, but can I say one thing I'm proud of Witten about?
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We have gotten rid of most of the whiners. We are very blessed.
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We've gotten rid of most of the whiners. In other words, you know, the lights could be out, the floor could be flooded.
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People like, I guess we're canceling church. Witten would be like, No, we're not. We're going to meet in the parking lot. Right? I guarantee you, our pastors ain't canceling.
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Okay? We're going to figure it out. I don't have to worry and call MLG and W. I've got enough rednecks around here.
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We would make a generator, right? Right? Guys, you work through persecution.
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And some of you, listen, I know you've been wounded, and I know you've been hurt, in churches in the past.
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It's time to toughen up just a little bit, buttercup. Okay? How long are you going to use that as an excuse for your own laziness?
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Because that's what it boils down to. No, pastor, you don't really understand. Okay, I'll do this.
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I want you to take a moment, picture Jesus Christ gritting His teeth as a lash ripped the flesh from His back, and I want you to compare what you went through.
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Okay? So, you tell me. And if you still need counseling for that, call
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Carrie. Verse 7. Here's what sanctifying faith looks like.
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You're an example. Verse 7. So, you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Archaea.
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Are you an example? Now, you might be an example of stupid, but what
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I'm asking you specifically, are you an example of what a Christian should look like?
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Are you, as I said in the beginning, there's something different about you. When you're sitting around the job, and they start talking about the big boob blonde, and everybody's, that's funny, and you go, man, no, man,
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I ain't part of this. When everybody else is cursing, you're going, no,
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I ain't going to be a part of that. Do you sound and act like the world? Or is there something weird about you?
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Are you an example of Jesus Christ? Look at this. Verse 9.
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Here's the big one. Here's what sanctifying faith really looks like. And you have turned to God from idols.
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Now watch this. If there is not a better definition of repentance, I don't know what is. Because it gives both actions of repentance.
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If I'm walking with sin, if I, some of you think becoming a Christian is,
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I'm just not going to walk with that sin more. I'm not going to smoke that bowl. I'm not going to bust that line.
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I'm not going to read that. I'm not going to act like that. That's not repentance. That's you trying to re -up yourself or reform yourself.
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Real repentance is, you stop and turn away from this, turning to God.
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It's a dual thing. Not just sinning, it's not being a Christian. It's not doing this action, because by default you've turned your back on sin and turned your face to Jesus Christ.
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And then last one, verse 10 is this, and to wait for His Son from heaven.
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You know what sanctifying faith looks like? It looks like this. You're waiting expectantly.
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Now, I'm going to be honest with you. It was about 15 years ago that I actually started to understand what that meant.
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Because I have ADHD. Okay? My name is Jeff. I have
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ADD. Thank you. Keep coming back.
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Guys, I squirrel hard, man. Yeah. Yeah. I squirrel real hard.
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Right? Waiting patiently, to me, is like...
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Ask Carrie. It's like, dang. I don't understand waiting, because something needs to get done.
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Here it says, sanctified faith is waiting expectantly for the return of Jesus Christ.
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So I had in my brain had to figure out what that looks like. And I have figured out there are two different types of waiting.
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Here's the first one. Have you ever been to a doctor's office and had to wait? And I'll be honest with you, nothing chaps my backside more than paying 75 bucks an hour to sit in your office and read some magazine with sticky pages to some kid's snots all over.
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Right? Right? Most of the time, nowadays, you walk into a doctor's office, everybody's doing this.
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They're waiting. They're waiting. Yesterday, my wife, when
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I got up, I knew it was going to be a bad day. And here's how I knew it was going to be a bad day.
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Because we had out -of -town guests from Georgia coming to my house.
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Now, I don't know how your wife acts in your house when guests come over, but it's anything but pleasant for me.
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Right? Because my wife is like going, oh, let's clean the floors.
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Let's do this. Oh, my God. Brittany's going to think I'm a horrible wife if that pillow is not geometrically centered to this pillow.
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Oh, let's wash the baseboards. And then the phrase I love the best is, hey,
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Jeff, do you have a second? I'm busy. I'm working on guns or doing leather or doing something important.
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And she's cleaning the house. Now, the latter one is a great example of what a
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Christian should be. You see, if you're waiting expectantly for someone to arrive, you're busy at work preparing for that arrival because that person has worth and value.
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If you are a born -again Christian and you're expecting Jesus to return and you're more involved with the cares of the world than you are at work preparing your body and your home for the arrival of Jesus Christ, you might need to be thinking this morning.
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Just a little bit. So I close with this. Who are you waiting for?
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Who are you waiting for this morning? Do you think waiting is coming to a church building?
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Or are you so busy cleaning yourself up and inviting others to be a part of that cleanup?
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Which one are you? Now, some of you, especially some of you older folks, haven't been to this altar in 30 years.
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Maybe some of y 'all need to walk your little rear ends up here. Maybe some of you in this room, you pray to prayer or you play church, but as the
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Word of God has been spoken, it's been like the Holy Spirit going, yeah,
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I'm talking to you. You know? Now, you can do what you always do. You can suppress that and push it down and try to ignore it and walk away with it.
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It ain't going nowhere. It ain't going to go where. In fact, the
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Holy Spirit of God wrote the book on nagging. If you're a real believer and you're really under conviction,
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Holy Spirit's going to go, hey boy, hey boy, and you don't want Him to say and count to three.
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Okay? Trust me on that because He don't believe in general parenting. Okay? Where are you this morning?
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Are you truly a believer? If you're not sure, you don't know, or you doubt it, you need to come down here.
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This church ain't going to save you. Same Spirit of God that's in me is the same Spirit of God that's in Mickey.
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Obviously not the same value in looks, but it's the same Spirit of God. I can't save you. I'm just one beggar showing another beggar where to find grace.
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And where I point you to is not the Baptist traditional religion. I point you to sola scriptura, only the
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Word of God. Maybe some of you in this room, you're sitting there and you are pressed in that sin that keeps kicking your butt.
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Quit living in the secret pain. Walk up here. Find somebody and go,
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I need help. But nothing's going to change in your life until you start cleaning that house.
34:06
Okay? You need help. You're a hoarder of sin. Help someone come clean that joint up.
34:13
Alright? Maybe some of you need to join a church. Maybe some of you have been playing church so long you don't even know what a real church looks like no more.
34:23
Because you're so worried about this that you think what it's all about. Maybe some of you are so arrogant you don't think none of this applies to you.
34:31
You're the one that needs salvation the worst. I'm going to ask you to stand with me. I'm going to ask the pastors to come up front.
34:38
if God has spoken to you today, you come this morning as He leads.