02-28-2021

Park Meadows Church

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All right, let's look at this right at the end of chapter nine, because we always want the context as we go into chapter 10.

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And you remember, you didn't have chapters in the original. So that's been added. So a lot of times, you wonder why they put the chapter where they did, because it's still the same thing, you know, the same part of the letter.

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So let's just look at this. What shall we say then that the Gentiles which followed not after righteousness have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness, which is a faith, and he's talking to a mixed crowd of Jews and Gentiles, and he's trying to make the

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Jews jealous, actually, because the Gentiles, a lot of them are seeing the light and receiving Jesus as their personal

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Lord and Savior, and the Jews are sitting there looking at it all. So here he says,

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Well, here you had the Gentiles that knew nothing of the law knew nothing of God's ways, and they're being saved.

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And then he says, but Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness has not attained to the law of righteousness.

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So here you have the Jews in the crowd listening. Now imagine, you know, preachers used to make people angry when they preach nowadays will make them happy.

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So they'll pay for the bowling alley and the church and all the property, and won't leave. So we hope you don't leave.

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But used to, they just told the truth. And what he's saying is, look, you guys, my gin, he was a

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Jew, Paul was a Jew, of course, my brothers, what you're doing is you're seeking righteousness in the wrong place.

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Because you're trying to achieve righteousness by being righteous, and it's not going to ever work.

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And we'll talk about that more in chapter 10. That's why I wanted to sort of review this a little bit. So you know, you have to have those of the next verse, wherefore, here's why the

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Jews missed it. Paul says, because they sought righteousness, not by faith, but as it were, by works of the law, for they stumbled at the stumbling stone.

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Now, who is that? Jesus is the stumbling stone, and that terminology was used in the

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Old Testament, and the Jews out there in his crowd knew that. As it is written, behold,

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I lay in Zion a stumbling stone, a rock of a fence, that's Jesus, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

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Now, it's kind of interesting, because what we're going to look at here in a little bit is there is a certain desire to believe that comes into the heart of the believer.

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If you remember, we talked about that last time. And where does that desire come from? What causes this desire?

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Well, it's interesting, because 14 times that I could count in the

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New Testament, when Jesus was speaking, he said, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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So I want you to think about what that means, because it's not talking about just hearing the sound waves. The Greek word means hearing with understanding.

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So Jesus is saying, he that has the ability to understand what I'm saying, let him hear, and he that doesn't is just not going to understand it.

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So why is that? Why is it some people hear with understanding, other people cannot? And that's the question we're asking, okay?

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So another question I want to ask you as we jump into chapter 10 here, what makes the gospel actual good news?

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For example, what does gospel mean? It means good news, right? And we're saved by two things.

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Only two things Jesus lists, same two things Paul lists, and that is the water and the spirit.

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The water is a picture, is an allegory of the word of God, the written word. And the spirit doesn't have to be the written word, it could be you quoting the scripture, but it's the word of God is the water and the spirit is the

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Holy Spirit. If you don't have those two elements, there is no salvation, there is no born again experience. The modern church today has developed a churchy type of salvation where you come down the aisle, you repeat a little prayer after someone and they now say you're saved.

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That is not how salvation works anywhere in the Bible. That is a modern concept that's unbiblical and dangerous.

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The good news about that is that if you had the desire for Christ and you came down that aisle and they told you to do that, they can't undo your salvation, right?

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Because it's between you and the Lord, it already happened in the pew before you came down here. And that's part of what the lesson today will be about.

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We talked about it a little bit last time out of chapter nine, but we're going to see it again in chapter 10 in a minute, which is really amazing stuff.

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If you haven't seen it before, I think you'll go, you'll have an aha moment today. But my question is what makes the gospel good news?

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Would it be good news if the Lord said in the Bible, here's what I want you to do to make it to heaven is

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I want you to be a good person your whole life. What would you think about that?

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How many of you were born in this world, good people who never had to be spanked? How many of you have kids, right?

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You got to teach them to be bad or do you have to kind of work on that badness?

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It's natural. You probably, if you're a modern mom, you probably call it inquisitiveness or they have a leader.

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They're going to be a leader. They have leadership qualities. I say that as a grandpa all the time about my grandbabies, right?

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Not that they're bad. They're perfect. They never get a spanking at my house. That's for sure. Hope they're not listening.

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All right. So, be a good person your whole life, would that be good news?

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Why not? Somebody tell me, why not? Huh? Well, you can't, you're not good.

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That's why. We're not good. Okay. So, what if we said, well, here's the 10 commandments, just keep those.

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What about that? Well, if we're not good, we're not going to keep the good commandments, are we?

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So, you can name, all right, how about this, come to church, get baptized in our water and tithe regularly.

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How about that? Forgetting to heaven. Why wouldn't that work? I like the tithe part. Why wouldn't that work?

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Huh? City water. No city water. And the city water has critters. You didn't hear all that whole story, did you?

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You don't want to hear the story. I have to tell it anyway. I have, I like,

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I've got a fish aquarium, had one since I was a kid. And so, it gets a little bit low and you got to add some water, right?

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So, the water had been off for eight weeks, it felt like eight weeks, eight days in Mahea, longest eight days of my life.

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But finally comes on and they got a boil warning, you're not supposed to drink it unless you boil it. Now, I'm wondering, is that really going to help?

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And I'll tell you why. Because I put this three -gallon bucket in the tub and filled it up, you know, about a day after the water came on and put it in my fish aquarium and topped it out.

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Went about my business and came back later that evening and the light had come on and I looked and my fish were like little bass hitting things, like eating stuff.

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And I looked real close and these little white things were floating all in there. And they're hitting them and eating them.

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And I look real close and they look like baby shrimp, but they're not, so who knows what they are?

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That's in the drinking water in Mahea, Texas. Thank you very much. The fish were thrilled because they're meat eaters and I'm always giving them fish food, which is probably vegetables.

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They don't like it. So, man, so I had been brushing my teeth with that water, washing my hair, it goes in my ears, my eyes, left my nose, my mouth.

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And so then I had to share with the family, you got to still be careful for a while.

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That was amazing. What does that have to do with this? Nothing, except I don't think getting baptized is going to make you clean.

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Good point. I would say that was a great illustration. I spent hours thinking that up for today's sermon. All right, so now we're in chapter 10.

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Remember, it's all just one letter, so forget about the chapter title. So it says, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.

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Now, why would we start this out with the question, what makes the gospel good news?

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Well, to me, it's the fact that you don't get saved by being good and you don't get saved by keeping the law and you don't get saved by being a good church attender and a good church member and all that.

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None of that saves anybody. Why is that good news? Because you can't do it.

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In the scripture, anywhere you see the law given, somewhere, if you read far enough, you're going to see the word from God saying, and you need to keep all of it.

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That's there in every context. If you read far enough, everywhere the law is given, you need to keep all of it.

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That's the problem, because we fall short when we try to keep it. When we try to be good, you know,

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I remember Brother Otis, one of my mentors who's in heaven now, you sit right over there where Bill is.

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And one time at coffee, I asked him, you know, what do you think is the best way just to be a good man?

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I just want to be a good man. And he said, Brother David, that's the worst way to think of it.

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He said, don't go about, you know, trying to think about quitting this sin and that sin and not doing that, not thinking that, he said, it'll never work.

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Because the minute you think about it, you're thinking about it. So he said, what you need to do is just fill your day up with good things and serve people and fill your day up doing good, and then you won't have time to do bad.

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He took a sip of coffee. There's a lot of wisdom in that, right? But the point is, we can't be perfectly good.

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And we, you know, if we did the things God told us to well enough, we still wouldn't make it. I mean, how are you supposed to pray, right?

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That's one of the things we're supposed to do. Do we pray enough? Do you pray for everyone in this church every day? Do you pray for them every week?

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Do you pray for everyone in your family weekly even? See, we don't, if prayer would get us to heaven, we fell short there.

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Church attendance, you know, that's going down the tube nowadays in modern

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America. Used to young people, when they started having babies, they'd get in church because they want to raise them right. Now they're, now they start having babies and they got soccer club and they got all this stuff, you know, what do the little girls do?

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Jump around like monkeys. What do you call that? Yeah, gymnastics. And you, like, you're all over the place and you're too busy to go to church because that's the one day you can rest.

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Am I right? So everything's changing and it's not changing towards more church attendance.

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So that's not going to save us. So, I mean, if the gospel said we had to do those things and do them right, not only count the things we're not supposed to do, but what about doing enough of the good things we are supposed to do?

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We fall short on both ends of that. So he says, I hope Israel will be saved.

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And why is he saying that? Because they think that you're saved by doing good works. That's exactly what they thought. The crowd of people before him thought that.

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They had a works system of salvation. We have a lot of Christian groups that say, oh, we believe in Jesus. But and that's always dangerous when you put that in there.

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But you also have to come to church regularly. But you also have to get baptized. But you also have to repent.

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But you also got to do and they name tons of things. And in reality, none of those things save you. All of those things are just effects of the salvation.

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And it's just the Holy Spirit and the word of God that God uses to save you. And then you're regenerated.

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And then there's a lot of effects. Yeah, then you do repent and then you do have faith, genuine faith, Jesus's faith.

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And then you do want to be around other church people. All of that comes as effects. So it's all messed up.

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And these people are very similar to Christians today. Christians today love the idea of a list of rules to keep.

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And it just won't get you saved. And really, that's the good news is that that's not the plan.

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For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. Now, we shouldn't just read through this thing and just zoom on into the good stuff here in this chapter, because there's a lot of good stuff in this chapter.

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But we need to think about that a minute. How many friends do you have that are zealous for the

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Lord, but they believe all kinds of different works, systems for salvation or some admixture of faith plus works?

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Most people believe that, believe it or not, they like you ask the person if you died, they where would you go? If they say this, if they say, well,

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I hope I go to heaven, then that proves they believe it works. And you got to do something to help God save you.

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And they're thinking, well, I hope I did enough. And that's why they say, I hope. So that's the modern use of hope, not the biblical use of the word hope.

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And that's wrong. Well, I think I'd make it because my grandpa was a preacher. We talked about that last time.

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That doesn't work either. Does it get saved by genealogy? So these people, part of the people in his crowd had a zeal for God because they were in church that day.

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Not so much in a little church like this, but in a larger church like maybe Northside or First Baptist or First Methodist, some of the bigger churches, even

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First Baptist, Mahalia, where I grew up years ago. You got a big enough group of people where you're going to have three kinds of people in that crowd every time you're going to have goats, which are people who will never get saved.

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You're going to have lost sheep who are running with the goats, but someday they will get safe and you're going to have saved sheep. And that's all there are other than the angelic world.

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So you're preaching to all three groups, usually I get the good fortune of preaching, you know, to people that you at least look saved to me.

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So it's not so not so scary, you know, and the ones you that don't look like you could ever be saved, you're probably the most saved, right?

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Like Brother Rob, but anyway, you know, I was going to say that. All right.

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So these people had a zeal for God, but look what he says, not according to knowledge. So let me ask you a question.

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How important is knowledge to you getting saved or being saved?

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It's very important. But remember, do you remember the two ingredients? What are they again? The water and the spirit.

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And what is water pictured? The word. Where do you get the knowledge? From the word.

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You cannot get saved without the word of God. Now, what if you're only getting it from preachers that are teaching false doctrine?

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Showing you a false method of salvation, like come down the south, repeat this after me, dear Jesus. Put your hands together.

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Come on, put them together. I hear just last week I heard one had everyone in the room, everyone, everybody in the entire church.

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Please put your hands together. Pray this with me. And the music was playing in the background. It was beautiful music.

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That's why I was listening to it. It's because of their music. Lord Jesus, I give you my life.

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I give you my heart, my soul. Come into my life and save me today. I mean, surely some of them were already saved.

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Why are they praying this prayer? You know, because it's their formula. It is so frightening.

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It's no different than this. They're not informed by the word of God. They're informed by false preachers. And Jesus said, the closer we get to the end.

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And I don't know if you've noticed or not, but we are way closer since January the 6th than we were to the end.

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And they're going to be more false prophets, he said. And none of us think they're false because they're dressed like me and look true like me.

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I can barely get that button anymore. All good preachers are gluttons.

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But anyway. Not according to knowledge, let's think about that.

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OK, so number one, he mentions they have zeal without knowledge. The zeal can fake everyone out into thinking that they're saved, including themselves.

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They have a zeal for God. What? Well, they're in church. All right. Then he goes on and he says this.

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For they being ignorant of God's righteousness. And going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves into the righteousness of God.

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So now we know there are two kinds of righteousness, at least from man's viewpoint, two kinds of righteousness.

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There is self -righteousness where you do something to be right with God.

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And there is God's righteousness, which they are ignorant of. In other words, they don't have knowledge about that yet.

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They don't know about it. They haven't been informed about that. So now you have two kinds.

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All right. So there is the wrong kind of righteousness. And let's talk about it a little bit over here in Romans, chapter three, verse 10, as it is written, there is none righteous, not one.

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So if you think just being born in this world, being a good person is going to get you there, that's the wrong kind of righteousness. You see, that's the that's ignorant of God's righteousness.

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Going back to establish your own righteousness, that doesn't work. Then it goes on and says there is none that understands none that seeks after God.

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So you say, well, I'm just I'm zealous for the Lord. I have a zeal for God. Is that enough to get you saved?

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No, because the Bible says there's no one that has real actual, at least not in their natural state, you know, before prior to salvation, prior to the regeneration, no natural human man, woman, boy or girl.

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None of them have a true zeal for God. It's just because they don't understand the knowledge.

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It's without knowledge. They don't understand God's plan of salvation. They don't understand the gospel properly.

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And they have to have the word. And the Holy Spirit has to come along and open their eyes and their deaf ears and quicken their spirit and bring them alive before they'll understand it anyway.

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And now that's not in the modern gospel at all. No one talks about the calling anymore that you actually have to be called by the

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Holy Spirit or you never get saved. And that that has to come first before you do anything. Because while we were yet our sins, has he quickened us?

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That means brought us to life. It's all about him and you. It's not about stuff doing things. All of that's the effects of it.

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It's not the cause of it. And as Charles Spurgeon said so wisely, an effect can never be the cause of the cause.

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So there's none that understand it. There is none that seek it after God. They're all how many people is that in the human race?

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That's the entire race. They're all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable to whom their boss.

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Who are we talking about? They're unprofitable. Who are they supposed to bring profit to? That is not a hard question.

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Come on, wake up. God, whose business is this? This is all God's business, even the secular stuff we call secular.

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It's all his or it's not worth being involved with. And we're unprofitable to him. We bring him nothing.

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In the natural state, right? There is none that do it good. Oh, you mean this system that these this crowd is talking to?

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At least part of the crowd, the Jewish part of the crowd where they're going to seek to be a righteous person. It says here there's none that do it good.

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So God doesn't consider the good stuff they're doing as if it's good, does he? Major problem.

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So when we look at the wrong kind of righteousness, let's talk about that a minute. And then back in the scriptures, we just looked at it, talked about the right kind.

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We'll talk about that. We have time. Romans three, 19. Now, we know that what things over the law say, it says to them who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped.

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And all the world may become guilty before God. So God, so the apostle Paul presents this to the

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Jews in the crowd. He says, look, you got the law, Moses, and God didn't give that to you to save you.

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He gave that to you to show you how far from righteous you really are. Isn't that kind of what that says?

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The whole world becomes guilty before God when they look at the law and look at themselves before the law of God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, by doing good stuff, by trying to keep

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God's commandments, there shall no flesh be made right with God in his sight.

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That's what justified means. Justified means that God makes you as if you've never sinned in his own eyes.

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He sees you as if you never sin. There is no man that finds that state by attempting to be righteous.

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Now, that seems like a conundrum, doesn't it? Attempting to be a good person and be righteous never brings anyone into a right state in the eyes of God.

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Almighty, holy, pure, perfect God. Because we'll see later why if I get to it. I don't know how many sermon when

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I when I run out of material, I'll study, you know, all day Saturday.

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And I don't know how many weeks of stuff I have. So what I'll do is like if you get tired, just look really sleepy.

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And that's when it's over. And we'll pick it up next time. OK, it's over now.

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All right. So by keeping the law, shall no flesh be made right in God's eyes?

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Whoa. You think the Jews in the crowd knew that? Do you think most Christian friends you have know that? For by the law is the knowledge of sin.

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It just lets you know you're not going to get to heaven. So where's the boasting then? Now, the

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Jews were big on boasting about how righteous they were, weren't they? You know, they want to pray in front of the whole city where everybody can see and pray.

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They want to put their money in in the coffers in the town square so everyone can see how much they put in there.

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And where's the boasting then? Paul says, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it's totally excluded from true salvation.

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So by what law are you saying the works? Nay, but by the law of faith. Now, the

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Jews are scratching their head and the Jews are going, I've told you so. I mean, the Gentiles, the Gentiles are going, I've told you so, and the

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Jews are scratching their heads because the Gentiles knew they were filthy because the Jews told them how filthy.

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They called them dogs. They called us dogs. Still do over in Israel. You know, a true

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Orthodox Jew would look at you with disdain because you're not a Jew. So it was a surprise to them that you're not saved by doing righteous works.

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Therefore, here's the conclusion. We conclude that a man is made right with God. That's what justified means.

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It means to be made and counted as if you're righteous. We conclude that a man is justified by faith without.

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And that word without you been here very long. You know, we've studied that one word, and that word means a great gulf.

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Like in the rich man went to hell and and he said, go tell my kin, folks.

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You know, Abraham, go tell my kin, folks back on earth to not live like me because I don't want him to come here. And he said, well, you know,

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I can't come to you because there's a great gulf between heaven and hell. That word is the word there for without.

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Isn't that interesting? So there is a great gulf that God has put between salvation by faith and people that believe in salvation by works.

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The faith is here. The works are over here. There's a gulf in between. And the works have nothing to do with the cause of salvation.

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Only the faith does. And even the faith doesn't cause it. It's a an effect of it.

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Now, that one's that'll throw you if you've been listening to typical preaching in the south of the

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United States of America, that will throw you because you thought you were saved by faith. Well, in a sense, you are.

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But it's not your faith. It's Jesus's faith. And it's a gift of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians two, eight, nine and ten. It is a gift, a free gift where God gives you

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Jesus's faith because your faith is hit and miss about the time God doesn't answer your prayer in about three minutes.

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You have doubt. So that kind of faith is what you can work up in your mind, human faith.

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That doesn't save anybody back. Hebrews chapter ten, the last two verses prove that. So it's a different kind of faith.

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It's a God given gift where he gives you Jesus's faith, which is real, which can walk on water, which can move mountains from the mountain to the sea and can change lives and change everything.

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It can even save your soul. And that's what it does. And once you have that, then there are many effects because all of a sudden your your brain, what would you call it?

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Brain originated belief, you know, that you think up in your brain. It comes alongside the true faith

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God gave you, the faith of Christ. And it resonates with it. So that's a that's an effect. You want to repent?

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That's an effect. Repentance means change your mind about who's God. It means, you know, you're not anymore. You know, God is.

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That's an effect. Getting baptized in water. There's a baptistery right back there. That's an effect. Going to church is an effect.

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Doing good things is an effect of your salvation. None of it causes it. That's what Paul's telling these people.

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We conclude that a man is justified by faith without a great gulf in between that and the works that you guys think save you.

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You see what he's saying? Wow. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also God of the

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Gentiles? Yes, the God of the Gentiles. He's telling that to the Jews because they did not think God would save a Gentile. That's why

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Paul said Jesus died for all men. He didn't mean for every individual. He meant for all kinds of men.

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And in the Greek, the word pas for all means a few from every group.

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It's a different, a little bit different word than in English. Seeing it as one

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God, which shall justify the circumcision, that's the Jew by faith and the Gentile through faith.

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I did a study on that, wondering why it says the Jew gets saved by faith and the Gentile gets saved through faith.

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And I couldn't figure it out. Spent hours on it, never figured out. So Dave, Jeannie, figure that out for me.

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I'm serious, because they probably will. Or anybody, if you figure that out, let me know. Bill, put some thought into that.

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That's a good breakfast question. Five years ago, that was one with me and Otis, and we didn't figure it out.

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Yet. Yet. Always add yet. Because otherwise you quit studying something.

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All right. Now, let's let's think about this a minute.

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A lot of times the Apostle Paul, who didn't have a New Testament yet, the

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Holy Spirit was using him to write most of it. He had an Old Testament, and that was the word. That was the water of the word that he used and that God used in his life and other people to be saved at that time.

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So let's take a look here at Isaiah 64 and verse four. For since the beginning of the world, men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen,

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O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waits for God. There's a beautiful promise.

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You cannot even imagine what God has waiting for you guys and me, too. All right.

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So please do not go up in the rafter without me. You can't imagine what this is going to be like when we get into that dimension.

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And we'll still recognize one another. We'll have a body, but the body can't die.

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The body will never be ill. That's why it says with his stripes, we're healed, you know, and saved and everything else.

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So we can't even imagine. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness.

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Those that remember thee in thy ways, behold, thou art wroth, for we have sinned.

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In those is continuance and we shall be saved. And you're going, huh? At least that's what I said when I first read that.

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Anybody want to come up and exegete that one? Don't you think that was a little difficult, that last verse?

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I mean, to me, it was required a little bit of study and asking the Holy Spirit, what in the world are you talking about here?

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But it's interesting because what the Lord is showing very quickly, very concisely here is the same thing

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Paul was talking about. And Paul is informed by this scripture, by the way. And that you cannot get saved by acts of righteousness.

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In fact, God is angry with you already. If you're part of the human race, God is already angry with you because you're part of a race that has none seeking him.

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All have gone their own way. There's none that seeketh God, not one. There's none that's good, not one to a holy God. He's already angry or filled with wrath.

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He's wroth. He's filled with wrath toward you. But right in that same.

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So that's talking about depravity of man, isn't it? The great doctrine of the depravity of man in the same verse.

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It comes right back and says. And those some some of the same people, though, part of the same group of Jews is what this is picturing.

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Is continuance and we shall be saved. So if you were to read that verse, does it imply that you're saved by being a good person and pleasing

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God? It is not because it's saying God is angry with you because you're not doing well, isn't it?

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It's interesting. It helps to look the words up in the Hebrew. If you look at continuance, this is fascinating to me.

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I know it's not to you, but some of you, I mean, kind of like math. But it's all wrong.

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And the reason it's interesting to me is because that is the same Hebrew word for eternal.

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It's the only well, it may be more than one, but that's the only one I know that I remember for eternal along.

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And it comes from the idea. Greek is interesting. I mean, sorry, Hebrew is interesting because it always builds word pictures rather than just a quick, sharp definition.

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It builds word pictures and you got to get all the pictures together in your head to fully understand the word. You say, well, that's not very precise.

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It's not. But what it does give you that the Greek doesn't is that it gives you a whole lot more pictures than you would have had it been precise.

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So you can there's so much embedded in the Hebrew. You can learn for years by reading the same verse. Literally, especially in the

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Old Testament, true in the New Testament, too, because the Holy Spirit wrote it. But look at this. It comes from the idea of something that's concealed or hidden that no one knows about.

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No human knows about this. Secondly, it can mean the vanishing point or you could say this way, time out of mind.

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So you think about if you go to Genesis one, one, where everything that we know of began and you step one step before that was just God.

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Right. The father, the son, the Holy Spirit. That's it. Now, maybe we had some angels already, probably, because I know

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Satan showed up pretty quickly after Genesis one, one, didn't he? So you probably had God.

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And at some point he created the angelic beings in heaven and a place we call heaven. But really, you have to ask the question.

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Bill, you can help me with this, but if Genesis one, one is where time and space and matter began, don't you have to have a place to put the demons in?

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So I think maybe between Genesis one, one and chapter three, you might check on that,

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Matt, that'd be awesome. I think I just saw Katie run by there. They'll be all right.

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OK, you must have had the creation of the angels somewhere in there. Did you have to have a space to put them in?

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So but before that, there's a time where there's just God. There's no space. There's nothing. It's just God.

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And God has love among the father, son and the Holy Spirit because he is love. That's one thing that proves the

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Trinity. You can't just be one thing because you have to have an object of love to have love. So he's always existed as a triune being.

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But think about that, that's kind of time out of mind. I mean, don't we have trouble thinking about what happened before Genesis one, one?

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I know Brother Otis is geniuses. He was as much as he knew God. He had one thing that troubled him that I knew of because he would keep coming back to it through the 13 years we had coffee together in church together was he'd say, it bothers me,

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Brother David, because I can't figure out what God did before Genesis one, one, what do you do with all that time?

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And I said, Brother Otis, it wasn't time. OK, I know. But what do you do with all that time?

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You know, well, I think that's an interesting question. I sort of I gave him an answer and he didn't comment, which means

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I don't think he liked the answer. But I said, well, maybe Jesus, the God man, maybe the father laid the plan out, but he actually let

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Jesus build it little by little like a man would, which would take a gazillion of our years.

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Because you think about those little critters floating in my fish tank and inside those critters are cells and inside those cells are.

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What do we got in there? Mitochondria inside there. We got molecules and atoms.

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And then you go out to the stars and you can do it the other direction. Right. So how long did it take him to figure all that out if he did it as the

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God man? And Otis was saying, no, he just spoke it into existence. Brother David, I'm saying, well, you asked what he was doing.

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There's a thought and he never commented on it again. So that tells you that that got shot down.

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But anyway, think about it. Time without mind. In other words, you can't even think about it. And from from that Hebrew concept comes the word eternity, because you should try it sometime.

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See, I can't even talk without putting the word time in there. Try to think of something that's not in time and think that through.

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It's it's it's impossible, don't you think, for a human? You just can't do it. And so that's the

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Hebrew concept of eternity. And that's the word continuance. So think about this.

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Here you talk about a human race, including Jews, who think they're pleasing God with the works they're doing in Isaiah, the prophet of old, at least 600 years before Paul lived on the earth, said, you've got this whole race, including the whole race of the

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Jews and the Gentiles. And God is wroth with them, except there are some of those.

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They have continuance and shall be saved, but continuance means they're from eternity, which means in Ephesians one, where it says that God knew you with love before the foundation of the world.

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Paul was correct when he wrote that. Well, of course, he was the Holy Spirit inspired him. But Paul also had this scripture that he had studied his whole life because he was a

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Jew of the Jews, wasn't he? You don't think Paul knew this scripture? Do you think Paul ever spent time as a young man who was smarter than his own teachers, sitting there looking at that one word in what we now call verse five of 64 of Isaiah and thinking, what in the world does this mean?

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These people are saved and they're from a group of people that God's wroth with, and these people came from eternity.

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And later, Paul writes, he knew us from before the foundation of the world.

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And see, the modern gospel does not include that because they call that Calvinism. It's not Calvinism. Paul wrote that.

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Isaiah wrote that. 2 ,600 years, probably about 1 ,600 years before Calvin was born.

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Well, more than that, a little bit more than that. So that's just God. That's just God telling us how it works.

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That's cool, isn't it? At least I liked it. What about the word saved?

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Now, this is the Old Testament, right? This is before the Baptists came along, which I grew up Baptist, right?

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Say, Yahshua in the Hebrew, it means to be free. To be set free.

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What are we being set free from? All the stuff we were trying to do that God's mad at us for because we think that saves us by doing that stuff.

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We're set free from all that. We're set free from the law because we can't keep it. We're set free from the world and the flesh and the devil, our three enemies that, as David said, hate us with cruel hatred.

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And we're set free. It also means to be made safe. Wow. It also is translated, when you see the colon in the little line, that's a lot of dictionaries use that to mean this is not my definition of the word, but it has been translated into English into these words.

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Deliver. You've been delivered. What about this? You've been helped.

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See, no man gets saved in and of themselves. They have to have two things. What are they again? The water and the spirit.

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You have to have the knowledge that comes from the word of God, just like they had Isaiah, right? Y 'all try

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Isaiah 53, it's full of gospel. Isaiah 53 is the whole gospel is right there. Jesus died in our place.

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It's all there. So you have to be informed by the word and you have to have the Holy Spirit come along and wake you up.

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And if you don't have both of those, you ain't saved. Now, I'm not trying to get you to doubt your salvation.

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You say, well, I went down and prayed a little prayer for you. Maybe I'm not saved. Well, did you did you want to do that?

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Because if you had the desire for Jesus, then you are saved. Which I can tell I'm not going to get to that.

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It's in the sermon, but it's going to be. Not this one. Wow, something just fell. Oh, I see what it is.

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Part of the big party you had this week. Everything was slightly arranged differently up here when

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I got here. But I looked at that picture, you know, Katie sent me a picture and I said, should

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I should I text Paul and say, hey, just do online because he'll never get that room back.

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And I almost did. And I thought he'd want to have church, you know, out of all people.

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He said, we're going to have physical church, aren't we, Brother David? So now. All right. So look at this. These people who are among this race of people that God's mad at.

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There is a select few of them. We call that a remnant of them. You you might call them the elect.

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The scripture calls them that the chosen ones who come from eternity past where God knew them.

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And they will be saved from what the race they're a part of, which is totally lost and held down and deserves it.

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They're saved from that. Not only are they saved from it, they're set free from it. Not only are they set free, they are safe from the world of the devil.

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Not only that, they've been delivered from it. They're helped by the Holy Spirit. They are preserved forever because the rest are going to be lost forever.

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Preserved is is huge. That's eternal security. Listen, once you get saved, you can't get unsaved because you didn't get saved.

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There's so many phrases we use, Brother Bill, from our baptism. When did you get saved? You didn't you don't do something to get saved.

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You are saved by God. You are saved. It's a miracle like what you talked about. And by the way, one of your verses in my sermon,

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I'm just not going to get to it today. Thankfully, it always steps on my sermons. Wow.

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Preserved. You mean you mean if if the Holy Spirit visits me and someone in my life had read me enough scripture where I knew the gospel and the

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Holy Spirit visits me and awakens me, where all of a sudden I have a desire for Jesus, which

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I didn't have my whole life. And I then receive him as my personal Lord and Savior, because for the first time,

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I find myself not only believing in him, but loving him. You mean I can't lose that? That's right.

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You can't because you're preserved. That's part of the Hebrew meaning for saved in the first place. You're not even saved if you're not preserved.

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And if you are saved, you're preserved. And then what? Rescued. And then what?

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You will be saved. It will. It can mean to bring salvation. It can mean to get victory.

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This modern easy belief is that Satan is always on both sides of the spectrum, like like there's people that believe you got to do a bunch of good stuff to be saved.

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They're wrong. There's people here. All you got to do is just say, dear, he's come hard to save me. I mean, I believe I'm safe and then they go live for the devil.

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That's wrong, too, isn't it? Because there's a victory that comes with genuine salvation.

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I don't mean an every moment victory because we stumble, don't we? Because we're still in the old flesh. But the

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Bible says even that's on purpose. Didn't didn't the scripture say that he's put this treasure, which is the new man, the salvation, the holding

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Jesus hand in these earthen vessels? So we still have the earthen vessels.

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And God did that on purpose because he gets all the glory that way when we do get it right. But there you have now see when you have a language like Hebrew, where it's not precise like Greek, you get all these colors of meaning of one word salvation in English.

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The only word you would have, in fact, the only word we have is shall be saved. Aren't you glad God gave us the

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Hebrew and wrote it in Hebrew because we didn't just get saved. We God knew us from the foundation of the world as his own.

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And we were selected from a fallen race to be his own and to be adopted into his family. And so we weren't just say we were made safe.

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We were delivered. We were helped. We were preserved. We were rescued. We were given salvation. And now we have victory.

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And then there's another verse. But we are all as an unclean thing.

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Now, while we were talking about this part of the message, and you can see why it takes us like how many years to get through one book, because it takes a lot of time to get through one chapter.

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But now we're just trying to work on one verse in chapter 10. But look at that.

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Why in Paul's discussion of telling the Jews, you have a zeal for God, but without knowledge because you've gone about to establish your own righteousness and you have totally missed the righteousness of God.

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How do you know that? Because he knew Isaiah and he had the Holy Spirit. Who taught him

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Isaiah. But we are all as an unclean thing. So the wrong kind of righteousness is where you try to go about to be a good person.

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I'm not saying it's a bad thing to try to be a good person after you're saved. You should try. I pray every day, Lord, help me be a good man, not a regular man.

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Help me be a good preacher, not a regular preacher, because I do not want to I do not want to disappoint my people or my family or my wife or the church or you,

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Jesus. But I will, if I get in the flesh, I will even disappoint myself. So, Lord, make me a good man.

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That's OK, because I know that's not what's saving me. The only reason I have a desire to even ask that because I am saved.

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Right. So same with you guys. The only reason you worry about sins you've done, don't let

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Satan come and say, well, you're probably not saved or you wouldn't done it. The opposite is true. The fact you're concerned about it proves you've been saved because goats aren't concerned about it.

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They love the sin. It doesn't bother them. So here it says, if you think you can establish your own righteousness, the problem with that is that all of our righteousness is and look at that.

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That's plural. Every individual good deed you could do in this physical body.

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Is as a filthy rag to holy God. So how is that going to save you?

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It's not it's going to make him wrathful, like the other verse above it says, he has wrath on people that try to approach him that way because it's unfit.

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It's unseemly. And they're telling God, well, I can be as good as you. I'm just going to walk right into your presence, into your castle.

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And you don't know me and I don't know you, but I'm a pretty good person. Here I come. And you want to get over the moat, the great gulf.

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You won't even get there. You won't get in the front door. Why? Because all that good stuff you thought was good is filthy to God.

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And we all do fade as a leaf. Depravity of man. Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away from God.

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It's like the wind just blew and blew us away. That's the state we're in. So, yeah, the wrong kind of righteousness won't work where you go about to establish your own righteousness.

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But we are all is an unclean thing. And all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

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And we all do fade as a leaf. And there is none that cometh upon thy name that stirreth himself up to take hold of thee.

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Now, think about that. I'm losing you now. So I'm going to quit here in a second. But just don't you think a minute, because you hear me preach a lot out of Romans nine, we just finished.

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And, you know, the depravity of man and the fact that the modern gospel says, here's a choice. You'll determine your future destiny by deciding whether you'll pray this little prayer or not.

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That is not the gospel, by the way. All of it's based on humanism and what you do and what you think and what you do and say.

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And it's not by works of righteousness, which we've done. But now look what Isaiah 64 says. It didn't just come from New Testament.

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Doesn't just come from Paul. It certainly didn't come from John Calvin. Look what it says. There's none that calls upon God's name.

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There's nobody in their natural state that stirs himself up to take hold of God. But the modern gospel is based on that.

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It's all about play the music, which you can play it well enough to do. You could get over here and say, I want you to stir them up a little bit and then we'll have an altar call.

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Have you seen that before? Have you seen that before? You grew up. It's the whole thing. Pentecostal church that you grew up in.

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Get that music going. And I love music. It's awesome. You need great music. But you stir them up and get them to decide to give their life or how about this?

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Surrender to God. You won't find anywhere in the scripture where it says that's how you get saved, by surrendering to Jesus. How many times have you heard preachers say just surrender?

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Give your life to him. It doesn't say that saves you either. What are some other? I mean, you can think of a lot of those, but you're getting tired too.

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So you see my point. But look what it says. There's none that stirs himself up to receive

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God. So how does it work then by the calling? The Holy Spirit has to tap you on the shoulder, so to speak.

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Open your blind eyes, your deaf ears that could never hear. You've heard the gospel your whole life, but you never heard it with understanding.

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And he opens your ears and he says, there's Jesus. Now you can see him. What do you think? And at that point, you want him.

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So you decide it's not against your will. The Holy Spirit just opened up your will to have the kind of will that God intended humans to have.

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And you just receive him as your personal Lord and Savior because you want to because you couldn't not do it.

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He's irresistible. As Calvin said, people not Calvin for saying that Calvin was exactly right.

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Not that he always is irresistible because you resisted him your whole life up to that moment. But in that moment, when the

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Holy Spirit called you, look at him. You're a hungry sheep. He's the shepherd. He's got the food. He became totally irresistible to you.

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And you received him because you wanted to. That's how salvation works. It does not work by people stirring themselves up in a religious manner to accept

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God. If you don't believe it, look at the word stir in Hebrew. You thought I was three, didn't you? The slide still has space.

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I'll stop with this slide, though. Well, I can get a lot on there if I get the font smaller. It's the

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Hebrew word or which means opening of the eyes to awaken.

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No man stirs himself up to receive God. No man awakens himself.

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You have to have the calling. Is that amazing? Calvin didn't say that. He did say it, but he got it from here.

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For thou has hid your face from human beings. Look at that. Do you really think this humanistic gospel of just being good or just, you know, repeat this little prayer and you'll be saved?

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Be religious, go to church, tithe and all this stuff. It's going to work. When the Bible itself says, God himself says,

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I hid my face from you so you can't see it. In your natural state, for thou has hid thy face from us and consumed us because of our sins, eventually you're consumed in fire for all eternity and you don't die, you just keep burning.

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That's the natural end of the human race. And if the Holy Spirit doesn't stir you up.

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And cause you to desire Christ, you will be lost forever. But here's the good news.

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If you're stirred up, you didn't do it. Listen, I meet people every day that have no desire for Christ.

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I can say one little word. Yeah, I'm a pastor. And they change the subject. Well, you like football? You know, as soon as they change that subject, you know, don't need to go any further because they're not their brain is just not open to the

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Lord yet. Maybe later I may say something about what Jesus died for for his people.

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So keep that in mind. But I mean, I know they're not going to they're not going to see it right that moment, maybe later, but the

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Holy Spirit's got to stir them up. So there you have it. All right. So back to Romans, what we'll start on next time.

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We just covered verses one through three. Then it begins talking about the right kind of righteousness for Jesus. Christ is the end of the law of righteousness to everyone that believes.

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So that's where we'll be when we pick it up next time. So let's stand and have prayer together. You you held out for a long time today.

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You let me get to a good stopping place. I appreciate that. Lord, we thank you so much for your word and for your

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Holy Spirit. We live in a dark world, a lost world, and we were part of a lost race and you have awakened us and we thank you for that.

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You show us both old things to remember and be reminded of and new things all the time as we look into your word.

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Thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are our teacher and you're the one who stirs us to do right and to try to be better people now that we are saved.

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And thank you for that, too. And Lord, thank you for the patience you have for us. Lord Jesus, thank you for giving your blood to take our sins away entirely for all of our life and for making it so that the father counts us as righteous right now and counts us as already glorified even right now and as if we've never sinned.

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And thank you so much for that. Lord, go with us into our time of fellowship. Now, bless the meal we're about to have and we ask it in Jesus name.

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Amen. If you're visiting, we have food here right after church every