What is...? The Commands of Christ- Rejoice!

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I just think a central location is a really good idea so that people know where to go and know that they can expect to hear

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God's word every day. So love to have you participate in that. Dan is graciously joining me again as we continue to look at God's word.

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We are going through well, our series is called what is and we're going through the commands of Christ, taking the of course, the initial idea from Jesus, our

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Lord and our King from Matthew chapter 28. All authority, he says, has been given to him in heaven and on earth.

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Go therefore based on that authority and preach the gospel, make disciples and teach them to obey all that I've commanded you.

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So that leads to the inevitable question. What is he commanded us?

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What are the commands from Christ in scripture? And then my pastor, Pastor Tommy Hullett is putting together a discipleship booklet going through the commands of Christ as a discipleship tool, which is, you know, it should be.

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Should have been the most obvious thing for all of us is that Jesus gives us the command to teach others, observe them ourselves and to teach others.

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And so that's what he he desires through his workbook that he's working, working on called

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Multiply. So if you're interested in that workbook,

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I'll be glad to give you more information about that. Tonight's topic, tonight's command is rejoice.

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And some of us or many of us probably familiar with the verse rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.

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So we want to do that and rejoice in him, be obedient to him and rejoice in him.

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But to start off our conversation, as I think about rejoice and thinking about it being a command of Christ, I go back to our discussion from John, chapter 15, when we discuss the command to abide in Christ.

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And what we learn from that chapter is Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing.

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So rejoicing falls underneath that umbrella of not being able to do it or do it properly, do it correctly, doing it in a way that is pleasing to the

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Lord apart from Christ. So so we need Christ to be able to rejoice and rejoice in such a way that's pleasing to the

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Lord. You know, I thought about I thought about this today, how

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I'm talking too much. I don't want to take a rabbit trail. I'm talking too much. I want to get Dan involved.

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And so that was a big, long introduction. I was looking at Hebrews, chapter 13, and he explains to us there what

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I was trying to explain earlier, that we need Christ apart from John, chapter 15, to be able to rejoice, to be able to do anything.

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Hebrews, chapter 13, verses 20 and 21. It reads now the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even

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Jesus Christ, our Lord. So it's God through the blood of the eternal covenant, even

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Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ, the blood of the eternal covenant. We are born again.

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We are saved. We are raised from the dead spiritually. And then, of course, later on physically, but it's because of God.

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And then through him is in verse 21, it says equip you in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.

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Amen. So he's the one who saves us, causes us to be born again, raises us from the dead.

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And then he doesn't just leave us alone. He equips us to do a good work. In such a way that it pleases him.

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I've already talked a whole lot, Dan, I'll let you go first. We want to talk about I think rejoicing stems from joy.

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And I'd like for Dan to give us his definition of joy and then his definition of rejoice.

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And then then I'll give mine. All right. Joy is is kind of a tough thing to define because it's it's kind of an emotion, but at the same time, it's not joy.

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Best I can explain. Joy is an overwhelming. Peace.

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A happy peace, but it happens and it occurs because of something that is completely unchangeable.

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And here's what I mean by that. I've actually never defined joy in a snippet.

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I've always done it in sermon like stuff. So give me a second, I'll get it out. Joy. Is the result of knowing and understanding who

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God is and what he's done for you and resting in that fact, it is that underlying hope and goodness that you that you sense and you know is there just below the surface because of what

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God has done. And because no matter what else happens in your life, you have

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God there. There is a positive right there behind the scenes. So while you look at the words, happiness has the idea of something temporal, something that something happens and you become happy.

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Joy isn't connected to those circumstances. Joy is something that is grounded in a reality bigger than yourself.

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Something that's immovable, at least the joy that we're talking about, the joy of Christ. So to rejoice would be to express that joy outwardly.

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So when we're commanded to rejoice where it's assumed that we have a joy within ourselves, it comes from Christ and his abiding presence in our life.

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The abiding presence of God in your life is a joy right there that when you rejoice, you put that out there for other people to see.

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You give a shout of praise or you sing a song or you you say a prayer and you thank

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God. Thanksgiving goes hand in hand with it. That's how I would define joy and rejoice.

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Absolutely. And my definitions are going to be very similar.

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And I was paying attention. I was just trying to maneuver my mic here so that my camera would stop the autofocus.

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So I apologize, but we're partying. So I apologize for that.

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There you go. Happy is a thermometer. Joy is a thermostat. Let's pull that up. I like that.

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Happy is a thermometer. Joy is a thermostat. Yeah, that's really good. Thank you, Catherine.

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Hope you're doing well. So, yeah, my definition is going to be very similar to yours.

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And it's and I don't want this. Of course, I'm sure nobody's going to take it this way.

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But both of us giving a definition, it's not a competition, but it's just different vantage points and additions to your definition, maybe.

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And like, Catherine, if you want to add anything to our definition, you're more than welcome to leave a comment.

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Joy, I was trying to think about today. And like you, it's hard to condense it just to a small definition.

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But I was thinking about joy being a contentful bliss.

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Wrought by the Holy Spirit. And, of course, exactly what you were talking about.

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Not depending on our circumstances. And then rejoicing would be, to me, the outward manifestation of that joy.

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So others can see the joy that's within us. Does that make sense?

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Absolutely. OK, a good verse. If we stay in Hebrews chapter 13, we read

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Hebrews 13, 20 and 21 and saw that joy and saw that rejoicing, the ability to rejoice comes from God.

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I think we can find a good definition from Scripture in Hebrews chapter 13 as well. If you look at verse 15, he says through him, of course, you've got to start there through him.

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Then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.

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That is the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name. And I can't think of a better definition than of rejoicing.

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Then Hebrews chapter 13, verse 15 there, a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of your lips, giving thanks to his name.

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And so we're thankful that God has saved us and give us the ability to to do it.

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And and helping us understand what it is and what it looks like in such a way that pleases him.

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Catherine says rejoices, the verb that shows the action of joy.

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Very concise and accurate. Absolutely. And so I think

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I'm going to say what I was going to say earlier, just to qualify while we're moving forward in this certain direction. If we come up on a scene where.

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Someone is someone just had a tragic accident and their loved one is there with them or.

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Or. Any kind of horrific thing that we come upon. We don't want to approach that scene and rejoice.

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In other words, we would view that as rejoicing in evil. So. To be able to rejoice in such a way that pleases

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God, we've got to have Christ. It's got to be wrought by the Holy Spirit. And we have to have a certain mindset to be able to rejoice in such a way that that pleases

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God and rejoice in circumstances that scripture causes to rejoice in.

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We must have otherwise because the scripture teaches us to or commands us to rejoice in circumstances.

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Otherwise, I think in our nature, we would never rejoice in, but the scripture causes to rejoice in those circumstances.

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So I think and we talked about this before we come on. I called him rejoicing, rejoicing requirements.

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And I think it works only because it's an alliteration. That's what that's what

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Dan and I decided just because it's an alliteration. But these are the things that this is the mindset that our heart attitude that I think we need to have.

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And I'm going to let Dan kind of discuss each of these bullet points that we need to have a hard attitude that we need to have to be able to rejoice in such a way that pleases

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God. The first one is we need to trust in the sovereignty of God to be able to rejoice.

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Right. We need to if we're going to have an abiding joy in God, we need to know that everything that he does, he is in control of that.

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There's not a single thing that happens in this world that he's not he doesn't have his hand in that.

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That's easy to understand and easy to think of when things are going well, but it's all it's a little bit more difficult when things are going tough.

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But that's exactly why we need to have a solid theology of the sovereignty of God, why we need to trust that he is in control.

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He is in charge because of those tough times when things go ways that we don't think they should to know that he is in control.

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He's got it. He is working everything together for our good because he loves us.

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He cares for us. He's looking out for us. This is part of his plan.

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Part of his plan for the salvation of men is anything that we have going on in front of us.

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We need to nail it down during the peaceful times and it can carry you through.

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It doesn't make it hurt less, but it can carry you through some tough times. Yeah, that's a great point.

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It's going to be tough and it doesn't hurt less. You're absolutely right.

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But the commands, the command stands. And, you know, doing things that please

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God helps sustain us supernaturally when we don't understand it.

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So the second one is trust in the complete forgiveness of sin.

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How does that help us rejoice? Oh, man. We have days we have we have whole entire seasons of our lives where when we look back at it, like, man,

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I was a wretch. What was I doing? I have sinned more in this little span than I think

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I have in the rest of my life. Why is God even patient with me? And it's this right here, because you get down there to that low point where you feel so far away from God.

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And, you know, I have complete forgiveness of sin, not because of what I've done, not because I deserve it.

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We know we don't deserve it because we just had all that sin. Why would anybody forgive us for that?

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But through Jesus Christ, our sins are completely forgiven.

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Yeah. So while we still need to repent, we still need to turn from those things. We still need to look to Christ for forgiveness.

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We have that forgiveness. It's not something that goes away. It's not like there's a forgive that he forgives you for this and then.

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No, you're OK. I'm not going to forgive you anymore. Was it says in somewhere in Hebrews says that we have a great high priest was able to save to the uttermost all that he makes a sacrifice for.

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I'm butchering that it's back in chapter eight, nine, seven, somewhere in Hebrews.

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But that's the thing. He is able to save to the uttermost. He's able to to completely save us from our sins.

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And that is a great source of joy, especially when times get tough.

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We need that forgiveness to know that we have one that we can go to. We have a mediator. We have an advocate for us in Jesus Christ who died and shed his blood for our sins to know that there is an atonement there for us.

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As a great source of joy and comfort, especially in those tough times where we've fallen by the wayside, done what we ought not to do.

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Absolutely. All right. The third one is. We need to have a love of Jesus to be able to rejoice.

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Yeah. So I was real quick going back through Hebrews. I couldn't find it. That's OK. We do need to have a love for Jesus.

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I'm going to leapfrog. Go to go to the one about the Holy Spirit first. OK, but go out of order.

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It works better. So so the next one, then trust in the spirit's work of sanctification.

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Yes. Trust in the spirit's work of sanctification. Trust in. The work of the

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Holy Spirit in your life. You have the knowledge that God is sovereign.

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You have the knowledge that he is everything that he touches, everything that is happening in the world.

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You have the knowledge, the understanding that the forgiveness of sins are always found in Jesus Christ to those who come to him in repentance and faith, seeking him as their savior.

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He will be he will save them. And the spirit then will work in that person's life.

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And you trust in that work. You trust that God will not dole out wrath to you, but instead he chastens you, he corrects you, he disciplines you.

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So that way you won't be going through those deep valleys of sin.

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At least not as much as you had been. You may go through new ones, but you won't go through the same old ones over and over again, because there is a work of the spirit in your life.

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And the reason why I wanted you to reorder them is because all three of these, they say, trust, trust, trust.

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And that is putting the focus outside of ourselves. It's putting the focus on God.

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And I also thought it was interesting that you also put trust in the sovereignty of God.

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Know that the father is in heaven doing everything that he has commanded, that he has decreed is going to come to pass.

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He's ruling. There's not a rogue molecule in the entire cosmos out there. There's not a single one.

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You're trusting in the son for the forgiveness of your sins. Now you're looking to the Holy Spirit for your sanctification.

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It is the Trinity, the triune God, all three persons of the Godhead working together for our good.

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There is that much care put into the life of Christians that he controls all things.

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He forgives sins and then he doesn't just forgive them, but he doesn't leave you in your sin.

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He doesn't allow you to stay the way that you were. There is a marked change in your life.

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And then when you see more and more sin, you still have the son that forgives sin and the spirit that sanctifies you of the sin all the way up until the final day when the sin is finally completely taken from us.

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And when you look at those things, when you put your trust and faith in God, all three persons of the

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Trinity, it leads to that fourth point or third, which is the point where you love

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Jesus. And why is that? Because he's done so much. The father is decreed that he come, he came, he died for sins.

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He applied the blood on the altar in heaven. He saved to the uttermost sinners who didn't deserve it.

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Sent his spirit, sent the advocate, the paraclete to come help us, the Holy Spirit to help us, to guide us into truth, to keep us from sin, to witness about Christ and his love for us.

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So it's not a trust that's a trust in something that's unwarranted or unfounded.

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It's a trust in a God who's absolutely worked in history and done incredible things for us.

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And our response to that is love.

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Jesus says, if you love me, which if you're going to trust in God for all those things, if you love me, keep my commandments.

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Yeah. All right, let's do it. And the next one,

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I guess, is to be able to rejoice. Heart attitude, mindset that we need to have is absence of pride, absence of self -reliance and a clear view of my own sinfulness.

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Why are those things important? Right, because if we look at God, let's say we have all those other things right in our mind, but we look at ourselves and we don't have...

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I put down, I've summarized your last part as an honest appraisal of our own sinfulness.

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If we do not have that, if we think, I'm good, I haven't sinned in 13 years.

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First off, you're wrong. Second off, you're no longer trusting in the

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God that you said you trusted in. We have to have an honest appraisal of who we are.

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We have to look at ourselves realizing what 1 John said, that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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The entire reason we need a savior, we need the forgiveness of sin is because we have sin.

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We can't be so prideful as to think that we have arrived or accomplished anything on our own.

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When Jesus said in several places, apart from me, you can do nothing. Yeah, absolutely.

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And then the last one, eternal kingdom perspective versus temporal circumstances.

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And that's really a mindset thing. It is a consistency with everything we've talked about before, about trusting in the sovereignty of God, knowing in the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, knowing and trusting in the sanctifying work of the

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Holy Spirit, loving Jesus, having an honest appraisal of who we are as men, that we need a savior, and then living our lives in light of those facts.

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Because if we live our lives in light of those facts, we will look towards the final day when we will finally have our full redemption.

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But all too often, and it happens, I think probably daily to us, especially as we're going about our day, because it's so easy because you get started.

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Like I show up to work at six in the morning to do warehousing stuff. And it's so easy to be worried about, well, this order has to go out at this time.

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We're going to get this order in at this time. And to get so bogged down in your mind about what you're doing, that you only concentrate on the things that are around you.

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You don't think of, well, I'm working with someone who has an eternal soul that will lay somewhere one day.

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Do they know their creator? You forget it.

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I mean, just you're trying to do your work well, and that's a good thing. You're supposed to do your work well, but we have to keep our focus on those primary things.

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Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto us.

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We need to live consistently in light of the truth of everything that we've seen before.

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Trusting in God, trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, loving

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Him, looking at ourselves. When we do those things, we're consistent.

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We live as creatures looking to our creator instead of a creature looking at other created things as if we somehow run and rule the show, which it's very easy to fall into those traps.

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Absolutely. And if we wanted to, I'm sure we could spend a lot more time making this list longer.

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And anybody that's joining with us, you could help us too to make this list even longer.

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These are just some of the things that I come up with as I'm meditating on this and the command to rejoice.

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A list of things that needed to be our mindset, our heart attitude that God needs to work in us so that we may rejoice in such a way that's pleasing to Him, as verse 21 says of Hebrews 13, working in us that which is pleasing to God.

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So there's a lot more that could probably be added to the list. So the question is, why do we need this type of mindset?

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Why do we need this heart attitude that is wrought by the Holy Spirit, given to us by God, to be able to rejoice?

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Well, you've got verses like, and I quoted it earlier, you've got verses like Philippians 4, 4, and you've got verses like 1

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Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18. Rejoice in the

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Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. And 1 Thessalonians says rejoice always. And if you're going to rejoice always, in all circumstances, every circumstance in our finite understanding, in our natural ability, not every circumstance is joyful or makes us happy, brings us contentment, brings us sorrow, it brings us pain.

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So how do we rejoice in all circumstances? How do we rejoice always?

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It goes back to that analogy that I gave just a few minutes ago, where think of any horrific scene that you can think of that you may come up on or that may happen to you.

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And we say, well, if we were to rejoice in that, we would be rejoicing in evil. But then we have verses like this that says rejoice always, rejoice in the

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Lord always. Again, I say rejoice, rejoice in all things. So how do we reconcile those two things together?

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My opinion, and I'll let you chime in here. My opinion is we need to rely on God to work these things in our mind and in our heart so that we can rejoice.

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Our response to circumstances is on a deeper level because as we see those horrific circumstances, our response is not to rejoice.

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But there's a way that we are to approach every circumstance that will lead us to rejoicing.

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And that takes us to this deeper level of spirituality that God calls us to.

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And it's got to be wrought by Him for us to be able to do that in those circumstances.

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What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I don't know if I have too much to add about. Yeah, I don't know if I have too much to add, but I do know what it would look like.

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Rejoicing during those tough times. You get this idea in your head, rejoice always.

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Okay, so something bad comes along and all of a sudden I look like a weirdo because I'm smiling at a funeral or I'm dancing around in a hospital while somebody is getting a treatment.

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Completely inappropriate responses for either of those situations. But we've all been in those situations where things are just hard.

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And what joy looks like in those moments is that you'll see and you got to catch it quick because it's those couple seconds where somebody remembers their creator or they remember.

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Like say you lose a loved one that you know is with the Lord. You are grieving, you're crying and then there's a brief one, two, three second interval where they get a smile on their face and it fades quick.

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But that smile, it's the joy of the Lord shining through.

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It's the hope of Christ that is there in the midst of that pain.

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It doesn't make the pain go away. The pain is still present even in that brief glimpse of a smile.

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But it's the joy of the Lord there that comforts us in those times.

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I don't know so much if I know how that works. Just that our

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God is good and he's there for us and that he's promised us to be there and never leave us.

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So it's in those moments where we don't have to put on a brave face.

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We can bawl our eyes out, cry and hurt. We can be angry.

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Whatever the situation dictates and still have the joy of the

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Lord there causing us to remember who our creator is and rejoicing in those situations may look a little different.

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Obviously rejoicing in good situations, go ahead and dance. Smile, cut up, have a feast, something.

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But joy is something that's just got to be there.

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So rejoicing is going to look different depending on the circumstances. But joy should be something that's abiding in there because it doesn't depend on those other things that happen.

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It depends on the one in whom we find our joy, the one in whom we find our delight, which is

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Christ. Yeah, and apologies for being redundant.

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But the two words that come to my mind, which in my mind are redundant, is supernatural miracle.

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And of course, how does this happen? What does this look like? How does it work? How is it going to work out in those circumstances?

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It's a supernatural miracle. It proves that it can only come from God.

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It can't come from within ourselves. And like you were saying, we can't explain how it works or what it's going to look like.

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And that's why we have to be tender and gentle and merciful and graceful with people who are hurting.

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And it's because we don't create the standard of what responding with rejoicing in painful circumstances looks like.

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It comes from the Holy Spirit as a supernatural miracle from Him. And I think that's why this list, and of course we can extend it, but I think that's why it's good for us to remember the things on this list.

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Here's this horrific, here's this painful, difficult circumstances that are in front of us.

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Trust in the sovereignty of God. Trust in the complete forgiveness of sins.

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Remember my love of Jesus. We can go to Revelation. Don't lose your first love.

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Trust in the spirit's work of sanctification. Remember your love for others. Remember to have an absence of pride, self -reliance, and this clear view of your own suffering.

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The list, go over the list and think about the list. Trusting in the sovereignty of God. Recite verses from Romans chapter 8.

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God works all things together for good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose.

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That's another difficult verse to go along with the Philippians 4 and 1 Thessalonians 5.

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God works all things together for good? How does that work?

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There again, another supernatural miracle that we know that this can only come from God. We can go back to Hebrews chapter 13 and have praise on our lips because we see

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Him working this miracle in us that we're able to rejoice and have this blissful content in Him.

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Any other comments? Nope. Let's look at a few verses.

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We've talked about our analogy. We've talked about the list of things that we can think about as we go through difficult times.

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Of course, this just popped in my head too. I think just as difficult as praising the

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Lord and rejoicing in difficult circumstances, you brought up the fact that we rejoice.

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It's maybe easier to rejoice when circumstances are good, but I think it may also be true that it's easy to forget.

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When things are going smooth, when things are going good and when circumstances are great, we seem to be more apt to forget

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God. We seem to be more apt to read His Bible, read His word less. We seem to pray less when circumstances are good.

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Rejoicing or giving Him praise, giving Him thanks in the good circumstances may elude us because of our natural man, but we need to remember to do that as well.

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I believe it's Deuteronomy that even says that when you go into the land and you eat of your produce and you have the cisterns that you didn't dig out and the houses that you didn't build, you're going to forget about me and then it's going to go bad for you.

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Or in the Psalm, it says, give me only what I need, lest I don't have anything and I curse you or I have everything that I ever wanted and forget you.

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It's a trap on either side. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why it's so important that we trust and rely on the

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Holy Spirit and meditate on His word, hide it in our hearts and do those things that God has asked us to do.

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I don't think that I'm going to go through the list, Dan. I've got a few verses that come from the discipleship manual that Pastor Tommy put together that I want to look at.

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But you can do what I did. Those of you who are watching and, you know, just do your do a search for rejoice and look up all the different places in Scripture where the command is in the

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New Testament for us to rejoice and look at the different circumstances. For example, this comes from the manual,

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Matthew chapter five, verses 11 and 12. One of those difficult circumstances, but Jesus is telling them rejoice anyway.

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He said, blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

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Rejoice and be glad for your reward is in your reward is in heaven or your reward in heaven is great.

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And so there's that difficult circumstance again. And Jesus command them to rejoice and he's giving them a mindset to have something to put their mind on, something to put their heart on.

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Your reward in heaven is great. In the manual here, it gives us about three different Psalms that we can read to show us that God does want us to rejoice.

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Psalm 32, 11, be glad in the Lord and rejoice. You righteous ones and shout for joy.

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All you who are upright in heart. Psalm 33, one, sing for joy in the

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Lord. Oh, you righteous ones. Praise is becoming to the upright and Psalm 47, one.

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Oh, clap your hands. All people's shout to God with a voice of joy.

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And then, of course, you got first the Thessalonians 516 rejoice always. So we have this is our command from Christ, our command from Scripture, that in that we should in all circumstances always have a heart of rejoicing.

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In the good and the bad, remembering that God is sovereign. And who we are in front of him and who we would be in spite of him.

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To help us to to stay focused. Let's see here.

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We've got two comments popped up. Catherine says through hard things, we can rely on the list that we can continue the joy that can only come from God.

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Absolutely. Absolutely. And then. Special guest.

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We glorify God by walking cheerfully. It brings glory to God when the world sees a

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Christian has that within him that can make him cheerful. In the worst times, Thomas Watson.

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Absolutely. Yeah, and that's. That's another thing that I've thought about, too, is we're trying to think about why

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God is using this circumstance. We don't have to look too far.

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There may be a lot of underlying reasons that we may never know until eternity.

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But we don't have to look far for some of those reasons.

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And some of those reasons include, as Thomas Watson is talking about, when the world sees a

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Christian. Others are looking at us as we are image bearers of God.

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And are being a witness, showing others Christ and who he is, who

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God is, his character and nature. And so that's I think that's absolutely one of the reasons that we can we can look to us for why

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God is doing the things he's doing, why he's taking us through some of those things is to be a witness of who he is.

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As we are ambassadors for Christ, we are image bearers of God and we want to do we want to represent him well.

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Or I do. I know that I do. And I know that I fail miserably a lot of times.

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Have to seek him. Wanted to share one last thing that comes from the manual.

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And he's he does a really good job in the manual. He quotes from let me look at his footnotes just to see the book that he uses.

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How do you place a story of Corey Timber? And he gives the story of of her and her sister as they were in the the barracks, the concentration camps and how they would they would read

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God's word and people will be drawn to them as they read God's word. And how just how the circumstances in those barracks and in those concentration camps were just horrible.

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And he he relays the story from that book of how in one circumstance they were in a barrack that was only had space for 400 people.

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But I think it says that there were at least fourteen hundred there. And in those circumstances, they began to.

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Contract fleas and it it was, you know, horrible circumstance for for the girls and.

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You know, they one of them, I think it was Corey. That was asking her sister, you know, what's what's up with the fleas?

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I'm using modern terminology here. You know what's going on with the fleas? How can we rejoice?

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And of course, she speaks to the verses that they read.

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She goes back to the the verses that they've read before to give her encouragement. But he wraps up this tells the end of the story at the end of the lesson, how when they had opportunity, they would they would be reading.

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They would take time to read God's word. And more and more of the folks who were in the barracks would continue to come.

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And the the the numbers would grow of folks who wanted to hear God's word and hear about Jesus and come to Christ through that ministry there in the barracks.

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And then it was amazing to them that none of the guards would would interrupt them or want to be around them.

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The barracks or the place where they would read God's word would be be free of the guards.

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And one of them overheard the guards talking to one another.

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And the question was asked, you know, why are you why are you staying away or outside of the barracks and not going in?

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And the answer was, well, because they have fleas. And so God was using the fleas.

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They were they were taking that as an answer to their question. God was using the fleas to keep the guards away so that they could be open with God's word.

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They shared Jesus with the folks in the barracks. And of course, the story goes a whole lot better than the portrayal that I gave.

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But that's just, you know, an example of Christians in history relying on Christ, relying on his word to have joy and being able to rejoice in him.

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Despite the circumstances, do you have any last thoughts that you want to share? No. All right.

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We want we want you guys to know Jesus Christ so you can have that supernatural joy and supernaturally be able to rejoice because there's hope in Christ.

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If we were to look at our temporal circumstances and that's all that we saw, we would be miserable, that it would be hopeless.

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The only hope I mean, you can you can study all you want to. You can look at different religions, different avenues, different philosophies.

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You can go wherever you want to go. But the only hope to be found is in Jesus Christ through the good times and through the bad in this life and in the next.

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It's only in Jesus Christ. So we want you to know him. And Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is a hand is here.

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Repent and believe the gospel. We're commanded to repent of our sins, turn from them and turn to Jesus Christ, putting our faith and trust in his work, his life, his death, his resurrection and his authority.

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And where he sits at the father's right hand as king of kings and lord of lords. And he is he is saving those who would repent of their sins and put their faith and trust in him.

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If you've not done that, we would encourage you as we proclaim Jesus as king to repent and trust in him.

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If you are his, if you've been born again, as we said earlier at the beginning, join us as we strive together to get

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God's word out and share the gospel to our community. If you have any further comments, questions, shoot us a message and leave us a comment.

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We'd love to be able to hear from you. If you're willing to share the video to help us get God's word out, we'd love for you to do that as well.

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Dan, would you mind to close this as in prayer? Sure. Okay. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you've done for us, for being sovereign over your creation, for sending your son to die on the cross for our sins.

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God, we thank you for all the reasons that you give us joy, that we can look forward to a future hope, a wonderful bliss and eternity, that we can have sweet fellowship with you and our fellow believers now.

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Thank you for all of it. We pray that you would continue to have that grow within us, that we would be able to rejoice in all things.

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God, we pray for our nation tonight.

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You know its needs. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. We appreciate you guys.

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Thank you for watching. Remember that Jesus is king. Go live in that victory and let's continue to go out there together and share the gospel.