WWUTT 1461 Review of 1 Corinthians 2 (Part 1)

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Hey friends, I'm on the road this week, but in keeping with our study through 1 Corinthians, I'll be playing clips from the sermon series that I did through that book,

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Rejoicing in the Message of the Cross, The Power of God for Salvation, When We Understand the

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Text. Many of the

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Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When We Understand the Text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

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In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand. 1 Corinthians 2, beginning in verse 9.

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The Apostle Paul said, But as it is written, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what

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God has prepared for those who love Him. These things God has revealed to us through the

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Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

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For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the

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Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the

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Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

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And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the

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Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

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The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him.

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And he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

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For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

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Let us pray. Our Lord, as we come to these scriptures this morning, I pray that You will impart to us the wisdom of God through Your Holy Spirit that dwells within each and every person who has been brought from the spirit of this world into the

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Spirit of God. All who are followers of Christ, indwelt with Your Holy Spirit.

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And Lord, may we listen to that Spirit as we read Your words and be able to, with the mind of that Spirit, understand what has been written here.

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For who can understand any of these things with the mind of a man? Help us to have the mind of Christ.

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Lord, I pray for those who could not be with us this morning because of weather or otherwise. And I pray that they also, today, would be in a mind of Christ as they open the scriptures and study.

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As they think about this day, Sunday, as being designated as the Lord's Day. For it was the day of the week that Christ came back from the grave, after having died on the cross for our sins and made propitiation for us by absorbing the wrath of God as we sang about this morning, the wrath of God being satisfied through His sacrifice on the cross.

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He then came back from the grave to show that He had power over death itself. And so we begin, each and every week, worshiping on Sunday, remembering that day that Christ came back from the grave and that all who are in Christ have died in their sins and are resurrected in Him to new life.

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And so even if we could not gather this morning as a body of believers because of illness or weather or any other reason,

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I pray that this still becomes that day that we commit our thoughts to Christ, remembering His sacrifice and His resurrection that gives us right standing before the

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God of justice. And so on that day of judgment, we stand before you justified by the sacrifice of Christ.

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What other reason do we need to lift praises to our God? I thank you for the voice that we were able to lift this morning as one in singing these praises to our

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King. And I pray also for our missionaries around the world in the service that they have given to spreading the gospel abroad.

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I pray that we would remember their circumstance and not turn our eyes and ears away from it or think of it as something that somebody else is doing so I don't have to do it.

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But we labor and we struggle with our missionary brothers and sisters in this responsibility to share the gospel around the world.

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We pray and ask for your continued and guiding hand upon this church as we submit ourselves to the authority of the

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Word of God this morning and in our continued ministry.

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And we pray this in Jesus' name and all God's people say, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. A little over a week ago, the

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Washington Post ran a story by David Haskell, professor of religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University.

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The article was titled, Liberal Churches Are Dying, But Conservative Churches Are Thriving.

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It began, Mainline Protestant Churches Are In Trouble. A 2015 report by the

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Pew Research Center found that these congregations, once a mainstay of American religion, are now shrinking by about one million members annually.

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Now what do we mean by mainline Protestant churches? What does that mean? Well, we're talking about a liberally theological church that has softened the gospel or changed the message to be more palatable to a worldly people.

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They have decided against preaching the scriptures and instead preaching philosophy.

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What Haskell and his colleagues found is that in more conservative churches where doctrine and biblical teaching were the precedent, congregations thrived.

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Where churches had dismissed the importance of biblical teaching and calls to repentance and faith, the congregations were shrinking.

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It was two decades ago that John Shelby Spong, a bishop in the Episcopalian church, published a book entitled,

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Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Spong is a theological liberal and said that churches would grow if they abandoned a literal interpretation of the

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Bible and transformed along with the changing times. And it turns out that the exact kind of churches that Spong said we should be are the churches that are shrinking.

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At the end of his article, Haskell said the following, When it comes to growth in mainline churches,

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Spong and other liberals are right to claim that Christianity must change or die.

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They just get the direction of the change wrong. Piggybacking off of Haskell's research,

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Owen Strakin wrote an article for the Gospel Coalition a few days ago. His article was entitled,

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The Hot New Church Growth Method. And he said the following, This isn't necessarily what we've heard in recent years.

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Whether it's the music, the attractive facility, or the feeling of community, we need something to keep the church growing.

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Something besides biblical teaching. How surprising, then, that David Millard Haskell, Kevin N.

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Flatt, and Stephanie Bernion have found that doctrine grows churches.

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In their peer -reviewed scholarly article for the Review of Religious Research, a prestigious journal, the trio presented findings among mainstream

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Canadian churches showing that, contra the stereotypes, doctrinally conservative churches that reach out aggressively often grow.

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Churches that soften biblical teachings and de -emphasize evangelism often shrink.

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Now at least anybody assumed that our pursuit of this biblical model of preaching doctrine and evangelizing our community is something that we decided to do because we felt like it was a model that was going to grow our church numbers.

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That's not the reason why we did it. The reason why we as a church approach the teaching of doctrine and the sound teaching of the

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Word of God from the pulpit, entire books of the Bible at a time, the reason why we approach that method is because it's a biblical method.

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Because we want the Word of God to be proclaimed and the entire church to be under the full submissive authority of the full declaration of the

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Word of God. As the Apostle Paul said to those churches that would not receive his teaching, he said,

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I have not neglected to teach to you the full counsel of the Word of God. Your blood would be on your own hands.

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He said this to the synagogue in Corinth. And he said to the elders in Ephesus that I am innocent declaring the faith of you because I have preached the full counsel of God.

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It is our conviction to do so because the Bible says so, not because we're providing a church growth method.

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In fact, the conviction for me as a preacher, I knew that this would shrink our numbers, not grow them.

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As Mark Dever has said, if you want to see those who are truly faithful to the church and its teaching, teach doctrine.

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Those who don't want to sit and hear it will leave. And for those of you who have been with our church over the course of the past five or six years that we've been devoted to sound teaching of the

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Word of God, you've seen people come and go because they don't want to sit and listen to the teaching. In fact, two years ago, we had a disgruntled church member leave our church in a huff because of the direction that we were going.

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Among some of the changes that he was upset about included plurality eldership, preaching from the

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ESV Bible, and placing a greater emphasis on teaching from the pulpit instead of a stronger emphasis on Sunday school classes and small group

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Bible studies in our homes. He said that these things were just a plot to subject people to Calvinism.

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He expressed an opposition to expositional preaching, or teaching verse by verse through the

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Bible the way that we do, and preferred a more Socratic method of presenting evidence and hypothetical questions and letting people figure things out on their own.

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In a manifesto that he wrote online to explain why he and his family left this church, he said that First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City was in the grip of Satan and that we had joined with the world.

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Our devotion to more Bible teaching made us in league with Satan and with the world.

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I couldn't quite wrap my head around that one. But he wrote, this was two years ago, mind you, the future is clear for this church based on its current course, that its current spiritual death will likely be followed by a physical death within a couple of years, if not sooner.

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When I read that, my heart broke for the man, but I had no need to fear or worry, nor was

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I set out to try to prove him wrong. But I knew that if as a church we were devoted to the sound teaching of the

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Word of God, we would do nothing but thrive. And that's not necessarily going to be evidenced by the growth in numbers.

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As a matter of fact, a thriving church might be shrinking in numbers. Because those who are truly devoted to the sound teaching of the

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Word of God will remain while those who have their hearts fixed on the natural things instead of the spiritual things will not remain with a church that is focused on the spiritual things.

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As we read about in Romans chapter 8, or we read about rather in Galatians chapter 5, the spirit and the flesh are opposed to one another.

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Let's look at Romans 8. Let's turn there together. So turning back one book of the Bible to Romans 8.

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I thought I was missing a page there for a second. Romans 8. Let's begin in verse 1, just because that verse is so wonderful.

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. And that is precisely what it is that we see

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Paul saying here in this section in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, that those who are in Christ judge all things but are to be judged by no one.

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There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

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For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending

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His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the

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Spirit. So pay attention here in verse 5. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.

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But those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the

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Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the

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Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

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For it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot.

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Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the

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Spirit. If, in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the

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Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the

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Spirit is life because of righteousness. And one of the most powerful verses in Scripture gives me goosebumps probably every time

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I read it. Romans 8, 11. If the Spirit of Him who raised

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Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised

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Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

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The same Spirit that worked His power to bring Christ out of that grave on that Sunday morning is the very same

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Spirit that you have living in you that has brought you from death to life. The same

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Spirit of God dwelling in all those who are in Christ Jesus. Paul adds that caveat there.

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You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If, in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you.

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So it's though the Apostle Paul is saying, should there be anybody that I am addressing who does not have the

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Spirit of God dwelling within them, you are still in the flesh and you cannot please God. In fact, you in your worldly and your natural thinking are opposed to the things of God, rather instead trying to follow in the things of the world, the desires of your flesh, what the natural mind wants to conceive of and achieve.

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That's what we do for those who are not in Christ. But if we are in Christ Jesus, we've had a change of mind.

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We have gone from being the naturally minded person or somebody who is driven by the flesh or attracted to the things of the flesh, and instead we are in the

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Spirit of God, judging spiritual things, but we ourselves to be judged by no one.

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Paul begins this section that we have read this morning, quoting from the prophet Isaiah, as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what

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God has prepared for those who love Him. We read also from the prophet Isaiah that God's ways are higher than our ways,

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His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Who can understand the mind of God?

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The prophet Isaiah goes on to say that as rain comes down from heaven or the snow from heaven and covers the ground, it does not go back up to heaven without accomplishing the task that it was sent forth to do.

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This is a process that you learn about in science called convection. Is that correct? Did I get the term right?

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This process of rain coming down from heaven and watering the ground and then by evaporation going back up into the atmosphere again and then in the atmosphere developing clouds and once it becomes heavy that the air can no longer support that cloud, it falls to the ground as rain again.

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And we have this cycle that just continues over and over again, watering the ground so that things may grow. And just as the rain comes down from heaven and does this on the ground and does not go back up again before accomplishing that which it was sent to the ground to accomplish.

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So the Word of God does not go out from Him void, but will accomplish the task that God sent

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His Word out to accomplish. So I know that any time that I preach the

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Word of God, one of two things are happening. And it is not by my power that these things happen.

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It doesn't matter that I have a radio voice. It doesn't matter how convincing that I can be with the things that I say.

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It is the Spirit of God that works the power of His Word in the hearts of people who hear it. So one of two things is happening.

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Either a person's heart is being softened by the declaration of the Gospel of God to receive that Gospel where previously they were resistant to it.

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Or, when the person hears the Gospel of God, their hearts are even harder to that Gospel than it was before they heard it declared.

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One of those two things is happening, and both are works of the Spirit of God. Either the

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Spirit is working to soften the heart of a person to receive and understand the

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Gospel, or the Spirit is hardening the heart of a person to be even more resistant to the

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Gospel than they already were. And yet, as we read about in Romans 9,

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God is going to use both works to His glory. Those whom

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He saves to the glory of God, and those whom He will judge to the glory of God.

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God is going to use you for His glory one way or the other.

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It will either be by exercising His mercy and grace, or it will be by exercising

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His wrath. And I pray that for you, you turn from your sin when you hear the

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Gospel declared, and you believe on the name of Christ, and so become an instrument for His righteousness instead of an instrument of His judgment.

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And this only happens in the mind and the heart and the ears of a person whose heart has been transformed by Christ to hear the

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Gospel proclaimed, and believe it, and understand it. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

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You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word, when we understand the text.