Christ Became a Curse for Us

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Alright, so we're back in Galatians chapter 3 and today we're going to be talking about one of the most important subjects in Christian theology.
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I'm going to write it on the board and then we're going to read the text and then we're going to begin our discussion of the text.
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But the subject of today is Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
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Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
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We're going to go through and understand.
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I've taught on this before here.
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Many of you guys are newer and you haven't heard this.
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And if you have, it's always good to be reminded because as we're going to see, this is the heart of the Gospel.
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This is the heart of what we mean by the good news of Jesus Christ.
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And we're going to understand that hopefully by the end of today, you'll all have a better understanding of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
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So we're going to read verses 10-14 in Galatians chapter 3.
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So if you have your Bibles, we'll read and then I'm going to pray.
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For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.
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For it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them.
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Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith.
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But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them.
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Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
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For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.
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So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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And Lord as we now seek to understand your word and specifically verses 13-14, Lord I pray first and foremost that you would keep me from error.
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For God I'm a fallible man and I'm capable of preaching error and I don't want to.
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For the sake of your name, for the sake of these men, for the sake of my own conscience.
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Lord keep me from error.
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And Father for the time of study, I pray that you give us minds that desire to hear your word.
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I pray that your spirit would be the one who goes out and fills the hearts and minds of these men.
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And Lord God that you would lift them up and teach them.
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And for those who know you Lord, that they would understand the word.
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And for those who do not know you, that you would give them eyes to see, ears to hear.
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Grant them the gift of regeneration Lord, which would give them the ability to hear the word and believe it, love it, follow it, desire it.
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For Lord God those things do not come from the natural heart.
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For the natural man does not receive the things of God, for they are a folly to him.
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Lord let it be that this word being preached is not folly today, but that it is received as the truth of God.
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In Christ's name, Amen.
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No, Galatians 3.
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3, 10 to 14.
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Now, again, I'm going to give a very brief, brief, brief overview of what has brought us here so far.
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We are in Galatians.
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This is Paul writing a rebuke against a church which has turned away from the gospel that he had preached to them.
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Paul preached the gospel to the Galatians.
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They planted a church in the region of Galatia, actually several churches in Lystra, Iconium, and Derbe.
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And now those churches had been infiltrated by a group of people that we call the Judaizers.
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The Judaizers were people who were saying Paul's gospel is not enough.
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It's not enough just to believe in Jesus.
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You also must keep the Torah.
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You must keep the law.
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Particularly, you must be circumcised.
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And if you're not circumcised, then you're lost.
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You must also keep the dietary restrictions.
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If you don't keep the dietary restrictions, you're lost.
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You must also keep the feast days.
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There was all these rules and laws.
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The Sabbath and all of these things.
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And if you didn't do them, then you're lost.
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Paul said they had added to the gospel and thus made it not the gospel at all.
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They were false teachers.
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They were dangerous teachers because they had added to the work of Christ.
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Chapters 1 and 2, Paul defends his message.
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And in chapter 3, he begins his rebuke with, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Who is it that came in and fooled you like this? And what we're going to see is this narrative carries all the way to the end of this book.
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We've got three more chapters after this one.
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And we're going to see this theme is going to ride all three of those remaining chapters.
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So if you're bored with what I'm saying, and if you're saying, oh, Fossey says the same thing every week, just know this.
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I'm just going verse by verse.
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And Paul's saying the same thing over and over.
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Because it's a huge deal.
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Because you've got people who believe they're being saved by their works.
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You have people who believe that the works of the law are the way of salvation.
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And Paul is saying to them, No, there is no salvation in works of the law.
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Salvation is found only through faith in Jesus Christ.
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There's two mountains, remember? Mount Law and Mount Grace.
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And if you try to scale Mount Law, you will fail.
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If you trust in Christ, He will lift you up and He will put you on Mount Grace.
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That is the two mountains.
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And so, in the beginning of chapter 3, Paul uses their experience.
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He asks them questions.
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Did you come to this? Did you get saved by hearing with faith or by keeping the law? Well, it was by hearing with faith.
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And he asked these experiential questions.
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And then he talks about Abraham and says, Did Abraham get saved by keeping the law or by believing? And he said Abraham lived before the law.
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You have to remember that.
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Abraham lived 500 years before Moses.
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So Abraham didn't have the written law of Moses, but Abraham was saved by faith.
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And so, Paul uses that example.
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And then Paul gives the Scriptures.
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And we looked at these last week.
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He quotes from Deuteronomy in verse 10.
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He quotes from Habakkuk in verse 11.
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He quotes from Leviticus in verse 12.
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And that's where we ended last week.
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If you want those references, get with me after and I'll give them to you.
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I don't want to rehash everything we talked about last week.
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But I'll begin with a quote that I ended with last week.
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This is from the Pulpit Commentary and it says this, Those under the law were bound to render strict obedience to all its requirements, whether moral or ceremonial.
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And whoever set aside any of whichever class was constituted by the law, a transgressor and a man accursed.
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So what is that saying? It's saying this.
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If you want to be saved by the law, you've got to keep the whole law.
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If you break the law at one point, you're a lawbreaker and you're no longer being saved by the law.
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Yes, sir.
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Isn't that like in the Old Testament some of what the Jews were doing was almost like a form of worshiping and seeking righteousness through the law instead of actually seeking it through Christ? Yes.
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More so we see that with the Pharisees.
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Technically, the Pharisees are still under the Old Covenant dispensation.
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If you consider the real dividing line is when Christ dies on the cross.
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Everything before that is under law.
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And then when Christ dies on the cross, we have the introduction of the New Covenant, which is made in His blood.
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He says that in the Last Supper.
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So that could be considered like a form of idolatry? Oh yeah, and there was certainly idolatry in holding up the law as a way of salvation.
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Even in the Old Covenant, even in the Old Covenant, there was no salvation through the law.
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The law only had the power to condemn.
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How was somebody saved? Let's say under Moses.
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It was through faith.
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And what did they do because of their sin? They made sacrifices, right? They had the daily sacrifices.
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They had their feast days with their special sacrifices.
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And then once a year, they had what was known as Yom Kippur.
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The word Yom means day.
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Kippur means atonement.
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So Yom Kippur is the day of atonement.
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That was the day.
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We talked about this last week.
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The guy going in, remember you talked about the rope? Have you mentioned that yet? The belt.
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Yeah, he wore the outfit.
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Because the temple, first you had the tabernacle and then you had the temple, but they were both essentially built the same.
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You had the first curtain that you walked through was the holy place and that was where the routine sacrifices were made.
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But then past the inner veil was what was known as the Holy of Holies.
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That's the one that ripped when Jesus died? Yes, that's the veil torn from top to bottom when Christ died.
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That's right.
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And so that was where the Ark of the Covenant was stored.
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And the Ark of the Covenant was simply a box that was made according to God's specifications and inside that box was the Ten Commandments, the stones.
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It was the rod that Aaron had that turned into a serpent.
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And the manna, a bowl of manna was there.
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And basically representing God's power, representing God's provision, and representing God's law.
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Right? We see that.
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The power in the staff, the rod, the provision in the manna, and the law.
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So this represents these things that God has given.
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And when you go in, once a year the priest would go in and he would put blood on the mercy seat.
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And what the mercy seat was essentially was the top of that box.
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There were two cherubs, which were angels, that were carved and were placed on the box.
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So if you kind of imagine as best you can, and again, I never saw it, I'm just basing it on what the Scripture describes.
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You sort of have this box and then on top of it you've got sort of an angel here and an angel here.
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Inside is all the things.
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And on this portion here would be called the mercy seat.
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Well, based on what we understand, yeah, funny that you should mention that.
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The Indiana Jones, if you've ever seen Indiana Jones, and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's the Ark of the Covenant.
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That's what they supposedly had found in the movie.
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We don't know what it looked like, but we know based on the Scriptural description, sort of like that.
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And so the priest once a year would sacrifice the animal and he would go in and he would pour blood here.
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And he would sprinkle that blood on the mercy seat.
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And that act would produce what was known as atonement.
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God, who had been offended by the sins of His people, for an entire year, was now satisfied with their sacrifice of faith and He would relent in His anger over their sins.
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That was how it was understood.
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And this was done over and over and over again, year after year after year.
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Now there came a point at which the Ark was lost.
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So there was no place to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat.
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And yet, they continued to act out the other portions of the law as best as they could.
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And then there was the time when the temple was destroyed.
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Now actually, there was multiple times the temple was destroyed.
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The first temple that was destroyed was the Temple of Solomon.
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Do you remember? He was the one who built...
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David wanted to build God a temple.
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God said, No.
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You have blood on your hands, right? And we know David had a history that not only was he a man of war, but he was also a man who had unjustly taken the life of another man, Uriah, and taken his wife.
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And God said, You're not going to be the one who builds My temple, but your son.
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So David collects all the necessary items for his son to be able to build this temple, and the temple was amazing.
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It was a wonder of the ancient world.
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The Bible says people would come from far and wide to see this amazing thing that he had built.
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And so that was the Temple of Solomon.
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Now that temple was destroyed when the Babylonians came in 586...
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Yeah, around 586 B.C., the Babylonians came, they destroyed that temple, and they led the people of Israel into captivity for 40 years.
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At the end of that 40-year period, what happened? They returned, built the wall, rebuilt the temple.
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What did the people do when they saw the rebuilt temple? They wept because they said it was nothing compared to what it was.
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Those who were alive who had seen the previous temple saw this new temple and they wept over it because it was so minuscule when compared to the glory of the previous temple.
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They were unhappy.
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Then of course, after that temple was later essentially turned into a fort and used for battle during the Battle of the Maccabees, Herod would build the third temple which was the temple that Jesus would have seen.
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The temple of Jesus' day.
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The one where He went and cast out the money changers and all that.
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That would have been the temple that was built by Herod.
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And so we call that Herod's temple.
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That temple was destroyed in A.D.
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70.
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And when Titus, the general, came in and sacked Jerusalem, destroyed everything.
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Literally melted the gold out of the walls.
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Like pulled everything out.
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Killed countless people.
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It was a destruction like has not been seen in history.
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It's such a horrible story if you go back and read the history of the siege of Jerusalem and what happened to the people inside.
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So, you have these temples and they represent something.
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They represent God's atonement.
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And who's offering the atonement? It's God.
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Man is sacrificing an animal, but it's God who's offering the opportunity for a restored relationship.
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And by the way, that's what atonement means.
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Atonement is actually a combination of words.
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It really means at one.
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To atone means to take two people who are separated and bring them back together.
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You take two and make them at one with each other.
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So that's what atonement means.
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So atonement is really at-one-ment.
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It is bringing two people who are separated back together.
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Man and God are separated by a wall.
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And that wall is the wall of sin.
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You may not think how bad your sin is, but sin is enough to separate you from God.
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I heard a pastor one time.
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This was years and years ago.
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And he said, there's nothing really bad about sin.
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The only thing bad about sin is it separates you from God.
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I mean, you know, I just want to throw something at the chancel.
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Because I'm like, what do you mean it's not bad except it does the worst thing ever? That's like saying getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer ain't that bad.
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It's just going to crush your sternum.
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So with that being said, I had very little respect for what he was saying.
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Because he didn't understand the weight of sin or the power thereof.
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Sin separates you from God.
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The Bible says that.
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Isaiah says that.
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Sin has separated you from your God.
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And you need to be brought back.
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You need to be made at-one with Him.
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You need to be reconciled.
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You need to be restored.
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Your relationship is broken.
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How many of you have had broken relationships with people? Maybe your parents.
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Maybe your wives.
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Maybe your best friend.
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You've had broken relationships.
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And what do you do? You want that restored.
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You want that reconciled.
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You want that to be brought back.
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In the book of 2 Corinthians 5, it says, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation.
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Because that's what the Gospel is.
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Not reconciling men with men, but reconciling men with God.
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When the angels came on the birth of Jesus Christ, and they said, glory to God and peace with those whom He has pleased.
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They were saying peace.
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Why peace? Why do the angels proclaim peace? Because there's war.
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The war is between you and God.
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You say, I don't feel like I'm at war with God.
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When He commands, do you listen? When He commands, do you obey? Every time we disobey, we are declaring war against our Captain.
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We're engaging in cosmic treason against the King of the Universe.
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That's what sin is.
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It's engaging in hatred against He who created us and has the right to demand of us.
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People say, God doesn't have the right to tell me what to do.
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If anybody has the right to tell you what to do, it's the One who made you.
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This is why we're taught to obey our parents as children.
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This is why the Bible says, children, obey your parents and the Lord.
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Why? Because by teaching them to obey their parents, we're teaching them to understand the concept of authority.
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Because God is the ultimate authority and when we disobey our parents as children and we learn to do that over and over and we're not disciplined for it and we don't receive any punishment for it, we grow up into being adults who have no respect for authority.
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This is why when somebody tells me why I love my child too much to discipline him, I say, no, you love yourself too much to discipline your child.
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If you don't discipline your child, you don't love your child.
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The Bible says, if you do not discipline your child, you hate your child.
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You love yourself more.
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So you learned authority as a child through your parents so that you would understand the authority of God in your life.
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And so we have a broken relationship with God.
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In the Old Covenant, they brought sacrifices to try to restore the relationship because that's what God set up.
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God set up a plan.
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He said, okay, I'm going to give you these laws, but there are going to be those of you who break these laws at times and we know there are, and so we set up provisions for that.
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We set up the sacrifices.
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And the sacrifice was a sacrifice to make atonement because when you sin, it breaches that relationship.
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So atonement needs to be made.
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So once a year, they had atonement in the temple.
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But in AD 70, the temple went away.
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In AD 70, the last Jewish temple was destroyed.
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There's not been another one since.
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And I believe there won't be another one, but that's another conversation for another time.
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I'm not going to get into eschatology today, so if you're going to ask about that...
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Okay, go ahead.
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What's that other temple that they're fighting over right now, the Jews and the Muslims? Well, there's a mosque that's built on the temple mount.
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So if you look at pictures of Jerusalem today, you'll see a big golden dome.
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That's a mosque.
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That's not a Jewish temple.
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I thought they were arguing over who...
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Well, they do argue over who owns the land.
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But is that the same place where the temple used to be? Well, they believe it is.
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Obviously, it's a traditional place of where it is.
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If you go into that mosque and take a tour, they have the place where traditionally Abraham supposedly offered up Isaac.
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What were you saying, brother? Is that the dome of the rock? Yeah.
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So it's a mosque that the Muslims currently occupy? Yes.
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Okay.
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And that's part of the reason for the battle.
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If you look...
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Have you ever heard of the Wailing Wall? Yeah.
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That is the only part of the temple...
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It's the only part of the temple left.
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It's a small wall on the western side which was left...
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The one Herod built.
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Huh? The western wall.
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Yeah, and it's basically being held up by prayers.
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Because it's just pieces of concrete sitting on each other.
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And they take and write prayers and roll them up and stick them in there.
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If you go over there, there's hundreds of thousands of prayers stuck in the wall.
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These little pieces of paper.
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That's the one Herod built? The wall? Yeah, that would have been the last temple.
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So we have this temple.
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This temple had this function.
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But it's gone.
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So what has replaced the temple? What has replaced the thing that happened in the temple? The thing that happened in the temple was sacrifices.
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We now have the once-for-all sacrifice that has replaced all of those others.
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Every animal in the Old Testament going all the way back to Cain and Abel.
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Every animal that was sacrificed in the Old Testament pointing towards Jesus Christ.
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That's why I believe the temple was destroyed in AD 70.
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I believe the temple was destroyed because God allowed it to be wiped off the map so that those sacrifices would stop because they did not need to continue anymore because the Lamb of God has come.
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There's no need to continue the sacrifices if the sacrificial system was pointing towards someone and He's come.
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This is what I consider to be one of the great historical proofs of Christianity.
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Because within 40 years of Christ going to the cross, one generation, within one generation of Christ going to the cross, did you see generations and periods of 40 years? Within one generation, the temple is destroyed.
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No more sacrifices.
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Yes, B.J.
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It talks about in Isaiah that even the sacrifices of the testables...
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Well, yes.
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And that goes back to the time of the prophets when the people of God were doing the sacrifices, but they didn't have the heart of faith.
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If you do sacrifices without a heart of faith, it doesn't mean anything.
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If I go to church and I sing songs and I listen to the preacher and I give money, it means nothing if I don't trust in Christ.
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There's an old saying among preachers that a lot of people miss heaven by 18 inches.
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You ever heard that? They say they miss heaven by 18 inches and the 18 inches is between your brain and your heart.
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Because they know the truth, but they don't believe it in their heart.
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Yes, sir? What do the Jewish community now do in what they believe is good works? Acts of good works.
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Yes, basically they do acts of philanthropy and they consider that to be a replacement for the sacrificial system.
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They do works of charity, works of giving, and they consider that to be a replacement.
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What's philanthropy? The what now? Philanthropy? Oh, philanthropy.
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Philanthropy means doing good to people.
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Like a soup kitchen is philanthropy.
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Yeah, if you do good, doing good to man, it's called philanthropy.
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It's just a word.
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It just means good works done to people.
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The word philos in the Greek means love.
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Anthropos means man.
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It means the love of man.
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Right? Doing things out of the love of humanity.
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Okay? Alright, so we have this system in the Old Covenant, this system of atonement.
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It stops with Christ because Christ, according to the book of Hebrews, is the once for all sacrifice.
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His sacrifice not ever going to be repeated.
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Not ever needing to be repeated.
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He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw an eye to God through Him.
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This is what Hebrews tells us.
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In fact, this whole understanding of atonement, this whole understanding of the priesthood of Christ is found in the book of Hebrews.
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Hebrews tells us over and over and over again that the priesthood that was in the Old Covenant has been abolished because we have the final and perfect High Priest who is Jesus Christ.
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He comes on the scene and He offers a sacrifice like no other.
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The ultimate and final one.
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Yes.
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And the animal sacrifices.
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Hebrews tells us they never truly took away sin because all they were doing was pointing to Christ.
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Hebrews says the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.
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I still have never been able to understand how the Catholics have still got things so screwed up as far as when Jesus came and separated the bridge between God and man so you could go directly to God, but they still believe you have to go to a priest to get to God.
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They're not worthy enough to pray directly to God.
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There are a lot of theological errors in Roman Catholicism, not the least of which is their priesthood.
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The New Testament does not have a priesthood.
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If you go through the New Testament, you will not find anywhere where pastors are called priests.
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They're called elders and they're called pastors.
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They're called shepherds.
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The Greek words are episkopos, which means overseer, or presbyteros, which means elder.
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That's the words that are used.
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But never priest.
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The only person in the New Covenant who has the position of priest is Jesus Christ.
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Yes, sir.
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This is what I'm getting out of everything that I've learned.
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God figured that His people were so far gone that He made Himself a man to prove to the people that this is what you need to...
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basically to prove to people that look, man, I'm real.
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I'm perfect.
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There's nothing bad about me.
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That's proof that He's the one that needs to be worshiped.
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You know what I'm saying? That He died on the cross for all of our sins.
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Basically, just like this proof.
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Proof of His existence.
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You know what I'm saying? That the people that were so far lost, that they were worshiping other gods, this and that and the other, that He wanted to give them proof of God being a man on earth to perform miracles and all that stuff.
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You know what I'm saying? Well, I would take issue with one thing.
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I don't think Christ's coming proved God's existence to the people because of a couple of things.
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One, most of the Jewish people in Jesus' time would have believed God exists.
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And they would have also believed they were right with God because they were Jews.
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They believed that their Jewishness made them right with God.
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Jesus came to declare that all men are sinners, even the Jews, and that all men will be saved only by faith in Him and His atoning work on the cross.
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Proving God's existence in the ancient world was not the main problem.
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Unlike today where a lot of people don't believe in God because they think they have a scientific out with things like evolution and things like that.
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In the ancient world, the understanding that God exists was when you look up in the sky and you saw all this stuff, the stars, the sun, and the moon, that was proof.
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There's got to be a God.
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There's got to be something that's controlling all this.
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There's got to be something that's managing all this.
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And so not so much was the issue unbelief in God.
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The issue was that the people worshiped God with their mouths but not with their hearts.
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So they knew that He existed, but they did not have faith in Him.
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And Christ came to declare Himself as the one and only that you are to place your faith in.
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John 14 I am the way and the truth and the life.
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No one comes to the Father except through Me.
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There is no other way.
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And the Jews wanted to throw stones at Him for that.
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They wanted to kill Him.
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When He said He is one with the Father, when He said, Abraham, long to see My day, that I, before Abraham was, I am, equating Himself with God because He was God in the flesh.
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It says they picked up stones and wanted to stone Him.
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So Jesus was a very offensive character.
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He ran a lot of people off.
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If you ever read John 6, He starts out with thousands of people following Him.
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And by the end of His sermon, everybody's gone except for the twelve disciples.
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And He looks at them and says, are you going to leave too? Because Jesus could clear a church.
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He could run people off.
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I'm not saying everything He said was wrong, but I don't necessarily see Jesus as coming to prove the existence of God, because I think the people believed in God.
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He's proving how people are to come to God.
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And it's by faith, not by their external works.
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The Pharisees were great at external works, but the Bible says inside they were wolves.
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They were false.
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They were dangerous.
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And so Jesus was saying it's not what's on the outside that counts, but what's in the heart.
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Does that make sense? Does that help? And another reason for Jesus, because the Bible says that if my people perish, they're dying and going to hell for lack of knowledge, because they didn't know.
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And Jesus being that ultimate sacrifice, He said God made Himself into man.
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He said Jesus is His only Son to be that ultimate sacrifice for us.
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That was the primary reason He came.
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He said...
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Right.
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So then we won't have to suffer the consequences of the world.
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We won't have to suffer death.
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Yeah.
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And the consequences of sin.
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And the consequences of sin.
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Yeah, right.
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But what happens to all those who sacrificed and died before Christ the Prophet? If they had faith in the promises of God, then they were saved.
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If they had faith in the promises of God...
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That's why I don't know if you remember last week or the week before when I was talking about Abraham, it said that we who are saved are saved the same way Abraham was because Abraham believed the Gospel.
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We believed the Gospel.
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Abraham had the Gospel in the seed form.
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We have the Gospel in the fruit form because we can see the fruit of the Gospel through the cross.
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Abraham had the seed.
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But it's all the same Gospel.
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It's all the same thing.
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Hey, Pastor.
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You don't have to make sinning shrewd and cruel of God, but He can do whatever He wants to do.
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Yeah, I mean...
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A lot of people don't want to believe in hell because they don't want to believe that anybody goes there except for a few people.
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Some people are satisfied if Adolf Hitler gets good enough.
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Okay, hell can have him.
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Or hell can have...
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Or just go down to Ted Bundy.
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Yeah, if he went to hell, we're good with that.
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But when you think of the old lady who has spent her life as an enemy of God, who has never served Him, has never desired to follow Him, but she's been the sweet old lady who grows tulips and she hands out bread to the local kids and cookies, and you say, well, that's sweet old lady.
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That sweet old lady's going to bust hell wide open too.
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That's the thing that bothers people.
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Because apart from Jesus Christ, you are not righteous.
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No matter how sweet, old, and lady you are.
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Hopefully you're not those things.
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I have done...
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Back in 2008, I started working with a funeral home.
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And a couple times a month, they'll call me to do services.
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And I've done well over 100 funerals in the last 10 years of people I never met.
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They would just call me and say, hey, this person passed away.
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Pastor, would you come and give a sermon and say something about this person? And basically what I do is I send them a questionnaire.
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And I say, tell me, what were their hobbies? What did they like to do? And I'll tell a little story about their life.
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I never say they're in heaven because I don't know.
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I didn't know them.
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I never say anything about their spiritual condition unless it's very clear what it was.
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Like one lady was a believer, like a sincere believer, but her pastor was away on a trip.
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And so the family called me and said, hey, we need a pastor to preach my mama's funeral.
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And they came and they learned about me.
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They asked me more questions than I asked them because they wanted to know I was going to preach the Gospel.
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That lady, I felt confident at least she probably knew the Lord and I was thankful for that.
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But out of the other services, I only bring this up to say this, every service I've ever done for an unbeliever, every service I've ever done for a person who did not know the Lord, somebody said, oh, he's in a better place.
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Because we have convinced ourselves that everybody who dies goes to heaven.
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And the Bible says the way to eternal life in heaven is narrow and few there are who find it.
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And the way to destruction is broad and many go thereby.
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The reality is many people are in hell and they're justly there because of their sin.
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The Bible says God is just and He's never given anybody injustice.
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He's only given them what their sin deserves.
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God has never given anyone anything that was unfair.
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If God were to send me to hell, He would be righteous to do so because that is what I deserve.
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Praise the Lord, He has given me life through Christ.
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But I don't deserve it.
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And that's why I always say don't ever say, God, give me what I deserve.
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Because if God gives you what you deserve, it's hell.
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He had his hand up first.
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I'm going to ask him.
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Are you good? Go ahead, brother.
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And then I'm going to...
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If somebody lives their whole life and then they hit...
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I mean, just an example, because I had a member of my family with Alzheimer's.
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And then they're unable to function and so they end up dying in the last years and that just stops them from really hearing the Gospel.
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Did they believe before? Exactly.
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Okay.
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Well, I would say this.
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If a person never has confessed faith or never professed faith, I have no reason to have confidence in their salvation.
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And that's why things like Alzheimer's are so dangerous because there comes a point where they can't understand anymore.
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You know, I don't know what God could do in that situation.
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I know He can do anything.
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And I don't trust in the person to make the commitment.
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I trust in God to save the soul.
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So, you know, I don't have any hope for a person who's never confessed Christ.
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That's why when somebody comes to me and says, hey, my mama died, I say, I'm really sorry to hear that.
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Do you know if she was a believer? And if they say, yeah, she was a believer, I'll say, well, praise the Lord.
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She's with the Lord.
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We can be confident that if she's professed faith and has followed after Christ, then we can have some joy in her death because she's not gone from life to death.
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She's gone from life to life.
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But on the other hand, if a person says, no, mama didn't know Jesus, I'd say, well, I'm sorry for your loss.
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That's about all I'd say.
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I'm not going to condemn her or say, well, it's going to be rough.
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I wouldn't say something like that.
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I mean, honestly.
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Honestly.
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Yeah, I mean, that's rough.
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But typically they know it.
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I mean, I have had ladies and men in my church who've lost family members and have come to me weeping because years and years of trying to give them the Gospel and they never believed.
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And I'm going to get to you, brother.
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I miss you.
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My wife's family are not believers.
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My sister-in-law is an atheist.
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And my...
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Those family get-togethers are fun.
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Yeah, we have a...
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Our relationship is...
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They know who I am.
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And they know what I'm about.
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And certainly have shared the Gospel with them.
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They make little remarks, but nothing...
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They say stuff when I'm not around.
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They say stuff when my wife's there.
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They're cowards.
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That's what they are, cowards.
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They don't want to have a real conversation.
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And the good thing is that my wife's smarter than me.
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She'll let them have it.
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But anyway, the point is, we pray for them every day.
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Because we know what their eternity is going to be like without Christ.
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We have been told what their eternity is like without Christ.
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So we pray, God save my sister-in-law, save my brother-in-law, save my mother-in-law, save my father-in-law, save my cousins, save my son, save all my children.
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Because I can't imagine what it will be like.
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Now brother, you had your hand up.
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Go ahead.
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I was just...
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How do you feel about the...
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You know, you've watched a movie one time, you're a believer, but at that time, you know, he's still alive, but he's going to die.
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God's not dead? Yeah.
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And he's talking about the end of God's not dead where the guy makes a profession? I do believe in what's called deathbed confession.
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Only because of the thief on the cross.
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You know, the thief on the cross had nothing that he could do except cry out to Jesus and Jesus saved him.
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And here's where I get that not only from that Scripture, but also you remember Jesus tells the story of the parable of the workers.
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And He said one worker came and he worked all day.
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Another guy came and he worked from noon until the end of the day.
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The other guy came at 3 o'clock and all of them were given a day's wage, a denarius.
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And the workers that were there all day said, hey, what you doing? This guy only worked three hours.
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I worked all day.
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How are you going to give him the same thing as me? And what did the owner say? It is mine to give to whom I will.
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You have no stake in who I give grace to.
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If God chooses to give grace to a man on his deathbed, praise the Lord.
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Here's my concern though.
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The heart.
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Is it a genuine conversion? But also my other concern is people who are hoping they'll have that extra five minutes at the end of their life.
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They're living like hell busted open right now just jiggying it up.
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And they're hoping that five minutes before they die, they're going to be able to go, okay Lord, I'm good now.
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Save me.
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Let me tell you something.
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Your heart could stop in a minute and you wouldn't have time to repent of anything.
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You know, I talked about that 18 inch gap earlier.
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There's another 18 inch gap I remind people of.
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You're always 18 inches from eternity when you're driving down the road because that's about how far the other car is from you and you're both traveling in excess of 55 miles an hour.
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At any moment, he could look at his cell phone or drop his iced tea or something and bam! It hits you and you're in eternity and you didn't have time to say Jesus help me or anything.
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Death can happen in an instant.
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Aneurysm in your brain.
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Boom! You're dead.
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I mean, I know people who get infections.
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Even today with modern antibiotics, they get infections.
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It turns into MRSA.
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And MRSA gets into their blood and it becomes a sepsis and they die from an infection.
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A cut on their arm.
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You never know how much time you have.
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If you're living apart from God, if you're living apart from Christ, you are living the most dangerous life.
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Evil can evil and it's got nothing on you because you are living on the edge every day.
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Jonathan Edwards, when he preached certain sinners in the hands of an angry God, he said this.
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He said we're like spiders on a web over an open flame.
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At any moment, the flame could come and lick the web and cause the fire to consume the spider.
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And that's us.
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We stand, if we're apart from Christ.
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And the passage he was preaching was from Isaiah.
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Their foot shall slip in due time.
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That's the passage.
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He used just those few words because what he's saying is it's like we're walking around on slippery ground beside a large cliff.
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And at any moment, our foot will slip.
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If you're not ready for eternity, if you are not in Christ, one day you will face eternity without Him and you will spend eternity with the knowledge that you've rejected the only One who could save you.
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So real quick, let me finish by just giving you the definitions again.
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Penal.
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This is penalty.
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Penalty.
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You deserve the penalty of hell.
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Substitutionary.
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Substitute.
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Someone stands in the place for someone else.
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Christ is the substitute.
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He is the substitute.
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And because He took your sin on Himself and gave you His righteousness, you now can be made at one with God.
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And that's why the passage says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
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He took the curse I deserve.
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He took what I...
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I deserve the cross.
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I deserve the tree.
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I deserve to have my back split open by those men with the scourge.
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I deserve to have my body laid out on the tree.
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I deserve to have those nine inch nails shoved through my hands and my feet.
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And I deserve to hang between heaven and earth and die a cursed man.
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And Christ was a curse for me.
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That is penal substitutionary atonement.
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And that is the heart of the Gospel.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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May it be, Lord, that these words would save souls today.
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And for the saved people, Lord, that they would understand even better how it is that You have brought about their salvation.
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In Christ's name, amen.