The Sixth Plague

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 9:8-12

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Well, we continue on with chapter 9 this morning, as we made our way past the halfway point.
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Now here we are with the sixth plague, beginning in verse 8 through verse 12, the sixth plague.
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So I'll be reading from Exodus 9. I'm just going to walk through these verses briefly, and then
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I'd like to take out one particular phrase and run that with some application, three points of application, so we'll see how far we can make it.
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Exodus chapter 9, beginning in verse 8. So the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, take for yourselves handfuls of ashes from a furnace, and let
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Moses scatter it toward the heavens in the sight of Pharaoh. And it will become fine dust in all the land of Egypt, and it will cause boils that break out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.
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So we begin with the Lord's commands to Moses and Aaron, and again,
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Moses and Aaron obey the Lord's command without question. That's set in contrast to Pharaoh, who refuses to obey
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God's command. Moses and Aaron are given this command, take handfuls of ashes from a furnace.
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This could be translated as ash or even soot, soot, ash, already like a fine dust, but it will actually become a fine dust that spreads not only in the court of Pharaoh, but throughout the whole land of Egypt, and that is, of course, a supernatural spreading of these fireplace ashes.
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I mean, if you have a fireplace, if you've ever tried to scoop out ashes from a fireplace, but it is impossible to get it all in a bag or a box without getting it everywhere else.
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I have a little tiny shovel, and I'm super careful not to shake my hand at all, and then, you know, put it as low as I can in the bag and turn it, and then instantly a cloud of dust flies everywhere in the room.
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So as they're throwing this up in the air, it's supernaturally beginning to spread throughout the land, throughout the homes and alleyways and countryside of the land, affecting all of the
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Egyptians as well as all of the animals in the land of Egypt, and we'll talk about that in a moment.
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Moses notices to scatter these ashes toward the sky or toward the heavens, same word in Hebrew, and that's very significant because the idea is that by throwing them toward the sky or the heavens, the plague, the judgment is coming down from the heavens.
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Pharaoh would understand this plague is descending upon him from the heavenlies. Now this word scattering, it's the same word for throw that we find toward the end of Exodus in regards to ritual rites that Moses performed, that which the
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Levitical priests would do, we find that in Leviticus 1, 3, 7, 8, when they throw blood against the sides of the altar, it's the same word.
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And so here we have a different type of throwing, a scattering that leads to judgment, whereas later on in Exodus and Leviticus, we have a throwing or a scattering that leads to forgiveness, that leads to atonement.
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And this is to be done all in the sight of Pharaoh, that's part of the command. Nothing is done in secret,
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Moses is not to leave Pharaoh with any doubt about the origin or the point of the plague, and all along we've seen there's been a direct confrontation, a direct charge that has been brought against Pharaoh with undeniable and unavoidable clarity, though Pharaoh in so many ways seeks to deny, seeks to avoid that clarity.
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And here we see simply a sinful hardened heart in response to the revelation of God. God's confrontation, whether externally or even internally, as that external word, that external confrontation, mingles with the conscience, reverberates in the very heart, in the mind, in the soul, there's an undeniable and unavoidable clarity to what
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God presses on a hardened heart, and yet that hardened heart will not receive. That's why
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Jesus throughout the Gospel says, let him who has ears hear. Let him who has ears hear.
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Talking to everyone that has ears in front of him and recognizing that not everyone who can hear will actually be able to hear, such is the fallen condition of man.
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Now as a plague we may wonder, why ashes from a furnace? Was this necessary for God to bring sores and boils upon the
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Egyptians? No, of course not. God didn't need the ashes, he didn't need the furnace, he didn't need this little act in front of Pharaoh's sight in order to break out sores and boils upon his enemies.
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And so we look at that more carefully, we look at that word furnace. Furnace, of course, is what the
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Egyptian slaves would have been baking their mud bricks in. It's the same word for kiln.
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And of course the furnace was a symbol, therefore, of the oppression of God's people. The furnace was something that these
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Israelite slaves hated to be in front of, as they had gathered straw, making these bricks without their own straw being supplied, and standing in front of these blazing furnaces baking them throughout the long day.
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This was a symbol, therefore, of their oppression, and that had been the case even back in Genesis 15, the first time in Scripture where the event of Exodus that we're looking at was foretold.
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Remember that great dark sleep fell upon Abraham, and he saw the
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Lord in a vision manifested as what? As a furnace passing before him.
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Same word. The furnace, the torch, the flame passing by.
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And here the ashes being taken from the furnace represents God using the very mechanisms of oppression as a form of judgment upon the land of Egypt.
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He's taking the tools of the oppressor and using those same tools to punish the oppressor.
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And that's, I think, a truism that God will often bring people to recognize their sins in the punishment or chastisement
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He brings upon them. It's not just that God loves irony, or God loves poetic, you know, parallel.
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It's that God is just, and loves to reveal Himself as a just God.
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And like mere dust, judgment can spread as something very small, discreet, almost inconspicuous, and then with a moment's notice, it can become so incredibly severe.
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This dust has a hard edge, we read. It will cause boils that break into sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.
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God's own people are not spared from the sores elsewhere in Scripture. They're spared here.
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It seems the last seven plagues, at least, if not all ten, were spared from the
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Israelites. But of course, later on, when we turn to Job chapter 2, we find him with a potsherd in hand, and what is he doing in the ditch?
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He's scraping the sores on his skin, as his wife says, curse
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God and die. This is no way to live, your God has abandoned you. We find Hezekiah, tearfully, in Isaiah 38, beseeching the
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Lord because of the outbreak of sores that was putting him on his deathbed, and the
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Lord, of course, received that repentance and extended his life. The term here implies festering in its etymology, something that is festering, breaking out, boils as well, swelling, overflowing, and what a symbol it is for the guilt, for the sins of Pharaoh, for the sins of Egypt.
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They swell before the face of God. They overflow in terms of their magnitude and guilt, and so the judgment is parallel to the sin.
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Now we've seen that God is confronting not only the sin and pride of Pharaoh, but also the false gods of Pharaoh.
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He's exposing the fraudulence of the pantheon of Egypt, exposing how hollow and how unable these gods are to protect or save any of the
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Egyptians from God's judgment. Of course, there's only one God, one maker of heaven and earth, and with that, most likely, this plague is an exposure of the
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Egyptian god Imhotep, who would be sort of the equivalent to the god of medicine,
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Imhotep becoming, in Roman mythology, Asclepius, or perhaps
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Serapis, who was a healing god. Of course, this highlights the sovereignty of God, the confrontation, the showdown between not only the idols, but even the idolaters, as God has always wanted to do.
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Exodus 9, beginning in verse 10, we actually see now the judgment not foretold, but enacted.
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Then they took ashes from the furnace, stood before Pharaoh and Moses, scattered them toward heaven, and they caused boils that break out in sores on man and beast, and the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were on the magicians and on all the
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Egyptians. So again, Moses and Aaron obey the Lord. What the Lord said would happen is what happened.
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What the Lord says He will do is what the Lord always will do. That is always the case.
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And now, for the first time, the people and the animals are both directly affected by the plague.
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We've seen plagues affecting animals indirectly affecting the Egyptians, but for the first time with the sixth plague, we have the
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Egyptians as well as the animals directly affected by the judgment of God. At first glance, that says something of the patience and long -suffering of God, that though He was bringing judgment upon the evil empire,
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He did it in such a way as to be patient and long -suffering with the people. So He didn't go directly with the intensity that we'll end with in the tenth plague.
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In fact, the people aren't even directly touched until after the fifth plague.
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That says something about the long -suffering nature of God. But here for the first time, we have a foreshadowing of the tenth plague.
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In the tenth plague, it will be the most severe touch upon the people of Egypt. Here, the word for beast is a different word from the fifth plague, animal.
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Beast and animal are the same to us, but in the Hebrew, the word translated animal from the fifth plague would have been domesticated livestock, cattle.
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Here it's beast, it's literally anything in the land of Egypt. Any creature is affected by these boils and by these sores, by this epidermic disease that has spread from the heavens.
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So all of the animals are affected. As we said last week, this is a throwback to Genesis. Pharaoh is like Adam, and the sin of that one man has brought curse, has brought judgment, has brought a fallen, cursed condition upon all life, not just humanity, but even animal life.
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The whole world lies groaning under the effects of that fall. And so here, Pharaoh, because of his sin and his pride and the evil of his ways, brings about judgment, curse upon his land, upon both animal and human.
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Beyond this, the plagues are foreshadowing the greater judgment yet to come.
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John in Revelation takes so much of the imagery from these chapters in Exodus to depict, as it were, that final judgment that awaits the earth.
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Sores fall as the angels pour out the first bowl of wrath upon the earth in Revelation 16.
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So here we have not only a preview, but a confirmation of that judgment. And yet, if there's any encouragement, we're reminded from Exodus that the
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Lord has absolute control over the protection and care of His people. The Egyptians are utterly helpless in the face of this judgment, but God has a providential care for the
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Israelites. And so they are spared from the very judgment that is being poured out on the land.
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Exodus 9, verse 12, where we land, the Lord hardens the heart of Pharaoh, and He did not heed them, just as the
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Lord had spoken to Moses. This is the first time we've seen the Lord actively harden the heart of Pharaoh according to the text.
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Now, we've seen already twice the fact that God would harden Pharaoh's heart.
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Exodus 4, verse 21, the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which
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I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart that he will not let the people go. And then again, in chapter 7, verse 3,
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I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and so multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt, you see?
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God had foretold that He would harden the heart of Pharaoh, but finally now, with the sixth plague,
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He actually does so. Now is the time where the Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart unto judgment.
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Now, what does that say? Well, as we've pointed out earlier, we always maintain that God is not the author of sin.
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God does not write sins for people to do. God does not create or compel people to sin.
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God is not the author of sin. He who is perfect light cannot dwell with darkness, and there is no shadow of turning within Him.
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And yet, as a righteous and holy judge, as we've said, He can judicially harden a rebellious heart.
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Now Pharaoh's heart was rebellious from birth. We don't need to enter into a new status or category of rebellion for God to somehow become just in His hardening upon Pharaoh's heart.
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Pharaoh was already rebellious to the Lord by virtue of being born in Adam, and yet God seems to not act upon this judicial hardening until we get closer to this sixth plague.
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And so we see Pharaoh in abject rebellion against God, and only now in response does
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God say, now there will be no possibility of mercy. There will be no squirming, no relenting, even as I'm dialing up the judgment.
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And the intensity is going from yellow to orange to crimson red. He said, I will not allow you to turn back from what
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I am bringing upon the land. John Calvin says, the tyrant was not absolved from crime.
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His hardness of heart was voluntary. Now see that. It was His hardness of heart.
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And now God has confirmed Him in it. Please listen to what I'm saying.
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It was His hardness of heart. Now God has confirmed
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Him in it. Hardness of heart is the spiritual predicament that every unbelieving human being endures.
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The hardness of heart is not something that God authors or causes so much as we see here.
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He executes as a confirming judgment, as a reinforcing or establishing judgment.
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So there can be no excuse and no question, which means people who are only halfway exposed to Calvinism, and usually that's the case.
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People who are allergic to the idea of God's sovereignty usually have a very severe misunderstanding of God's sovereignty.
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And it becomes the God who authors good or evil. And they begin to not only misconstrue the nature of man in terms of salvation, but also the nature of God.
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Well, hardness of heart and this misunderstanding is usually something they see as, well, if God didn't harden my heart, then
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I would believe, so I have an excuse. I have a defense. When God wants to save me,
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He'll save me. God hasn't saved me yet. Thank you for praying for me. Please keep praying for me.
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God hasn't saved me yet. I know it's all in His hands. Don't we sing hymns like that? Isn't that what's always being talked about in our circle?
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Yeah, well, He just hasn't done it yet for me. No, no, no. Listen very carefully.
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You are responsible for the hardness of your heart. You are responsible for the hardness of your heart.
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In no other sense, George Bush, not the 43rd president or the 44th for that matter, but George Bush, the commentator from the 19th century says, in no other sense did
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God harden Pharaoh's heart than by permitting him to rush forward in precisely this course of rebellion that would issue a result in him hardening his heart.
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But even this permission was a fearful judgment and it speaks awful things to those who violate their own conscience and sin with a high hand.
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You see what he's getting at? There's an accountability because there's responsibility. There's no excuse that is left to man.
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He is accountable for what he does with what God has revealed to his conscience. He's not off the hook when he sins with a high hand.
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He aggravates the justice of God in this very way. God does not force or author that fallen condition upon him, but rather permits him to run headlong without hindrance.
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If this is what you have set yourself upon, headlong for destruction, lo, I remove my restraints along the way.
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That is what it looks like to fall under the judgment of God. Now, there's one thing that we see here that I'd like to highlight in application.
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In fact, it stands out in our passage. It's emphasized. The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were on the magicians and on all the
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Egyptians. So, notice just the way that's repeated within that sentence. It's showing how important it is.
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It's repeated for the sake of emphasis. The magicians could not stand before Moses.
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They could not stand before the representation of God. Remember, God said to Moses, you will be as God.
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The Hebrew verb to stand is the exact same verb that's used for Moses and Aaron standing before Pharaoh.
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Moses and Aaron have no problem standing before Pharaoh. Though they are comparatively weak, they recognize because they are on the
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Lord's side, they are infinitely stronger. They have an infinitely more solid position of power than Pharaoh could ever dream of.
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So, they have no problem standing before Pharaoh despite Pharaoh's rage, despite his wrath and his threats, despite his arrogance and his rebellious heart.
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They have no problem standing before him. Meanwhile, because of the judgment of God, Pharaoh's wisest men, the equivalent of priests in ancient
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Egypt, are not able to stand before these Hebrew prophets. They're so covered with the effects of this plague, covered from head to toe with boils and sores that they cannot stand.
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Can they not stand because they're ritually unclean? Most definitely, but perhaps even they're in such a state they can't physically stand.
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It's far too painful. They can only lay and groan. They cannot move about with all the choreographed elegance that they used to have in the courts.
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Of course, as a people, not just as this priestly caste within Egyptian society, but just as a society, ancient
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Egyptians held very high regard for hygiene. They had ritual cleansing acts that affected every level of society, all manner of baths and perfumes and cosmetics.
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We went to a museum this week and went to the ancient Egyptian exhibit. That was the whole reason we went.
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And in the display cases, they had several cosmetic jars, pots with remnants of various ointments and creams and the equivalent of ancient makeup, as well as the applicators that were used.
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But this judgment leaves no room for makeup. There's no foundation that can make them look credible or worthy to appear in the court of Pharaoh.
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Festering sores everywhere, festering sores on everything. Have you ever had chicken pox?
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That's the closest thing I can imagine, and that was misery. I remember laying in the bathtub filled with oatmeal, groaning.
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The one thing you're not supposed to do is itch, and what's the one thing you have to do? It's itch like a madman.
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Everywhere from the crown of your head to the toes on your feet, in between the webbing of your fingers, everywhere that there could be pox, there's pox, festering sores.
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The priests who served in these temples, the magicians that were a representation of the wisdom and the learning and the sophistication and even the divinization of the
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Egyptian caste, they of course had to be clean. If they were sick, they could not make an appearance.
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They were not appropriate to appear before the pantheon. Well suddenly this plague comes and now they're unfit.
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Later on in the book of Deuteronomy, we get to chapter 28, God warns His people as they've entered now into the promised land and He says if they refuse to obey
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Him, He would afflict them with the same boils with which He had afflicted the Egyptian.
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So God is saying, remember when you were in Egypt, the plague, the devastation that I brought upon that land, and remember all of the proud high priests, the magicians and the wise men, and how they could not stand before their gods because they were covered in boils.
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Well you will not be able to stand before your God if you disobey Me. I will bring those same boils upon you.
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Leviticus 13, we see that these conditions, these boils and sores broken out in the skin makes one ritually unclean and that requires you to be excluded from the camp, sent away from the people of God, for the
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Lord can only dwell in the midst of a clean and a holy people. And so that to me raises the question, what prevents us from standing before the
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Lord? What prevents us from standing before the Lord? There's three things
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I want to draw our attention to, three things that we universally, perennially face as believers that if we walk in these ways, we will not be able to stand before the
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Lord. We may not break out in boils and sores, but we will not be able to stand before the
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Lord. So the first is self -sufficiency, self -sufficiency.
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I was going to simply say antinomianism or lawlessness, a lawless way of living, but there's more to it than that.
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When you actually nail down the heart behind that lawless living, there's a hidden core of self -sufficiency.
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Unwittingly, subconsciously even, we begin to think there is something deep within us, within our abilities, within our talents, within our grasp, within the decisions we've made or the lifestyles we've committed to that somehow these things commend us to God.
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And to the degree that that commendation creeps into our understanding of our justification of our standing before God, it might as well be a plague that casts us from the camp.
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Self -sufficiency is a slow, subtle delusion. It never shows itself in full strength.
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It begins like dust in the land, and then it gathers and begins to break out.
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And as soon as it breaks out in that moment, you're paralyzed. You cannot stand before the Lord. It undermines the gospel in such subtle ways by minimizing the reality of our sin, highlighting in a wrong way the mercy of God as a mercy that has no respect toward the evil of sin.
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Hebrews 9 .22 tells us something about the gravity of sin in this way. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin.
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We resist sin, but not to the point of shedding our blood. Yet without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.
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It's a simple verse, and it tells us something about the gravity of sin. And when we understand that gravity, we begin to resist our natural tendencies toward self -sufficiency.
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Everyone in this room struggles with this problem. We all have somewhere within our practice, within our understanding of our lives and ourselves, some core, some secret root of being sufficient within ourselves.
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We think we have a way that we're able to pay our own debt, do what is needed to be done to save ourselves.
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Some of us were talking about this around the table yesterday at the feast. There was a film that's coming out about the tremendous work of rescuing children from child trafficking and child slavery, and this agent who had begun this nonprofit and was guided by faith.
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And I watched this little five -minute interview with a sort of Christian media, one of these big CBN or something like that, and very loose and watery anyway.
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And they were interviewing the man who founded this, which the film is based off of.
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And he began to say how difficult it was for him to leave his government job and the security of that and kind of venture off on his own.
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And at one point, he said, when I was really struggling and I wasn't going to do it, my wife basically cornered me and said,
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I will not let you jeopardize our salvation. That's what she said.
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And the interviewer was like, oh, you know, wow. What great faith. And he said, oh, yeah, you know, and I just knew.
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She's exactly right. And I'm watching this like, what? Jeopardize our salvation?
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Is this nonprofit rescuing 6 ,000 children? As noble, as mind -numbing as that kind of sacrifice and that kind of reach, as noble and good and needful as that is, do you really think that's what amounts to your salvation?
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If sin is really not all that bad, it is difficult to see how we need such a merciful salvation.
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From the Lord Jesus Christ hanging upon the tree, taking our place because we could not take our own place and be saved.
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If God is not all that holy, it is impossible to see how his justice requires an infinite punishment upon sin.
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Such that it could only be met by the infinitely atoning blood of the sacrificial lamb.
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And if you deny the reality of sin, you deny that reality of God's mercy, then of course there's all sorts of things you could do with your life to become sufficient in yourself.
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Just a little bit more than the next guy. A little bit more than your neighbor. I donate more blood.
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I scoop out more soup on Saturday mornings. I'm really a great person. Can watch all these viral videos,
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MD Motivator, all these people who go around and they love giving out money to homeless people, wonderful, wonderful.
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That kind of heart, of course, it's sort of a little ecosystem within itself.
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Because of the views, they make money so that they can make content of handing out and helping out homeless people, meeting their needs, can
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I come buy you a meal, do you need some clothes, you need a bus fare to get a job interview, things like that, all wonderful.
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So often we watch those things and we feel good about it. Maybe even in a weird way we feel good about ourselves.
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I would do that too. And James has a word with you if you think that about yourself.
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Of course all these wonderful things can deceive us into somehow having something within us that commends us to the mercy of God.
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Surely there's something about my life, something about my sacrifices, something about how
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I am. Aren't I just a peach? Surely, if anyone deserved
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God's mercy, it would be me. I would never say it in that way, but in subtle ways we begin to think and actually act and respond to the
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Christian life in such a way. Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse 9.
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We read this, Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.
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I love this because normally in the Gospels you simply get a parable and it's sort of like let him who hears hear, right?
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Let the reader understand. That's usually the most help you get. All right, I'm supposed to understand something here. Let me put my thinking cap on.
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Luke's like, this is so important, I don't even want you to guess. I want you to know exactly why
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Jesus gave this parable, who he was speaking to, who he was warning. He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others, which means there's a litmus test here.
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One of the ways you may possibly detect you have self -sufficiency or you're acting or living out in a self -righteous way is that it's easy for you to detest others.
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Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself,
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God, I thank you, I'm not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers.
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Even as this tax collector, I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess, but the tax collector standing far off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven.
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So he beat his breast and said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went home justified rather than the other.
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The Pharisee, of course, in Luke 18 was a man deeply concerned about personal holiness.
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In the details of his life, down to the spices, we can see that in his prayer. First of all, he recognizes,
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I'm unique. I'm not like these other men. I am not like most people.
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Do you know the kind of podcasts I listen to? Do you know the kind of homeschool curriculum I grew up with?
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I'm not like other men. He's happy to compare himself with others.
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Wouldn't you know it? He always comes out ahead. It's amazing. It's a miracle. He's never behind the others that he compares himself to.
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And look at his diligence. He fasts twice a week. That's far beyond what the law requires, by the way.
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We may pat ourselves on the back because we're fasting in full once a week. He's going double that.
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He's doubling down, saying, I fast and I tithe twice a week. Surely this
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Pharisee was God's man. Surely this Pharisee was righteous. Surely if anyone's leaving that temple justified, it's this man.
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Look at his heart. Look at his devotion. Look at his zeal. Look at his commitment. Look at the sacrifice.
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When he's tithing in that way, when he's fasting in this way, that's damaging his body, taking food off his kids' plates.
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Who's going to question the righteousness of this man? But here's the other man.
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He won't even look up. Rightly so. I don't see you fasting. I don't see you tithing in this way.
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Rightly so, you can't look up to heaven, you heathen. And then, of course, this
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Pharisee, though the tax collector was far off, perhaps even heard him say, oh, Lord, be merciful to me.
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And maybe the Pharisee was even tempted to think, give me a break, like you've ever done enough to earn that.
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But Jesus says it was because that tax collector knew he could not earn anything, that he was the one that went home justified.
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This was the parable that Jesus spoke to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.
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We are over -familiar with this parable. We always know the right answer. We put it in our own terms.
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We say, I am so glad I am like that tax collector and not like those Pharisees.
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And in so doing, we actually become the Pharisee. We just switch the players. But the mechanism of self -righteousness is the same.
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I'm so thankful I'm not like this drug addict. I'm so thankful that I do family worship 10 times a day, 10 minutes each session, and I bake zucchini bread for every person in my neighborhood.
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The point is, of course, we need to have some shock at the conclusion of Jesus' parable.
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There's only one who goes home justified, only one. He doesn't say, here's the amazing thing.
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Both of them were justified. Isn't that incredible? I'm so merciful, I even take the tax collector. No, he doesn't even say that.
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He says, no, no, there's only salvation for one. There's only a standing before God for one of these two types of people.
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It should shock us because we often have more in common with the Pharisee than the tax collector.
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If we could put to the level of detestation that maybe was exhibited by first century
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Jews toward Roman patsies like tax collectors, compromisers, Benedict Arnolds, it would probably be some of the leftists, some of the
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LGBTQ folks. We always have to reflect very carefully.
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Is there something in my heart that is so shriveled up that I actually detest them? As though I have something within myself, as myself, by myself, that gives me a standing of righteousness before God that they don't have access to because they haven't lived like I've lived.
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They've not who I am. They don't have the virtues and all the nobility that I have, a right understanding like I have.
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Does that amount to some sort of self -sufficiency before God? Then you've made the cross of no effect. The question is not, doesn't my devotional life prove that I am accepted by God?
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Or why should I ever doubt when I've stuck with the church all these years? I show up week after week. Surely that proves that I'm standing with God.
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Or I have a more firm grasp of Scripture than almost anyone else I know. That is never the question.
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That's not the question in Luke 18. The question is simply this. When was the last time in sincerity and earnestness you said,
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God, be merciful to me. I'm a sinner. Not as something you read off a sheet, not as something you're supposed to say before the hearing of others, but something you felt in the very basement level of your heart.
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I am wretched, God, show me mercy. Otherwise, I have no standing before you.
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We've come to worship a God who abandons the hard -hearted, the proud, he resists, the unrepentant sinner, the defiant, those who think they're self -sufficient.
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And again, I say it's devious, it's subtle. You may assume that you're the tax collector and you understand something of mercy.
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But if the way that you do that is by comparing yourself to others, you haven't understood anything about Luke 18.
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The second thing that prevents us from having a standing before the Lord is really the flip side of this coin.
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It's legalism. Legalism. I said so much about the law over the past week and we're gonna be getting there with Exodus 20.
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And that's just to say, whenever you speak about law, just like Paul, you ought to have a immediate knee -jerk reaction to warn about the danger of legalism.
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In promoting, as we ought, that the purpose of our salvation is ultimately to restore us into the image of God so that what is written upon our heart in terms of the moral law is exhibited intrinsically in our lives in a new heavens and new world where we can dwell with Him.
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And so, of course, we wanna promote the law is holy, just, good. But because of our fallen flesh and because of this inner drive of self -sufficiency, we're often prone to the other side of that, which is legalism.
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Legalism robs us of a standing before the Lord. This is why Paul said to the Galatians, you were running well.
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What happened? Who bewitched you? Seeking acceptance from God through our efforts.
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Seeking acceptance from God through our efforts. A perversion of God's grace, a perversion of God's law, a misunderstanding and misapplication of the law of God is to make the cross of no effect.
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The cross denounces legalism. Paul states it bluntly. If righteousness could come through the law,
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Christ died for nothing. Why would God send His only Son to endure the misery and agony of Gethsemane and then
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Golgotha on top of that if it was possible for you to be made righteous by the law? And if you are not to be made righteous by the law, then don't think that you have any standing before God by virtue of the law.
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Your justification is by the blood of the sacrifice. Legalism will always beat you down in the long run.
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Legalism loves to give us a boost. It's like that jolt of caffeine in the morning. Or if you've ever tried to keep yourself going with a lot of caffeine and sugar, you start to crave all the sweets.
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And what happens? You crash. But at first it feels like you're invincible. You get that little shot of espresso and you feel like you can go now and conquer the world.
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And I think I'm gonna be up till midnight. And then about 4 p .m. you're like a zombie. You can't hold yourself up anymore.
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That's what legalism looks like in practice. All right, now we're onto something. Now we're really making some headway.
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Now we're striving. I know that this is doing something for my standing before God. But when the law comes, sin revives and we die.
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We're guilty, it pronounces. We're failures. The law always rightly exposes us. And so we become ashamed.
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And the lie of legalism says, you're gonna have to do a lot better than that if you wanna get back into grace.
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You're gonna have to work a lot harder than that if you wanna stand in God's grace. And so we try a lot harder.
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And then we fail a lot harder. And we cry for the law to show some mercy like faithful in Pilgrim's Progress.
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Please show me mercy. I don't know how to show mercy. As Moses is pitilessly beating him down.
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We cry for the law to show us mercy, but it's powerless to pardon us. Our only hope then is to cling to the cross of Jesus.
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The gospel says it was while we were still weak that Christ died for us.
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And he didn't die in such a way to then say, now it will all be by your strength, but by my strength says the
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Lord. And of course, just as a caveat, we always make sure we're looking at God's law and we never say good riddance.
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I'm so happy. I'm free from any and all obedience. Isn't it wonderful? I can have
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Jesus as my savior, but not my Lord. No, of course not. Romans 6, anathema.
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God forbid we ever think or speak or understand things in this way. It shows we're condemned already if we make a travesty of grace in such a way.
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But we stand in grace. That's the key. Sinclair Ferguson, if you've ever read his tremendous book on the marrow controversy, where he gets at the very heart of antinomianism and legalism and shows how they're essentially the same error, a twin error, two sides of the same coin.
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And he says in this book, it's a failure to see the generosity of God and his wise and loving plans for our lives as a production of legalism.
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When this distortion of God's character is complete, we inevitably mistrust him.
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We begin to lose sight of his love and of his grace. We begin to see him as a forbidding
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God, right? The legalist sees God and maybe even wants to see
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God as sort of the cosmic killjoy. Gerhardus Vos, the great
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Dutch theologian, said, legalism is a peculiar kind of submission to God's law, something that no longer feels the personal divine touch in the rule it submits to.
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That's a great way to detect, to think about, is there some root of legalism in my walk?
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Am I obeying out of the delight for who God is and what he has done? Is there a personal presence?
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Is there a divine touch to my obedience? Or is it so abstract and so distant that it's become simply a letter
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I'm walking by? Which is to say, it's a ministry of condemnation, whether I know it now or not.
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To get back to Ferguson, this is simply what he's saying. Legalism is separating the law of God from the person of God.
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Separating the commands of God from the character of God. When Eve saw the fruit from the tree, after she had been given the command, she lost sight of God himself.
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It became plausible that maybe God wasn't all that he appeared himself to be. Though he was placing man and woman in an endlessly beautiful paradise with all of the abundance they could possibly need for their work of dominion, she began to look at the fruit and be convinced that God was depriving her.
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She took the command and she separated it from the character. She was deceived into hearing the law as a needless, cruel rule rather than a kind guidance from a heavenly father.
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That's the distortion of legalism. It's rooted not simply in our view of the law, it's rooted in our view of God and his gospel of grace.
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And so we reject the lie. We certainly see the law has a condemnation that was emptied at the cross.
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What is that? That torn veil signifying. But that which had been blocked indefinitely to all but the high priest by virtue of the atonement is now open to all by virtue of the great high priest and the unending once for all atonement.
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And so we're free to walk in the wisdom and the goodness and the grace of his holy commands out of gratitude, not out of merit.
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We think we somehow merit our acceptance by God. We have no standing before him.
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The third and the last that I'll bring up this morning, the third thing that prevents us from standing before the
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Lord is our own selfish desire and hardness of heart, just like Pharaoh.
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Selfish desire and hardness of heart. We can have no standing before God when we're operating, walking with this kind of hardness, with this kind of self -consumed lifestyle, only ever concerned about me and what impacts me and what things mean for me and how and who regards me.
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It's impossible in such a state to attend to the things of God. Your heart becomes so self -consumed that it calcifies and it's no longer receptive to the will of God, no longer receptive to the pleas of mercy from God.
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A .W. Tozer, in his classic, The Pursuit of God, don't always quote Tozer, he's sort of a mixed bag, but he's got some wonderful little gems in his writings.
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And in The Pursuit of God, Tozer puts it this way. Speaking of the veil that was torn.
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With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus' flesh, with nothing on God's side to prevent us from entering, why do we stay without?
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Why do we consent to abide all of our days just outside of the holy of holies and never enter at all to look upon God?
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We hear the bridegroom say, let me see thy countenance. Let me hear thy voice, sweet is thy voice.
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Thy countenance is beautiful. We sense that call is somehow for us, but still we fail to draw near.
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And the years pass and we grow old and tired in those outer courts. What hinders us?
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The answer usually given is simply this, we're cold. But that doesn't explain all the facts.
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There's something more serious than coldness of heart. Something that may be behind that coldness and be the cause of that coldness.
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What is it? Well, what is it but the presence of a veil in our hearts?
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A veil of flesh. A veil not taken away like that first veil in the temple was.
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But it remains there, still shutting out the light, still hiding the face of God from us.
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It's the veil of our fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified, unrepudiated.
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It's the closely woven veil of the self, which we've never truly acknowledged, of which we've been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we've never brought it to the judgment of the cross.
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It is not too mysterious, this veil. It's not so hard to identify. We have but to look in our own hearts and we'll see it there, sewn and patched and repaired as it may be.
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But it is there, nevertheless, an enemy to our lives, an effective block to all of our spiritual hope.
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You see? It's the flesh, it's the self, self -will, self -desire, self -ambition, self -sufficiency, writ large with all of its poisonous effects.
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And what is the response to this? We turn to Christ. We say,
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Lord, I recognize and I praise You for You have opened the veil that separated You from me.
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But Lord, there is a further veil that must be removed. There is a further veil that You must tear open, lest I wither and perish apart from Your presence.
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And so we come to the one who not only opened the Holy of Holies, but we boldly go to the one who opens before us the throne of grace.
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Are you able to stand before the Lord? That's the question. What has given you a standing before the
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Lord? That's the question. Is there a root of self -sufficiency?
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The things that you've done, the way that you're striving, and you patch it up as best you can, you ask for forgiveness for the things you're aware of, but it's all just part of this endless journey, and you're no different than that wife saying, please don't jeopardize my salvation.
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I'm working really hard at this thing. Is that how you're gonna stand before the Lord? If you,
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O Lord, should mark iniquity, who could stand? We come to the one who stands on our behalf.
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We recognize we have no standing before the Lord. We are no different than the tax collector in Luke 18.
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We bend our knees, we cannot look to the heavens. We have no possibility of standing. So we kneel and we bend over.
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We cannot raise our eyes. We simply are there in our shame. All we can do, looking downward at ourselves, is enter up that plea toward the heavens.
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Lord, show me mercy. We are not able to stand, but there is one who stands before us, one who stands between us, one who ever lives to make intercession, one who stands close to the
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Father, pleading for sinners, one who, though he stood close to the
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Father, also threw himself away from the Father as he took on our sin, as he atoned for those sins with his precious blood.
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That's how Jesus stands before us. And so now, if you're a believer in Christ, you're so fully washed, so fully cleansed, so fully justified.
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You are now accepted in the beloved in such a way you could never possibly be more accepted than you are in the beloved, so accepted that your acceptance could never be taken from you.
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Sin completely purged because of the worthiness and the efficacy of the sacrifice of the
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Son, so that you can have boldness to enter where God dwells in perfect light.
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We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but in all points was tempted as we are, yet without sin let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace.
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What is your standing before the Lord this morning? What gives you boldness to rise up from that kneeling position and boldly go before the throne of grace?
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It simply must be this. You have a standing before the Lord because you've recognized that the grace of God has come not by works, but by faith.
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And what does it mean? What does it look like practically? To have the kind of faith that gives you a boldness to be a recipient of grace, a partaker at the bold throne of grace.
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What does that look like? What's another way of describing it? Well, Paul has this wonderful little idiom, this little description of what it means to be in union with Christ, what it means to be in Christ.
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What gives us boldness before the throne? Not some little rescue raft of faith that we float, but it's a faith that actually unites us to the person of the
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Son. By faith, we are united to Christ. By faith, we are brought not only near to Him, but we are made one with Him.
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That is what faith accomplishes in our salvation. Faith brings about union with Christ.
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We sing it in the hymn. And when before the throne, oh, how did you get before the throne?
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What gives you a standing before the throne? How dare you stand before the throne? Oh no, no, listen.
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And when before the throne I stand in Him complete.
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Do you see? It's union with Christ. It's being in Christ that gives you the ability to stand before the throne of God.
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You are either unable to stand, self -meriting, self -striving, legalistic practice, living in the flesh with a hardened heart, unable to stand, pockmarked and riddled with the guilt that is boiling and overflowing, almost like a skin disease from your life.
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And though you proudly trumpet your achievements and efforts, you have no standing before God. You're either unable to stand or you're standing by faith in Christ.
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Therefore, Paul says in Romans 5 .1, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
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Our standing in grace is being united to Christ by faith.
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It is in whom we stand that gives us the ability to stand.
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What does it mean to be in Him, to be in Christ? I'll draw us to a close with this.
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Take this as a preview, as an encouragement when October comes and the Bolton Conference rolls around to make a point on the calendar to come to that.
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One of the speakers will be Jeremy Walker, who's a dear brother from the UK who's written some tremendous books and he has this wonderful book about what it means to be in Christ.
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And this is just from one chapter, just a few paragraphs from a chapter and it's probably the greatest description
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I've ever read of what it looks like, what it means to be in Christ. To be in Christ is to be savingly united to the
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Lord Jesus Christ by faith. It is a saving connection to the
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Lord. God's gracious gift to otherwise hopeless sinners granted in sovereign mercy.
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To be in Christ is to know the certainty of being accepted in the beloved, readily received, embraced by the
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Father on account of the Son in all of His perfection. It is to be secure, nourished, assured of the life which is to come.
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A Christian in Christ in the same way that a hand or a foot is in the body. God gave
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Him to be a head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
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This is the sure result of looking to Him and being saved. This is the certain consequence of entrusting your soul to Him.
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We get to be in Christ by faith, with love, by faith when we depend utterly upon Him alone to make us acceptable in the sight of the
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Holy God. And with love when we adore Him above all, above any others, above ourselves, as the true joy of our hearts.
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Where faith is sincere, love will readily follow. We are in Christ in the same way
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Noah was in the ark, a place of safety, peace, rest, shut in by the very hand of God Himself, made secure from all the terrors of law and judgments.
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To be in Christ is in the very instant in which that is true. To be the inheritor of all that Jesus accomplished by His atoning death and glorious resurrection.
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By the time Paul died, he had spent long, faithful, fruitful years in Christ. When the thief on the cross died, he had spent but a few agonizing, helpless hours in Christ.
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But neither had more nor less of Christ. Neither was more or less righteous in God's sight.
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Neither was more or less beloved of God for the sake of Christ. It is being in Christ that makes all the difference to any man or any woman and paves the way to be with Christ when
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He returns. Amen? And when before the throne we stand in Him complete,
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Jesus died, my soul to save, our lips shall still repeat. Let's pray.
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Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for the faith that You've given us as a precious gift and a costly gift.
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And in using that gift, Lord, You've brought us by the Spirit into union with Your Son so that we can stand in Him, so that we can stand before You, so that we can stand in this grace which we've received.
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Help us then, Lord, to stand fast, to not be seduced and deceived by the errors of self -sufficiency or legalism, or by the hardness of our hearts and of our selfish desires.
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Lord, help us to stand fast against the tricks and the deceptions of our enemy, against the lies of the world and the magicians of our age.
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Help us to stand, Lord, in You complete, coming always under the shadow of the cross, knowing that we're justified simply by the blood, and claiming, pleading nothing but the blood.
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Help us, Lord, to fly to that fountain even this morning. Are my brothers and sisters,
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Lord, dirty, ashamed? Are they guilty? Wash us in the fountain.
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Is there one here, Lord, who needs the veil of their heart torn open, lest they never see the glory of the
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One that dwells within the Holy of Holies? Do that work, we pray. Show mercy this day.
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Turn a Pharisee into a tax collector and a tax collector into a beloved, adopted child of God.