WWUTT 951 I Will Manifest Myself to Him?

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Jesus says to his disciples that if you obey my word, I will manifest myself to you.

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The rest of the world will not see me, but you will see me, and you will live. And that makes sense to us when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the Gospel of John chapter 14, and I'm going to go back to verse 15 and read through verse 24.

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Jesus said to his disciples, If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

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And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the

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Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

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You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans,

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I will come to you. Yet a little while in the world will see me no more, but you will see me, because I live, you also will live.

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In that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.

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Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my

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Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas, not

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Iscariot, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?

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Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my

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Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

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Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine, but the

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Father's who sent me. We finished up last week with verse 21, so let me come to verse 22 here.

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This is where, after Jesus is sharing in this particular discourse, one of the disciples speaks up,

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Judas, whom John is sure to clarify is not Judas Iscariot. He's already gone out from the midst of them.

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So there's another disciple named Judas, not the one who is the son of Simon Iscariot. This disciple interjects in the midst of Jesus' teaching to ask,

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Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us but not to the world?

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So how is it that we're going to be the ones that will see you, but the rest of the world will not see you?

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And I hope you can recognize by Judas' question here that he's asking according to his flesh, like according to a fleshly understanding, according to using your senses, not according to faith, not according to knowing with your heart.

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As Jesus has even said here that he's going to give the helper to them, the Holy Spirit, and the

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Holy Spirit will show them these things. They will know by faith the things that Jesus has said.

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They will see him by faith and know him by faith. But here,

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Judas doesn't quite understand, and he's speaking for the rest of the disciples. The rest of them don't get it either. How is it that Jesus is saying that we will see him, but the rest of the world will not see him?

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Because Judas is thinking of his literal eyes. He's not thinking of his mind's eye, right, so you understand that.

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Jesus has previously said that whoever has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my

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Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. And with Jesus saying that, saying that he was going to go out from the world, the world will not see him any longer, but you will see me, and I will manifest myself to you.

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So the disciples are curious about this. How is it that we will see you, but the rest of the world will not see you?

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Now, we understand that the gospel is a gospel of grace, meaning that God has shown us favor, though we don't deserve it.

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In fact, what we deserve is the judgment of God, so it's demerited favor.

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That would be the two -word definition of God's grace, and God's grace in particular, not just any grace.

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Whenever we use the word grace in a generic sense, we're talking about unmerited favor.

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But in the case of our position with God, his grace toward us would be demerited favor, since we had rebelled against God, and what we had deserved for that was the wrath of God.

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But that's not what he gave us. He gave us his son to die for our sins. Romans 5, 8,

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God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

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That's the grace of God that we have by faith in Jesus Christ. It is demerited favor.

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And we understand the gospel is a message of grace, God showing us favor, though what we deserved was his judgment.

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It is not by our works that we earn this favor. If it was by our works, then it wouldn't be grace.

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You can't say that our salvation is based on grace and works, because then there would not be any grace at all.

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If even God did 99 % of the work and we do 1 % of the work, it's not grace, because it was not sufficient.

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The sacrifice of Christ was not enough. There had to be something else that needed to be done to be accomplished on our part, a work that we needed to do in order to meet

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God the rest of the way and complete our process of salvation. And that's not the way our salvation is accomplished.

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It is completely the work of God from beginning to end. Every way that you come to understand the order of salvation, all the texts that you can put together and lay out the order of salvation, it is clearly when you're systematically working this out through the scriptures, it is clearly the work of God from beginning to end, starting with predestination and ending with glorification that God had chosen us from before the foundation of the world.

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See Ephesians 1, for example, and that he is going to unite us with him forever in glory with the

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Son. See Romans 8, 28 through 30. So in these things, we can see even systematically working through an order of salvation that the work of salvation in our lives is the work of God.

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It is not our work. We don't do anything. Faith itself is a gift from God. Ephesians 2, 8, it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing.

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It is the gift of God. Not a result of works so that no man may boast. God grants us faith.

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He's the one that even gives us repentance. Second Timothy 2, 25, God will grant repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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So God is the one who justifies us, who makes us innocent before him. He's also the one who sanctifies us, grows us in this process of holiness that begins on the day that we come to faith in Christ and will conclude on the day that we are glorified with him.

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God is the one who justifies us. He is the one who sanctifies us. He's the one who gives us our faith. He's the one who perfects us in our faith.

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The instruction in Hebrews 12, 2 that we put off every weight, every sin, let us take it all off and everything that so closely entangles and run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, the one who gives us our faith and the one who grows us in that faith, perfects us in that faith as well.

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So God is the one who gives us faith. He is the one who gives us salvation, starting with his election, his preordained plan, his decree from before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

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He predestined us. That's back to Ephesians one. And as I quoted to you earlier,

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Ephesians two, eight and nine, we have an Ephesians to ten for you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared for you beforehand that you should walk in them. So it is not by our works that we come to salvation, but we are still appointed for works.

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So anyway, I've kind of gone all over the place here explaining this. Let me let me bring it back to what

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I was intending to say when I first started on this particular trail, minus all the extra rabbit trails.

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But all of that feeds into what I'm going to say here. So we understand that the gospel is one of grace. It is not by our works.

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It is the work of God. Yet there is still an expectation of us to do works just because our salvation has come by faith and not of works.

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That does not mean that we are not expected to work at all. And that's where Ephesians two ten comes in.

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You are his workmanship created to do good works. God prepared those works for you, that you should walk in them, that you're growing in salvation or sorry, growing in sanctification, although salvation would apply in that as well in the in the sanctification sense, because before Paul said to the

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Philippians, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. OK, so anyway, so it is that process of sanctification, of growing in holiness, of being shaped more and more in the image of the sun.

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This is the work that we should be doing. And it's not something that saves us, but rather it's something that we're going to do because we're saved.

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It is an expression of our salvation and it is the way that we show that we love

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God. He has already demonstrated that he loves us by creating us and then sending his son to die for us, sending an evangelist to us to preach the gospel, that we might hear the good news of the message of the kingdom and so turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ and live.

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All of this being the work of God, the Holy Spirit regenerating our heart to understand the message of the gospel as it was spoken, being united with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And we have fellowship with him. We have adoption. We are sons and daughters of God.

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All of this being the work of God, the blessing of God that he has worked out for us through the preaching of the gospel.

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So God has done this for us and has shown his love for us in this way. We show our love for God by obeying his commandments and we know the gospel is one of grace.

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And so there are a lot of people who will kind of bristle at that concept of thinking that we must obey or do something or follow commandments.

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We're not under the law anymore. Right. If we're under grace and not under the law, why are you now therefore imposing law upon me?

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Well, Jesus said that his commandments are not burdensome. First, John 5, 3, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.

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When you try to earn your own salvation by keeping the law or believing that you can be righteous in and of yourself, like I can be a good person without God and therefore tie the hands of God.

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See, he's got to save me now because I've done all these things, this, this and this, as though somehow we can obligate

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God to have to save us, which is ridiculous, just flat out blasphemous that we could think such a thing.

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When you obligate yourself to keeping the law and thinking that that would be your righteousness, that's actually enslavement because you can't keep the law and you are constantly going to be going down that list and finding yourself unable to keep it.

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It's the thing that you'll be doing for the rest of your life, ultimately to your destruction, because it was all self -righteous.

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You thought that you could earn your own salvation by doing this. You couldn't. There's no work that could have earned you right standing with God.

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It is Jesus Christ who kept the law perfect, who died for us, and he gave us his righteousness, clothed us in righteous robes so that we may stand before God as righteous.

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And the the instrument that God has chosen to transmit this righteousness from his son to us is faith, that we would believe in what

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Jesus said, what he did, his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, his ascension into heaven, and even his promise of returning again.

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All of these things, understanding in the life of Christ by faith, is how we receive the gift of righteousness from our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And it's he that did the work. It's he that accomplished it. And he gives it to us by faith.

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So the commandments that Jesus gives us are not burdensome because the commandments don't save us.

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We've already been saved by the work of Christ. Therefore, we are freely able to do what Christ has commanded of us to do.

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Knowing that we're not working toward our salvation, it's already been accomplished.

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So therefore, these commandments are not a burden for us. They are a delight because we know what

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Jesus has done for us and we delight in our savior. So therefore, you can love your neighbor.

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You can love your enemy. Jesus even loved his enemies, as we've read in first Peter chapter two, when

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Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

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And I quoted to you last week also from Romans chapter 12, where it says not to take vengeance out on our enemies.

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But instead, when your enemy is hungry, you give him food. When he is thirsty, you give him something to drink. And by so doing, you heap hot coals on his head.

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This is following the example of our Lord Christ. You are even able to love your enemy without thinking that your ability to love your enemy is going to be your salvation.

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But rather, you know that Jesus loved his enemies. He loved us and we were his enemies. So therefore, you are able to love others as Christ has loved you.

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So you must love one another. Husbands, you're able to love your wife, laying your life down for her as Christ has done for the church.

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We, the church, have been ridiculously unfaithful. But Jesus Christ is faithful to us, though we have been evil toward him.

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He is nothing but good to us. Wives, you can submit to your husbands as Christ did to the will of his father, as the church is supposed to submit to Christ.

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And it is your delight to do this because you have the example of your Lord and Savior, Jesus, who submitted to the will of his father.

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You love the Lord your God with all your heart. For Jesus even did all things to the glory of God, the father.

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Philippians 2, 11. You are content with what you have. Jesus gave up everything for us, for our benefit.

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Second Corinthians 5, 21. For our sake, he became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God through him.

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Later on in Second Corinthians chapter eight, verse nine, for, you know, the grace of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that you, by his poverty, might become rich.

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And as I said earlier, he did all things to the glory of his father, and that was enough for him. Hebrews 12, 2, once again, where I talk about how it says that Jesus is the author and the perfecter of our faith going on from there, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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So his full desire was the glory of God, the father, the glory that he would share with the father in heaven forever.

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He did all things for that purpose. So there was nothing here on earth that was to Christ's glory.

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It was it was for the heavenly kingdom. It was all these heavenly things. And so therefore, the apostle

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Paul says in Colossians chapter three, that we should seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Why? Because Jesus did it.

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And so you you can do it since Christ has done it for us in every way.

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He became like his brothers in every way, as it says in Hebrews 2, 17, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

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Jesus having accomplished all of that work. So there's no work for us to do to attain salvation. Christ has purchased us by his blood.

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We work as an expression of love to Christ and everything that we do, we are able to do to the glory of God because that work does not merit our salvation.

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We would not be able to accomplish that anyway. Our salvation has been purchased for us, and now we work in joy for Christ, for the

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Lord. Christ even did what he did for the joy of the Lord, despising the shame of the cross and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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You will never face shame like Jesus faced. And so knowing that that shame has been taken away, the shame of sin, of regret, of your guilt before God, all of that has been atoned for by the blood of Christ, which you've received by faith.

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And so now knowing that, you obey the commandments of God. If you do not obey the commandments of God, then you don't love

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God. And I'm not talking about messing up every once in a while. I'm saying that you are habitually rejecting, denying what

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Christ has said and deciding to go your own way. There's something about the commands of Christ you just don't like.

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I'm just going to ignore that one, and I'm going to take for granted that the grace of God is just going to forgive me for that. No, the possibility is that you do not actually have the grace of God.

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That's the whole point that Paul makes in Romans chapter six. If you are still a slave to unrighteousness and not a slave to righteousness, you're committing the members of your body to unrighteousness, then you can't have the grace of God.

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For how can one who is covered by the grace of God continue to walk in sin in the passions of the flesh, just thinking, hey,

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God's just going to forgive me for this? No, the possibility is that you are still in darkness. You are not walking in the light as he is in the light.

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You are afraid of the light because you don't want your evil deeds to be exposed. Those who love

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Christ are willing to have the works that they do seen in the light by others.

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They're not trying to hide anything because our works have been carried out in God. If you love me,

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Jesus says you will obey my commandments and I will manifest myself to you.

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Judas asked the question, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?

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And Jesus answered him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.

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Keeping the word of Christ means keeping his commandments. If you believe what

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Jesus has said, you will obey it. That is the way our faith is demonstrated.

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It's demonstrated through obedience. If you do not obey, you do not have faith.

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You can pay lip service to your faith. Yeah, I believe in Jesus. But if you don't demonstrate that declaration by your works, then you don't really have faith.

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That's the point James was trying to make in James chapter two, that faith without works is a dead faith.

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You can say that you have faith. You don't demonstrate that faith by your works. That faith is not real. Doesn't matter what you say with your mouth.

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It doesn't exist in your heart and therefore you are not right before God and you stand in condemnation.

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So what does it mean then where Jesus says that I will manifest myself to him? We see

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Christ through his word and we are so convinced by his word that we are motivated to do what it says.

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This is how Christ is manifested to us and is the Holy Spirit that shows us these things.

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We know God, we see him through his word. The rest of the world does not see

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God in such a way because they do not have the Holy Spirit of God who is opening their minds and hearts to spiritual things.

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Spiritual things can only be discerned with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within us. Otherwise, the

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Bible to us is just a textbook. It's not the living, breathing word of God unless the

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Holy Spirit reveals it to us. And in this way, Jesus Christ becomes manifest to us through his word.

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And so obvious to us is this, that we are compelled, we are delighted, excited to obey and do the will of God as given to us through Jesus Christ because we have seen it all through his word.

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So love God, obey him. As we sing in an old hymn, and maybe you know this hymn, we sing it in church a few times a year.

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Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

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And I believe ultimately there's another way in which Jesus is manifest to us that the rest of the world will not see.

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We will see Jesus Christ as loving and benevolent and a friend to us where the rest of the world will view him as an enemy.

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And ultimately, at the at the great white throne of judgment, we see Christ as our savior and our deliverer, our entrance into the eternal kingdom.

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But Christ will be the judge of the wicked upon whom his wrath will fall in the end.

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At the end of Matthew 28 in the Great Commission, Jesus said, go into all the world, making disciples, baptizing and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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So we must tell the world, turn from your sin, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and live.

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And then the way Todd Friel ends all of his wretched broadcasts with these words, we must say, now go and serve your king.

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Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.