Dangers To The Gospel (part 3)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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It's an amazing thing to me to think that people won't believe the Bible, even though you can go and see so much of the

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Bible before your very eyes right there. Whether it's Israel and you go to the Temple Mount, you go to the

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Sea of Galilee, or where you go to Philippi and think, this is the room where the generals, translated magistrates in the

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New Testament, took Paul and said, you know what, what's this strange thing you're teaching? Right there before your very eyes and people still won't believe.

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So, Saviour Shekels, February 2015, Israel and Jordan. So, if you'd like to go to Petra in Jordan, who knows, maybe the world will be done by then.

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Syria is bombed today by Israel, you just never know. Maybe today. Would that be good?

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I love preaching. If this is my last sermon, let it be from the Bible. Threats to gospel and the gospel ministry, a little mini -series here.

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The threats that I've gone over so far, when the church assumes the gospel, that's a threat.

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Number two, making the gospel about how I receive it versus who Jesus is.

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Number three, making the gospel a lesser priority. Four, the preacher himself getting in the way.

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Six, success -driven preaching, popularity over faithfulness. And tonight,

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I'd like to talk about moralism. Who could define for me moralism and why is it a threat to the gospel?

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Why is moralism so bad? Ferdie? Okay, good.

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Anybody else want to add to that? Us? Okay, good.

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Do churches in the area preach moralism? So if they're preaching moralism, what could it be?

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What would be a typical moralistic sermon? Do this, do that, good.

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Do unto others. You know,

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I was happy to preach Romans 7 this morning, went home, took a nap, got a little exercise, played with the kids in the yard and all that.

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And then I get up here and I think we're going to have to ask the Lord for some divine help because you guys pretty much, except for the visitor, you're all sitting there like this, like...

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So, I think it's a sin to make the Bible boring, so we're going to try to put some enthusiasm into this.

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And so, you can sit at the edge of your seat. And tonight, I'm going to talk about this doctrine that really is bad for the church.

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I'm not going to ask any more questions because I was afraid of the answers I already got. Those are pretty bad answers. So, I'm not going to ask any more.

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Moralism is tough, but before we go into moralism, let's go back to 1 Corinthians 15. I know you know the verse, but let's just reset everything to what is the gospel?

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There are a variety of different statements about the gospel in the New Testament, either explicitly stated or implicitly derived.

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But 1 Corinthians 15 is just a great spot to just camp so we understand what the good news is.

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We have good news for people and the good news is not the law. The good news is not a to -do list. The good news is not to be nice.

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The good news is not to have a nice family. We need a different set of proclamations.

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And it starts with 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3, for I delivered to you as of first importance that which

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I also received that Christ the Messiah died not for his sins because he was sinless, he was blameless, he was the

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Lamb of God, perfect and spotless. He died a substitutionary death in our place, on our behalf, in our stead, for our sins, in accordance with the

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Scriptures, that he was buried, he in fact died, that he was raised on the third day, with the focus here not

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Jesus raising himself, although Jesus did raise himself, but focuses on the Father raising him to confirm the great death as it was sufficient, as it was a satisfaction, on the third day in accordance with the

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Scriptures. That is the good news. And the good news requires a response. Repent, believe, trust, follow.

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Jesus Christ, the God -man, both representative and substitute, died on the cross, was raised from the dead.

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So anything less, anything more, we're going to run into trouble. And I want to talk about today what Mohler calls one of the most seductive false gospels of moralism.

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Taking the Bible, taking the gospel, and reducing it down to principles for holy living.

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Taking the gospel that's good news about what Jesus did, and turning it into law, how to have improvement in your life.

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And this is going to be a risk, but I'll do it anyway, because most of the people here have been around for quite some time.

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I think it's fair to say that nine churches in this area out of ten give regularly, and most often, moralistic sermons.

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Sermons about improvement of behavior, void of the gospel. And I think

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I can prove it by this. If you ask unbelievers, what's the message of the church?

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Mostly the unbelievers would say, to be good people, to be moral people.

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They've heard the church loud and clear, and they think our message is moralism. Moral improvement.

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Reducing the Bible to kind of a handbook for living. Jerry Bridges, and he's not one for kind of no -co -radio style, said,

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I believe that human morality rather than flagrant sin is the greatest obstacle to the gospel today.

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Not a bunch of crazy abortion doctors and pedophiles, but no morality.

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Bridges said, and the more religious a person is, the more difficult it is for that person to realize his or her need for the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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You know, when Jesus talked to the sinners and the harlots, the prostitutes, the tax gatherers, they had no qualms about saying,

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I need righteousness. But when Jesus preached to the moral people, if you would like an example of morality in the

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Bible, who is the example of morality? The Pharisees.

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They were religious, self -righteous, moral people, and when you think you're moral, you don't think you have any reason for a sin bearer.

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I've told you this story probably 20 times, but when I had to go door -to -door evangelizing as a seminary student at Master's Seminary, you had to have a partner with you or another seminary buddy.

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Mike Canham was a guy who was my seminary buddy, and I thought he was nervous when he parked the car about three feet from the curb.

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And I just thought, you know what? At least he's nervous too. I can barely talk. I've got to knock on the door and say, hi, my name is

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Mike Abendroth, and we're having a concert at Grace Community Church about Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We'd love to have you come.

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Free. And I was nervous to say that, and I thought, yes, this guy's nervous too. Misery loves company.

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He's parked so far away from the curb. Years later, I asked him, I said, I was so glad that you were nervous too.

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He said, I wasn't nervous. I just don't know how to parallel park. I hated that. But the two people that stood out the most to me was the guy who looked like he was playing for ZZ Top, who said, hey, come on in, buddy.

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Want to have a beer? And a lady that looked like my grandmother, who said,

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I don't believe you, and slammed the door in my face. One was a moral person, one wasn't moral.

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John MacArthur said, immoral people didn't blaspheme and cry for Christ's death. Immoral people did not plot his execution.

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The harlots, thieves, and murderers didn't do it. The religious people did. That's the curse of morality.

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Moral, religious, self -righteous people, confident they are holy in themselves, are utterly deceived into believing that Satan has nothing to do with them and that they have no villagence or protection, and they can be swarmed by demonic hosts.

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Moralism kills more people than guns, alcohol, tobacco,

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TV, dancing, and hip -hop all put together. Well, could

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I add anything else in there? Moralism, according to the

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American Heritage Dictionary, is an undue concern for morality. MacArthur defines moralism as a system of belief that misrepresents the divine message that man, moral or un -moral, is damned and must be saved and can only be saved by believing the gospel.

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Moralism distorts that. Mark Minnick describes moralism as the teaching of standards and Bible ethics apart from the deliberate preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

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See, that's the key, and I think you've all heard moralistic preaching. Do you know you got some giants in your life, don't you?

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And all you need is these seven stones of victory to conquer the Goliaths in your life.

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That's moralism. Do you know, Lot was a self -centered man. He picked first, he picked the best, and we ought to all learn from Lot, don't be self -centered.

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That's moralistic preaching. Abraham had a lot of courage, and he'd be courageous.

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Daniel had some...he was a daring person, dare to be a Daniel. Life lessons from Hannah, teaching friendship from David and Jonathan.

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Maybe the clearest example I could give you comes from the number one best -selling book of all time short of the

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Bible. What was the second best -selling book of all time until just about five years ago?

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Pilgrim's Progress. What's number two now? The purpose -driven life.

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Day nine. By the way, day nine, God's goal for you is to make Him smile.

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I didn't know that. I've been to a couple theological seminaries, and you know what? Noah really made God smile.

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Quote, God said, this guy, talking of Noah, brings me pleasure. He makes me smile.

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I'll start over with his family because Noah brought pleasure to God. You and I are alive today.

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Savior Noah, I didn't know that. From his life, we learned the five acts of worship that make

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God smile. These are the five acts of worship. Love God supremely, trust

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God completely, obey God wholeheartedly, praise and thank God continually, and use your abilities.

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Really. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 9. Let me give you a few other things we could probably learn from Noah.

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Do we really want to be moral like Noah? Turn to Genesis 9 .20.

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I'm going to give you my own five. These are five keys that we shouldn't do because I think this would be important for us to run if we're going to use the

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Bible like this, some kind of divine talisman. How about this? Genesis 9 .20,

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Noah began to be a man of the soil and he planted a vineyard. So my first guaranteed merit to love

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God supremely, or merit the smile of God, is to, one, plant a vineyard. Number two, he drank of the wine and became drunk.

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So that's the second thing we could learn from Noah. Three, and he lay uncovered in his tent.

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Noah, the Savior, of course. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside and then

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Shem and Japheth took the garment, laid it on both of their shoulders, walked backward, covered the nakedness of their father.

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Their faces were turned backwards and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his young son had done to him, he said, cursed be

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Canaan, then he blessed Shem and he blessed Japheth. So what I got out of that is, plant a vineyard, get drunk, lay uncovered, curse

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Canaan, bless Shem and Japheth. Of course,

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I want you to love God and obey him, but that's not the gospel because without Christ Jesus, you can't do any of those things.

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Brian Chappell said, B messages that contain only moral instruction imply that we are able to change our fallen condition in our own strength.

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Such sermons communicate that we make the path to grace and our works earn God's acceptance.

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How many people here know who Billy Sunday is, was? What was his most famous sermon? It was about alcohol.

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Where did he preach it? It was called

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Boston Booze. You ought to type that up and listen to that.

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Read it, Boston Booze. Not one mention of Jesus Christ, only one mention of sin or grace, and hardly any mention of God, but a lot of booze talk.

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He said, the saloon is the sum of all villainies. I thought maybe depravity was sin, the fall.

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It is worse than war. It is the crime of crimes. It is the parent of crimes and the mother of sins.

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It is the appalling source of misery and crime in the land and the principal cause of crime.

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It is the source of three -fourths of the taxes to support that crime, and to license such an incarnate fiend of hell is the dirtiest, low -down, damnable business.

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I just put that in for you, for those that were watching. On top of this old earth, there is nothing to be compared to it.

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That is moralistic preaching. And you know what? You can be a teetotaler and go to hell, and you can struggle with alcohol and without being shown who

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Jesus is and how he can help you with it. It is just moralistic teaching. This is not new. John Owen said, many who have more light and knowledge of the gospel also insist on and prescribe the same false teachings about mortification.

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They have their outside endeavors, bodily exercises, self -performances, and mere legal duties without the least mention of Christ or his spirit.

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I think one man who is really smart said, we start looking at sanctification as something we must master instead of looking to the master for the completion of the work.

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So I ask you, what is the remedy? What is the antidote? What is the corrective to moralistic preaching?

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Well, let's find out. Go to 2 Corinthians 4. The answer is we need to preach Christ Jesus, not as problem solver, not as therapeutic healer, not as example, but as prophet, priest, and king.

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2 Corinthians 4, this should be our mantra. Verse 5 of chapter 4 of 2

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Corinthians, for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

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Everything must be centered around the preaching of Christ Jesus. And I know you get that here at the church.

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By the way, a side note on the prophet, priest, and king issue. Is anybody here? Did you go to Greece with me?

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I see anybody here? No. They took us to Patmos. And we don't know where John wrote

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Revelation exactly. This is the spot. But they had a little cave there, and they think that this particular cave is the holy place

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John wrote the book of Revelation. And so they said, no cameras, please. This is a holy place.

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And make sure if you're a man, I had a hat on to take your hat off. And I thought when things were holy, I was supposed to take off my shoes, but that was another story.

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And so they said, no filming. And so, of course, what does the law do? It incites sin.

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And so I got my little iPhone right here, turned it on, and I was just walking around like this inside and stuff.

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And you could go see the rock where John laid down his head to kind of like in between, you know, bowl one and sign two and seal three.

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And so we were walking around, and then we went to another spot and they had icons.

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You can see icons at the Russian Icon Museum over here in Clinton if you'd like. And so we were looking at icons, and this guy said, well, what's that stand for over there?

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I said, oh, that's Adam. He said, what about there? I said, that's the last Adam. And then the guy started preaching

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Romans chapter 5, first Adam, last Adam. I thought, this guy really knows what he's doing. And he said, something about the prophet.

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And who's the greatest prophet? Nobody in our group said anything. So I said,

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Jesus is the greatest prophet. And the guy that I hired to take us around looked at me and he said, there'll be no talk of Jesus as prophet in this place.

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I was kind of sick and taking antibiotics, but this is kind of my group and stuff.

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And I thought, now if you want to say this is where John laid his head down, this is

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Jacob's ladder, I don't know. You can say anything you want, but when you say Jesus isn't the prophet, Deuteronomy 18,

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Acts chapter 3, Jesus is the great prophet. There's a great prophet. He's prophet, priest, and king.

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I wanted to say, I know a guy in Massachusetts who wrote a book about Jesus as king, and one chapter is entitled

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Jesus, prophet, priest, and king, but I couldn't say it. I said,

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Deuteronomy 18 says Jesus is the prophet, and he's the priest and king. And he said, no, he's not.

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And I said, I'll bet my life on it. He's prophet, priest, and king. We're like in some kind of alcove where John the

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Apostle was talking. So what does that have to do with anything?

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It doesn't have much to do with anything, but you're all now paying attention. Why is that? If I'm in the text, you're like, but if I tell you some little ditty that means nothing, you are all in there.

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He said to me, we'll talk about that offline. Jesus is the prophet, priest, and king,

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Deuteronomy 18. Who else is the prophet? He never talked to me.

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Turn to Matthew chapter 23, and let me give you a little sermon against moralism. Matthew chapter 23.

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Just this week, I listened to a sermon from the children's pastor at the largest

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Southern Baptist church in the area. And he said, we at this church are all about loving

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God, loving others, and making disciples. Really? That's called moralism.

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That's what you're all about. Of course, that's a response. But that's not what we're all about.

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That's nothing more than moralism. Sermons without Christ aren't sermons. How can you be a

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Christian and preach a Christian sermon without mention the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus?

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Matthew chapter 23, Luke...sorry, Matthew chapter 23, Jesus preached a little bit about moralism.

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Let me just read you this sermon. I don't want to even make any comments because this is such a brilliant sermon against people who are trying to put others underneath a code without the good news of the gospel indicative.

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Matthew 23, 13 and following, I just want you to feel the weight of this.

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What does Jesus think about moralism? There's no language in all the Bible like this. Matthew 23, 13, but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.

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For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes,

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Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte.

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And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it's nothing.

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But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind guides, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?

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And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.

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You blind men, for what is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

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So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it.

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Whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self -indulgence.

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You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

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So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we have not taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

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Thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers.

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How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of the innocent

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Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

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Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."

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True or false? Did Jesus ever use such hard words, harsh words for people like prostitutes and sinners and tax gatherers?

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The answer is no. Moralism is damning for several reasons. Let me give you one.

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It competes with the Great Commission. Do you want moral people or are you supposed to go give the

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Gospel? What's the Gospel in Matthew 28? Go make disciples by baptizing, by teaching.

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Moralism is bad because it wastes a lot of resources, time, money and effort.

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Moralism is bad because it's frustrating because it doesn't work. It's impossible because you ask sinners to do only what

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God can do for them. And here's maybe my most hateful thing about moralism besides robbing

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Jesus' glory. It takes people who aren't our enemies and turns them into our enemies.

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The Ninevites weren't the enemies. God had compassion for them.

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Immoral people aren't our enemies. Those who lead the pornography industry are not our enemies.

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Friends, you better get this right because we're going to need this. Homosexuals aren't our enemies.

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I'm not saying any of these things are righteous. But abortion doctors who do late -term abortions aren't our enemies.

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But if you're a moralist, they're your enemy. The Ninevites were worse than all these people combined, slaughtering enemies, building pyramids out of people's skulls.

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Far worse sinners and God was compassionate to them and rebuked Jonah. There's something more wicked than rape and pornography and pedophilia and that is preaching people to do good and to be good without giving them the gospel.

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J. Adams said, if you preach a sermon that would be acceptable to the member of a Jewish synagogue or a

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Unitarian congregation, there is something radically wrong with it. Preaching when truly

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Christian is distinctive and what makes it distinctive is the all -pervading presence of a saving and sanctifying

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Christ. Christ must be at the heart of every sermon you preach. That is just as true of edificational preaching as it is of evangelistic preaching and if you're an

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Awana teacher, and if you're a Sunday school teacher, and if you're a dad or a mom teaching the

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Bible. The substitutionary death and burial of resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the center.

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And I've got news for you. If we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be what?

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Accursed. Look at the Bible and say, are people divided between moral people and immoral people?

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And you won't find that bifurcation. You'll find everybody is under the curse except Christ Jesus.

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My old pastor used to say, you can be a prostitute or a policeman and you're still going to hell without Christ Jesus. The problem is so many of us have grown up on moralistic preaching.

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That's all we know. It's nice to be nice. It's good to be good. What we're about at this church is loving

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God, loving others and making disciples. Really? Lloyd -Jones says,

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I'm increasingly convinced that so much in the state of Christian church today is being explained chiefly by the fact that for nearly 100 years the church has been preaching morality and ethics and not

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Christian faith. Morality damns.

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I'd like you to take your Bible and go to Exodus chapter 20 please. How can we avoid preaching like a moralist?

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How can we do the right thing? It's easy to criticize. It's easy to critique. How can we make sure we never do that?

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How can we understand biblical preaching? Let's start with Exodus chapter 20. Wasn't that fun this morning in Romans chapter 7?

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Did anybody go home and put a cross on their Ten Commandments? Exodus 20.

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What's the most important part of the Ten Commandments? I know many of you already know this, but I got to say it.

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What's the most important part of the Ten Commandments? Pardon me? No, I don't want the right answer.

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I want somebody to fall on their face first. I want you to say something like, don't have any other gods before you.

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So remember the way these treaties were set up. These suzerain, vassal treaties, these king and serf treaties were set up by saying, listen, here's what

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I've done for you and in light of what I've done for you, this is what I want you to do for me. Here's the indicative statement of fact.

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I've done this great thing for you. I'm the Lord, your God. I've rescued you out of land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

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This is what I've done for you. And in response to my goodness and my graciousness, this is the imperative

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I give to you. Indicative, imperative, gospel, law, however you want to slice it up.

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And the most important part of the Ten Commandments is the first part. It's this umbrella statement.

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I'm the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. That's why if you're going to have the

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Ten Commandments up, I'm glad that you have any scripture up in your house. But at least put the preface up.

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And if you won't put the preface up, at least put the cross on top so we know who fulfilled all these. That's why it just burned me when

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I see people standing up for those who do nothing except preach moralism, seemingly.

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Ladies' Home Journal, years ago, there was a pastor who got to have a little column called whatever he wanted to call it.

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Now, if I was given one Ladies' Home Journal article, what do you think I might talk about?

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Not because I'm great, but I know better. If I've got one chance to talk, if I got a funeral to talk at,

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I get to talk this Wednesday at Awana. Scott Ferrer has given me a few minutes to talk at Awana. Let me tell you what this pastor gave the

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Ladies' Home Journal, five things that you should do. And maybe, Scott, can I do this? This is my message for Awana.

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Accept yourself. Love yourself. Be true to yourself.

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Boy, that's a hard one. Forgive yourself and believe in yourself. And it was entitled,

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Learn to Love Yourself. Five simple truths for self -esteem wobbliness.

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Rick Warren closes with the words, you can believe what others say about you, or you can believe in yourself as God does.

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Who says, he says, you're truly acceptable, lovable, valuable and capable. What's the goal of a church?

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You say, Mike, what's your goal here? Do you have like a vision? Without vision, people perish. What's your five -year plan?

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Here's Scott Brown, he's an elder. Scott and Mike have this grand scheme for the church. I'm just going to give you a little inside information between elders.

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Here's the goal for Bethlehem Bible Church. Are you ready? I mean, it's pretty grandiose.

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Here's the goal. Why don't you turn to Colossians chapter 1 and I'll tell you what it is. What is the goal?

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The goal, we could say, be faithful. The goal is maybe for some to be successful.

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How about maybe the goal is go to three services? Who'd like to do that? Three services?

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Yvonne raised his hand. You know, it's just the psychology of the whole thing.

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You can get other people to do what you do if you'll just do it. It's like you look at Micaiah. You want to get home early tonight?

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Bob's holding down his arms. What is the goal?

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More money, more staff, more people, more buildings, more services? Really?

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Let me give you this goal because I'm going to wake you up with this. Here's one of my goals for Bethlehem Bible Church. I don't think

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I can get it past the other elders but this is one of my goals. One of my goals is to have right outside between those two double doors is to have two cigarette butt ashtrays about this high.

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If I was the only one in charge, we'd have them. You know how they do in the hotel? They take those special imprint things and they clean off the cigarette ashes and stuff and then they do the inverse imprint and then they push it down and it says

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Weston on there or Four Seasons or something like that backwards and they take it off. It just says beautifully this cigarette ashtray stand that says

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Four Seasons. We could get some kind of BBC NoCo thing or something on there and just do that.

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You know what I want? I want people who smoke cigarettes to come to Bethlehem Bible Church.

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I want them to take the last little drag off the cigarette butt and push it down on that NoCo sign and walk in and sing praises to God.

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That's what I want. That's exactly what I want. I hope they got a bunch of tattoos too.

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What was that? Who said that? Look at what

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Colossians says. What's the goal of the church? Verse 28. Everybody looks good, suburban, white picket fences.

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Friends, we're corrupt on the inside. We need a savior. We need the gospel. Yes, even Christians. Look at verse 28.

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We proclaim him admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom that we may present.

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Here's the goal of Bethlehem Bible Church. If there's five people or 5 ,000 that we may present every man, every woman complete in Christ.

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And if you get that right, it'll change the way you do church. It'll change all your methods. If your goal drives you to,

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I want people to mature. I want people to be conformed to the image of Christ. If the goal is to get more people, then you've got to figure out how to do it.

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Positive, encouraging, K -love, I don't know what you do. But if your goal is,

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I want people to mature, I want to present them as mature, similar language like Hannah presenting

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Samuel to God. And I don't want just men to mature.

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Every man, it says here, literally every creature, all kinds of people. I couldn't be happier.

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We've got all kinds of ethnic backgrounds here at this church. I'm after maturity, full grown -ness.

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Do you see that word there in Colossians chapter 1, present every man complete in Christ?

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That is used of someone who has wholly turned their heart to God, bound themselves by the

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Spirit's power fully to God, undivided in their attention to God.

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And how do we get that? There's only one way. Be good, do good, be nice, be nice to other people.

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What's the text say, verse 28? Him we proclaim. How do you get mature people?

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Ten promises, twelve steps, forty days? No, by preaching one person over and over and over and over.

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It wasn't just Paul too. Look at the text. We proclaim him. Paul, Timothy, Epaphras.

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And those false teachers at Colossians, at Colossae, weren't doing it. They were out of step.

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They weren't preaching them. They were preaching themselves, not Christ. We herald

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Jesus. That's what we do. We make him known, the captain, the Messiah, the mediator.

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Barnhouse said this, if Satan really were to take over a city, the following would happen.

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The bars would close, no alcohol would be sold, there would be happy marriages, well -behaved children, no crime, and everyone would be in churches on Sunday where Jesus is not preached.

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We've got to preach Jesus even to believers so that when you do sin, you realize that Jesus has atoned for that sin.

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We preach Jesus Christ to sinners because we then tell them, Jesus has fulfilled that command in your place.

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We preach Jesus Christ to sinners and saints to say, you know what? He empowers you through the

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Spirit of God to live out the command. I guess moralism is not where we want to go.

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Friends, if you teach Sunday school, would you just talk about Jesus? Say to yourself this, what am I going to say about Jesus today?

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How am I going to talk to them about sin and the Savior today? And you know what would be better if you don't want to talk about Jesus?

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Just let them color a lot. That would be good, wouldn't it? It's good to color.

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I like coloring. Who here likes to color? Don't color pictures of Jesus because you don't know what he looks like. No, that's another sermon.

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So I'm putting Makarowski on it. I want one of those cigarette deals. Okay? All right,

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I have a lot more to say, but I'm not going to say it. Here's what we're going to do.

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We are going to celebrate the Lord's Supper because it's such a visual, tactilely stimulating

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God -ordained reminder that if left to ourselves, we probably just want a good shot in the arm on a

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Sunday. We just want to be good. We want to feel good. We want to know we're better than others. But the

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Word of God just slays us at the Lord's Supper. And so let's just bow our heads, please, and just ask the

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Lord to prepare you for the ministry of the

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Lord's Supper in just a few moments. Lord, we're certainly not better than other people.

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If we were left to ourselves, I'd be preaching moralism. But Father, by Your grace and by Your Spirit, You've given us a desire to speak well of Christ, to learn much of Christ Jesus, to have

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Him be the head of the church and to have Him proclaimed week in and week out. And now,

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Father, we'd ask that You would help us to remember, help us to rededicate, as it were, our lives to His ministry, everything that He's done for us.

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I pray that You would use this to stir us to gratitude, thankfulness, and that all the focus might be on the

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Savior, who is the focus of heaven, worthy as the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and honor, authority, majesty.