Lesson # 5 - The Work of Christ (Fundamentals of the Faith by John MacArthur)

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So this is lesson number five in John MacArthur's book,

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The Fundamentals of the Faith. Lesson number five is on the work of Christ.

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So the memory verse was 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4.

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You want to give that a shot? You got it memorized? Go! For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which

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I also received, now that Christ died for our sins according to the

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Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the

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Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4. Salvation, I think, is the topic.

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New King James version, that sounded like. No, no. New King James.

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Oh, that was in the King James, okay. I think yours is as of first importance. Yeah. Yeah, that's in the book.

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That was our Awanam. You must know that for Awanam. So that's the most clear explanation anywhere in the

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Bible of what the gospel is. So if you haven't memorized 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4,

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I would highly recommend that you do that. Let me just read John MacArthur's opener here.

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He says, Some people think Jesus died as a martyr. They think that Jesus is just a great example of someone who died for a cause.

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He says, That's the Jesus Christ superstar mentality. I get what was that, a movie, a

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Broadway play, something like that. I don't know. I never watched it. I'm assuming it's not all that honoring to the true

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Christ. But he says, That's the Jesus Christ superstar mentality, that Jesus was a martyr who lived a good life or lived for a good cause and set a great example of how to be sold out for a cause that you were willing to die as a martyr.

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And admittedly, a martyr can be an example of suffering. But a martyr cannot be a substitute.

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A martyr cannot take away my sin by the sacrifice of himself.

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So you can kind of see the direction that we're going in. The work of Christ.

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What was the work of Christ that he died as a substitute? Says the scripture tells us that he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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That's 1 Peter 2 verse 24. In other words, Jesus died in our place.

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Everybody is born into this world. A son of Adam. So we are either in Adam and in Adam all died because Adam sinned.

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Or we are either in Adam or in Christ. And in Christ, all shall be made alive.

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So Jesus was our substitute. He dealt with that sin that started in Adam.

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And the exchange is he takes all of our sin on the cross, dying as a substitute for us.

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And in return, by faith, if we would believe in him and commit our lives to him, he gives us all of his righteousness.

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So this is the work of Christ. And obviously, that's why the cross is the symbol of Christianity.

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Notice, though, that in many modern contemporary churches, you won't even see a cross in the sanctuary.

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This has been a movement for the past, whatever, 40 years, where the idea is if you want to bring people into the church, you have to do church differently.

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One of the things is take the cross out of the sanctuary. Don't have the cross on top of your don't don't even have the cross on your church campus.

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Matter of fact, don't even call it a church. Call it a campus. And they're really trying to strip everything

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Christian from Christianity. But the work of Christ is all about the cross.

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So if you ever move away or start attending a different church, I pray you would stay here.

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I want you to stay here. But if you ever do attend somewhere else and you notice there's no cross anywhere, that probably means the work of Christ is not really going to be a central part of the preaching.

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OK, Larry, I saw your your hand. I was just going to ask you to expound a little bit more on the second or the last part of that verse so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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Right. So die to sin.

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Well, the idea is you are supposed to stop sinning. Right. Die to sin.

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Stop sinning. So when you come to faith in Christ, it's a new life in Christ.

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So you're not supposed to do the things that you did before. And he's going to talk about because before you preach the gospel, you have to before you can get people saved, you have to kind of get them lost.

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You have to show them their need for the gospel. So when a person places their faith, this is another thing in the past 40 years, probably more than 40 years.

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But the emphasis is to get people to confess Christ, say a prayer, do something, make a decision.

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And that's good because you do need to make a decision and you should call upon the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. But the discipleship is lacking. The preaching against sin is lacking.

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So when he says die to sin, you're not supposed to live the way you did before.

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Die to sin, live to righteousness. So it's a total transformation of your life.

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That would be that would be my answer, because the whole purpose of the

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Christian life is to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus and become more like Jesus. And Jesus never said, yes, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

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We are sinners. We will sin. That's obviously true. But we're not supposed to.

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We're supposed to put the deeds of the flesh to death. Yes, Marcus. Dead to sin.

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When you're dead, your body won't move. Your eyes can't see, your ears can't hear. Nothing happens.

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I like the, well, of course, we know the verse that says, I am crucified with Christ. Unfortunately, we're supposed to be more than crucified.

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Crucifixion is a slow, painful death. And unfortunately, sanctification is a slow, painful death.

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Right. But the verse that said in Romans six, it says, don't yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness.

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That your members as your eyes, your ears, your feet, your hands, your mouth, your great big mouth.

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Yep. So we're going to go through these verses. And in case somebody could be somebody here, somebody watching online later on, if what you're hearing is judgment or condemnation.

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I mean, that's true because God does speak against sin. Okay. But you tell people this, you preach this because you want what's best for somebody.

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So if somebody is addicted to heroin, you should speak against heroin and you shouldn't make excuses.

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And, well, it's no big deal. You know, we all have some problems. You wouldn't do that.

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Nothing will matter unless they stop doing heroin. Right. So they might receive it like you're condemning me.

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You're speaking against me. I feel offended now. Yeah. But if you really love the person, you want them to get off drugs.

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Right. So this is what the preaching is for, because you care about people.

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You want them to stop doing those things because they are just harming and destroying themselves.

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So that's the heart behind the Apostle Paul here in Romans chapter 3 verses 10 through 12.

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Starts out man's need for Christ's work. So what are the six things?

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According to Romans 3, 10 through 12, every man is guilty of what? Six things.

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Okay. Number one, there are none righteous. Number two, nobody understands.

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Number three, nobody seeks after God. So this is lost man.

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This is man, natural man in a sinful condition. Nobody is righteous. No one understands.

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No one seeks after God. All have turned aside. Number four, number five, they have become useless.

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And number that's useless to God. And number six, no one does good.

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And Romans 3, 23 sums up the problem for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God.

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So that's pretty comprehensive list of things. None righteous.

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No one does good. No one seeks after God. I would argue that the majority, not only did the majority of people not believe this.

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The majority of people who are members of Christian churches don't believe this.

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That might not be true for our congregation because our congregation is committed to biblical exposition and have been for a long, long time.

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But still, there might be somebody in this church who doesn't really believe this.

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I mean, do you really believe that nobody does good, that nobody is seeking after God?

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Do you believe that? Yeah. Well, I don't know.

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Tell me, do you? Well, see, people do good, do good in the eyes of God.

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If they have faith, Hebrews 11, verse six says, for without faith, it is impossible to please

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God. So a believer can do good and they're doing it for the right reasons because they love

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Christ. A believer does seek after God. The gospel is preached.

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God, the Holy Spirit is working in their heart. There are people seeking after God because God is seeking after them.

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But the lost unbeliever who is not concerned with the things of God, they're not seeking

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God. They're not doing good. Even their good deeds are being done to be seen of men.

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Or if I do this good thing to this person, they might do something good back to me. Or I do good and it makes me feel good.

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But they're not really doing it for the one right reason to love

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God first and to love their neighbor as themselves. I mean, at least that's what the scripture says.

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But again, I don't think most people really believe this. This is this is a little too much, I think, for most people.

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The average person would say, no, I'm a pretty good person. And even my atheist neighbor, they're a good person.

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And that's the average viewpoint out there. Did you have your hand up? I was just going to say regarding versus there is no one righteous, not even one.

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I think that's really referring to or at least in part that sin is universal. And people of faith do good, if you will, because of the spirit of men.

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Right. Yeah, there's a qualifier for every one of these. None righteous.

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Well, Jesus was righteous, right? And the saints are righteous.

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But again, this is man in his lost condition. This is unregenerate man who is not seeking

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God. He's not doing good. And Paul is just making this point that everybody is hopelessly lost without the grace of God.

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Instead of, hey, you're pretty good. You probably make it to heaven anyways. Okay. So go ahead.

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Oh, no. I was actually on the phone. Yeah, well, I was wondering, is that the church phone? Yeah. Sounds like the same ring.

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So I'm surprised the church phone doesn't ring more often on Sundays.

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You know, you think about it, but anyways, let's move on. So this is man. Man is dead and trespasses and sin all of sin and fall short of the glory of God.

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B says to what is man a slave? John 8 34 to what is man a slave of sin?

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Okay. Man is a slave of sin because it's in our nature. So if it's in your nature, you can't not sin, but believers have the new nature, right?

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With the Holy spirit within you have the new nature. So you don't want to sin anymore.

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Uh, C what is the result of sin? James one 15 death.

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Okay. So man is a slave to sin and the result of sin is death.

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D says because we were dead and trespasses and sins, whom did we follow and what kind of children were we?

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Ephesians two, one and three. You could read the verse, but if you want to just answer it in your own words, follow the world.

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Okay. Uh, anybody else? Yeah. Okay.

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So because we're dead and trespasses and sins, who did we follow? Uh, the Prince of the power of the air, which of course is one of the titles for, for Satan.

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So we were following Satan and we were children of wrath.

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Again, most people don't believe this, that the people of this world are actually following after Satan.

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You say, wow, that's pretty expensive. Extreme statement, right? If you don't believe the gospel, you, you view this as extreme that everybody is following it while they're blinded.

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So they don't even realize it. You know, nobody, nobody is arguing that they're literally, you know, worshiping the devil and they have this pentagram made of salt in their bedroom with a goat's head and they're worshiping

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Satan. And nobody's saying that. I mean, there are people who do that obviously, but the people of this world had been blinded like just the past few years.

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You know, people are starting to wake up to what's been going on the past few years, but to start with back in 20, 20, 20 people were kind of blinded and we wanted to believe certain people that they were telling us the truth and you want to believe people and you want to assume the good.

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And then you kind of realize later on that, no, there was something else going on. Well, that's what happens when you come to faith in Christ.

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Just as an illustration, you realize, wow, I used to think I was a pretty great guy.

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Now I realize I'm a sinner and I'm corrupt and I need

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God's grace and forgiveness. So you have to have your eyes opened to the truth.

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Otherwise this seems, seems ridiculous. Yes. You use the word extreme.

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Heaven and hell are both extreme, extreme paradise, extreme torment.

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This life on planet earth is a very, well, it's temporary and it's, it's nowhere near what eternity is going to be like.

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And you know, if you wanted to slay the gospel, we use first Corinthians 15, three, four, you've seen the, you've seen the big neon sign that says

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Jesus saves. And that's not simple enough for people.

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People need to know they need to be saved. They're going to, they're heading off into eternity, into eternity of torment.

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Would you like to be, nevermind this, would you like to go to heaven? Raise your hand. I mean, this is what

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I did. They said, yeah, I'd like to go to heaven, little boy. Yeah. I want to go to heaven. Yeah. I'll pray this prayer. Okay.

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Pray the prayer. And, and then they said, well, okay. Ask Jesus into your heart.

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Okay. Yeah. Come on in. I asked him in. He did come in by the way, because when the, when the evangelist said, all right, now

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I want those that raised their hand, want to go to heaven. Those that asked Jesus into their heart. I want you to come down front.

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That was when I said, oh, but that is also when

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I said, Lord, I don't want you to think that I didn't mean it. So I got up and I went down.

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But even as a little child, you understood something that you did wrong. Yeah. You were doing wrong bedtime prayer ever since I could memorize a verse.

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Right. But if a little child is told from the time he's this big that no, you're wonderful.

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And you're, you know, you're a product of your environment. Uh, there's our nature, but also what we've been taught and what we hear again and again, just one comment on this idea of extremes.

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Certainly there are things in the Bible that to the world seem extreme, but then look at some things that are going on in our culture.

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Uh, I sort of assume most people have heard of this, but you've heard of drag queen story hour.

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Okay. That started in libraries. They would bring a guy dressed in drag, dressed as a woman, and he would read stories to little children in the public library.

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Uh, they say, well, okay, that's some, that's some story that happened one place and Fox news made a big deal about it.

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And they're exaggerating that that would never happen here. And then it happened in town, not in this town that I know of, but I won't name the library, but it happened in the area.

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And some people reacted like that. We can't stand for this. And that person was railroaded and all the rest.

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Now the trend is instead of drag queen story hour in libraries, guess where they're having drag queen story hour now, elementary school or kindergarten in churches.

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Oh, they're doing it in elementary schools. I mean the, the Leverett, I don't know if they've done it in Leverett, but the

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Leverett elementary school has the trans pride flag, like right on their sign that should say

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Leverett elementary. They have the, the trans LGBT flags. That kind of tells you,

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I would, I don't know if they're doing it there, but the, at the trend is to actually have drag queen story hour in churches.

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Well, that doesn't, I'll never dress them up, but I'd like to put a little rabbit.

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Right. But my point is, my point is that's extreme. That is extreme, but to the world that's normal.

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It's fine. It's actually great. And we should all celebrate it. That's what they're saying. So we're looking at them.

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I'm all to speak for myself. I'm looking at them as extreme and they're looking at us as extreme.

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So in this life, now we people basically have two choices, either worship

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God or worship. The devil is going to be, you know, it's becoming that clear. So that's, that's extreme.

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Moving on. As I've seen, we're preaching this morning, both of us, and that's, that's okay.

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If I'm doing it, I can't get on your case for it. And, uh,

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I had mentioned in a sermon, I think it was last Sunday that there will be people in the church who think, oh, pastor, don't even go there.

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Don't even bring that up. And, uh, we should just preach the things that are in the text of scripture.

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And I said on Sunday, you can't do that. You have to take the scripture and apply it to the modern day.

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I mean, we would talk about Moses fighting the idolaters. And he said, I would have, if I were there,

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I would have stood with Moses against the people worshiping the golden cap. Are you standing with the man of God today?

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That's, that's the question. What good is it? If you would, you say you would have stood with Moses. You say you'd have stood with Paul against the

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Judaizers. Are you standing with the man of God today against the wickedness in the false teachers?

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And if you can't get behind me, then find a church with a pastor that you can get behind because these are critical times.

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So you, again, I'm preaching, but these are the things we're dealing with.

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And we have to take what all the apostles did in the new Testament. They saw what was going on in their time.

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They took what the scripture, the old Testament said, and they applied it to what they were seeing.

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And we have to do that. Otherwise the church, the church truly is irrelevant. Like some people say it is, but actually it's not because we're going to bring these issues to bear.

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Okay. Larry, You mentioned that they're celebrating all this sex, diversity, but yeah, 1

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Corinthians 5, starting in verse 9 says, I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.

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Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world or with the covetous or extortioners or idolaters.

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Since then, you'd have to go out of the world. But now I've written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral or covetous or an idolater or a revival or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even to eat with such a person.

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Right. So if there's a church or someone from, you know, who calls himself a

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Christian and they're going along with that lifestyle.

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Right. I mean, it says right here that we're not going to have anything to do with them. And so, right.

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You know, do you hear that? Larry is an extremist. You hear what he's saying? It's so extreme. He believes the

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Bible. Oh, what's wrong with him? No, but you're right. But if you try to uphold that standard,

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I had a guy, same thing. We, our church would not support a music group who had someone on stage who was totally supporting that type of lifestyle.

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He said, we can't support this group. And another pastor got mad at me and he says,

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I'm so sick of these degrees of separation that if somebody is connected to this person, that person is connected to this person that we won't support them.

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I'm like, there's no degree of separation. The person supporting immorality publicly was on stage. There's no degree of, but that's the mindset that you're supposed to be just tolerant of.

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And I don't think that guy was tolerant of that, but he didn't want to fight. That's that's the point.

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He didn't want to fight. And going back to Jude, Jude, remember he said,

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I wanted to write to you a letter talking about our common salvation. And I really do want to talk about how we have peace and unity in Christ.

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We have love for one another and God has blessed us with so many blessings. And that's all true.

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And we do preach that as well. But there's the other side, you know, when you recognize the time you're living in.

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But, and here is another side of it. There's a world full of lost people, but you know what the work of Christ does?

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The work of Christ is able to change those people's hearts. The work of Christ is able, if a person would place their faith in Jesus, he is willing to forgive them of all of their sins.

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They could be in that lifestyle. They could be promoting it. They could be up to here in it.

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And you know what? God can forgive that. And the gospel is that God so loved the world that he died even for people like them.

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But he also died for even people like me because I have also come short of the glory of God.

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So there's the other side of it. Will God tolerate sin? This is the next, this is the next statement, the next question.

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Galatians 3 verse 10. Will God tolerate sin? I mean,

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I guess you could make the argument that God is long -suffering. He is tolerating things to the extent that he's giving people time.

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But ultimately, will God tolerate sin? What's the answer? Galatians 3 verse 10.

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Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.

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And that's who? Well, that's everybody because nobody's kept the law.

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And then Paul leads to the fact that the whole purpose of the law is to show people their sin and their need for Christ.

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Actually, I skipped over one. It says, whose wrath will the sons of disobedience experience?

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Ephesians 5, 6. Whose wrath will they experience? They'll experience God's wrath.

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And God does not tolerate sin. So you're getting the idea that everybody is what?

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Everybody is in need of a savior. And that's the bad news.

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And the good news of the gospel only makes sense. People only see their need for it if they first understand this part, the bad news.

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It says, as we studied in lesson 3, God asserts his holiness and demands conformity to that holiness.

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Man is faced with sin, Romans 3, 23. Man is faced with having

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God as his enemy, James 4, verse 4. Man is faced with subjection to the power of Satan, 1

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John 5, 19. Man is faced with death, Romans 6, 23.

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And man is faced with condemnation and eternal separation from God, 2 Thessalonians 1, 9.

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Any comments or questions about this? So man is faced with sin.

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That's what we spent the last half hour stressing that point, right? Having God as his enemy.

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And this is another thing I don't think most people believe. Let me ask you, how do you reconcile the verse,

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God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son? How do you reconcile that,

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God is love, God so loved the world, with this statement in James that God is their enemy?

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Who wants to explain to the class how those things can be reconciled? If God loves the world, how is he the enemy of the people of the world?

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Or how could he be? Yes? The same way that he said, love your enemies. Good. He loved his enemies.

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And grief. I didn't go on and on, did I? Yeah, that's impressive.

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When Jesus came, the people, I would take Saul of Tarsus, who became the

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Apostle Paul. He despised the name of Jesus Christ. Saul of Tarsus was the enemy of God.

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And he was a minister, right? He was a Pharisee. But Jesus died for him.

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And Jesus showed his love for Paul and confronted Paul. And Paul, of course, believed, gave his life to the

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Lord. And once Paul believed, then he was God's no longer his enemy. So it really depends on our response.

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God loves people, but do we believe? Are we going to follow him? Or are we going to reject him?

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If we reject God, then he will be our enemy. But that comes down to our choice.

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The cost of Christ's work. This is number two. The cost of Christ's work.

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Read Philippians 2, 7, and 8. Who would like to look that up and read that?

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And we're going to look for... Can I get a volunteer? Okay, Jen.

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Because there's three things that Christ did when he came to earth. So try to hear those three things in these verses.

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Philippians 2, 7, and 8. Go ahead. But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

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Okay, so this is the cost of Christ's work. What are three things

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Christ did when he came to earth? So in verse 7, there are three things that Jesus did.

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What did he do? Number one, he... Yeah, he emptied himself. And these are the benefits or the privileges of his divine nature.

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That he lived as a man, just like anyone else. So number one, he emptied himself. Number two, he took the form of a bondservant.

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Think about it. Jesus is the king of kings, and here he is, a man who has no place to lay his head, and he's constantly serving other people all day long.

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So he emptied himself, he took the form of a bondservant, and then the third thing he did, he was found, what?

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In appearance as a man. Just a hard thought to really grasp, is that the

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God of all creation became a man. And he humbled himself.

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In what way did Jesus humble himself? He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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And he did that, why? Because he so loved this world. Would you do that for somebody?

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I mean, most people, I probably wouldn't do that, but God did. Yes, Larry.

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I just wanted to go back to be in the first...

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You took the form of a bondservant, as it says, but isn't the definition of a bondservant really a slave?

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Right. So a servant, it doesn't sound as harsh as a slave.

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Right. And I think I've gone through everywhere that I run across it in my

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Bible, and I crossed out servant or bondservant and write it slave.

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Right. Because, I mean, yeah, slavery is not a good thing, but back then it was a little different than the slavery we think of here in this country.

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Right. But, I mean, just that he became...

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Yeah, he took the form of a bondservant. So most people don't know what a bondservant is.

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I mean, you might know, but the average person out there, this is not a term used in our culture.

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The King James version of the Bible, and I don't know if the RSV, but the versions that were popular before the 60s and 70s when all these new translations were coming out.

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I know the King James renders it servant. So the Greek word is doulos, and it can either be translated as servant, which is what most people were used to for hundreds of years, or it could be translated bondservant, which has the idea of a slave, or more modern translations do translate it as slave.

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Like Paul, I don't know what translations use it and don't, but Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ.

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You'll read that in some translations. So doulos can be translated servant, bondservant, or slave.

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Now, if you translate it slave, people, you know, they think of slavery in the

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United States in the 17 and 1800s. That's not the idea contained there.

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But then servant, you know, people serve and they do it voluntarily. Well, that's not really the idea either.

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So it's kind of hard. It could be translated all three, but it's more than just a servant.

34:36

And slave does get across the idea because Christ does own us. What's the verse?

34:42

1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20. What does it say?

34:48

Bought at a price. Yeah, bought at a price. So there are statements about, yeah, he bought us.

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So God does own us. So that would be accurate to say that.

35:01

Okay, anything else before we move on? Of course, the human nature reacts and rebels against that.

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This is my life and this is what I want to do. That's the sinful nature that needs to die.

35:16

When we go to work, we are working for our boss, who is literally, to put it in scriptural terms, our master.

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So we are his servant or slave to do the will of our boss.

35:41

So, I mean, back then, a slave or a servant, they were paid.

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They were given something, whether room and board to live there and to work.

35:58

But it's very similar to our jobs today.

36:07

We have a boss or a master over us. Right. Yeah, we submit to people.

36:16

We will submit to somebody. People submit to their boss. They submit to the governing authorities. They submit here and there.

36:23

You're supposed to submit to God as well. Lance. So, is a bond servant specifically a servant to somebody they owe something to?

36:36

Right. So, in ancient times, if there was a debt, a person would become, sometimes it was voluntarily, sometimes it wasn't, but a person would become a bond servant and they would work for that person and they would be under their ownership necessarily.

36:58

But, yeah, they were under their power and authority until that debt was paid off.

37:03

I just came to mind. Jacob. Right. Jacob worked basically as an indentured servant for his uncle

37:12

Laban. That was his choice, but he was doing it for something.

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For Rachel. So, but there's all sorts of different scenarios where people would work to pay off a debt.

37:27

They would work for something. Back then, there's a lot of poverty. You know, you didn't have a guaranteed meal or shelter.

37:35

So, people would happily be someone's bond servant, especially if they were treated well, because all their needs would be taken care of and they would work for that person.

37:45

So, yeah, that's what I don't know. Did I answer your question? Yeah. All right.

37:52

We got five minutes left. So, we're talking about the cost of Christ's work. So, Jesus himself, the son of God, became a bond servant.

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Who was he the servant of? His father. His father. Right. B, what happened to Jesus on earth?

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According to Isaiah 53 verse 3, the cost of Christ's work. What happened to Jesus on earth?

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He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

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C, forgiveness of sins requires what?

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Hebrews 9, 22. It says, according to the law, one may almost say all things are cleansed with blood.

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And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. So, this is the cost of Christ's work, his own blood.

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And he was a servant to the father. So, part of the father's plan.

39:05

This is probably the most offensive thing about the gospel. Is that Jesus became the servant to serve

39:13

God, who was his father. And it pleased the father to bruise the son. So, it was the father's plan that his son die on the cross.

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As modern theologians and pastors have called this. They call it divine child abuse.

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And we call that blasphemy. But this is obviously the gospel.

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That Jesus died as, what was the word? Begins with S that we started with. He died as a substitute.

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This whole idea that Jesus died on the cross to set an example. To set an example for love or something.

39:55

Honestly, I don't even get that. I don't understand how the cross makes sense in some of these other theological views.

40:07

Jesus died as a substitute. Either we die and pay the penalty for our sins.

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Or Jesus paid the penalty for us. That's the idea. D, what price did

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Christ pay to redeem us? 1 Peter 1, 18 and 19. He died on the cross for us.

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He died on the cross. He shed blood. He shed his blood. And we'll just finish these last two.

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E, what did Jesus cry out on the cross? Matthew 27, verse 46.

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My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Right. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

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And was Christ forsaken? Yes. I mean, he's quoting that quote from Psalm 22,

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I believe. Jesus wasn't on the cross just quoting scripture just to quote scripture.

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He felt forsaken because he was forsaken.

41:06

Did you have? Okay. And then F, what did God do to Jesus while he was on the cross?

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Isaiah 53, verse 6. The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.

41:22

So I'll just go back and kind of go back to what I started with about, you know, churches wanting to remove the cross from the sanctuary, remove the cross from the steeple outside.

41:36

Well, if you remove the cross, there's a pretty good chance you're not going to be preaching the cross.

41:42

If you think the cross is offensive to look at, it's going to be even more offensive to preach.

41:48

So there's going to be two responses, maybe three responses to everything we've looked at this morning.

41:54

This really goes to the heart of the gospel, right? That we're talking about the work of Christ. Either someone will hear this and be offended.

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Either someone will hear this and love it because this is what Jesus did for me.

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This is the gospel. I love the Lord and what he did and dying on the cross.

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Or maybe the third option is you're somewhere in between because God is working on your heart.

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He is drawing you unto himself. But as of this moment, you haven't fully come to that place where you've accepted

42:28

Christ. So you're kind of resisting it, but he's drawing you, you're resisting, he's drawing, you're resisting and hopefully you'll get to that place where you see this for the sweet thing that it is.

42:42

The love of God displayed towards sinners that Jesus died for our sins and rose again the third day.

42:51

All right. Any final comments or questions? Yes, Larry.

42:57

Along the same line of removing the cross, remove the hymn books, sing love songs.

43:08

Yeah. You know, uh, the doctrine is so rich and strong and powerful, you know, the scripture and the lyrics, right?

43:21

Remove everything that seems to churchy, you know, hymns. But the idea was, well, you're going to get rid of all that other stuff, but you're still going to have the gospel.

43:32

So you're going to appeal to the world with all this other stuff, but then you're going to give them the gospel. That does not work.

43:39

That does not happen because what they're offended by most of all is not the pulpit or stained glass or a cross.

43:45

They're offended by the message. So that was the whole thing. We're still going to preach the gospel. And then of course the gospel was dropped as well.

43:54

Yes, Marcus. Yeah. When I was first asked to preach, I said, Oh, what should I preach on? What should I preach on?

43:59

So I looked it up. It says, preach Christ and him crucified. You say preach the gospel.

44:08

That's a good thing too, but preaching Christ and him crucified. Yeah. Bloody, bloody sacrifice.

44:15

He was so bloody. He was so ripped up that people couldn't even stand to look at him.

44:21

I've seen some bloody messes of car accidents. They're no fun to look at or deal with.

44:27

Sure. And as people walk by him there, that was too ugly to look at.

44:32

Right. So here's the challenge. Stick with this class, stick with this book, learn what's in this book.

44:38

And then when we're all done and you've learned it and you got a handle on it, then you can take this book and find somebody else and you can be in my place and you can be telling them all of this stuff, make disciples.

44:51

And hopefully that person will do the same. And if that were to happen, it would just spread all over the world.