Failing to Obtain the Grace of God

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Probably didn't have to remind you that, but I will.
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We're back in Hebrews, going to be in the 12th chapter.
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We're going to be looking at verses 12-17.
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Now we started this last week, and I said I didn't know how long it was going to last, and still not certain if we're going to be able to finish out today.
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Last week we looked through verses 12-14 of Hebrews chapter 12.
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And I've entitled this section, because that's really what it is, it's just a section of Scripture.
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I've entitled this section Practical Christian Living, because what it provides for us is really just goals for which we should be striving, and failures against which we should be guarding.
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And really, if you think about the Christian life, that's really sort of the two-fold things that we have to consider.
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We have to think about what does God want us to be doing, and what does God want us to be avoiding and not doing.
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It's sort of the old thing about sin of omission and sin of commission.
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The sin of commission is things that we do that we're not supposed to do, and the sin of omission is not doing the things that we are supposed to do.
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So really, it just sort of provides for us this very basic, very practical, this is sort of where the rubber meets the road, this is where you see what it is we're supposed to be doing as believers.
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And what we said last week is really, the Christian life can be summed up in two goals.
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As far as the way we are to live, the Christian ethic, the Christian life is really summed up very simply in these two goals.
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We are to seek to live at peace with other men, and we are to seek to live in holiness before God.
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In this way, we fulfill the great commandment.
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The great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
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That's what the Scripture says.
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And for us to do that means that we actually seek to live holy lives.
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The way that we demonstrate love towards God is not by waking up every morning and saying, God, I love you.
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It's nice to know that you're there, and I'm glad that you're going to be with me today.
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Even though that's sort of the way that I think people think about how they show love towards God is that they say, God, I love you, or they have a five-minute devotion, or they read their Bible for 20 minutes, or they do these things.
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No, the way that we show God love, the way that we demonstrate that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that's the four parts there, the way that we demonstrate that we love God is that we seek to conform to His holiness.
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We seek to do those things that He wants us to do.
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We seek to conform to the image of Christ.
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We seek to go through that process which we call sanctification.
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That's how we demonstrate love towards God.
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And when we don't do those things, we're demonstrating an act of violence against His very nature.
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That's what sin is.
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Sin is a crime against the very nature of God.
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Sin is an act of violence against who God is.
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And that's why we seek to avoid sin, and we seek to live according to His holiness.
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So we seek to love God by living towards Him in holiness, and we seek to love others by living at peace with them.
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And that's what the text says up until verse 14, strive for peace with everyone.
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That's our goal.
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We want to live at peace with each other.
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We want to live at peace with all men.
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Even though we know there are some people who don't want to live at peace with us.
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There are some people who will not allow us to be at peace with them.
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The Scripture says as much as it depends upon you, live at peace with all men.
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As much as it is your side which is keeping the war going.
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As much as it is your attitude which is keeping the anger going.
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As much as it would simply take a simple apology, or a making up, or going to a person, or loving them, or doing whatever.
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As much as you can do to live at peace, that is your responsibility.
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So really again, the Christian ethic, the Christian ethos can all be summed up.
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Love God, love others.
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Live towards Him in holiness, live towards others in peace.
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And that's very simple.
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That's sort of a distilling down of all of the Christian ideals.
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Well today we are going to look at what should we be avoiding.
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Last week the goals, love God, love others.
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This week, well what things should we guard against.
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So let's stand together, we'll read the text, verses 12-17.
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And today's focus will be on verses 15 and following.
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So we'll read the whole to get the context, and we'll begin focusing on verse 15.
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Therefore lift your drooping hands, and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
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Strive for peace with everyone, and for holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
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See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.
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That no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.
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For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.
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Father God, as we thank You this morning for the opportunity to go to Your Word and to study it, that You have preserved it down through the ages, and that You have placed us in a country that is free to study the Word, we just give You thanks, Lord.
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I pray that You would keep me from error as I preach.
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I pray that You would keep me honed in on the truth, and that You would keep me from going to the right or to the left with my own vain opinions, but help me to focus just on the text.
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I pray, Lord, also for the hearts of everyone that is listening, that You would open their heart to understand what is being said, and to be able to believe it.
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And not just believe it intellectually, Lord, but to apply it to their lives.
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And this we all ask in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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We seek to live at peace with others, and we seek to live in holiness towards God.
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Those goals are easy to understand, but they're not always easy to apply.
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It's easy to know what we're supposed to do.
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Sometimes it's just hard to actually do those things.
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I remember a pastor one time years ago made the comment I thought was very insightful.
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He said, you know, it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bother me.
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It's the parts of the Bible that I do understand and just don't want to do.
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The parts I don't understand don't really bother me, but the parts I understand that are uncomfortable for me, the parts that I do understand that I don't want to obey, that's the part that really keeps me up at night.
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And so when we begin now looking at verse 15, we've seen the goals and they are lofty.
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Holiness.
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What a lofty goal.
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It's an impossible goal in the flesh, but yet it is that which we strive for.
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We strive for holiness.
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So too is peace.
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It is a lofty goal and we strive for it.
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Yet there are walls that come up in our lives that keep us from attaining those goals.
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There are walls that come up to keep us from even wanting to strive.
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And these are the things that we need to guard against.
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Verse 15 says something very clear, but yet I think very easy to misunderstand.
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It says, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.
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That really is a pretty serious command.
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That's in the imperative.
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That is a command and it is a command that is plural.
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Meaning that this is talking about not just you.
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This is talking about you as a collective you.
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The church as a unit.
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See to it that no one among us is really, if you wanted to come into the vernacular of today, see that no one among us fails to obtain the grace of God.
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Not only am I supposed to keep myself and be concerned about myself falling and not continuing with the Christian life, I'm also supposed to be actively involved in keeping others from falling.
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And likewise, you all are supposed to be helping one another.
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Now, I want to very quickly interject here that I am not talking about someone who is saved and then becomes unsaved because according to the Scripture and according to what we teach, according to what the Bible says, salvation is a once in a lifetime thing.
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It is not something that happens.
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You lose, you get it, you lose it, you get it, you lose it.
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That is heresy.
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That is not a doctrine that I believe is founded upon Scripture.
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Jesus said when he looks at those who come to him, he looks at them who do not know him.
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He says, I never knew you.
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He doesn't say I knew you for a time, then you lost it, then you got it, then you lost it, and you just happened to die on a downswing.
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You know, I mean, that's the idea.
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You just happen to die when you were in a bad way.
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But that's the way a lot of people see salvation.
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Because they see salvation as something they do.
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And when you think you contribute to your salvation, then, yeah, it's really easy to come up with this idea that somehow you can earn it and lose it.
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I remember talking to a gentleman about this one time.
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He was so frustrated that I would believe that salvation is a once for all event.
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I don't like using the phrase once saved, always saved because I think it's utterly simplistic and ultimately it is reductionistic.
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And I don't use that phrase.
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But I do believe that salvation justification is a once for all event.
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I don't believe we're justified, unjustified, justified again, unjustified again.
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That is not founded in Scripture where anyone was re-justified.
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We don't find that.
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So the idea, this person was arguing with me.
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He's like, well, you can lose your salvation.
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And I said, well, how is it then that you lose your salvation? Well, you start sinning.
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I said, well, when did you stop to begin with? I said, when did you ever stop being a sinner? And then secondly, where are you now? And he said, well, I'm good.
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I'm real good with God right now.
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I said, but according to your theology, tomorrow you could be headed for hell.
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Something could change in your life tonight.
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Something could change in your life this very moment.
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And you could be headed for hell tomorrow.
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He said, well, yes.
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I said, really? You're Catholic.
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I said, because Catholics believe in what is called mortal and venial sin.
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Venial sins are those sins which do not affect the condition of the soul, but simply add to the time in purgatory.
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And if you commit a venial sin and you go to the priest and you ask for forgiveness from the priest, the priest will tell you that you can, by virtue of the Hail Mary or by virtue of some kind of act of penance, that you can reduce your time in purgatory.
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But a mortal sin destroys the grace of justification and a person then becomes unsaved.
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A mortal sin would be something akin to murder or rape or some kind of sin that would be considered outside of that which the grace of God would cover.
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And you would have to, at that point, be re-established, re-saved, and all of the like for somebody.
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I said, effectively, that's what you've done.
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You've destroyed the grace of God and you have gone back to a pre-reformation condition in your theology.
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So we don't want to do that.
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And we want to be careful about that.
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So, the reason why I'm mentioning all this is because when it says, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, we have to be careful in the idea that someone in this idea would be that someone falls from grace in the idea that they're saved and then they become unsaved.
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That's not the picture here.
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That's why it's not saying, see to it that no one has the grace and then loses it.
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It doesn't say that.
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It says, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.
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Someone who fails to obtain the grace of God is a person that we would generally label as an apostate.
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You might want to add that to your Christian dictionary if you keep a little notepad of words.
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The word apostate is a very important word that you need to understand the definition of.
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Because apostasy means this.
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A person who has claimed the name of Jesus Christ, who has made a profession of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has demonstrated that profession in the act of baptism, and who has joined a church, but yet at some point after that, chooses then to reject Jesus Christ in toto.
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Either in their actions or in their words.
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They have rejected Christ.
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You might say, well, didn't you just say someone can't do that? No, I didn't.
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Because you didn't hear me say that they were saved and unsaved.
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I said they made a profession, they got wet, they got fed, and they got a chance to spend time with Christians.
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But I never said that that person was genuinely saved.
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Because someone can say the words, get wet, have the supper, and sit among Christians, and be legitimately illegitimate.
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They can be genuinely ungenuine.
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And that's the concern of the writer here.
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That there are those among us who may be among us, but not be in the grace of God.
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That's the concern.
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That there may be those here who are failing to obtain the grace of God.
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Not as if we can do something to obtain it, but yet at the same time, when we look around us, we should be encouraging one another to know that we have obtained it.
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That we are in it.
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And that if we're not in it, that we're challenging one another to self-evaluation.
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That is a key in the Christian life.
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We as believers are supposed to be challenging each other towards holiness.
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And if we do, and there is one among us who is not in grace, he will likely be quickly discovered.
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In fact, one of the things that shouldn't happen is that a person who is unsaved sit among the church and be comfortable in his unsaved condition.
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He should be challenged by his unsaved condition.
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This is one of the things I hate to hear.
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Because I spend time with pastors.
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I listen more than I talk.
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I'm sure you can't believe that.
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But I really do.
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I like to listen to what other people say.
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And one of the things that I often hear people say is we want our church to be comfortable for unbelievers.
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And I say, slow down.
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Because it's not supposed to be comfortable for unbelievers.
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It's supposed to challenge the unbeliever.
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It's supposed to make an unbeliever look at himself.
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It's supposed to cause self-evaluation.
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This is why churches have become rock concerts in a lot of ways.
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It's become a place where people come in and they're entertained rather than engaged.
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And they're lifted up with words of encouragement rather than being challenged with words from the Scripture.
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And that's why we have to say this is what the condition is.
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If a person is unsaved, this is what unsaved means.
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This is what the future holds for somebody who is unsaved.
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And we need to seek that none among us fails to obtain the grace of God, even if that means challenging one another with the Gospel.
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If I challenge someone with the Gospel and the holiness of God, the Spirit will either bring conversion to his heart or his heart, which is hardened, will bring either one of two things.
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Either he'll sit in anger or he'll leave in anger.
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But don't think for a second that he's going to stay happy if he's being challenged about his sin.
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He'll either sit in anger and in being obtuse and responsive.
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I've had people do that.
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We talked about this before.
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Chris and I were talking about this.
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I've had people sit.
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And they look.
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I know this isn't going to come well over the audio recording.
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But this is how they would sit during the service.
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They hated everything I was saying, but they weren't going anywhere because they had staked a claim.
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They had assured me this was their place.
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And they give this look like they can't stand what's being said.
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They can't stand the preaching of sin.
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They can't stand the preaching of holiness.
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But for whatever reason, they're not going anywhere.
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So what do you do? Do you stop? Do you placate them? Do you salve them? Do you pat them on the head and say it's okay? Or do you keep preaching sin? No, you keep preaching on sin because you don't want them to fail to obtain the grace of God.
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You don't want them to stay in that condition.
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You want to chip away at that stony heart knowing that the grace of God can pierce any stony heart.
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The grace of God can take any heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh.
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The Scripture says that.
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That's what salvation is.
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God takes out the heart of stone and He replaces it with a heart of flesh.
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Why a heart of flesh? A heart of flesh is malleable.
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A heart of flesh is pumping.
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It's alive.
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It's beating.
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It's not a dead, stony, cold heart, but it's a beating heart.
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How does God do that? He does it by the preaching of the Gospel.
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When the Gospel is preached, again, a person is either converted or angered.
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But they never can sit neutral.
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They never can sit neutral.
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Either way, we have to preach the truth.
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We have to challenge one another to righteousness.
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Otherwise, we might be outside of the grace of God and not know it.
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How good of a pastor, how good of an eldership, how good of a diaconate, how good of a church would we be if we said, yes, come sit among us, fully unsaved and unconverted, and be happy with yourself.
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It's as if I were saying to someone, it's as if my neighbor, it's as if his house were on fire, and I could see that his house were on fire.
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And I could see the condition of his home.
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And I could see him sitting in his living room with his feet propped up, and he's watching the local news, and he's sitting there, and he has no concern because he can't see the fire.
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And I walk over and say, hey man, here's a Pepsi.
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Enjoy the news.
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What would the whole world say about me? A lack of compassion? A lack of love for my neighbor if I went over and I said, here man, have a Pepsi.
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Keep watching the news.
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I'm going to leave because I don't want to be here.
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Because very soon, your house is going to collapse around you, and you're going to die in this fire.
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But yes, that's the attitude that so many have is that no, we can't challenge one another because we might hurt their feelings.
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You know, if I went and told my neighbor, get out of your house! He might say, this is my house.
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I don't want to get out of my house.
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Listen man, your house is on fire.
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Now, if you tell a man his house is on fire and you confront him with the truth, and he says, like these people who live in the flood plains, well, we're going to stay.
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Once you tell them, if they stay, then at least you know you did all you could.
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At least you know you stood there and you proclaimed.
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You were the watchman on the wall.
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You proclaimed to them the gospel.
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You did not hold back the truth of their sinful condition.
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You let them know the reality of the situation, and as such, you can be confident that God has done through you what He intended to do, which is have the gospel proclaimed to them.
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How God uses that, how God opens their heart to understand that, how they receive that, that is not our concern.
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We are simply heralds of the gospel.
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We cannot force anyone to believe.
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We cannot make converts.
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All we can do is preach the gospel.
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You say, now, wait a minute.
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The Bible says that we win souls.
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The Bible says, he that winneth souls is wise.
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Paul said, I am all things to all men that I might win some.
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What does it mean to win? It doesn't mean, beloved, that we are the ones who are literally changing someone's heart.
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What it means is that we are the herald of the gospel, and by proclaiming the gospel to someone, God opens their heart to believe, and at that very moment, we were the instrument used by God to save that person's life.
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Just like a lifeboat saves a person's life when their ship is going down.
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You might say that the lifeboat itself was the Savior.
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But really and truly, it's the person who put the lifeboat on the ship.
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It's the person who built the lifeboat.
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It's the person who established this plan who is the Savior.
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And this is the very same way.
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We're like the lifeboat.
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We proclaim the gospel to someone.
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We're just a tool.
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We're just one of the cogs in the wheel.
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We're just part of the process God uses to bring a person to salvation.
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Don't you want to be part of that? I want to be part of that process.
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I want to be proclaiming the word of God, not because I think I'm going to change someone's heart, but because I know I could be used by God to change the heart of someone else.
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I could be used to win souls.
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I could be used to proclaim.
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I could be used to seek that no one in this room fails to obtain the grace of God.
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Because to me, that is a very frightening thing.
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To consider that any one of us would fail to obtain the grace of God is to me frightening.
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Because every one of us who stands in this room, every one of us who sits in this room today is sitting here in one of two conditions.
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We are sitting here in a condition of justified or unjustified.
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We are sitting here in the condition of sinner or saint.
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And beloved, let me very quickly, and I do not mean today to be mentioning Catholicism a lot.
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You know I don't on a regular basis mention any particular group or thing.
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Just sometimes it comes out in this.
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There is something that has also happened because of the history of Catholicism in the Christian faith is the idea that saint is something that people achieve by virtue of a certain level of living, some type of holy living.
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That somebody is made a saint.
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Beloved, do you know what the word saint means? Saint comes from the Greek word hagios.
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Ok? Hagios means what? Holiness.
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Somebody said haginos.
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No, it doesn't mean haginos.
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It means holiness.
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Saint comes from that word that means holy one.
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And that is the two conditions that every person in the world is in one of those conditions.
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Either they are still a person who is under the weight of their own sin.
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They are still facing judgment for their sin.
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Or their sin has been taken from them and they have been made righteous by Christ's work and they are now considered before God to be holy.
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There are those who have the grace of God and there are those who do not.
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And in this room, you are either a saint or you're not.
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You might say, well, sometimes I don't feel like a saint.
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Saint is not a feeling.
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Saint is a position.
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It really is.
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This is what we call positional sanctification.
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It means we who were once in this pit of sin and despair and headed towards hell, God reached down into that pit.
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God picked us up out of that pit.
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He cleaned us up.
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He covered us in the righteousness of Christ.
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And He suited us in heavenly places.
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In fact, let's read that.
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Go to Ephesians 2 and read that with me.
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Because Ephesians 2 expresses that better than I ever could.
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Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1.
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And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
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By the way, it doesn't say you were sick.
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It doesn't say you were dying.
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It says you were dead.
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Meaning that you were dead.
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In the Greek, it's very fancy.
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It means dead.
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It means not living.
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It means a corpse.
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We just make sure we understand that there's no debate.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sins.
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In which you once walked following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air who is the devil, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
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Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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By the way, there is one of the most important verses for that little doctrine that we call the doctrine of original sin.
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The fact that we are by nature children of wrath.
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We don't become sinners when we sin.
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We are born in sin.
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We are by nature children of wrath.
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We are born again into the family of God, but we are not born good, become bad, and then are made good again.
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That's a miscommunication of the truth.
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But here's verse 4.
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A very important verse because it begins with the word, but.
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That word, but, is one of the most important words in all of Scripture because it changes things.
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And you know that.
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You know the word changes something.
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Every guy in here who was ever...
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well, maybe I don't know.
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Every one of us who was ever a teenage boy and we were interested in maybe going on a date with a young lady.
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And we said, I'd like for you to go on a date or whatever, have dinner.
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And the girl says, I like you, but.
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You know that just changed.
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I think you're a nice person, but.
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It's the scariest word in the English language because it changes everything.
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Well, life lies here.
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It changes because He says, here's where you were.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sins.
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You were walking according to the way of the devil.
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You were living in the flesh.
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You were doing nothing but what your fleshly soul, which was dead, desired.
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You were living as a dead man in a walking corpse.
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But, God.
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And God would be the only natural word to follow that because God is the only one who could make the change.
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It's not, but you were smart enough to accept Jesus.
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No, no, no, no.
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Please.
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It didn't say, but you were smart enough to join a church and start living your life.
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But you were smart enough to go to 12 steps and do whatever.
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It doesn't say that.
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But, God, being rich in mercy.
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Again, it's talking about God's mercy because that's what's necessary because of the condition we were in.
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God couldn't just look at us as righteous or even good or worthy.
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He was looking at us as dead in our trespasses and sin, unworthy of any mercy.
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But, He was so rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us.
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Even when we were dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ.
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By grace, you have been saved.
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You see, that's the key.
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The key to understanding our condition is understanding the condition from which we came.
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And we are either in one of those conditions.
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We are either before the but, or we are after the but.
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The however or after.
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We are either in the condition where we are still dead in our trespasses and sins, or we have passed that place where God has taken us out of our sin and He's given us new life.
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And that's what Hebrews 12 is saying.
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We need to not only be concerned with ourselves, we need to be concerned with each other that no one among us fails to obtain the grace of God.
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That no one among us fails to get over that hurdle from death to life.
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You might say to yourself, well, Pastor Keith, you know what? We're reformed.
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We know it's up to God ultimately and it's God who saves.
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Yes.
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But never ever forget your role as an instrument in God's plan.
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Don't ever let your reformed theology get you to the point where you forget that you're a part of God's sovereign plan.
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That He puts you where He puts you in the condition He puts you because He has a plan for what He is going to do with you.
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That's why I really have a hard time with our brethren in the primitive Baptist movement.
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Because they say, hey, God's going to save who He wants.
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We don't have to evangelize.
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Don't ever, ever let that thought cross your mind without putting up a big stop sign.
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Because that's ridiculous thinking.
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Because that removes our responsibility.
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And guess what? That's what true reformed theology is.
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You know, Arminianism is bad because Arminianism steals from the sovereignty of God.
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But hyper-Calvinism is bad because it steals from the responsibility of man.
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True living biblical theology and that's all reformed theology is, understands that God is sovereign, and yet we are still responsible for our actions.
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That's the balance.
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That's what we have to understand.
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And that's what we see.
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Thus, the Apostle can tell us through the Word, you look after one another.
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See to it that no one among you fails to obtain the grace of God.
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If you see a brother stumbling, you go help him up.
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If you see someone whose path has gotten crooked, you help him straighten it out.
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If you see someone where there's a wall that has come up in their life, you go help them tear it down.
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Am I my brother's keeper? Yes.
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To answer Cain's age-old question, yes.
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We love one another enough to speak words of truth into each other's lives and encourage one another to live righteously and to seek the holiness of God.
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And by that, we help ensure that none of us fails to obtain the grace of God.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank You.
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Thank You for this opportunity to consider the Gospel, to consider the fact that we are on one side or the other of the Gospel.
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And Lord, we are to encourage everyone in this room to fall down on their knees and call out for mercy, to recognize sin and the responsibility to repent and believe in Your Son Jesus Christ.
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And Father, we do pray, Lord, if there is anyone here who has not heard this message, if there's anyone here who has not been a part of a place that has preached the Gospel, if there's anyone here who has never heard of the responsibility that You have given that all men everywhere should repent and believe the Gospel.
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And I pray this morning that You would use this as a means to bringing about the end of their salvation.
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Lord, we do know that everything falls to You, that You are ultimately sovereign over everything and we do not control anything, but Lord, we know also we are Your instruments and we pray that You would use us.
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We pray that we would minister to each other and to the community through the power of Your Holy Spirit and through the name of Your Son.
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For it is in His name we pray, Amen.