John 10:25:30 (The Gift Of Salvation)

The Shepherd's Church

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthened in your faith and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you

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It's just three months left for Jesus to live He's standing in the portico of Solomon when we get to John chapter 10 the second half of it at least

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He's under the massive colonnades and under the roof Where he's going to be protected from the elements where he's going to be teaching a fairly good -sized crowd

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Now this crowd is not as big as the Passover crowd Passover crowd is when all of the

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Jewish males were required to come to the city of Jerusalem and to be there with their family So that was the largest crowd.

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That's when Jerusalem swelled up to about a million people at some people would say But yeah, this is not as big as that but it's still filled with a good amount of people reasonably sized and Although the weather is probably bleak.

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They are in festive spirits. Just like us today This is three months since they've seen

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Jesus Back in September in the Feast of Booths. Jesus had had preached this amazing sermon that had thoroughly embarrassed the

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Pharisees There was this tension that was rising in the city of Jerusalem and that tension caused Jesus and his disciples to leave the city

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For three months between verse 21 and verse 22 There's a three month gap that the text doesn't tell us about but it is because we know that the

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Feast of Dedication Was in December the Feast of Booths was in September. So there's this three month gap

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Now again, Jesus had thoroughly Embarrassed the Pharisees the last time he was in Jerusalem in John 8

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He had said that he's the light of the world in John 9 He had opened the eyes of the blind literally giving light to the blind man to his eyes and Then again, he gave the stirring sermon.

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He said I am the Good Shepherd. I am the door of the sheep and Then he said all who came before me are thieves and robbers

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See that was the part that really infuriated the Pharisees They realized that he was making very subtle claims to divinity by saying he is the

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Good Shepherd and that he is the door they realized that they were unmistakably clear because they pick up stones to kill him, but What really made them mad was the explicit claim that they were thieves and robbers the explicit claim

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That they were the ones who were abusing God's sheep. It was a very clear indictment upon their character and They had had all that they could stomach

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Now if you remember they gave this ridiculous response to Jesus. They said You're an insane person

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You're filled with demons Essentially when they called him demon possessed

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They were saying that you have been so given over to the darkness so given over to the demonic spirits That your mind is now mangled and you can't be trusted to say anything truthful whatsoever.

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They overplayed their hand Because the crowds were like can a demon possessed man bring sight to the blind can a demon possessed man speak like this man speaks

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He's not crazy. He's lucent. He's cogent He's not crazy

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So they overplayed their hand like we said last week it was like when The news was calling the grandmas who invaded the capital

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Nazis Maybe they overplayed their hand Maybe they let us know that they're not serious people.

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This is what happened in Jerusalem Now this was a huge problem for the

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Pharisees not just The worst problem of all which was that they committed blasphemy against the

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Holy Spirit and that their sin would never be forgiven That's true But in the temporal sense they lost the crowd they lost their power they lost the people

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Their whole identity was bound up in leading the crowds Leading the people and they lost them in that moment and the crowd started like this malleable middle that we have today

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They started moving over To Jesus like a bunch of young conservatives did when

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Barack Obama said we can or yes we can I Voted for Barack Obama.

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I would never vote for Barack Obama ever again But what I mean is that there was the shift in American politics where that happened where people were motivated by this

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There was momentum in that this is kind of what's happening in Jerusalem in that Jesus is now getting momentum by this malleable middle

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Because the Pharisees are being so unreasonable Now these people are not going to follow Jesus. They're not going to stay with Jesus They're not with Jesus because they love

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Jesus. They're with Jesus because the Pharisees have been ridiculous But the Pharisees sense that they're losing control and it was more than they could bear the pressure was rising

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They've already picked up stones once before to kill him. So Jesus Realizing that he needed to leave he left the city of Jerusalem verse 21 and he didn't come back for three months

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Jesus used this time intentionally to build up his disciples Six months from verse 21 the disciples are gonna be by themselves and alone

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Jesus is gonna be ascended into heaven and they're gonna have to take the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth without him Now they're gonna have the spirit, but they don't know that yet So Jesus is gonna spend three intentional months with his disciples teaching them and preparing them

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Discipling them getting them ready for what is coming next The Pharisees are gonna spend three intentional months stewing in their hatred planning for whenever they see

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Jesus again To flip the script to flip the crowds and to get them to kill him

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Remember we said last week that if the Pharisees could mobilize the crowd they could create Instability in the city if they could create instability in the city

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They could get pilot to sign off on Jesus's death and then they would think their problem would be over It had only just begun

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Now that's not all that background is an interesting to me but what's even more interesting this week's passage is why did

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Jesus go back Why did Jesus go back to the feast of dedication? He didn't have to It wasn't a mandatory feast

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It wasn't one that Jesus had to be at according to the law of Moses or according to you know custom

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It was a good thing to do But it wasn't mandatory. Why did Jesus go back? Why did he risk it?

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He had already he'd already smacked the hornet's nest Why did he go back to the city?

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I think there's three reasons number one Father told him to John 5 19 says that I only do whatever the father tells me.

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So if Jesus goes to the city we can assume Reasonably that God has told

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Jesus that he wants him to go back because Jesus doesn't do anything unless the father tells him So the fact that he did this means that the father told him it was the father's will for Jesus to go

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That's the first thing I would say The second thing I would say is Jesus was not afraid It was not his hour

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If you remember in the Gospel of John his hour means his death Hour doesn't mean you know, it's eight o 'clock in the morning and I'm sleepy still and I need a cup of coffee

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It's not my hour Maybe you tell that to your kids Maybe you tell that your co -workers.

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Give me till lunch That's not what Jesus was doing. His hour is the hour of his death

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His hour is the hour that he came to be glorified in when he was lifted up on a cross crucified on our behalf

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He tells his mother in John 2 Woman, it's not my hour. He's not saying

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I don't want to help you He's just saying that I can't reveal myself in that way yet Because it's not time for me to die

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John 4 He tells that to to the woman at the well an hour is coming when you and I will worship

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Not at this mountain or that mountain, but we'll worship in spirit and in truth the hour meant his death

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John 5 he tells the crowds an hour is coming when the dead will raise from the dead

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He's time at the hour of his death he's saying that That only he and the father could determine the time of his death and he wasn't afraid to go to Jerusalem He wasn't afraid that the

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Pharisees were going to catch him and arrest him prematurely Because that would be outside of the will of God The will of God was that Jesus died during Passover as the true

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Passover lamb There's no way in God's green earth literally that God was going to let

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Jesus die in Jerusalem John 10 17 through 18 says For this reason the father loves me because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again

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No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again this commandment

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I received from my father. So unless Jesus is laying down his life. No one can take it from him

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That's the second point the third is the purpose of the book The purpose of the book is in John 20 31

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It says these things have been written so that you will believe these things have been written because Jesus did

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So therefore Jesus went to the city and he did this for us and he showed us this Because this is one of the things the

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Holy Spirit wanted us to have as believers 2 ,000 years later to see Jesus to see that he's the

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Messiah to see that he's the perfect man But also fully God These things have been written so that we will leave

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So the three reasons that I would say that Jesus went to Jerusalem is because the father told him to he was not going to die until it was his time and he gave us an example of who he is so That we would believe in him and have life in his name and the

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Pharisees could not thwart that now today As we continue along in John 10

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We're gonna see how Jesus has all the authority over our salvation If you remember we've been talking about division three weeks ago and even four weeks ago

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We were talking about division and we were talking about how Jesus has divided the world into three different groups of people

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There's the people who hate God Who are unbelievers? There's the people who cheer for God cheer for Jesus go to church

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But yet they're still unbelievers and then there's the ones who are known by God who are the believers

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Three categories of people we've been dealing with the first two in the last several weeks today

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We're gonna look at the third category. What is a true believer and A true believer is a true believer because of the work of Christ in Christ alone

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Today, we're gonna look at how belief is a gift given to us by God It's not something that we can earn on our own we're gonna look at how that gift is given only to God's people and how

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Thieves and robbers cannot steal it They can't steal it away from God for themselves and they can't steal it away from you so that you would lose your salvation

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We're gonna see how the Father's gift Was that he gave us to Jesus. He gave us to Jesus as a gift for Jesus's obedience on the cross

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And we're gonna see how in Christ we've received many gifts that help us walk with God So today we're gonna be talking about the gifts of God and how those gifts of God come to us

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So if you will, let us turn to the passage today John 10 26 through 30 Then we'll pray and we'll consider these things together, but you do not believe

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Because you are not my sheep my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they

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Will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand My father who has given to them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the

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Father's hand I and the Father are one let us pray Lord Jesus our salvation

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Is a gift Given to us by you by the

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Father Lord I pray That as we are held firmly in your hands that we would also

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Have eyes open to see the manifold graces and gifts that you've given us

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Lord. Let us not be ungrateful Lord let us not be unthankful Lord if we are in you we are held firmly and tightly and we're unable to lose that gift

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But Lord the Bible doesn't say that we're not capable of being unappreciative of that gift

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Lord I pray that as we see what you've done in your word That we would be thankful and grateful

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That Lord it would fill our hearts full of joy and that we would worship you Lord in Jesus name.

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Amen We understand gift -giving in the natural world we think of things like Christmas birthdays

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Anniversaries, we understand gift -giving. Hopefully when you receive a gift someone freely chose to give you that gift without any compulsion if you weren't the person who's

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Trying to motivate people in a manipulative way to give you gifts. Well, then that's not good. Don't do that Hopefully the person has given you a gift joyfully as a symbol of their devotion to you a

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Gift in its purest form is an act of sacrificial love from one party to another based on a relational status

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We don't give gifts to everyone we give gifts to the people who are connected to us who are related to us who are our family and Yet we understand this in the in the physical world barely even needing to explain it

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But yet we often misunderstand this in the spiritual world and we create these strange categories on gift -giving to try to preserve some sense of free will that we think that we are supposed to have

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I Arranged these in a couple different types of errors four different errors that we that we view

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God's gifts With and the first is the gift and the wages error Imagine I said to you

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I've got a gift for you and you smile and you say oh, well Thank you. And I say if you come to my house and work for the next 10 days, then

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I'll give it to you That's not a gift That's a gift masquerading or that's a wage masquerading as a gift

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Gifts and wages are not the same thing It would be wrong of me to say I've got something for you and then make you work for it.

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That is a wage That's compensation. That's not what salvation is But yet we often many people often think of it that way that if I can just be good enough

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If I can just earn my way back into God's good graces if I can just go to church and if I can do this And if I could do that, if I can clean myself up, then

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God will reward me. That's not a gift. That's a wage Salvation cannot be earned

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We can't busy ourselves with spiritual activities and impress a thrice. Holy God Romans 6 23 tells us the only wage that we have earned it says for the wages of your sin is death

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But the gift the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord we can't treat this as a wage that we can earn and Yet we often do the second error is

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What I call the gift profession error, I Want you to imagine?

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That you and your family are sitting around a Christmas tree Your father your mother and you've bought the greatest gift for your kid.

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They're gonna they're gonna enjoy it so much But you don't want to violate their free will So you just sit there awkwardly

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Until they ask for it You don't say hey, I've got this gift for you. I want to give it to you. You say

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I'm not gonna impose You can imagine

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Them having to make a credible profession before they get it dear earthly mom and dad I'd like to take this

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Thy moment to acknowledge that I've not been the greatest son I've done a lot of things for you not to love me

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But I want to ask you to forgive me and allow me to partake of this great gift if it be thy will Amen That would be strange and absurd

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And yet we treat salvation like that. We treat salvation Like that it's on us to Convince God that we're worthy of something by praying some prayer and we have to make sure that we're sincere because if our sincerity is not just right, it's like we're walking through a

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Divine minefield if our if our sincerity is not just right boom done try again next time

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It's not the way gift -giving works God's not up in heaven waiting for you to sound smart God loves you.

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You're his child. He gives you the gift We have to understand that salvation is a gift from God The next error is what

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I call the gift for everyone error error Same family sitting around the

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Christmas tree in a very small little area of their house because there's gifts stacked to the ceiling in every room every room of the house

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It's filled full of gifts because the family said we're gonna buy a gift for everyone. We're gonna buy a gift for the entire town and We're gonna stand out on our porch and we're gonna say come in.

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We've got a gift for you If you'll just receive it If you'll just come in and you'll take a step of faith

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I see that hand back there if you'll stand up and if you'll walk down you can receive this gift

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Then you can have it and that's really poor stewardship because almost everybody thinks you're a weirdo standing out of your porch at Christmas Yelling at them to come in your home

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We treat salvation like that like that God has bought a gift for everyone and that he's so Weak and impotent as Savior that he can't deliver the package to the ones that he intends to give it to That's not the way

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God is God can and will Give the gift to whoever he is intended to give it and that leads to the final error what

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I call the post office error of gift -giving We live in a world Where packages don't arrive even in Amazon.

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I ordered something the other day and it took four days and I was furious And that ridiculous How spoiled we've become?

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We have our package is stolen. We have our package is taken we have you know you look on your little camera on your front door if you have one of those and you see the the perp come up on your

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On your lawn and grab it and because it was prescription medicine for something like arthritis. They throw it down and run away

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We have this idea That if there's someone out there who the gift of salvation could have gotten to If it wouldn't have been stolen it wouldn't have been taken away from them

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If it wouldn't have been thwarted by some enemy or by some plan. I Want to tell you something?

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If your name is written on the package and it was handwritten by God, you're gonna get the gift You're gonna get the gift

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He will give you what he is determined to give you. Do we not believe that God is powerful that God is able

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There's no stolen packages in the kingdom of God, amen to speak in more theological terms the ones who received the gift of salvation or the ones that God chose before the

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Foundations of the world to receive the gift of salvation and in time Jesus Christ came and he died on the cross for our sins and he paid the penalty for our sins and then in our time

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The Holy Spirit came into us and awakened us and changed us and opened our eyes and we saw Jesus and we said

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Jesus I love you. I want to I want to follow you and he says to us follow me

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Well done my good and faithful servant. We've been his the entire time Because God chose us, but it didn't work itself out until at some point in our life

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Maybe you ran from the Lord for 15 years 20 years 30 years Maybe you were born into a Christian home and you have no idea

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Exactly when you came to know God if you are ever in Christ, then you've always been in Christ even before the world was made it's like an adopted child a great

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King Decides that he's going to adopt a child that child belongs to him, but he has to send his servants to go find it

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And he goes and he searches the streets and he searches the byways and the highways and he finds that child and he brings that child

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Into his home and he clothes him in different robes and he gives him showers him full of gifts. That's us God made a declaration that he was going to save us and then in time

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We heard someone preaching the gospel We heard so we heard the Word of God declared to us in some way that we understood the

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Holy Spirit opened our eyes and we were clothed with the robes of Christ brought Into the family and given the gifts that God has decided to give us

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John 10 Gives us an example of this He doesn't say

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That if they ask me or if they pray if they raise their hand They fill out a card if they do any of that that I will give them eternal life

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He just says I will give them his believers eternal life

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We can't earn it. We don't deserve it But he gave it to us because he's good.

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He gave it to us because he's good John 3 36 is another example

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He who believes in the Son has eternal life and you're like see it says he who believes he who makes a decision he who?

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Does something he has to work he has to do something. He has to make an effort here He has to actually turn his brain on a believe keep going

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But he who does not obey the Son will not see eternal life But the wrath of God abides on him the way to understand this passage is

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That if you do not believe Then you have to obey in order to be saved and because no one is righteous not even one

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No one can obey God. No one can be saved unless God gives them the gift of faith

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If you don't have the gift of faith and it requires perfect obedience for you to be saved

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But if you have the gift of faith It's not your obedience that saved you. It is a gift from God Either you will die under the condemnation of God as John 3 36 says the wrath of God will abide on you or You will die as a

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Christian Because you've been given the gift of faith that you did not deserve

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Faith is not Because you were smarter than the other people who heard the gospel and you decided that You could make a better decision than them.

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That's not what faith is We're all sheep sheep are dumb. None of us are smart enough to make that decision in our sin

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We laugh but it's true It's not because we were lucky to hear the gospel because we were walking down the street and we heard

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Christian radio or we heard a song or we heard Somebody preaching the gospel and we just so happened that we were luckier than the next guy

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Who didn't get a chance to hear it? There's there's no luck in the kingdom of God He chose us

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He claimed us as his own and he gave us the gift that he determined to give us Sometimes with you and I kicking and screaming

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John 4 14 is another example But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst you say see

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You have to do the drinking you have to drink look at what he says But the water that I will give

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Will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life He doesn't say that if you go out and find the water or if you go to ancient market basket and you buy the water

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Or if you look through all the shelves of different options and you find just the Jesus water and then you drink that he doesn't

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Say that he says the water that I will give so if he's not giving you ain't drinking That's what this means

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John 6 27 Do not work for the food which perishes but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the

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Son of Man will give to you He's saying that you can buy your ramen and you can buy your caviar and you can buy everything in between But if God doesn't give you eternal life, he doesn't give you the food that abounds to eternal life

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Then you don't have it John 6 44 one of the clearest passages in Scripture No one can come to me

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Unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day

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No one can come Unless God draws them to Christ no one

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That's not a complicated Greek word that we've made simple in English. It means nobody Unless Jesus or unless God draws them to Christ unless God gives them the gift of faith

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Our passage today John 10 29 is a negative example of election this is what theologians call

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Reprobation reprobation is that some have been elected to faith and some have not and those have not been elected to faith

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They're called reprobate. They're called the ones who who cannot have faith Jesus says you do not believe because you are not my sheep he doesn't say you don't believe because you've made a poor decision or he doesn't say you don't believe because Because maybe you just need to think about it a little bit more

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Maybe I need to give you a couple arguments on apologetics so that you can so that you can understand what I'm talking He says you don't believe because you're not mine

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You don't believe because you don't belong to me He's saying you will not cannot and do not come to me because you're not mine

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You not believe because you're not my sheep He's saying if you believed in me if you belonged to me

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Then you would love me because I would give you a new heart in order to love me if you belong to me

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Then you would believe in me because I will have given you a new mind in order to believe in me If you belong to me, then you would worship me and I would have given you new affections

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So that you can worship and I would give you a Holy Spirit to help you worship If you're mine, I would have gifted you with the things necessary for you to love me worship

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Me and follow me but because you're not mine You haven't got that gift and because you don't have that gift.

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You don't follow me. You don't belong to me this starkness is

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Really difficult for us as modern people because we live in a world of participation trophies and everybody gets a prize

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When we think about it No one should have gotten the gift of salvation. No one should have been saved

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It says in the Bible that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God the wages of sin is death

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So if everyone has sinned everyone deserves death so the fact that some receive the gift of salvation

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Means that God is even more gracious and even more loving than his justice demanded even more gracious and more loving

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Than he had to be The question is not why doesn't everyone get saved?

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The question is why did God save anyone? Take a deep look and realize inside of your own heart.

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You don't deserve this Us together as a family gathered worshipping this great and holy

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God. We don't deserve to be here We don't deserve salvation We stand in awe and say

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God I have no idea why you chose me over so -and -so There's plenty of people better than us.

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There's plenty of people smarter than us There's plenty of people who the world would say. Yeah, they deserve it more than us and yet by some

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Amazing grace we are who we are because of God See the point the Bible is trying to get us to realize is your salvation is not about you

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Your salvation is not about your strength and power and intelligence your salvation is about the glory of Christ He gets praise because people so weak and dumb and rebellious are saved.

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That's us He gets he gets massive Infinite glory when objects of his wrath are turned into objects of his mercy.

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That's not about us It's about him and his goodness salvation is about his goodness and his grace to creatures who deserve his wrath

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But the starkness is all over John the gospel He says in John 2 that he would not entrust himself to the men of the city because he knew

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What was in the heart of men? He says in John 7 where I go you're not gonna be able to find me

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Because You can't find me. He's saying to the Pharisees that they're gonna be locked in a state of perpetual

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Wondering because they don't have him. They do not know him. They can't find him where he is going and they thought What is he gonna do kill himself?

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They were so dull that they didn't understand he was talking about when I die and I ascend to heaven You can't follow me there You can't you won't

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John 8 he's even more explicit. He says you will die in your sins

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They were right because they were not Why because they were worse than anyone else No No, the

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Pharisees were pretty righteous compared to a lot of people if we look at our life in comparison to the

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Pharisees Yeah, they were they got it wrong. They missed who Jesus was we do often as well

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But they followed the law Religiously, they followed the law with all of their passion they would look at us today and say that we're half -hearted in our devotion because we don't make it all about obedience.

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So they're not this sort of maniacal evil group of people that you could say well gosh they really did deserve hell.

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All of us deserve hell. That's the point. The Pharisees were great representatives of people who thought they could get into heaven by their effort and they can't.

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Jesus says you will die in your sins. God's gifts cannot be stolen away from the hand of God by religious obedience or by self -fulfillment or by any other means.

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Jesus says I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life and no one comes to the Father but by me.

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If you want to try to pry open the Almighty's hand and get into heaven any other way you will not be able to do that.

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So his gifts cannot be stolen away. They also can't be taken away from you and I if we're believers because they weren't they weren't given to us because of our worthiness.

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They were given to us because Christ is worthy. John 10 29 says my Father who has given them to me

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God gave us to Jesus and because God is greater than all no one is able to snatch them out of the

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Father's hand. You see there is there is a pernicious lie in Christianity today and I hope to God it doesn't infect this church but there's a pernicious lie from the gates of hell that somehow you can lose your salvation.

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Somehow you can be cast out of the Father's goodness. This verse says you can't.

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No one can snatch you out of the Father's hand, not even you, not even your disobedience.

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If Jesus died for you and he forgave you of all your sins then he is faithful and he will complete the work that he began in you on the day of the

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Lord. He will complete it. If you were in his hand you're always in his hand. If you are held by Jesus you cannot be lost.

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You may have to tell yourself that a hundred times today. You may have to stand in front of the mirror and say

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I am a Christian. Not because of me, because of the goodness of Jesus. I am a Christian and if that's true then

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I can't be lost. If you need to tell yourself that, tell yourself that. If you need to preach that to yourself, preach that to yourself.

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But don't give in to the satanic lie that if Jesus died on the cross that he wasted his blood on you.

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Because he didn't waste a drop of his blood. All who are in Jesus will be saved. Because you and I, Satan and the world and the flesh, are not more powerful than God.

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Do you remember the example of Job? Job, righteous man, has everything basically and Satan goes in front of God and he has to ask permission to afflict him.

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He has to ask permission to do anything to him. You are in the Father's hands. Nothing happens to you, especially not your salvation, without the approval of God.

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And God will not take back what he has given to you. God is not an Indian giver.

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I don't know what the appropriate term for that is anymore. Please forgive me if that's offensive. I grew up in the 80s and Indian giver is what we called it.

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Please enlighten me on what's a better term. But God's not that.

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And hear my heart. I'm not trying to be mean to indigenous peoples.

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Romans 11 29 is an example that you can memorize. It's a very short verse, but it's a helpful verse.

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It's a verse that when you're worried about, have I send myself out of the kingdom, you can remember this verse and you can hold to this verse as an anchor for your soul.

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It says, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

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If God has given you the gift, it can't be revoked. If God has given you the gift, it can't be taken.

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If he's called you to Christ, you will be in Christ, and there's no condemnation for you.

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Now, I want us to spend a little bit of time as we're closing, which basically means

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I'm finished with my intro. I want us to finish our time today talking about this really important and beautiful point, that we are a gift to God or to Jesus by God.

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You see, we often think about our salvation as a gift, and it is. But before our salvation is a gift, we were first given to Jesus as a gift to him.

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God gave us to Jesus as a gift for his obedience, and that is so important for us to understand, because how could we have any assurance otherwise?

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Look at what it says in verse 29, my Father who has given them to me. What this passage is telling us is that Jesus left heaven, came to earth, lived a perfect life, in perfect submission to God, fully magnified

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God, fully glorified God, and we were given to Jesus as a reward for his obedience.

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When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, you and I were given to him. And you're like, how's that possible?

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We live 2 ,000 years later. We were given to Jesus. We are his. We belong to him.

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And Christ, in every decade, in every century, is raising to life those who are his, one soul at a time, until the last

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Christian is called out of death and into life. And when that happens, then the end will come.

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The end is not going to come because Vladimir Putin invaded Russia. The end is not going to come because a new technology is going to be put under someone's fingernail in Sweden.

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The Lord is not going to come because of all of these little newspaper articles that we read. The Lord will come when the last

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Christian is resurrected from death to life. When the last believer that God chose before the foundations of the earth have been raised to new life in Jesus.

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When that happens, then Christ will return and then the end will happen.

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We don't have to worry about newspaper articles or social media blurbs or some

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YouTube guy with a tinfoil hat who says, this is the end, I know it. Look, I have yarn on the wall.

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We don't have to be fooled by that. We don't have to be anxious by that. We don't have to be frustrated by that. We know that Jesus will return when it's time.

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He said, O men of Galilee, the angel said, why are you staring up at the heavens? Go do what Jesus has told you to do. We don't need to do that.

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We don't need to stand around looking up at the heavens to see if the signs of the times are going to line up for Jesus to return.

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We need to do the work that God has called us to do. And the work that God has called us to do is preach the gospel so that lost people will be raised.

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And when the last one's raised, Jesus will come back. That's the gospel. We've been transferred out of Adam's family and into Christ's family.

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That's the gift that God has given to Jesus. It says in Romans 5, you can read it on your own, that all who sinned are in Adam.

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We were part of Adam's family. It made me wonder this week if the Adam's family show had some covenantal undertones to it.

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You know how ugly and monstrous they are in their sin? It made me wonder.

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But because of what Christ has done, you've been transferred out of Adam's family and you've been transferred into Christ's family and now you're his.

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You're a gift handpicked by God to give to his beloved son. John 10 29 again says, my father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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Jesus is saying that everyone God decided to save has been given to Jesus as a gift and they will be saved because they're

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Jesus's gift. God would never take away a gift that he gave his son.

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God's not like us. If God gave a gift to his son, it's a forever gift and Jesus is not like us.

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How many here have lost a gift that someone gave them? Probably all of us. Jesus doesn't lose you.

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Jesus is not like us. If God gave us the gift, Jesus received the gift, we are safe. We are secure.

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We cannot be lost and it's so comforting because if it were up to us, we would lose it.

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If it were up to us, we wouldn't be saved. If it were up to our righteousness and our obedience, if it were up to our perfection, we would have never had it in the first place.

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It'd be like trying to hold sand with open hands. We couldn't do it. But yet because we've been given by God to Christ, we are bound up in the

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Father and the Son's love and there's no one that can pull you out of that. No one. Let's end by talking about now the gifts that Jesus has given to us.

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So if God has given us to Jesus, now Jesus, because we belong to him, has given us gifts to, has given us gifts by him.

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The gifts that Jesus gives us are to bring us to faith, to make us follow him, to worship him. Because when

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Jesus came and he purchased us on the cross, God gave us to him. We still, we didn't live yet.

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We weren't alive yet. So we needed to be brought into his family. And Jesus, when he ascended to heaven and he sat down on the throne, began ruling over this thing called the church.

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And the church, decade after decade after decade, has expanded and has moved into different territory, preaching the gospel, seeing lost people raised.

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Every single decade, all of the people that God called have been brought into the family of Christ.

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Now, you think about it. It started in Jerusalem and then it went to Judea and Samaria and then it went to the ends of the earth and it's still going to the ends of the earth.

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And it's not yet completed what it was set out to do. So all of those people throughout the last 2000 years who've been raised to life in Christ were the people

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God gave to Jesus. And if you're in that, then you are part of that. And because of that,

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Jesus has given you gifts because you now belong to him, because now he's your king.

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He purchased you. He made you his people. He's ruling over the nation called the church.

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So now Jesus is your king and he's given you certain gifts. You think about it like an old junk car. God gave the old junk car to his son and his son began working.

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His son began scraping. His son began buying new parts, like a new heart and a new mind and new affections.

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And he began replacing those old, dead, broken, rusted out pieces. And eventually he got it started.

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And then when he got it started, he brought that car into his convoy, which is called the church. And that convoy is going constantly to the ends of the earth telling more people about the gospel.

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That is what the gift we've been given, that we've been awakened, that we've been started, that we've been brought to new life because of Jesus.

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It says in this passage that the first gift that he's given us is hearing. It says that my sheep hear my voice.

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My sheep hear my voice. So the first gift that we have been given by Jesus after God gave us to Jesus is the gift of hearing.

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Before that, our ears were broken. Before that, our ears were dead. Dead is our soul.

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We could not hear the gospel. But now because of what Jesus has done, we can hear. And that is an incredible gift, but it's not good unless he also gives us his voice.

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Because when Jesus gives us spiritual ears, there's a lot of spiritual things that are going on in the world. There's a cacophony of all kinds of spiritual things, demonic and some godly.

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He gave us his voice to pierce through the cacophony of all of that to draw us to him.

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You think about it. Like a car only runs on gas. Our heart only comes alive with Jesus.

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You think about like in a nursery rhyme, the example of Pied Piper, where he plays the flute and all of the mice instinctively under this sort of spell follow him to destruction.

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Well, praise God, Jesus isn't like that because when he speaks, we follow and we don't follow him to destruction. We follow him to life.

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When we hear Jesus's voice, our ears, our soul was designed by God to hear the voice of Christ.

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And when we hear it, we awaken and we follow him and we run to him and he leads us to new life and he leads us to eternity with him.

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He's given us new ears to hear the gospel. He's given us his voice so that we can follow him and he's given us the gift of being known.

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It says my sheep hear because he gave us new ears. My sheep hear my voice because he's deliberately speaking to his sheep and my sheep hear my voice and I know them.

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He's telling us that you are not unknown by me. You are known by me. You might be surprised at the fact that you're a

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Christian. You might have been really far off the beaten path at one point. You might have been in the deepest pit, the darkest valley, and you may be surprised what is happening to me.

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God has saved me. I don't understand this, but you're not a surprise to Jesus. Jesus called you with his voice.

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He gave you new ears to hear his voice and when you came to him, you said my Lord and my God. He says

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I know you. That's what it means to be saved is that you are known by Jesus, awakened by Jesus, drawn to Jesus, given new life by Jesus, and by the time you finally figure out what's happened, there's been an entire eon of time that's been working on your behalf.

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In eternity, God chose you. At the cross, Jesus paid for you. By the time you realize what's going on, this whole thing has been going on for an eternity.

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You were already called. You were already chosen. You woke up out of a coma and were confused about what happened.

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You didn't raise your hand and make God love you. He already did. We'll follow him for eternity.

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This gift that God has given us is not going to last a lifetime. It's going to last an eternity and at some point, you and I are going to stand before the throne of God and he's going to say, well done, my good and faithful servant.

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Enter into my rest. There's going to be some who he says, depart from me,

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I never knew you. But for all that he knows, you will enter into his rest.

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And let me give you something to comfort you. If Jesus knows you, then you love him because he's given you a new heart.

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There's many ways to come to church and to try to be a good person and try to win favor with God that don't involve salvation.

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You can be an atheist and you can come and you can pretend or you cannot even know that you're pretending.

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If you've been chosen by God, you've been given a new heart. So the question I would ask you is, do you love

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Jesus? Do you want to know Jesus? Do you want to please Jesus? If those things are true of you,

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I'm not God, but I would say that you're a Christian because you bear the mark of one who's been called from death to life.

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You bear the mark of someone who's been given the gift of salvation. You bear the mark of someone who

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God gave to Jesus as a gift for his obedience. And the

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Bible says that you will have eternal life. Jesus says they will never perish.

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They will never perish. That makes almost no sense to us because we live in a perishable world.

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You leave the bread out too long and it becomes stale. You leave the the coke out all night and it loses its fizziness.

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But if we're awakened by Jesus, we'll never perish. We're safe.

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We're secure in the arms of Christ forever. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, so great a salvation we could never earn.

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And yet Lord, for all of us who are here who are Christians, who are known by Jesus, I pray

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Lord that we would never doubt again. Lord, I pray that we would have confidence in our salvation.

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Lord, the very fact that we that we love you and hate our sin, not perfectly. We struggle.

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We fall short. But the very fact that we love you and want to love you more and we hate our sin and we want to hate our sin more.

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Lord, let that be an evidence and a testimony to us that the gift of salvation was given to us by you.

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Lord, I pray that we would feel secure in your love. And Lord, I pray that as we sing that we would feel delight in your love as well.