WWUTT 2202 Jesus Welcomes the Children (Mark 10:13-16)

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Jesus said to His disciples, Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.

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We must enter the kingdom of God like children when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ. For He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wtt .com Once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we've been in Chapter 10 this week. Yesterday, looking at the section where Jesus teaches on divorce and marriage, and I want to come back to that again today and make another point about that, but I'm going to wait until the end.

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In the meantime, let's go on to the next section here where Jesus blesses the children. This is in verses 13 to 16.

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I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them.

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But the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them,

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Permit the children to come to Me. Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

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Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.

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And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.

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You know, it's kind of interesting in this section of Mark that we've been in, going back to chapter 9, it's been peppered with occasions where Jesus either takes a child in His arms or uses a child as an example or rebukes those who would hinder children.

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And here we have that again with Jesus taking the children into His arms and even rebuking

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His own disciples who are trying to keep the children from coming to Jesus. Now this is setting up the exchange that Jesus is going to have with the rich young ruler, which we're going to read about tomorrow.

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So keep that in mind. I'll have to kind of refresh our memory a little bit when we see Jesus encounter with this rich young ruler.

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But Mark is including this right here because he's setting that up.

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And Jesus teaching on receiving the kingdom of God like a child. But going back to chapter 9, you'll probably recall where Jesus was telling

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His disciples that if you want to be first in the kingdom of God, you must be last of all and servant of all.

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And in chapter 9, verse 36, He takes a child and sets the child before them and then taking the child in His arms,

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He says, whoever receives one child like this in my name receives me. And whoever receives me does not receive me, but him who sent me.

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And then we have next Jesus warning about what will keep a person from the kingdom of God. He says in verse 42, whoever causes one of these little ones, the very child he had just set among them, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.

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And there was both a literal application of that and a spiritual application. If anybody would do anything to prevent a child from coming to Christ, the judgment upon them will be great.

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And the spiritual aspect of that is with regards to those who are immature in the faith, children in the faith, they have just come to faith in Jesus Christ.

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And yet if we would do something to discourage them or cause them to second guess their faith or maybe even fall away from the faith, there will be great judgment upon the person who did not receive the child of faith, but instead had prejudice toward those who were more mature in the faith, those who had been

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Christians longer. We show favoritism toward them and not realize the instruction that's given to us in Romans 15 is that we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak.

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And that's a spiritual application in that we are looking toward those who are not as mature in faith, not as advanced, not as learned in this faith that they have.

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And the strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and build them up, help them to learn, grow them in this faith that they have.

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One of my models for that in my life has been R .C. Sproul, because this man is brilliant.

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He was a brilliant man in theology, and yet he knew how to reduce it down to just the smallest level and make it intriguing and captivating to anybody, no matter how immature in their faith they may be.

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When my daughter was eight and nine years old, she was reading books from R .C. Sproul.

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So seeing him do that and trying to, in my own ministry, bring this down to a level that people can understand, not trying to talk over anybody's head, but helping them to see the

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Savior and coming down to the lowest level possible so that we may all rejoice together in the wonderful work that God has done through our

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Savior, Jesus Christ. The gospel is simple enough that even a child can understand it.

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Even a person weak in faith can understand it. And then there are also things in these words that we read that are so deep and so profound that it baffles even the most decorated scholars in the universities and seminaries.

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There are things that we will be studying in God's Word until we die, and then we still won't have grasped all of it, because the wisdom of God is just so much greater than the wisdom of man.

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But praise God that He has so wonderfully crafted this message of the gospel in such a way that a child can understand it, and then we advance in it in our years and learn more and more beautiful things about it.

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It is simple enough to understand that we are all sinners deserving of judgment. Jesus Christ died on the cross for us so that whoever believes in Him and puts their faith and trust in Jesus will not perish under the judgment of God, but we will have everlasting life.

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Even a child can be taught that they are sinners in need of a Savior and that Jesus Christ is that Savior.

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We can have a simple gospel in just that way. And then we know that the gospel becomes even more advanced than that.

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You get into an understanding of double imputation. Our sins imputed upon Christ on the cross,

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His righteousness imputed to us, God's wrath poured out upon Christ, penal substitutionary atonement,

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Jesus dying in our place so that our sins would be atoned for.

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And then God has used faith, faith in Jesus Christ, He uses that as the mechanism to pour out

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His grace upon us that our sins would be forgiven and we would be in right fellowship with God.

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See, it goes even deeper, and we can get into deeper and more advanced doctrines even beyond a simple presentation of the gospel.

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But the gospel is nonetheless simple enough that a child can understand it. And Jesus rebuking those who would prevent children or even those who are weak from advancing in the faith, from coming to the faith and believing in Jesus, for all, even children, need to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved.

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For the kingdom of God is for such as these, as He says in this section. We've had other occasions before getting to this part of Mark 10 where there's been mention of children.

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Jesus had cast the demon out of the boy and healed him. So again, Mark has peppered in here all of these references to children leading up to this point here where children are being brought to Him.

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Now remember at the start of Mark 10, Jesus was teaching the crowds. According to His custom,

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He once more began to teach them in Mark 10. This is in southern Judea on the other side of the

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Jordan. And He has had this exchange with the Pharisees and then teaching His disciples.

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That was in verses 2 through 12. So He's still among the crowds and people in the crowds are bringing children to Him so that He might touch them.

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We're not told that they're sick or they're infirmed in any way. It's not necessary to have to understand that, but just that Jesus would give a blessing to them.

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They know that the blessing of God is with Jesus. And so if He just touches them, then these children will be blessed.

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But the disciples rebuked them. They're trying to keep the children from coming to Him. Children are a nuisance sometimes, right?

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I mean, we see that even in our culture today of people trying to keep children out of things. I attended a church once, worked at a church years ago, where the pastor did not like when my family would sit in the front row.

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He thought that my children were a distraction. And they weren't a distraction to anybody else.

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Nobody had ever raised a complaint about this. Never heard a complaint from anyone. In fact, the comments that we often got were that my children were so very well -behaved and how adorable and cute they are.

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Of course, all the old ladies in the church, they loved how adorable my children were. But this pastor did not like my children sitting on the front row because he thought they were a distraction to him.

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They were distracting him while he was preaching, he said. And a distraction to other people, but we didn't get any evidence of that.

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So he asked that we would sit in the back row or that we would sit somewhere else where my children would not be a distraction.

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Needless to say, I found it hard to stay there. And this is the way people are even today, even in today's churches where we try to get children out of there.

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It's a common thing among Southern Baptist churches. Al Mohler has made comments about this, where we've taken children out of the church and we've given them their own children's church or we dismiss them to childcare or something like that so that we can have big people church.

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But what we really need are family -integrated churches. We need people together worshiping.

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We can't give children this impression that, see, this church that we've got going on right here, this is too grown up for you and you're not ready for this yet, so you need to go to little people church.

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And then they go to children's church and then they're in youth, so they've got a different kind of church that's relegated for teenagers.

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And then there's probably going to be college age and young 20s, and then you're mature enough and you can get in with everybody else.

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But that main worship service in a church needs to be fully integrated, multi -generational.

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I'm about to take my church through Titus. I'm gonna begin Titus this coming

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Sunday, in fact, and you are probably familiar with Titus 2, which shows the multi -generationalness in a church.

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The more mature that are leading the less mature. Older men discipling younger men, older women discipling younger women.

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So a church needs to be multi -generational. There's been a lot of things going on in the church in the last few years about being more multicultural, right?

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We need more ethnicity in our churches. There should be a variety of skin colors in your church.

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Nothing in the Bible says anything like that because there are some parts in the world where you're only going to see one skin tone in your church and there's nothing you can do about that.

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So nothing in the Bible says that you need this multi -ethnicity or you're somehow sinning or not properly representing the people of God.

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If you live in a multicultural area, then may the Lord bless you with multiple kinds of different people of different backgrounds and nations and things like that.

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May there be that in your congregation because that's a picture of what heaven is going to be like. But nothing in the

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Bible says that if your church is not this variety of skin tones, that you're doing something sinful.

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But the Bible does say that our churches should be filled with men and women of multiple generations.

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Now when a church first gets started, and there may just be a dozen people there or something like that, you don't need to rigidly stick with that.

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But as the gospel is going out and people are coming to faith and entire families are joining the congregation, then yeah, you're going to have children.

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You're going to have teenagers. You'll have people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. You will start having grandparents and great -grandparents.

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And all of these need to be together in church, worshiping together, experiencing the benefit and the blessing of multi -generational discipleship.

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That is a good thing. And it should not ever be discouraged. If you're a pastor that gets easily distracted by children in your sermons, you need to grow up.

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You cannot be pushing children out of your service or telling them, you need to go sit in the back because you're too much of a distraction.

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Everybody just needs to deal with it. And you need to have children among you, even playing at your feet when you are coming to the feet of the master.

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For as Jesus says here, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.

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There is something that children have to teach us, even when it comes to the natural revelation of things.

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When we look at children and we see how dependent they are on their parents in order to survive, that teaches us something about how dependent upon our heavenly

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Father we need to be. We are not entering the kingdom of God by our own merit or on our own strength or our own abilities.

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No one enters the kingdom of God except through Christ, the Son of God who was given by the

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Father. And unless we are fully dependent upon God to get us there, we won't get there, is what

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Jesus is saying. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.

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We must be as children, fully dependent upon our Father in heaven for everything that we need concerning salvation and everything else.

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As Jesus said to his disciples in John 16, I am the vine, you are the branches.

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Apart from me, you can do nothing. And we need to have that kind of childlike faith in order to enter the kingdom of God.

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And so in verse 16, Jesus takes them in his arms and he begins blessing them, laying his hands on them.

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I'm a Baptist and of course as a Baptist we don't baptize babies. So that doesn't mean we don't baptize children.

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I have baptized children before. Those who have made a very credible profession of faith and even have an understanding of their sin and need for a

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Savior and that Christ is that Savior. I had that understanding at age four. I was not baptized until I was a teenager.

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But there wasn't anything that changed from age four to when I became a teenager other than I matured and my understanding of Scripture and salvation and things like that.

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But my faith was genuine at four as much as it was when I was baptized at 16.

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I think my parents were right to, you know, not take me immediately to church and get baptized at four.

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That's okay. You want to make sure that your children are truly making an honest profession and not just saying it because their parents have taught them to say it.

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But it is in our hearts that we desire to be followers of Jesus Christ. So that's important.

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But nonetheless, a child can come to faith, can have a credible profession of faith at such a young age.

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And we need to be encouraging that in our children and growing them in the training and the instruction of the

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Lord. Now, I said that I wanted to come back to Jesus' teaching that we looked at yesterday regarding divorce and marriage.

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And he had said to the Pharisees, from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

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And for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one flesh.

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What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. And I had said that God had given us marriage.

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We see in the very beginning of creation, the first human relationship that He creates is marriage between Adam and Eve, between the first man and woman, that the two would be united to one another and they would become one flesh.

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And so what God has defined, what He has set, this is what marriage is.

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So let man not separate or let man not redefine. And marriage is, of course, supposed to be a picture of the way that Christ loves

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His church. When you go to Ephesians 5, verse 25, the Apostle Paul says, Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave

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Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

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And so as Christ has done this for the church, so husbands must be willing to do for their wives. As the church is in submission to Christ, so the wife must be in submission to her husband.

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That's going back to verse 22, Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the

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Lord. So marriage is what God has given us to be a picture of the way that Christ loves

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His church. Therefore, we cannot be of this attitude about marriage that we can just get out of one marriage and jump into another.

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For as Jesus taught, as we looked at yesterday in Mark 10, that whoever divorces his wife and then goes and marries another woman commits adultery with her.

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And we have brought a reproach upon marriage and have even blasphemed

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God when we treat marriage in such flippant ways. And I wanted to come back to this because some of you are probably aware at the

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Republican National Convention yesterday, there was a lot of adultery going on.

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There was real adultery happening in that there was a certain woman who was a porn star who was platformed at the

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Republican National Convention to be able to address the convention and say that Trump was her president and she was voting Republican.

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A porn star. That's what she's known for. It's not some side gig. That's what she did.

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And then there was the closing prayer at the end of the convention to close out the first day was not to God.

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There was a prayer that was done by a Lutheran minister in the name of Jesus Christ.

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But then there was another prayer that was made to the Sikh God. The name that they use for him is

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Waheguru who is a false god. The Sikhs teach reincarnation.

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So this is not the true God of the Bible. Even though the Sikhs would claim to be monotheistic, it's not that they worship the one true

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God under a different name. This is a completely different God. A false god. A demon -influenced religion.

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And this was the prayer that closed the Republican National Convention yesterday. And this is adultery.

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James says in James 4, you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

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You adulterous people. Do you not understand that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

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And this is what we're seeing happen even among the Republican Party. Just days ago, they changed their platform to be softer on the issues of gay marriage and abortion.

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And so now you are seeing from their mouths they are producing what their hearts desire.

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They're now even praying to false gods. Both political parties are incredibly and deeply corrupt.

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And you must be very, very careful though you may think that one party is going to be better than another and will get us out of one pit, it's probably just to get us out of one pit and into another.

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There is no political savior on this earth. Our savior is

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Jesus Christ. And we must not be aligning ourselves with all of these other things and think that we're going to get out of that unscathed.

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We must be as children fully dependent upon our Heavenly Father and not running around as strangers.

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You know the instructions that your parents gave you about staying away from strangers, right?

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Your parents told you this. Beware of strangers. Stranger danger. If a stranger is offering you candy, you don't go and get in his van.

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And there are a lot of false teachers out there in the world, even politicians that are offering us that very thing.

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Hey, here's a little bit of candy. All you got to do is come over here. But we must cling to our

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Heavenly Father. We must know our Savior Christ and not go to another. Only Jesus saves and He will not share

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His glory with another as said through the prophet Isaiah. God is a jealous God who will not share

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Himself with other gods as He said in the commandments in Exodus 20. Don't be adulterers with the world.

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Be united to our Father in Heaven through Jesus Christ our Lord. Heavenly Father, we thank

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You for what we have read here and I pray that we take these reminders to heart that we may be as children and thus receive the kingdom of God.

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Forgive us of our sins. Forgive us the tendency to look for answers in the world thinking that it has to come through something else because, well, right now my faith is just not doing it for me and so maybe

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I need this other thing in order to get satisfaction or reprieve or an answer to the chaos that's going on in the world.

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The answer is still Jesus. And I pray, Lord, that we would turn from these worldly things and our fleshly desires and turn to Christ.

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Seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all the things that we need will be added to us as well.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt

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.com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our