Continued study - The God Who is There

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He does just that, doesn't He? He justifies the wicked.
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But how does He do it in such a way that He maintains the glory of His name and upholds His righteousness? God must interact with His rational creatures in such a way that He upholds the righteousness and the glory of His own name.
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Well, how does He do that? How does He do that? That's what we're going to talk about today.
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What's the title of this chapter? It's a hard chapter.
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It is.
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What was the title of this chapter? The Guilty Just.
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I'll tell you what justification is not.
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If you've ever heard that justification is just as if you never sinned, that's wrong.
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It's not.
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I know it's an easy way to say, okay, just if I never sinned.
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That's not it.
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Justification, the textbook definition of that in theology, is the forensic declaration that God has declared you righteous.
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Justification doesn't make you anything.
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Y'all completely aware of that.
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God doesn't make you anything when you are justified.
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He declares you something that you are not.
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Then, He begins to make you holy.
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So we know that this book is not...
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In the beginning, we said, hey, this book's not a systematic theology.
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And it is not.
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But as you're reading your Bible, you do what's called exegesis, which is extracting the truth from the text.
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Then you develop your biblical theology.
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Well, out of your biblical theology, yes, you do develop a systematic theology.
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So, we have already went through regeneration, which was what? You may remember what regeneration, what would we coin that? The new birth, right? God regenerates.
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That's part of systematic theology.
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Part of the atonement is in systematic theology.
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Systematic theology, we're gonna talk about, that's in this book, is justification.
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And how is God able to declare the guilty righteous and not condemn Himself? So, give me some reasons how God's able to do that.
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Christ.
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Okay.
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Christ works.
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And that is the foundation.
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That is the foundation.
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Christ has to be the foundation.
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It was the foundation in the Old Testament.
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He's the foundation in the New Testament.
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But what does Christ do that makes His foundational work absolutely necessary? What does Christ do? So, what's that? He went to the cross.
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I'm gonna put that here.
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Can y'all see that? I'm getting lower, ain't I? Am I getting lower? Let me move it up.
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Oh.
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Right.
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This is the center point.
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It always has been and always will be in time.
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Because all that was in the garden pointed to and all the consummation of all things points back.
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Okay? So, yeah, the cross, but what else? Use the substitution.
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That's right, that's part of the cross.
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But what was necessary at Mount Sinai? Just put the Ten Commandments.
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I know those.
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Those are tablets, by the way.
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What was necessary of the Ten Commandments? Or what was necessary of the 613 Commands and Prohibitions? Gotta be fulfilled.
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That's it, keep it and live.
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And what was the problem with those that were keeping it? Nobody kept it.
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And what did they do? They died.
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Keep it and live, do it and die.
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You go back to Deuteronomy 27, 28.
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You remember the curses from Mount Gerizim and Mount Gilboa? Remember those two? There was the blessings.
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One was on one side hollering back the blessings.
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The other one was calling back the cursing.
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Says, blessed is the one who does this.
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Cursed is the one who does not.
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Why? It's because they had to keep this.
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This, from the cross, would be the active obedience of Christ.
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This here.
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Now, Andy may agree with me, sometimes the active and passive obediences of Christ can be mushed together.
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But what we've done, we try to separate them so you can see, Jesus actively had to do all that the law required, right? Why? Because all righteousness had to be fulfilled.
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All the law had to be fulfilled.
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Word, thought, and deed, okay? So he did everything that the law required, not just the 10, 613 commands and prohibitions.
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But then, this is called the passive obedience of Christ.
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The passive obedience of Christ is what God did to him and him didn't have to do anything.
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God poured out his judgment on him.
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He didn't have to do anything.
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Jesus just did what he was supposed to do, which was go to the cross.
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So that's why sometimes that can be kind of confusing.
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Well, yeah, but he went to the cross.
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Yeah, but it was passive.
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All the acting was a requirement that God needed and under the old, under the Mosaic covenant, was fulfilled at the cross, committed to just demands of the law, meaning a sacrifice must be paid.
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The passive obedience was he went to the cross being the substitute, the substitute that God required for anybody that violated.
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I know two times this year, I did it on the atonement, so I'm not gonna get into all that again, but God demanded a substitute.
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Under the Mosaic legislation, if I committed a crime against God's, if I violated God's law, what did God make a concession for? For my violation to be put off until the appointed time, whether it be turtle dove, ram, goat, lamb, whatever, God made a substitute available for my sin until the time the cross came.
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And matter of fact, we can read that.
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This is my favorite passage in Scripture.
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And most people think that it would be in Hebrews, but it is not, it's in Romans.
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Because it brings all of the Old Testament and all of Christ's work together in one paragraph.
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And I do believe this is the most important paragraph in all of Scripture.
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Romans chapter three, verses 21 through 26.
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Now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifest or revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.
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First of all, when you read that, if you were a Jew, you're like, what? How can righteousness be shown apart from the law? Because the law was the very mirror of righteousness.
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But he goes on to say, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
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For there's no distinction.
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Everyone, all people everywhere have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.
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I wanna talk about that for just a second.
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When we think of falling short of God's glory, do we think that we are somehow shooting an arrow and just fall short? Let's say I had an arrow down there on Andy's head.
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Target.
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And I pulled back.
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And I pulled back and I let go.
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Oh, it just fell short.
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That's not it.
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Let's say, because you're gonna get me.
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So let's say there is that, that's the direction that I'm supposed to hit.
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He's the target, okay? I pulled back.
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Actually, this text really means that I do this.
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Nobody's trying to be God-like.
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So when it says you fall short, it's not like, hey, we were doing the best that we could.
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We were walking towards God and oh, you know what? We fell just short and where our good works didn't do what it was supposed to accomplish, God makes up the rest.
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If that's what you believe, that's Mormonism theology, by the way.
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You do the best you can and God'll make up the rest.
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That's not what this text says.
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This text says you fell short.
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God's demands absolute perfection under this law.
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So back to the text.
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For all have sinned, all have fallen short of God's glory and being justified by a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus which God publicly displayed as a propitiation in his blood through faith.
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What's a propitiation? That's absolutely necessary that we know what propitiation is.
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Something.
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Any meaning on any of that? Something that atones, satisfies or appeases.
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Okay.
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Mr.
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Mike? The absorption of God's wrath.
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Appease.
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God.
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What else? There's a right, by the way.
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Yeah.
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Satisfaction.
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Ultimately, that's what it does.
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Satisfaction.
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Appeasement basically is placating.
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I don't have a problem with somebody saying that God's been placated because that's exactly what it did.
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It placated God.
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It turned, it took his wrath which was being revealed against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness and it was being poured out towards us and then when Christ came and he bore the wrath in him sinners place, it placated God's wrath and turned it away.
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It actually satisfied.
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Satisfaction.
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The justice of God.
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That had to be done.
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That had to be done.
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I, back in 2000, maybe it was 10, I was put on a jury for a capital crime.
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I wasn't committed to that capital crime.
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I was on the jury that committed the capital crime and the man's name was Raymond Bright and he beat two teenagers to death with a hammer 107 times.
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That man got, us as a jury convicted him and gave him the death penalty months later or so, six, eight weeks later in the sentencing phase.
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That joker got off on a technicality.
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He was removed from death row and he was put on with a life without parole.
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That was unjust.
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Now, his appeal went back through the courts and he was put back on death row and I was, yeah.
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Yeah, so it should have been done.
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Yeah, but when you think about the justice of God, there is an, we think about justice, we think about someone just paying, paying its penalty to society.
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If I, let's say I was to steal something from Daniel and the society said that I was to do five years in prison, right? I gotta do five years.
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That would be justice, let me put this up here, that would be justice under man's law.
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But if I stole, when does me stealing ever stop being a violation of God's law? You see, there's a big difference between man's law and God's law.
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It never does.
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It's never.
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So, how is God able to declare the guilty righteous, have his wrath and his justice satisfied, have his wrath appeased, and be able to turn from the sinner and then give him acquittal? Well, it's through the person and work of Christ.
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We forget how holy God is.
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We forget that God's demand for justice is not, we often, let me back up, we often think of God, and we do have hymns that say that God pardons us.
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Well, what's wrong with a pardon? Or commuting a sentence? What's wrong with those things? We're still guilty.
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That's it, man, you're still guilty.
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Look, man, president's at the end of their term, what do they do? They, they start flinging them out there for political purposes or whatever.
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Governors do the same thing.
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But those crimes still are not dealt with.
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So when it says that God pardons the sinner, that's not really true.
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Because God actually, through his justice, pays the penalty through his son.
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And why is it that God can satisfy, how is it that God can satisfy his own justice? How is it? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Because the second person of the Trinity, who is God himself, satisfies God himself.
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That's how.
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God satisfied through Jesus.
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Man.
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That's how.
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That's how.
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Yes, sir.
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Did you raise your hand too? No, but I can.
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I thought you were getting charismatic.
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Go ahead.
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No, go ahead.
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So I was just thinking, when we talk about the cross and pain, most people really have no idea of what you have just said.
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In other words, people think that the cross stands for a thousand different things, whether it be Jesus was a martyr, Jesus was a reformer, Jesus was a teacher, whatever it is.
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But I think what's behind that is that many people don't understand that God's the one who has been offended.
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Yep.
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And God has to be satisfied.
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And it's because we're so self-centered that we don't look at the cross that way.
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And I think even as believers, we struggle with that because again, God is the offender when we're the criminal in this sin.
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And I think if we can get that straight, then those other things, the act of obedience, the act of suffering, all those other things make sense.
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But most people just miss that.
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Yeah, go ahead, and I'll answer, or make a comment.
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Well, I was just wanting to clarify that the satisfaction for salvation before the cross.
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There was none, but go ahead.
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You alluded to it a while ago through the dove and through...
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Here, hang on, he made a concession.
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So that, look here.
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This was a demonstration of his righteousness because in the forbearance, does how many translations, anybody got a translation that says long-suffering? Anybody say that? Chapter three of Romans, verse 25? In the middle, in his blood.
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This was a demonstration of it, right? But because of the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed.
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Does anybody say patient? What'd yours say? You got King James, don't you? Yeah, I get those people.
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Forbearance.
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Forbearance, forbearance.
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Okay.
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Well, the forbearance just means in the patience of God.
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Look, it looked like God passed, just went, you know what? All right, those sins are not taken care of.
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But what God did in the law of Moses, he made a concession.
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If you go on the day of atonement, all right, let's just say if that high priest on the day of atonement, if he goes in there and he does what God required of him under the Mosaic legislation, did God accept the sacrifice inside the Holy of Holies? He did.
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And he went over the mercy seat, which is propitious.
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That's actually means propitious.
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And even in the Septuagint, it's translated to the mercy seat, meaning propitious.
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It was the mercy seat.
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And God says, okay, I'm gonna accept that till next year.
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And it had nothing to do with the person that was offering it up in and of itself.
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Because think about Caiaphas who did it for how many years that he, I mean, dude, he was a wicked man.
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But God said, if this guy does what I've prescribed for him to do, I will accept that offering.
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As the- So for the ones who were saved before the cross, obviously there were- There were people that were justified by faith.
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Yeah, that's right.
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Before the cross, that's what that was.
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That's exactly what the sacrificial system was for.
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She's not here, but Rosanna Stevens hit me up right after that last message I preached.
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And she said, basically what you asked, but what about those, what about those Israelites? Well, the Israelite, if you go back and you look at Exodus and you look at Leviticus, every time they took an animal to the tabernacle or to the temple, you know who was actually helping take place in the sacrifice of that animal? It was the worshiper.
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Oh, the worshiper.
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Let's say you were the priest.
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I didn't come up and go, here, dude.
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Talk to you later.
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No, no, no, no.
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There were butcher tables everywhere.
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And they would go over there and they would either cut the neck or wring the neck of this turtle dove.
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They took place in that.
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Now they didn't take part in removing the entrails.
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If you just go back and you read, I can find the passages in Exodus where everything's laid out.
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They didn't go back to skinning the animals.
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You know, some of it went for their clothing and some of it went to be saved that they could eat down the road.
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You know, all that kind of stuff.
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But they took place in that.
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And they were putting faith and trust that, hey, if I do what God has required of me, which is take this animal to the prescribed place and sacrifice it, God will forgive my sins.
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Now, we're thinking of forgiveness in the same way that they thought and we can't see it that way.
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Did they have any idea that there was gonna be a God-man that was gonna come and was gonna pay their sins for them? They had no idea.
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That didn't even come about until 700 years before Christ came through the prophet of Isaiah.
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So what they were doing was just, this is what God requires of me.
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And if I do what God requires of me and I put faith in the blood that's being shed, what do we do? We put faith in the blood that was shed.
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And they did the exact same thing, except Hebrews tells us that those bloods of those bulls and goats could never take away sin.
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And how did we know they never took away sin? Dude, because they did it every day.
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Every day.
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Day in, day out.
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Day in, day out.
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Day in, day out.
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I mean, there was sometimes, there was so much being sacrificed that they had to stop because they couldn't stop the blood flow to get down through the Kidron Valley.
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I mean, just think about the time of, we'll just take for instance in the time of the Passover feast.
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Anybody read Josephus' work? Anybody know who Josephus was? Josephus was a, he was a historian, Jewish historian.
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He was actually adopted by Vespasian, who was an emperor of Rome, to let him, hey, I want you to chronicle what's going on.
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And he said, there was roughly 365,000 lambs sacrificed in one week.
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Dude, imagine the blood.
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Smell like studies all the time.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I mean, just imagine the blood.
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And you know where they went to sacrifice those? To the temple.
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To the temple.
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So to answer your question, what about those? Their sins weren't paid for.
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But God's wrath was placated for another year.
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God's wrath was placated for another year.
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God's wrath was placated for another year.
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Does election come into, bad word, bad word, bad use of word play, but I mean, as far as election is concerned, how does that, is that going on? Election would have nothing to do with God's, with the Mosaic legislation, other than getting eternity passed, God chose whom he was gonna put his affections on, and he did that, and some of those, okay, and some of those were part of Israel, but not all of Israel is Israel.
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I think that, you know, that might have been, that's hard for, I've been asked that question, like Rosanna asked me before, and it's a good question, because we, we think that all of Israel was saved, and all of Israel was not saved.
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All of Israel was not saved.
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Not all church goes are saved.
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Go ahead, I'm sorry.
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There's no way that, as you said, the blood of all those could take away sin, and again, because God is the one who's gonna, God himself, in his being, in his attributes, he has to be satisfied, and the only way for God to be satisfied is through the act of obedience and pass the suffering of his son.
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So when you think of it again from that, again, we're so self, we're so man-centric that we lose sight.
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This is all about, ultimately the cross really is about God's glory.
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Sure.
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Right? Yeah.
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But we don't think of it that way.
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We think of it as if God has to look to us.
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God doesn't have to look to us.
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God has to be satisfied in himself.
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Yeah, when, if we make the cross about us, it just makes, I'm gonna be honest with you, it just makes me wanna vomit.
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Because it's not about, go ahead.
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Isn't that what Abraham and Isaac was all about? God himself provided the sacrifice.
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Sure did.
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Yep.
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So this is, God is himself provided the sacrifice in his son.
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He sure did.
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Like I said, if some guy can't preach Genesis 22 and preach Christ from that, he probably should never stand in the pulpit.
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Because that's exactly what he says.
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He took his son, and he says, do not kill the lad.
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I will provide a substitute for him.
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And with actually the burnt offering that he was offering up, burnt offering in the Old Testament always alluded to a sin offering.
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I mean, even once you get into the Mosaic legislation, it actually defines what that burnt offering was.
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But it was always a sacrifice.
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And you're right.
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God provided a substitute so he wouldn't kill his son.
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But was Abraham willing? Yeah.
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And Hebrews tells us that he believed that God was able to raise him up if that's what he actually did.
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But yeah, to make the cross about us is sickening.
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Because it's never about us.
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Now, we can say, for I'm crucified with Christ.
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Sure.
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I am crucified with Christ.
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But the purpose of the cross was ultimately not for you, you, you, and you.
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It was actually first and foremost pointed to God because as Andy said again ago, he was the offended party.
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But we forget how holy God is.
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Look, if I commit a crime, let's say, let's say a gnat was flying around here right now.
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Pow! I killed it.
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Would anybody here be offended? But let's say a squirrel came in here and I can say this to my wife's not here right now.
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If a squirrel came in here, crawled up my leg and reached down and snapped its neck and said it was aggravating me, would nobody be offended? But my wife, she loves squirrels.
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Oh, you would too? Well, you and Sybil can go hang out at our house and feed the squirrels in the backyard.
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But, let's say, you fell asleep while I was teaching.
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And I grabbed that stand right there and thumped you on the head a couple of times.
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And you're dead.
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I know it's a joke now.
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And you're dead.
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And I just kept on.
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Kept on.
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How many people would be offended if I cracked him on the head with that stand? Oh yeah.
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Please raise your hand.
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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Hang on.
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But let's say he winds up being a governor or a senator and I get arrested.
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Would my crimes not be more offensive? Of course they would because of the stature.
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Well, what if he wound up being the president? I'd really be in trouble, wouldn't I? Well, what about God? You're not God.
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But what if he was God? Didn't I? You see, the offense is always against the dignity of the party offended.
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Look, when I killed the gnat, there was no dignity in the gnat, was there? Well, not really.
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But if a man was a president and I beat his head in with a mic stand or whatever, man, I'd be in trouble because of the offense of the party that I committed.
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And if I had done something like that, I should be punished.
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When a man ascends against God, it ain't gotta be murder.
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It can be, look, all liars find themselves in the lake of fire.
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Is that not what Revelation says? Well, I mean, think about the little piccadilly lie.
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Hey, man, you went fishing and you said you caught a fish this big and it was this big.
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Is that a lie? That's a lie.
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That's a lie.
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And it's an offense against a holy God and it's damnable for all of eternity if a person does not turn from their sin and put all their faith and trust in Christ.
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We don't think like that because we don't think of God as being holy.
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We think of God as being just like you and me.
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And that's what, good.
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We commit sins we don't even know about.
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Sure.
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We sure do.
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I mean, I think he brought it up in this, I can't remember if it was just this chapter or the next, but he said, think about it.
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When have you loved the Lord God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength? When? Not one second.
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It is.
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It is at the end of it, towards the end.
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Yeah, I think it is.
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But hey, just think about it.
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When? Not one time.
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I've said it before.
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Man, you take that breath and you don't bow your knee to King Jesus, man, you're storing up wrath for the day of wrath until the righteous judgment of God has been revealed.
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I mean, just think of the blessing it is that God filled your lungs with air.
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But we don't think like that.
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It's a gift from the Lord.
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But God, through His Son, be God-man.
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Fully God, fully man.
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Not half God, not half man.
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Not a hybrid.
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It is fully God, fully man, satisfied the just demands of the law as a man.
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Empowered by the Holy Spirit so that God could be satisfied and His wrath could be turned away.
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That's how God declares the ungodly righteous and upholds the glory of His own name.
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Look, God can only work with man in two ways.
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There's only two spheres.
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That's it.
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Which sphere are you in? I hope to God you're here.
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I hope to God you're here.
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Because if you end up here, it's the unbridled wrath of God forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
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And Jesus gives us some very clear depictions of what hell is like.
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It's where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
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And you go, well, how can that, you know, at some point, you know, the fire will run out of wood while the fuel of the damned never are annihilated.
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The Bible says that hell is never full.
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Preachers, I just, kill me here, preachers, oh, he died and bust hell wide open.
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Man, you can't bust hell wide open.
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It's never full.
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It's never full.
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So this is how God can interact with His creatures, His rational preachers, in such a way that He upholds the glory of His name.
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Hey, if God shows mercy to a sinner, is that unjust? No.
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He's able to show mercy to the sinner because of the propitious sacrifice that Jesus had provided in His place.
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If God shows justice to the sinner and chooses to punish that sinner in His sin forever and ever, does that make God unjust? No, it doesn't.
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That's how God upholds the glory of His name, is able to justify the ungodly.
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It says, mercy and truth have met together.
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Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
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And that really is the essence of it, that it's God being completely satisfied, being merciful, and yet His righteousness is upheld because of what Christ did.
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And if we don't think of it that way again, then the cross is really, it doesn't become personal otherwise.
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In other words, if it's not a substitutionary work to satisfy God, then what was it for? Yeah, it was an example, and which is, you know, there are heretics that believe it was an example.
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How many of you ever heard of Charles Finney? You ever heard of Charles Finney? Charles Finney.
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Yeah, he was a heretic.
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Yeah, he was a heretic.
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He was an open air preacher during the time of the Great Awakening.
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He created the anxious bench.
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He created sinless perfectionism.
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And he believed that Jesus Christ's atonement was nothing more than an example of how we should sacrifice our lives for people, not actually die, that we should sacrifice our self-will for other people.
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And that is not the case.
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Because even if that's what you did, it would never satisfy the wrath of God.
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Now, a person justified by faith, and we don't have long to do this part, but it's absolutely necessary.
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What is faith? Is it just mental cognition of the truths of the gospel? Is it? It is not.
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Faith is putting all of who you are and what you are into the finished work of Christ for your salvation and for your sins to be atoned for.
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That is it.
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That's what faith is.
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Now, the Bible uses the word faith at times.
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Pistua, or pistou, that's the Greek word for believe.
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And as we read through it, we go, well, didn't the devils believe? Sure, they did believe, but was it saving faith? That's the same word, okay? But were they saved? No, because their faith was just the fact that they believed that Jesus was the Messiah.
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I mean, heck, they saw him.
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I bet their theology in many ways would be better than ours.
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They've seen the risen Christ.
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They saw him in the flesh.
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What about when Jesus got off the boat to the demoniac guy of Gadara, and what did he say? Don't punish us yet, old son of God, at any time, is it? They knew.
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So there is a faith that doesn't save.
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James says that.
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Faith without works is dead, okay? So there is a faith that's a non-saving faith.
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That's a mental cognition of the attributes of God, a mental awareness of the truth, the truths of God, but it's not the faith that's putting all of the trust in the truths about God.
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Questions? Looks like no, yay, understand.
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So we would agree there's a faith that saves and a faith that doesn't save? Okay, what's the faith that saves? It's not a blind faith.
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It's not a blind faith.
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It's a faith that counts the cost.
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It's a faith that says, you know what? Am I willing to turn from sin? Am I willing to say, okay, I can't love the world nor the things that are in the world? Or this world system is a better way of saying that.
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I can't love the Lord and worship this world system.
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No man can serve two masters.
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He must love one, hate the other.
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So that faith has to count the cost.
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That faith doesn't just go, you know what? I'm gonna try being a Christian for a little while and if I don't like it, I'll do something else.
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Dude, it's not like being a plumber.
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You know, I'll try plumbing for a little while.
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If I don't like it, I'll go do something else.
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That's not what it is.
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It's going, you know what? I'm gonna put everything of my being into who Christ is and trust that he is who he says he is and that his atoning sacrifice was in my place and I'm gonna turn from my sin and I'm gonna follow him to the day that I die.
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That's saving faith.
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Hey, those that don't persevere in faith don't make it to the end.
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Anybody disagree with me on that? Okay, so if you don't persevere to the end, you ain't gonna make it.
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Not because you're gonna lose it.
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You never had it.
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Because God puts within his believers the desire to faithfully see it to the end.
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Hebrew says, hey, some of them were put in animal clothes.
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Some of them were butchered.
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Some of them were sawn in two.
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Some of them were burned.
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Some of them were hung.
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But what did they do? They saw it to the end.
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They saw it to the end.
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We got five minutes for riots or demonstrations.
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There's a church a couple miles down the road from where I live right now that has a thing out on the billboard in front of the church or whatever you call it.
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It says, Try Church Again.
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It's pragmatism.
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That's what that is.
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Try Cheerios.
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Yeah.
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It's because the doctrine of the church is not taught.
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Look, I'm all for inviting lost people to come to the church.
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I'm all for that.
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But they should feel uncomfortable when they get here.
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Not uncomfortable because we're jerks, okay? All right? Which we should not be.
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We should welcome them.
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But there should be something about it.
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Hey man, these people are raising their hands and they're singing songs that are worshiping a God that I don't know.
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I mean, I don't know if y'all have ever went and sat in a Catholic mass and she'd been saved, but dude, they love you when you get there.
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But that's an uncomfortable, because that's not the God that I serve.
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They're worshiping a false God.
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So yeah, we should invite people to come to the church.
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Invite people to church, sure.
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But they should already hear the gospel from your mouth before they get here.
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They should have already heard the words of life before they get here.
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And when they get here, whether it be me and Andy or Keith, we're just gonna affirm what you already said.
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So I was thinking of this little text that Keith sent to us this week.
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Yes, sir.
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It says this.
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It's funny, but it says, it says the church in Afghanistan, we will gather together and likely die.
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And then it says the church in America, we will gather unless there's a cookout, a birthday party, it's a rainy day, or there's a chance of rain, or some other reason.
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I was gonna read that this morning when I went out to read.
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I was going to.
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Well, do it, don't do it.
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You can hear it again, but that's so true, right? And again, we just, this whole God thing to, even many of us that claim to be, it's just, we're just checking boxes.
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And God, we, a lot of times, all false religions just let God forgive.
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Forgive.
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Like anything about Islam theology, Islamic theology is Allah just says, you know what? From the time you say the shahada, you're done, that's it.
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That's it.
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Allah forgave everything before that.
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Now, it's up to you to do everything from that point forward, so when you're weighed into balances at the end, you'll see if you're in wanting.
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But Allah just says, you know what? Everything before that, done.
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Over, gone.
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And I remember having this conversation multiple times.
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The guy where it really got heated is when we were at Speaker's Corner in London, because right across the way is a place called Hyde Park, which is where all the Muslims live, a good bit of them.
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And I was like, hey, that makes Allah unjust.
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What about the sins you committed before? Who's gonna pay for those? And he said, well, he just forgives them.
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I said, he's an unjust God.
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Yeah, I said, you wouldn't let somebody rape and murder your wife, and then the judge say, hey, no big deal, we're gonna let him go.
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Would he be unjust? He said, he sure would be.
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I said, so then what about Allah? Does that make him unjust? Well, I can't say that.
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Of course you can't.
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Look at it fits what you want him to be.
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All right, let's pray.
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Mike, you'll close us out.
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Sure.
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Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time we were able to gather together and look at your word, consider how holy and just that you are, that you are righteous, and you require a righteous sacrifice.
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And we thank you for that in that person.