Wednesday, July 19, 2023 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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So in summer sessions, we have a bunch of different sessions and I've been attending the one on the family, creation family versus chaos family.

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And we've talked about the dominion mandate or the creation mandate.

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This is what was given to Adam before Eve was created, be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth and have dominion over it.

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This was given to Adam before the fall. And it got me to thinking about several different things.

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We know that this was given to Adam, Eve was created, they were there in the garden and then someone sneaks in and starts talking about forbidden fruit and tempts

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Eve. And Eve goes to Adam and Adam listens to the voice of his wife and he falls also.

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And in that moment, there is separation. And so we've been talking about loving

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God rightly and loving God supremely, loving each other rightly and stewarding the creation responsibly.

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And in that moment, those relationships are broken. And so man's relationship with God is broken.

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Husband and wife relationship is broken and relationship with the creation is broken.

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There's a separation that takes place. But the band -aid is still there.

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He's still responsible to do that, the things that God told him to do, to be fruitful, to multiply, subdue the earth, which is now in rebellion to him and to take dominion.

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So that's a difficult task in itself, but it's meant to be done underneath God's authority and God's provision.

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God was there, he gave Adam the authority to do this and he gave him the provision to do this.

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Well, now there's separation. So now he has to do this task separated from God. And it got me thinking about the idea of worship in relation to this dominion.

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What does it mean to worship God? What does it mean to be with him?

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Particularly now that there's separation because of the fall. And so we've been talking about that.

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Separation leads to chaos, but not only in the family. So Adam was given the creation mandate while he was in the presence of God.

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And then there's the separation. So he was meant to do all of those things under God's authority, under his provision.

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And it's meant to be done in his presence and for his glory. So tonight

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I'd like to talk about that creation mandate and its relation to worship.

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So first I'm going to do kind of an overview of the Old Testament.

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Just really quickly, just kind of go through all of it. And the idea is separation.

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In the Old Covenant, in the Old Testament, it's separation. Here's the world, be fruitful, multiply, take dominion, subdue it, but separated.

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Separated from God, separated from each other, separated from the land. So first off, we have

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Adam. Adam walked with God. So originally he was not separated. He walked with God. He was in his presence.

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He was given the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, take dominion. This was all in the presence of God. So he was to reflect the image of God in the world.

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That's what he was meant to do. Then the fall, separation. He was cast out of Eden.

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So separated from Eden. Eden was a place where he walked with God.

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And in a sense, heaven and earth were separated. When Adam was in the presence of God, he was in Eden.

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He was in heaven and he was cast out. And so oftentimes we think of heaven as a different place.

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And then we're here on earth, they're separated, right? He's no longer in the presence of God, walking with God.

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Adam was separated from God. Adam and Eve were separated from each other and the land also rebelled.

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And yet the creation mandate continues. Man still has the responsibility to image

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God to the world, but now he's doing it separated from God. It'd be like if we are mirrors and we reflect light, what happens if the light is no longer shining on us?

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We no longer reflect that light correctly. The light has been broken, right?

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So number three, Adam's descendants become nomads, right?

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They're wandering around, but there are several places where it says they call upon the name of the

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Lord. There's several places where that happens, but they're nomads. They don't have a land any longer.

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There's separation. We think of Cain and Abel, separation. We can think of even

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Abraham and Sarah. He didn't believe the promise at first, so she offers her servant.

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Well, there's separation there. It wasn't being followed correctly. But Adam's descendants become nomads.

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They're building wells and altars to worship and call upon the name of the

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Lord. So they believe these promises that they're collecting, that they're receiving through time.

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They're being given promises and they're collecting them and they're believing them, but they don't see it yet.

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They don't see the promises coming to pass. So Abraham will be the father of all of these hosts of people, right?

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The stars in the sky, the sands on the beach. He doesn't see that, but he believes it. And so they're nomads.

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And what's interesting is we have this group of nomads going out. Abraham is called out and the places that he goes, he builds a well or he builds an altar and he worships

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God there. So he worships there first. Then they're given a land, but they're not able to keep the land.

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So they conquer and they conquer through worship and they conquer through obedience, but it's not a perfect obedience.

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They're defeated when they forget God's commandments or their disobedience. So if they forget what

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God had told them, that's why there's so many reminders in the Old Testament. Teach your children. Remember the works that I have done.

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Teach them to your children and your children's children. So they forget or they're disobedient. They don't do the things the way that God has commanded them to do them.

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So go and kill all of the people, including the kings and the animals. And then the prophet comes and he's like, what are these sheep bleeding over here?

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I told you to kill them. Well, they weren't obedient to God. And so they're unable to keep the land.

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They were not able to keep the covenants that God was setting up. Eventually, we have

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David comes and he's a king and we have a united kingdom, but then the kingdom splits and the land spews them out.

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And we have separation again, separation. Now I would like to say they went through and worshiped and built altars.

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And it's interesting, we see all of those places that Abraham went and he built altars and he built wells to worship

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God. Joshua came through and conquered those places. So what

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Abraham was doing, wandering in the wilderness, worshiping, worship came before conquering.

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They worshiped God in the wilderness. They worshiped God in these places that were not yet theirs, but that God was promising to them.

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And so they worshiped God for it. And then Joshua comes and he continues to worship and he continues to conquer.

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If you turn to second Chronicles real quick, actually turn to Joshua first, Joshua chapter six,

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Joshua six, four through seven. So everyone probably knows this story, but there were some things that stuck out to me while I was reading this.

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If you look at Joshua six, four through seven, and this is Joshua at the walls of Jericho.

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If you look at verse four, seven priests bear seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark.

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On the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times and the priest shall blow the trumpets.

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And when they make a long blast of the ram's horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout and the wall of the city will fall down flat.

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And the people shall go up everyone straight before him. And so this is what he does.

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They put the trumpets in the midst of the people as they're going around.

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And you think, well, I need to gather armies and we need to have a number of people and what's our strategy here to take this city?

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Well, God's strategy is to worship, is to march around the city in a specific way for a specific number of days.

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And on the seventh day, you do these specific things and you blow the trumpets and the people shout in response to the trumpets and the city falls.

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Keep note of the number seven there, seven trumpets there. Turn to the second

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Chronicles. Second Chronicles chapter 20.

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Look at verse, sorry, chapter 20 of second Chronicles 21 through 23. And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the

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Lord and praise him in holy attire as they went before the army and say, give thanks to the

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Lord for his steadfast love endures forever. And when they began to sing and praise, the

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Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab and Mount Sierre who had come against Judah so that they were routed.

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So again, here we have another instance of God commanding singing, commanding worship.

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And they went before the army and they said, give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever.

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And it says that the God set an ambush and the army was routed.

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So there we've got two examples from the Old Testament. Now this doesn't happen every time where they set worship, but we do see that Abraham would worship as he went through and Joshua was commanded to worship as he went through and we see that they conquered.

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Now, like I said, this conquering of the old covenant Israel was not permanent, right?

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They were not able to keep the covenant. They were not able to keep the land because the people would forget or would be disobedient.

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So Israel, the nation, was meant to show the world who God is.

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God promised to build a nation out of, and out of that nation, the good news would flow to the

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Gentiles, but the nation of Israel could not carry out its mission. It remained only physical conquest, right?

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They were conquering nations and they were over that land for a time, but it was only physical.

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There wasn't any lasting change in the hearts of the people. And so it was a physical conquest.

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Over time with the nation of Israel, laws begin to abound that were no longer, they were part of God's laws, right?

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So we think of the Pharisees that would just come up with, well, it says this and in order to do that, we come up with all these different rules and you can do this on certain days, but not that.

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And they would try to find ways to keep God's law by building a box around it.

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And they came up with rules upon rules upon rules, but they missed the spirit of the law.

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It was just the letter of the law. And so we have that growing at the same time.

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So they failed at carrying out dominion, right? God commanded dominion and it became domination, right?

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Which is a perverting of dominion, right? So when men try to seize the levers of power, it becomes tyranny or domination, right?

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So they were not being faithful. So we have the nation of Israel that is finally built up, but then we have some of the trappings of the

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Old Testament. We have Jerusalem, also called Zion, the city of God. This is the place where God's people were to meet, to be in the presence of God.

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This is where the temple was, right? This was supposed to remedy that separation, come to this place to meet with God.

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But we see that Jerusalem was unfaithful. There's a place in Matthew, Matthew 23, 15, where it says that they would travel across seas to make converts of the

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Gentiles, but then they would make them twice the sons of hell as they were, right?

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There was no salvation in what the Pharisees were trying to do. Their interaction with the Gentiles was a heavy load upon the

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Gentiles. And we've heard about the stories of what would happen at the temple. The temple, which was supposed to be

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God's house, his home on earth, it contains the Holy of Holies.

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It was meant to be the house of prayer. Does anyone know what it was supposed to be the house of prayer of, for?

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The nations, right? But what were the Jews doing? They were keeping the nations out, right?

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The place that they were supposed to allow the Gentiles into had become a shop.

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They were selling things for the sacrifices. There was no place for the Gentiles to come in, but they were meant to be able to come in.

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So there again, we see separation. Israel had separated from the Gentiles.

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They were not allowing the Gentiles to come. And the temple, again, was another object of separation.

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And so they turned it into a den of thieves rather than a house of prayer for all the nations.

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What about the kingdom? The kingdom of God. It had been promised to the descendant of David an everlasting kingdom.

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And Israel thought this meant a physical overthrow of their oppressors.

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They looked for a king to lead them in war. And several times we see where they tried to make Jesus king and like a ninja, he just kind of leaves the crowd.

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They can't catch him. He's just gone. He goes through and he's gone. But they try to make him king.

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Now he is king and he knew his mission, but they got it wrong. They thought it was domination.

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We're going to conquer people. We're gonna overthrow our pressures through physical war.

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So we see that in the Old Testament, nations rose against other nations. They were ruled by Satan marching as beasts on the land.

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That's the Old Covenant. That's the Old Testament. So what do we have in the

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New Covenant? The New Covenant established by God, by Jesus Christ.

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We have the second Adam, right? Adam, the second

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Adam was with God and was God, right? There's no separation there.

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He was with God in the beginning of creation and he started a new creation just as light was given on the first day of the first creation.

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God said, let there be light. And the light of the world rose from the dead on the first day of the new creation.

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Rather than blaming his bride, like the first Adam did, the second Adam crushed the head of the serpent and laid down his life for his bride.

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That's what we have in the New Covenant. Our savior coming down as the second Adam. Heaven and earth.

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We talked about heaven and earth being separated in the fall but heaven and earth can now be reunited and we are made alive, right?

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We are made alive because while we were dead, Christ died for us.

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The tree of life had been cut off from us but now we have access through the new heaven and the new earth.

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The gift of eternal life through Jesus, Emmanuel, which means

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God with us, no longer separated. God is with us. We continue to be nomads like Adam's descendants but we're not without a home.

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We're nomads, we're no longer wandering around without a home. We're sent as ambassadors into this world.

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We have, like Paul, Paul claims his citizenship. He uses it to his advantage but he also says our citizenship is in heaven.

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So we have dual citizenship. We're not wandering around seeking

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God. God has found us, he has saved us, adopted us and sent us as ambassadors out into the nations.

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So we're no longer separated and we also have a mission. We have a purpose, which we had already in the beginning, the creation mandate.

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That continues through the great commission. Go into all the nations and make disciples, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

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So we continue through, instead of conquering through physical warfare and taking land, we conquer through worship by going into the world and making disciples of all of the nations.

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It's no longer a physical thing. We know the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual.

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What about the earth? The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. It's all his. So the nations have been promised to Christ as an inheritance.

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Israel was promised land, but was unable to keep it. But the true Israel, Jesus, asks for all of the lands and he will receive them.

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Like Joshua, and I found this interesting, like Joshua, when you read Revelation, there are seven trumpets.

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Joshua, the seven trumpets are blown and the city is taken. In Revelation, the seven trumpets are blown and the world is the

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Lord's, all of it, starting with Jerusalem. So seven trumpets are blown to receive his kingdom.

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He kept the covenant, whereas the old covenant Israel could not keep it, the nation.

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The new covenant Israel did keep the covenant and he establishes a new covenant.

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Again, in the old covenant, the nation of Israel failed to reflect

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God's image properly. But in that, we see that they still pointed to Christ.

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And so I think Michael had mentioned in other cultures, in order to make a point, instead of stating the point, they'll dance around it.

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They'll go all the way around it and whatever is lacking or missing, that's how they'll drive it home.

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So we see that God gave them prophets, right? But the prophets were not able to keep the covenants fully.

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Moses was unable to lead God's people into the promised land but we have something better.

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Jesus does lead us into the promised land. The priests, they were corruptible and they died.

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Jesus lives forever incorruptible, right? We need a priest that does not die, that lives forever.

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He sent them judges and the judges fell short. They were not always just, but Jesus upholds

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God's condemnation, his just condemnation, but also brings mercy and grace.

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And then we also have the kings. The kings continued to do what was right in their own eyes, abusing their received authority.

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They had been given authority, but oftentimes it was abused. Christ submitted to his father, doing only what he received from his father in perfect obedience.

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All of those things which were given to Israel are meant to point us to the one that fulfills all of those things, that is all of those things.

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So again, the trappings, that was the nation of Israel and Jesus is the true Israel. What about the new

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Jerusalem, right? We have Jerusalem in the Old Testament who is unfaithful. Well, we have the new

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Jerusalem coming down out of heaven rather than reaching up towards God, the new

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Jerusalem comes down out of heaven. It's a city with foundation whose designer and builder is God.

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Rather than man trying to reach up, God comes down to earth. The new

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Jerusalem is the bride, the wife of the lamb. It's described as a city, just like Jerusalem in the

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Old Testament. We enter the gates. So the gates have the names of the 12 tribes of Israel and we had talked about this in Sunday school.

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We can enter through those gates because we are part of Israel, through the true Israel, Jesus. We are in him and so we can enter through those gates into the new

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Jerusalem. We are clothed with righteous deeds ordained from us before the foundation of the world and who gives us those righteous clothes?

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It's Christ, it's Christ's righteousness. What about the temple? The temple was destroyed.

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It's no longer on earth, but we see it in heaven. We are that temple, the

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Ark, Ark of the Covenant, Ark of the Laws, laws are written on our hearts.

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That's no longer on earth, that's in heaven. It's in that heavenly temple built with living stones and Jesus is the cornerstone.

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So no longer do we worship at this mountain or that mountain, but we worship in spirit and in truth.

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We're not tied to a location, we worship him in spirit and in truth.

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And I'll talk more a little bit about heaven, right? The temple being in heaven, we'll talk about that in a little bit.

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No longer seeking a kingdom, the king has conquered and we are on the victory march.

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The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his

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Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. Revelation 11, 15.

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And we proclaim that victory through worship and conquer the opposition, not with carnal weapons, but with tearing down of strongholds.

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I like it in some translations, it says tearing down of strongholds, every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.

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There are few lofty opinions in this world, right? Evolution, transgenderism, homosexuality, these things seek to raise themselves up against the knowledge of God.

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We make war on those things by tearing down those strongholds, by taking every thought captive.

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And so we are no longer separated. Dominion, not domination.

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We preach the gospel, which has the power to change hearts and that's what builds his kingdom.

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Greater is he who is in us. We are no longer separated. We're no longer separated from God.

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This, okay, so before you get worried, this handout is for you guys to look over.

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I just want to make a point. So first off in chapters one through three, there are seven promises and those are all promises to overcome.

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To those who are to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of paradise,

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God, Eden. To those who overcome, they shall not be hurt by the second death.

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Promise after promise after promise. Scattered throughout the book of Revelation, there are additional seven promises, seven blessings that he says.

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Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it for the time is near.

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Another one, blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection, that's salvation, over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years.

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So we have seven promises to the churches and in those promises, all of the churches are told to listen to what is said to the other churches.

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We are meant to listen to these promises. Then you have the seven blessings. So that is the promise of conquering and if you turn over on the back, we have the practice of conquering.

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Jesus, who is our example, teaches us how to conquer. If you look at the book of Revelation, you will see a few things.

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You will see worship in heaven, shaking on earth. You'll see worship in heaven and then destruction on the earth.

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Worship in heaven, conquering on the earth. So chapter four, real quick if you'll turn in Revelation.

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Turn to chapter four and I'm gonna give you a little bit of homework. We'll look at a couple of these.

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Chapter four, eight through 10. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within and day and night they never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. If you look at verse 11, worthy are you, our

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Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created.

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Look at the next chapter, chapter five, starting in verse eight.

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And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

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And they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and open the seals for you were slain and by your blood you were ransomed.

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You have ransomed people for God from every tribe, language and people and nation and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our

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God and they shall reign on the earth. After this, we get chapter six.

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What happened to chapter six? War, widespread death, civil disturbances, scarcity.

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You have worship in heaven and through the worshiping in heaven, you have conquering on earth.

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The same thing happens in verse seven, nine through 12, you have worshiping. What's after that worship?

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The seven trumpets. In chapter 11, the kingdom is proclaimed.

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The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Christ. In chapter 11, there were lightnings, noises, thunderings and earthquake and great hail.

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Chapter 14, the lamb and 144 ,000, they praise God. After that, we have the proclamations and reapings happening on earth.

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Chapter 15, song of Moses, then you have the bowls. So you see this back and forth.

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You have worship in heaven and then conquering on earth. And to tie it up, what do we do when we come here on Sunday mornings?

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We worship, right? We've talked about things being separated.

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Adam was separated from God, he was separated from heaven. But when we worship, we are entering into heaven, right?

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The Bible says, and I've got these verses here as part of your homework. If you'll look at these verses, it talks about the presence of God.

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It talks about the Holy Spirit. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, right?

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It talks about singing, right? Enter into his courts, enter into his presence, enter into his gates.

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Now those, when I read them, maybe this is part of it, but I don't think it's just an admonition.

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Now remember, whenever you die and you're entering into heaven, be thankful. Later on when you die and you're entering into heaven, be thankful.

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I think that's an admonition that we enter into heaven by being thankful.

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We are no longer separated from God. We have been made his ambassadors, his children, and we've been given a mission here on earth.

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And we conquer here on earth by worshiping in the heavenlies. We are seated in the heavenlies with Christ and we can do that because of Christ.

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And so as we gather together in worship, I pray that we would be thankful. We would be thankful for the many blessings he's given us.

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Let's pray. God, thank you so much for your word. We thank you for your encouragements.

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We thank you for making a way, for dying on the cross, for tearing that veil.