2nd Thessalonians

First Baptist Church Leominster

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The ABC’s of the Christian Life (3): Following Jesus unto Salvation (1)

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But we're here in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. I'm always mindful of the notes that we send out.

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I received a nice little note this morning, because I sent these out probably about 7 .30 or so, and received a nice note from a pastor in India, I haven't met him,

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I've received a few notes from him, and he thanked me for this set of notes, and that he said he copies them and distributes them to the pastors in his association,

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I don't know who they are, how many there are, but I'm always mindful that these notes go out to folks beyond us.

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And so, sometimes I provide more information in them than I know what we can cover on Sunday morning, but I'm looking for their benefit too.

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2 Thessalonians 3, and we want to address verses 3 -5, if we're able.

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Let's read verses 1 -5 of this third chapter of 2 Thessalonians. Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the

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Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men.

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For not all have faith, or have the faith, as we pointed out last week.

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But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

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And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing, and you will do, the things that we command.

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May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

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Well, the final chapter of this third chapter of 2 Thessalonians begins with the

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Apostle asking for prayer for himself, with particular attention to the ministry of the

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Word of God, to which he and his fellow servants, that would have been Timothy and Silas, had given themselves.

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And the reason that Paul gave for the need of prayer was due to men who opposed them, who sought to discredit and marginalize their witness of the gospel.

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And so these opposers of the gospel did not possess the faith. Not all men have faith.

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And Paul characterizes them as unreasonable and wicked or evil men.

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But in contrast to these unfaithful men, thankfully, Paul declared, the Lord is faithful.

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These men are unfaithful. Thankfully, the Lord is faithful. Verse 3. And Paul emphasized this truth.

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It may not be apparent in your English translation, but it's actually quite clear in the

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Greek text. And one way that points of emphasis are conveyed in the

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Greek language is the word order of words and sentences. And so Paul set forth the adjective faithful in the first position of the sentence.

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Faithful. But faithful is the Lord. And so the Lord is the subject, but he puts it at the end of the sentence because he wants to emphasize the faithfulness of the

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Lord. But upon Paul declaring the faithfulness of the Lord with view to his own ministry, he showed also how the

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Lord would be faithful to them, how the Lord would be faithful to these Christians to whom he was writing this epistle.

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Paul declared the faithful Lord would establish them and guard them from the evil one.

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And moreover, this faithful Lord will continue to enable these Christians to live in obedience to the word of God that they had been taught through the apostles.

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And so Paul closed the opening paragraph of this last chapter by appealing to the

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Lord himself that he would direct his people into the love of God and the patience or steadfastness of Christ.

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And so we might summarize the major theme of verses three through five, which we want to give attention to, which sets forth

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Jesus Christ as our faithful Lord. And the themes that we can identify in these few verses are first, the

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Lord will establish and guard you against the evil one. Secondly, the

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Lord will enable his people to continue to obey his word. And third, the

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Lord will direct the hearts of his people to the love of God and the steadfastness and some say patience of Christ.

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And so let's work through these three points. First, the Lord will establish and guard you against the evil one.

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But the Lord is faithful and he will establish and guard you against the evil one.

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Now the apostle had requested that the church at Thessalonica pray for him and his fellow servants that the

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Lord would deliver them from wicked and evil men. And then the apostle spoke assuredly that their faithful Lord would establish and guard them against the evil one.

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In other words, the devil. Clearly the evil men who were opposed to the gospel and the apostle were men controlled and inspired by the evil one, that being the devil.

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And so it would perhaps do us well to take a few moments and consider this evil one who is opposed to the

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Lord and to his people, the devil. The Bible speaks of the devil, the evil one.

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And he's spoken about quite frequently. And really among Christians, there's two dangers.

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One is to give too much emphasis to the evil one. And Christians many times fall into that error.

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And then the other error is to fail to give due attention to the evil one.

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Paul could write in one place, we are not ignorant of his devices, but I fear that many of us are ignorant of his devices and we should not be.

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The Holy Scripture set forth the devil as the archenemy of God and mankind.

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And although God is the sovereign king over all his creation, and the devil is under his authority, the devil can do nothing but which

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God allows. The devil is opposed to God and is opposed to God's purposes in the world.

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And so in order for the Lord to bring his people to salvation, he would need to contend with the devil, defeat the devil, and deliver his people from the devil's control, the devil's dominion, and the devil's influence.

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And thankfully, we read here, the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

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In other words, the devil has no ability to frustrate the purposes of God in saving you and me from our sin, because the

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Lord is faithful. And not only is the Lord faithful, the Lord is all powerful. And so though the devil is a very real force, an entity, a personality with great power who can wreak great difficulty in this world and cause great difficulty for us with touching our salvation, he is absolutely powerless with regard to us because the

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Lord is faithful and the Lord has committed himself to establish you and guard you against the evil one.

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John Murray, the Reformed theologian of the 20th century, is professor of theology, systematic theology at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia.

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He wrote of the devil and his influence. Back of all that is visible and tangible in the sin of this world, there are unseen spiritual powers.

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Satan is the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.

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The arch foe of the kingdom of God is not the visible powers arrayed against it, for behind these visible agents and manifestations of evil is the ingenuity, craft, malicious design, instigation, and relentless activity of the devil and his ministers.

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And there are many. It was this of which Paul was fully aware when he said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritualities of wickedness in the heavenlies.

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Because we have given way to the impact of naturalistic presuppositions and to anti -supernaturalistic and anti -prater -naturalistic bias, we are far too liable to discard it in our construction and interpretation of the forces of iniquity.

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To the extent we do so, our thinking is not Christian. In other words, if you're going to be biblical, if you're going to be

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Christian, you have to be aware and confront this matter of the devil who's in the world.

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But actually, there really is no tendency of modern man to dismiss the idea of the devil. There apparently is such a keen awareness of the nature and presence of evil in our fallen world that mankind continues to believe in the devil, that is, the existence of the devil.

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In fact, the majority of people do believe in the devil as a malignant force that is the cause of much evil in the world.

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And so in 2001, Gallup did a formal study of public opinion about this matter. As I quote more recently,

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Gallup asked Americans if the devil is something they believe in, something they're not sure about, or something they don't believe in.

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Sixty -eight percent said in May 2001 poll that they believe in the devil.

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Sixty -eight percent. Twenty percent said they don't. And twelve percent said they aren't sure.

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Majorities of Americans of every political inclination, region, educational level, and age group said they believe in the devil.

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I had a friend in California years ago. He was in a 1960s, late 60s, early 70s rock band.

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And they had given themselves over consciously to the devil. And they were into psychedelic drugs and whatnot.

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And my friend had a bad trip on LSD one day, or one time. And he told me about it.

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This was years later. He had such a vivid vision of the evil world and of the devil, it literally scared the hell out of him, is how he described it.

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He became a Christian because he was made keenly aware of the presence of the devil and that he needed salvation by Jesus Christ.

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And he's a Reformed Baptist preacher down in Virginia today. Oftentimes, an awareness of wickedness and evil will cause people to look to God to be delivered from their sin and be delivered from his power.

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The malignant nature of the devil and his malicious works may be seen in the names and the descriptions given to the devil in the

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Holy Scriptures. And so, for example, in the book of Revelation, he is called

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Abaddon and also Apollyon. And in fact, these two names are found in the same context because they mean the same thing.

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We read in Revelation 9 -11, they had as king over them, the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is

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Abaddon. But in Greek, he has the name Apollyon. These names speak of him as the destroyer.

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That's what Apollyon means in Greek, Abaddon, that's what it means in Hebrew. The devil is referred to as Beelzebub in the

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Gospels. When the enemies of the Lord Jesus accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of the devil, they accused him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.

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I won't read that because of the time, but the Lord Jesus responded to them, of course, that this was not the case.

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But the Lord Jesus equated Satan with the name of Beelzebub, which means

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Lord of the flies. Actually, it's derived from the Canaanite pantheon of Baal, the

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Lord of Fertility and the Lord of the Storm, as it were. And this is a name for the devil, for Satan.

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Belial means, Belial is also a name for the devil. We find this in 2

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Corinthians 6 .15, where Paul is reasoning with Christians not to be unequally yoked with non -Christians.

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You can't run shoulder to shoulder with them because they have a different worldview, different values, different goals in life.

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And so Paul wrote, do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. That's not saying you don't have friends with unbelievers, but you cannot have your closest ties and relationships with unbelievers.

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For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? He begins contrasting the righteous and the unrighteous.

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What communion does light have with darkness? And of course, these are rhetorical questions with the answer being none.

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And what accord has Christ with Belial? What accordance, what agreement is there?

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What compatibility is there between Jesus Christ and the devil, is what the apostle is setting forth.

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And here, Belial is a name for the devil, and the name Belial literally means worthlessness.

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He is absolutely worthless. No goodness, no benefit whatsoever can come forth from him.

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Well, besides his names, the nature of the devil is known by the manner in which the

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Bible portrays him. And so he's described as the accuser of the brethren.

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And we find that both in Job and Revelation. He is shown to be the serpent who is in the

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Garden of Eden, who precipitated the fall of Adam and Eve into sin. He is described as the angel of the abyss.

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The abyss is a bottomless pit. It's an emblem of a place of punishment, a holding tank for fallen angels as they await the judgment.

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And our Lord declared him to be the father of lies. The devil cannot speak the truth.

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He's a father of lies, and all liars are being generated by him, motivated by him, inspired of him.

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And he's also called the murderer. And then the Scriptures describe

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Satan's power by speaking of his great authority. And so he's the prince.

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In other words, the ruler of this world, that is, this fallen world system. And he is the prince of the power of the air.

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He's in charge of all malignant evil forces that exist. But perhaps the one area where he is most effective against the

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Lord's people is he set forth in the Scriptures as the tempter. When you have temptation to sin, it's probably satanically inspired.

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Satan tempted Eve in the garden. He tempted the Lord Jesus in the wilderness.

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He tempts you and me many times in our lives, perhaps even daily. And by the way, when we say the devil, the devil's not an omnipresent being.

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He's a finite being. He can only be in one place at a time, but he has his armies, as it were, his minions, his demons that do his bidding.

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He is able to put people in situations before us that he knows will lead us into sin.

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When the devil wants to trip somebody up, he can put something of temptation in front of that man or that woman that will lead him into sin, lead him into rebellion.

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We might consider the nature of temptation that the devil, the tempter, brings upon us when we examine his dealings with Adam and Eve in the garden.

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The devil came to Adam through Eve. He didn't come to Adam directly, but came to Adam through Eve, so that through her, he, the serpent, might tempt

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Adam. And we can actually stand back and draw some lessons about the nature of temptation as we consider

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Genesis chapter three and the temptation of the devil, the serpent, with regarding Adam and Eve.

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Let me just cite these. I'm not going to go into great detail because of the time. First, however, the tempter will come to you when you do not suspect and he'll address the temptation in your weakest area.

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He knows where in your week for Adam. It was when perhaps he was absent.

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He might have been present that he came to Eve because the devil knew that although Adam might not yield to him directly, he would yield to his wife.

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And so he came to Adam through Eve. Thomas Watson, my favorite writing

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Puritan, wrote these words. His subtlety and tempting was that he set upon Eve first because he thought she was weakest.

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He knew he could more easily insinuate and wind himself into her by a temptation.

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An expert soldier, when about the storm or enter a castle, observes rarely where there is a breach or how he may enter with more facility.

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So did Satan, the weaker vessel. He tempted Eve first because he knew if once he could prevail with her, she would easily draw her husband.

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Satan knew a temptation coming to Adam from his wife would be more prevailing and would be less suspected.

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Oh, bitter. Sometimes relations prove temptations. A wife may be a snare when she dissuades her husband from doing his duty or entices him to evil.

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Secondly, temptation will come in a manner that leads you to doubt the essential nature of God as he's revealed himself in Scripture.

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And really, you could go down a list of the attributes of God and the devil tempting

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Eve and then Adam was really an assault on all the attributes of God that set forth in Scripture.

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And so the serpent would have Eve question God's goodness and thereby flowing from his goodness, his love, his kindness, his generosity, leading them to think that God would deny her something that was actually good.

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Secondly, Eve was to discount God being righteous and just in punishing her transgression.

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If she did eat of the fruit, the devil, the serpent would have her doubt

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God's sovereignty in that God could bring about the consequences which he had formally declared to her if she had sinned.

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And fourthly, certainly the serpent would have her doubt God's right to rule in restricting her behavior.

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You do not eat of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat of that, you will surely die.

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Eve was to doubt God's wisdom in withholding something that would make her wise.

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She was to doubt his immutability in that she could eat of the fruit, forbidden fruit, and yet God perhaps would change his mind about the consequences.

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And so if we've been grounded in our understanding of the nature of God, we should make effort to reinforce that understanding lest it erode and make us vulnerable when the tempter comes to us.

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One of the strongest, most capable ways of defending yourself against the devil is to have a strong understanding and assurance of the character of a holy

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God. Third, temptation will come in a manner which would lead you to elevate your reason above God's revelation when making decisions that affect your life.

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This is the era of rationalism, which claims you're capable, in and through the thinking process, to come to truth about God and how he would have you live apart from Scripture.

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The serpent appealed to Eve and her reason rather than Scripture, the word of God that had been so clearly given to her.

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Fourthly, temptation will come which suggests to you that you yourself must experience something to understand it or to determine best whether it is true, right, and good.

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And this is the errant view of education today and education philosophy. The world tells us that you cannot make a determination what's right for you until you've experienced it.

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And this is a lie of the devil. The serpent said to Eve, basically, you eat of this and it'll make you wise.

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You'll be able to understand. You'll be as God yourself determining for yourself good and evil.

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And yet the Scriptures make it very clear that our participation in evil does to be more wise and more capable of making right decisions, but rather it causes us to be more susceptible and more vulnerable to error and to sin.

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And then fifth, the tempter's design is to lead you to first desire and then grasp for that which is forbidden.

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When she saw the fruit and it was desirable, it was pleasurable, and she perceived it would make her wise, then she would eat it.

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And so the Lord will perhaps allow the devil to come to us and tempt us in this form when he desires or when he moves us to desire something to long for before we partake of it.

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One once said, all of Satan's apples have worms. In other words, the apple may be attractive.

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It may look to be delicious. It may look to be quite innocent, but there's something defective and deficient about all of the devil's apples.

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If he could, he would destroy you because, again, the devil is a malignant entity, a malignant being who has no good in him and no desire for good for you.

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The devil has a hatred for man because man is the image of God in this world, and the devil hates

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God, and therefore the devil hates a man and hates a woman because he and she is in the image of God.

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And so these are the various ways that temptation may come to us. The nature of the devil's temptation is to lead us ultimately to be self -serving, to order our own existence according to our own will, according to our own reason, according to our own preference, rather than ordering our lives according to the word of God that's been revealed to us.

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The devil would have us serve self rather than God, and really it's the people that go through their daily lives serving themselves, doing their own desires, ordering their lives according to their own will.

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In actuality, they are serving the devil. We might think of a devil worshiper as someone who's like a

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Satanist and going through and witchcraft and that kind of thing, worshiping Satan, and there are those that do it, but actually the

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Bible tells us that everyone who goes through life serving his own lusts, serving his own desires principally and primarily, he is a servant of the devil, and the devil has control of him.

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The devil would control you by tempting you, urging you, making an opportunity for you basically to serve yourself and make decisions as to what pleases you and what generates what you think would be best for you, rather than submitting to the will of God.

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Now let's consider what the faithful Lord has promised us, and now we're toward the bottom of page 5, at the bottom of page 5.

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First of all, the Lord is faithful, and Paul said that he will establish his people against the evil one.

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That's a glorious statement. His people had been subjects to the kingdom of the devil.

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They had been established in his kingdom, the devil's kingdom, but Paul made them aware, earlier we read in chapter 2, about the coming of the man of lawlessness, the

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Antichrist, who would deceive people in order that they might follow him. They were citizens of the kingdom of Satan.

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Paul had revealed that the Lord himself, however, would send a strong delusion to those who reject the truth, who do not love the truth.

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He would cause them to believe the lie. But in contrast to those who would embrace the man of lawlessness, and the lie which is contrary to the truth of the gospel,

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Paul declares the Lord is faithful, and he will establish you in the presence of the evil one.

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And so in contrast to those fallen ones, the ones who were controlled by the devil, and who yield to the man of lawlessness, the man of sin, the

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Lord is faithful to establish his people so that they will not be deceived. They will not embrace the lie of the man of sin.

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The Lord would see to it that they were firmly established in the faith. He would keep them unto himself.

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The Lord is faithful, and he will establish you against the evil one. And then secondly,

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Paul declares, not only will the Lord establish you, but the Lord will also guard his people against the evil one.

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Again, we read in verse three, he will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

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The Lord protects and preserves his people. He first sets them apart and establishes them in his kingdom.

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The devil cannot get at them because the Lord himself is guarding his people from the evil one.

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The scriptures speak of the protection and preservation of his own. Our Lord Jesus told the church in Philadelphia, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which will come upon the whole world.

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And basically, that's what Paul is declaring here. Second Thessalonians chapter three, the

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Lord is faithful. He will establish you and he will guard you. He will keep you from that hour of trial.

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We read of the Lord's ability to guard his people in the doxology of the epistle of Jude.

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Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling. See, he's able to establish you and he's able to guard you.

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We read of the Lord. Jesus prayed to his heavenly father that he would keep his people.

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And so our Lord Jesus prayed in John 17. Holy father, keep through your name those whom you have given me.

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He's asking the father to guard his people, not to allow them to be drawn away from him.

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Those whom you gave me, I have kept. Jesus himself says, I am guarding them.

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And none of them is lost because the Lord Jesus is guarding them. And then again, at the end of his prayer, he says, but that you should keep them from the evil one.

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And that's what Paul is declaring in second Thessalonians three. That indeed, the

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Lord is faithful and he will establish you. So the evil one cannot touch you and he will guard you.

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The evil one can never get at you because the Lord is preserving and protecting you. That's the main point.

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First of three points. Secondly, and we're going to have to go a little more quickly now.

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Secondly, we see that the Lord will enable his people to continue to obey the word.

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This is found in chapter three, verse four. We read of Paul's assurance that the

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Lord would continue to perform a work of grace and their lives, leading them in the path of obedience.

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Paul wrote, we have confidence in the Lord about you. I think the King James says we have confidence in the

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Lord touching you. That you are doing and you will do the things that we command.

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This is characteristic of all true Christians. God sees to it that they will be obedient unto him.

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Not entirely, not completely because every one of us are faulty and we fail. But generally speaking, we are obedient people.

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We follow the Lord. We obey the Lord. We do his commands. So much so,

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Paul says, I have confidence in the Lord concerning you. He did not say,

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I have confidence in you that you've been doing and you will do the things of the Lord. He says,

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I have confidence in the Lord touching you. And there's a big difference, isn't there? You and I may not have much confidence in one another that we're going to follow the

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Lord, but every one of us can have confidence in the Lord. He'll see to it that we will continue to be obedient unto him.

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Obedience is essential to obtaining salvation. This is so misunderstood among evangelicals.

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They believe, they say, that all you have to have is faith, irrespective of how you live.

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It doesn't matter what you do. After all, we're justified by God's grace through faith alone.

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And indeed, we are justified by God's grace through faith alone. But to say somehow that obedience is not necessary for salvation is contrary to what the

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Scriptures declare. Obedience is essential to obtaining salvation. It's not the ground of obtaining salvation.

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I would say it's not even the means of obtaining salvation. But it is essential to obtaining salvation.

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God's grace enables his people to obey him and his word. We must understand the necessity of obedience to the

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Lord to be saved from our sin. The Holy Scriptures set forth the securing of our salvation as requiring great attention and great effort on our part.

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The Lord Jesus declared it as such. Enter that narrow gate, because you've got a narrow way that leads unto life.

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It's a narrow way, a narrow gate, and it's a difficult way, and few people find it.

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For broad is the way, and broad is the gate that leads to destruction, and many go down that path.

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The Lord requires his people to be his disciples, and his disciples are ones who are wise.

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They don't just hear the word and believe it like the foolish man who builds his house on sand, but rather they obey the word.

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They hear Jesus' words, and they do it. They are the wise man who builds his house on the foundation, who withstand the day of judgment when it comes upon the world.

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Obedience is absolutely essential. John the Apostle, toward the end of the 3rd century, was addressing this problem of antinomianism.

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People who believed they were Christians, and yet they were not living according to God's commandments, according to righteousness.

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And John wrote very strongly, little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous.

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What he's declaring is, he who is obedient to the word, he who is being sanctified, he is the one who is justified.

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The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as the

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Lord is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning.

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And for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

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Whoever has been born of God does not sin, and he's talking about habitually practicing sin.

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A Christian doesn't live in sin. Oh, he struggles with sin. Maybe all too frequently he's defeated by sin.

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But he doesn't live for sin. He doesn't live in sin. He lives in righteousness, and he's plagued by sin.

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He cannot sin, because he's been born of God. And then John declared, in this the children of God, and the children of the devil are manifest.

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Here's how you determine who's a Christian and who's not. Who's of the Lord and who's of the devil.

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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. Whoever is not obedient to the

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Word of God, the will of God, is not of God. Nor of he who does not love his brother, as John wrote in verse

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John 3, verses 7 through 10. And so if we're Christians, but we insist that we will order our lives according to the dictates of our own will, according to our sinful lusts, we'll die in our sins, we'll be damned in our sins, no matter what we claim to believe, no matter how sound our understanding of the gospel is.

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Because the gospel that saves is a gospel that transforms, that leads people into a holy obedience unto

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God. And the Lord is faithful in seeing that this takes place. Paul could say to this church,

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I have confidence in the Lord touching you, that you're doing the things I command you, and you will do the things that I command you.

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That is what is natural to a Christian. They want to do the will of God.

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Charles Spurgeon wrote about this in his classic book, The Soul Winner. And it's on my top list, 10 top books.

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And here he's talking about what it is to win a soul, and what it is not to win a soul, but rather gain a proselyte, basically.

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Another proof of the conquest of a soul for Christ will be found in a real change of life.

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If a man does not live differently from what he did before, both at home and abroad, his repentance needs to be repented of.

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And his conversion is a fiction. Not only action and language of spirit and temper must be changed, but someone might say, grace is often grafted into a crab stock.

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In other words, grace comes to great sinners. I know it is, but what is the fruit of the grafting?

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The fruit will be like the graft, not after the nature of the original stem. But says another,

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I have an awful temper, and all of a sudden it overcomes me. My anger is soon over, and I feel very penitent, very sorry.

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Though I cannot control myself, I'm quite sure I am a Christian. Not so fast, my friend.

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Or I may answer that I'm quite sure the other way. What is the use of your soon cooling if in two or three moments you scald everyone around you?

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If a man stabs me in fury, it will not heal my wound to see him grieving over his madness.

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Hasty temper must be conquered, and the whole man must be renewed, or conversion will be questionable.

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We need to proclaim a Christian life which is impossible to be lived unless you're born again.

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The Christian life set forth in the scriptures is something that only the Spirit of God can enable a person to live.

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And if we have so dumbed down what the Christian life is like, that anybody can claim that they believe the gospel and live any old way and still claim to be a

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Christian, we've misrepresented the Holy Scriptures. I read on. Spurgeon wrote,

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We're not to hold up a modified holiness before our people and say you will be all right if you reach that standard.

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The scripture says, he who commits sin is of the devil. Abiding under the power of any known sin is a mark of our being the servants of sin.

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For his servants he are to whom you obey. Idle are the boasts of a man who harbors within himself the love of any transgression.

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He may feel what he likes, believe what he likes. He is still in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity.

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While a single sin rules his heart, not plagues his heart. We're all plagued by sin, but I'm talking about governs his life, dominates his life.

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The true regeneration implants a hatred of all evil. And where one sin is delighted in, the evidence is fatal to a sound hope of salvation.

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A man need not take a dozen poisons to destroy his life. One is quite sufficient.

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There must be a harmony between the life and his profession. A Christian professes to renounce sin.

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And if he does not do so, his very name is an imposture. A drunken man came up to Roland Hill one day and said,

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I'm one of your converts, Mr. Hill. I dare say you are reply that shrewd and sensible preacher.

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Well, you're none of the Lord's or you would not be drunk. And to this practical test, we must bring all of our work.

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There must be all a willingness to obey the Lord in all of his commandments. It is a shameful thing for a man to profess discipleship and yet refuse to learn his

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Lord's will upon certain points. Or even dare to decline obedience when that will is made known to him.

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How can a man be a disciple of Christ when he lives in open disobedience to his

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Lord? And listen to this. If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows his

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Lord's will, but does not intend to attend to it. You're not to pamper his presumption, but it's your duty to assure him he is not saved.

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Has not the Lord said he that takes not of his cross and comes after me cannot be my disciple?

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Mistakes as to what the Lord's will may be and are to be tenderly corrected.

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But anything like willful disobedience is fatal. To tolerate it would be treason to him who sent us.

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Jesus must be received as king as well as priest. And where there is any hesitancy about this, the foundation of godliness is not laid.

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Now that's the direct approach. And perhaps that's why Spurgeon had such a wonderfully blessed ministry, because that's the kind of Christianity he was proclaiming.

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The Christian life is impossible to be lived by an unconverted person. A person needs to be given the

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Holy Spirit in regeneration. And then the Holy Spirit must be given to that believer by the

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Lord Jesus Christ from heaven in order to live the Christian life. It's a life that must be characterized by righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the

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Pharisees. And only the Lord can do that among his people. I glanced at a book last night.

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I wish we had time to summarize it. It's entitled Gospel Fear, written by a

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Puritan back in the 17th century, Jeremiah Burroughs. And he talked about disobedience and gospel fear.

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And he spoke about how we as Christians are moved by fear to obey the Lord. But we should understand it as a gospel fear, not a legal fear.

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We don't obey the Lord because we think our disobedience is going to result in our damnation.

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We obey the Lord because we fear the Lord. We love the Lord. We want to honor the Lord. We love his commandments.

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We love his word. And we want to follow him as he directs us. And if you have time to look over your notes,

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I cited 11 of his points in which he described what true gospel fear is, which is characteristic of every

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Christian. Three more minutes, we'll close. The last point, the third point.

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We read that the Lord will direct the hearts of his people to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ.

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And Paul expressed this in the form of really a prayer. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

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All that we are, all that we desire, all that we do with regard to obedience to the

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Lord is due to our love of God that he's produced in our hearts. May the

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Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the

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Holy Spirit that has been given to us. God imparts to his people a principle of love.

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They love the Lord Jesus. They want to please him. They want to do his will.

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As Paul could write, for the love of Christ compels us because we judge this, that if one died for all, then all died.

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And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.

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And Paul declares or Paul expresses the prayer. May the Lord direct your hearts in the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ.

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And really, that's the key to everything that we've been talking about today. The way of obedience is not just getting another holy resolve to move forward in obedience, but rather to settle yourself in developing, enhancing that love that we have for God in Christ.

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And the Lord will impart this to you. And with this love and good for God in Christ will also come a steadfastness in Christ.

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May the Lord direct each of us in that way so that we might please him and live a life that we know will please us because this is the desire that he's placed within us.

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Is that not right? Amen. Let's pray. Thank you,

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Father, for your word. And I pray that you would give us clarity of understanding and a hearty conviction of these matters that we might faithfully represent you to the fallen world about us.

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And we thank you, our God, for the wonderful promises that we have for us here in these few verses.

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We thank you, our Lord, that you've established us and that you're guarding us from the evil one.

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And we thank you, our God, that you put it within us, the desire through the new birth to live before you and to do the things that you command us.

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And our God, we recognize it's because of the love for you that you have imparted to our souls.

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And we thank you, our God, for the steadfastness that this brings to us. And so, our

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God, we pray that all of these matters would be realized in us more fully, more clearly, more greatly for having heard these things, believe these things, and embrace these things.

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And I pray, Father, for that soul that might hear these things, and they're strange things to their ears.

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They've never heard such a thing. But I pray, our God, that the blessed Holy Spirit would use the truth to draw that soul to a true faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

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And so, we pray that these things, Lord, would continue to be in our minds, in our souls throughout this coming week.

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And may we not be satisfied, may we not be content until we're resting in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Amen.