The Savior of Israel

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Sermon by Josh Rice from Luke 24:13-35.

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While they were talking and discussing together Jesus himself drew near and went with them But their eyes were kept from recognizing him and he said to them
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What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk and they stood still looking sad
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Then one of them named Cleopas Answered him. Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?
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And he said to them what things and they said to him Concerning Jesus of Nazareth a man who is a prophet mighty indeed and word before God and all the people and how our chief priests and Rulers delivered him up up to be condemned to death and crucified him
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But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel Yes, and besides all this it is now the third day since these things happened
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Moreover some women of our company amazed us They were at the tomb early in the morning and when they did not find his body
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They came back saying that they had seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive
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Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said But him they did not see and he said to them
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Oh foolish ones slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken was it not necessary that the
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Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory and Beginning with Moses and all the prophets.
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He interrupted Interpreted to them all the scriptures the things concerning himself So they drew near to the village to which they were going he acted as if he were going farther
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But they urged him strongly saying stay with us for it is toward evening and the day is now far far spent
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So he went to to stay with them when he was at the table with them He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them and their eyes were open and they recognized him
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And he vanished from their sight They said to each other
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Did not our hearts burn within us while we talked while he talked to us on the road? Why open to us the scriptures and they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem and they found they found the eleven and those who?
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Were with them gathered together saying the Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon Then they told what happened on the road and how he had known to them known to them in the breaking of the bread
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Father God, thank you for this day to just come and worship the risen King father that he's conquered death that he's sealed our salvation
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That he's absorbed our wrath We are so thankful for these things these great gifts that we are undeserving of the great grace that he's given to us
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Father God, we just see so many People saved in this building
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So many people saved at other churches that we have partnered with and knowing that other there's other good gospel preaching churches in this area
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Father God, we pray that you would You'd be so a great gift of salvation on the next generation as well
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God that we would just get to see children raised up Knowing the Lord and God bowing the knee to him and confessing him as their
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Savior We pray these things in your son's awesome name. Amen last year during this time
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I really spent a lot of focus trying to look at the historicity of the resurrection the fact that it happened and What hope we draw from that this morning?
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I'd like to look at a different angle and that is how at the very core our faith is not a naturalistic faith
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Nature and the laws of nature and empirical study cannot quantify
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What we have faith in and that is that a dead man Rose and walked out of a grave and notice notice the little bit as Cooper read it
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It's actually something that escaped me and study this week and I heard it because I've been on this line I think that even the witness even the people talking to Jesus.
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They say that the women saw a vision of angels There's a little subtle thing in there, right?
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They're not seeing what's happening in front of them That's perfectly obvious in that text the women who went to the grave did not see a vision of angels
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They saw an angel and an angel delivered the message to them that he is not here
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It's just like he said was going to happen But he's not here because Jesus had told them time and time again that he was going to rise on the third day
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He told it allegorically that the temple would be torn down and raised up on the third day
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He was talking about the real temple, but he was also talking about himself He also clearly said the
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Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of evil men They will kill him and on the third day And so his disciples those who are ingrained in his life who were following him every single day hanging on his words because he was a mighty man of Israel and a prophet and he was favored and Everyone who was around him heard that and they heard it
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I will be raised up on the third day and yet we find if they go It's almost like they're hoping against hope
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To see maybe this guy that we spent the last three years of our life following that we've given up our livelihoods to follow
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Maybe he was telling the truth But yeah, probably not because when they come to the grave and the stone is rolled away
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They are amazed and they don't believe what their eyes are seeing and then we find them they go away and they still don't really believe
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What their eyes are seeing our faith is not naturalistic and my my thesis this morning
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And what I hope to prove to you is that should provide great hope For God's people in a time when everything that our eyes can see show us that things are bad
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Now look, there's been stirrings, right? we have what a difference a year makes that last year a proclamation on Easter was about the transgender day of visibility and This year from the highest office in the land
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There was a proclamation that we celebrate this day because the Son of the Living God Was crucified and rose again.
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That is something that we should be grateful for. That is an amazing thing But we look out there and we've spoken
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I've done lots of content and I've done sermons talking about the need for courage the failures of Evangelicalism the weakness in the pulpit the falling values for family in our land
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And we think man things are bad And then we look for those who are reformed I like to say it tongue -in -cheek for those who have the curse of the
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Reformed Which the curse of the Reformed is we can't get away from the doctrine because we believe that it's true
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And then we look within our culture and we just despise everything we see It's like why can we not get along with the 99 .9
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% of things? We all agree about why can't we partner with anyone? It seems so self -defeating and what we're doing is
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I think we're looking for a naturalistic answer To a problem that has no natural answer to it.
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How can men just get along? How can we band together to do the Great Commission?
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Well, it's not on our authority It's on Jesus's authority and that authority is one that transcends natural law
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It doesn't obliterate natural law, but it transcends it Jesus's authority is cosmic and the call of the kingdom is cosmic and Jesus's resurrection
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From the grave is not like the other times in Scripture that people were dead and were resurrected
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Jesus's resurrection is not like Lazarus's resurrection Lazarus's resurrection was not the first fruits of the consummation of the covenant of redemption
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It was not that it was a foretaste It was a shadow and so as we go to the road of Emmaus We see that these men are still living in a room dimly lit with a bunch of fine furniture
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But the light is coming and I want to look this morning at how the light comes and how it is that men are
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Given faith. That's the key without faith. It is impossible to please God and we yet we know from Ephesians 2 verse 8
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That it's by grace through faith that we are saved it is not a result of our works
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It is not our own doing lest any man should boast. It is the gift of God it's the gift of God and too often we think that faith is something that we have just grabbed for ourselves and believed and I think that this passage in Luke 24 shows the impossibility of Grabbing faith for yourself in in the face of the most insurmountable revelation.
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These men don't get it They don't understand what's happening. They are sitting talking to the resurrected
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Lord about the crucifixion and about the witness of an angel To the women that the grave is empty and they don't know and their hearts are on fire
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They like all the multitudes before have never heard anyone teach this way They are on fire because God is a consuming fire and they don't know what they're looking at Because faith is a gift of God.
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It is not a result of intellectual combinations It's not that we read the word and solve the puzzle so that now we have faith.
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That's not how it works Faith is given by the Spirit if you can conjure up your own faith
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You indeed have something to boast about you have learned the secret of God But God reveals to those who he is elected and those who he loves
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To give faith. Is there any room for boasting in that? No, we boast only of the giver only of the giver
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So we see right away. There is hope in our land and there is hope in history because Reformation revival the turning of souls is not a work of human hands
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It is a gift of God and when God decides to pour out that gift on the masses
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Do you know what's gonna happen? The masses will become Christians That can happen in Sudan it can happen in China it can happen in Arkansas It is that the
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God is that God's good pleasure to save and when he decides to do that There is no resisting it.
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So even in the darkest time It's why I love the stories that I do. Is it my favorite author and my favorite authors?
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They they write about darkness and slow decay and yet there's always hope and the hope is found through means
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It's men Acting virtuously. It's men doing the right thing by faith
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And today that is the means that God uses and he is going to turn a couple of men's lives upside down on this
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Seven mile walk. It's a long walk and there's a lot of talking going on. So let's pick it up the first thing we see in verses 15 through 26 is we see that a
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Blindness has been put on these men and Jesus calls them out. They don't know who they're talking to He's walking beside them and he's like he comes into their conversation and he says hey
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What are you guys talking about? And they're kind of like, what do you mean? What are we talking about? What's everybody talking about?
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The greatest man that Israel has seen This prophet of God who was healing who was casting out demons the one who the crowds were following the one who entered
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Triumphantly on Palm Sunday that one our rulers killed him Our rulers killed him and there's been these reports
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That maybe the grave is empty. There was like a vision of an angel to these women
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Right, so we don't know and now you can imagine it's like Monday morning quarterbacking right there.
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They're speculating. What does it all mean? What's going on? And so Jesus comes in and he doesn't politely do this.
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Look at what he says. He says Oh foolish ones and Slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken
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Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory
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You guys are very interested in the things of God. You're very interested in the events in Jerusalem You're very hopeful that maybe something even crazier than all the stuff before has happened
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And yet you're slow and foolish of heart because what Jesus did was he came in and he turned the lights on on the
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Old Covenant What he's telling them look at what he says. He says you didn't understand what the prophets have spoken
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The people of Israel even at this point They did not understand what the prophets had spoken and what the prophets had spoken was there was no way out
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You are under condemnation there is no way the only way that this can ever be solved if for the suffering servant out of Isaiah to come and To make a way he must be stricken smitten and afflicted by his and by his
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Wounds we are healed he would be crushed by the father The leaders knew this
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The learned men of Israel knew this and yet spiritual sight is a gift of God and God chooses to reveal and to hide
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According to his good pleasure. And so Jesus chastises his men. He rebukes them
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He says you don't understand what the prophet said and you're slow to believe and there are many who are slow to believe
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It's better to be slow to believe than to never believe at all And we're gonna see this as this story unveils a blindness has been put on them.
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Why that's a good question. Why? Why is blindness given the answer is hard?
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But it's always it always comes back to this blindness is given to men for the glory of God because God When he interacts with human people with his creation
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What he is doing is he is revealing the full attributes of his glory And so when he judicially hardens when he blinds people to his revelation
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They are responsible for their decisions. But at the same time They are blind to show
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God's glory and chastening and in teaching and even sometimes in punishing
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It must be so Oh foolish ones slow of heart to believe Was it not necessary and I think the disciples
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Themselves had talked to Jesus and they're like no We don't really think it is necessary because the conception was you're here to rule this whole thing
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This is gonna be awesome. And Jesus says I'm gonna die and they're like surely not Do you see it?
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They didn't get it and I ask you Do we really get it today and we have no excuse?
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See the Old Testament in our our brothers in the cloud of witnesses Moses Isaiah David Solomon Our brothers that we will see in glory
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They did exist in a time where the full revelation of God had not been given they were in the dusk
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They could see shadows and types they could see reflections They could see pointers to what
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God was doing but when Jesus came on the scene you see it in John 3 16 through 18 that he turns the light on and the people who love the dark hate the light because what happens when the light
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Comes on is it illuminates and it's easy to see everything And so when Jesus comes on to seen what he does is he brings great hope for those being saved?
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but the other thing that he does is he illuminates all of our sin and He cast a light on its ugliness and its horror
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See we understand sin in the light of Christ in a way that we never did before and that is that the second person of The Godhead died for it
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So when we decide that we want to deceive when we want to be proud when we want to commit sexual immorality when we want to be bullheaded in our unbelief what we understand now when we are in this place and we hear the preaching of the word what we
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Understand is that we are not only falling short of the law of God. We are ultimately
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Placing our our pain and our suffering on Jesus Christ. And when we don't believe
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When we don't believe we have said well, that's not good enough for me. Maybe my good works will outweigh my bad works
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See we are in a we're in a perilous place and these men are too because they see the risen Lord and he's talking to them
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And he's blowing their minds Right. He's blowing their minds as he walks with him seven miles. That's a long way
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They would have had a lot of time to talk I imagine that they started walking more slowly as they got through their destination, right?
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They wanted it to continue What is this guy talking about? What is this guy talking about?
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And It asks a question these these men and the ones who are following Jesus around we're gonna look at in great detail next week
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As we look at the feeding of the 5 ,000 what had happened was they believed that Jesus was going to come throw off Roman oppression and Set up the second kingdom of David That was the goal.
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Why would Christ have to die for that? The answer is he wouldn't but their minds were too low
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They were set on things that were not quite high enough and it brings us to the question How how could they kill the mighty prophet?
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How could Israel kill this man and escape? It's a good question. It's a good question
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Does Jerusalem constantly kill the prophets? Yes. Did they kill the greatest prophet?
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Yes so what comes of that and We see here with the spiritual darkness that the people of Israel even those who are interested don't understand
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What's just happened? So Jesus is going to tell them let's pick it up in 27 through 30 if there is spiritual darkness and if there is blindness and if we want to Celebrate the resurrection of Christ and the
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Christian hope for all that it's worth. We have to have hope friends We have to have hope that there is not a naturalistic answer to what ails this country and our families and our people
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But the hope is that Jesus can change hearts That there is repentance
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Offered by God that there is forgiveness for sins and where there is forgiveness. There is a change
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Because when we repent it is a God -given gift to turn away from the sin
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That was clinging to you that was killing you and to turn towards life if that's you today turn away
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Turn away and the way that we do that is we pray We pray because if there is spiritual blindness then there needs to be spiritual illumination and this starts to Unveil itself as we go through the chapter.
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Let's look at verse 27 It's amazing to me. I want to This is undisciplined me, but I'm gonna spoil it before I get there.
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I can't help myself. Here's the deal. The story never changed From Genesis until the end the story never changed it just unfolded and there was greater degree of revelation
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So what does Jesus do? Does he come up with a new set of tablets from on high to give them the new
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Word of God? No, he does not look at what he does beginning with Moses and with all the prophets
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He interpreted to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.
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Oh to be a fly on the wall there Could there have ever been teaching like that I cannot imagine what that teaching was like and in 2 ,000 years later
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We stand on the shoulders of Giants who have tried who have poured deep into these scriptures using the insights of our fathers and our brothers before us and there and we gained ground and we look and yet it could have
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Never been like this teaching was can you imagine popping open the book of Leviticus and Jesus?
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Explaining how every word of the ceremonial system Was fulfilled in him and was pointing at him.
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I Going on they can't believe it It's unbelievable and they approached the village where they were going and he acted as though he were going further
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It's tricky But they urged him strongly saying stay with us. I think there's a couple of things going on I dealt with one of them in a sermon about lying a couple of months ago
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I'm gonna deal with the other part here There is a nature we saw it in discipleship a couple of weeks ago that there was this
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There's this motif that when you go to the towns if they won't accept you that you shake the dust off of your feet And there's something here where Jesus I think is testing them.
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He's testing them in a sense of do you want more? Have you had enough? Have you had enough?
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I'm gonna just keep on going on here like seven mile conversation You've had a lot.
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Is that enough for you in these men? No, no No, no, look what they did. They did what the towns who accepted they said no, no, no come into our house
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This this can't be over come tell us more they want more wife because these men are being given faith
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They're being given spiritual sight and they don't really even know it while it's happening, right?
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They're just they are inflamed with this teaching right and they're starting to understand things and they don't want it to end
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Have you ever had an evening like that? It's special and you know what we do Fools that we are right.
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We have an evening where you know two hours. It feels like it was five minutes The conversation was great.
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The food might have been you know something where every it's it's hard to quantify it thing Right because we don't live in a naturalistic world where everything just kind of comes together and you have one of those nights
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Right. I think you've all had it. I see the nods, right? We've all had one of those and then what we do is we try to recreate it and it never works
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You can't recreate it right it just happens God gives us gifts like that these men though They don't want it to end.
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They realize that something special has happened here. They realize that they are they are a party to something
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That's amazing. They're actually a party to something that every well -thinking Christian has been jealous of for the last 2 ,000 years
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What would you give to be there? What would you give to hear the master?
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Exegeting all the scripture all those difficult ones, right? I think of Zechariah man It's tough,
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I don't know, you know you get into that and you're digging and he just effortlessly Is talking about how it all teaches of the king of the
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Messiah see the story never changed But it is building to a crescendo We know because Deuteronomy 18 said that Yahweh that God was going to raise up a prophet like Moses from among them and that He was going to give the word and anyone who listens to him is going to be blessed and anyone who doesn't listen to him
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God will require it of him, right? He says in Psalm 22 16
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He says dogs have surrounded me a band of evildoers has encompassed me. They pierced my hands and my feet
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I count all my bones. They look they stare at me They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots and Jesus looks at these men and he says do you see?
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Do you see this was the prophecy? This is what just happened in Jerusalem.
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Are you still slow? Do you realize who you're talking to yet? No, they don't he goes on he goes on in 22 of you is my praise in the
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Great Assembly I shall pay my vows before those who fear him the afflicted will eat and be satisfied Those who seek him will praise
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Yahweh May your heart live forever all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to Yahweh and all the families of the nations will
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Worship before you for the kingdom is Yahweh's and he rules over the nations All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship all those who go down to the dust will bow before him
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Even he who cannot keep his soul alive Their seed will serve him.
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It will be recounted about the Lord to the coming generation They will come and will declare his righteousness to a people who will be born that he has done it all of the prophecy of Psalm 22 it ends
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He has done it who will hear that he has done it all of the generations that come after Do you realize that we sit here we sit here in this room today?
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And we worship the risen King Jesus and there are millions and hundreds of millions
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Doing that this very morning and this all started with 11 guys Because one of them betrayed one out of 12 11 guys and do you know what they did?
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They told the generations they told people who told their sons and their daughters and they continued to tell their sons and the daughters and Just as Jesus said like a mustard tree the smallest seed would grow into the big tree that the birds would perch in Just like leaven going through a loaf just a tiny little bit given time the leaven goes through the entire bread and rises it
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Just like the mountain that Daniel prophesied about that started with a little stone that was not cut by human hands and It grew into a mountain that took up the whole horizon
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In fact so large that you couldn't see anything else and friends. This is inevitable This is the end result of history is that Jesus will dominate all of anyone can see
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All the name one is going to be able to see in history is Jesus Christ And that's why we get verses like at the name of Christ every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is
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Lord to the glory of the Father why to the glory of the Father because it was the Father's will to crush him and It was also the
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Father's will that he would rise again and that he would fulfill everything that had been promised
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There is one hope for humanity and that is to worship Yahweh That is to listen to the words of the man who was risen up just like Moses How did you live by faith in the
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Old Covenant you followed the words of Moses How do we live by faith in today's
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Covenant? We listen to the words of Christ Who teaches us the greater meaning and everything that the words of Moses meant plus all of the other prophets?
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the story Did not change The lights came on and the earlier parts gained full glory and dazzling light based on the revelation of Jesus Christ we can look back and we understand
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Leviticus as it meant historically But we also have a new meaning that we understand in Leviticus It meant these are rules for life for the people who are living in Canaan But today we look at them and we say it points to a greater life true
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It was how they were separated from the other nations. It's how they were kept pure and sanctified but today it's also it shows us what a barrier there is between us and God and how
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Jesus has Eliminated that barrier. He has torn down the curtain that divided us.
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The dividing wall is gone No longer are we barred out by race and by creed and by male and female?
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It's no longer the people with the oracles of God versus all those who had no oracles Jesus has torn down every one of those barrier walls and he has opened the door for everyone to come in Except we need spiritual illumination
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To come in is for him to bring you in to invite you The story builds and it leaves true disciples as the song says seen
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Hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest Do you know that we're gonna hear the story played over and over again and glory and I ask you
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Christian Are you tired of it yet? Are you tired of it? I've heard it from the earliest memories that I can remember and I'm 44.
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I Don't think in 44 ,000 years that I will tire of hearing it told and you know, we're gonna get to hear it told
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With full revelation with no sin getting in our way with it not bearing us down with it
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Not weighing us down and we will hear the story, but see this learning they're learning he's teaching them
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And they're here man. This is unbelievable teaching. That's what they're saying. But that learning and curiosity This is often the fault of the
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Reformed the learning and the curiosity does have to turn into Faith and this faith get this this faith always brings fellowship.
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It always brings fellowship. Look where this story ends The faith is revealed
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It's realized in these men as Jesus reclines at their table and breaks bread and gives it to them boys
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They're a picture there Is Christianity is the faith a thing that happens in your brain?
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to where you start believing certain propositions and Then you can hold them for yourself and look at anyone else who does not keep all of the same propositions as yourself
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Maybe they're not Christians. I'm definitely not going to talk to them because they're very stupid This is the danger of having a curiosity and a learning and a knowledge that does not turn into God honoring faith
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God honoring faith delights in the fellowship with the people of God.
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That's what we're going to be doing for eternity Did you know that Jesus tells us that we should spend all of our treasure? developing spiritual friends because we're gonna spend all of our time and all of the greatness that we're gonna have in all of eternity is going to spend
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Time with each other and tell each other the story over and over again and work together not with toil not with sweat
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Not with thorns but with the full consummation of everything that God made the world to be
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Creation will not grown anymore. It will be realized That is the first fruits that Jesus gave with the resurrection and we see as he comes back to these men
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He's going to eat with them. What is eating show? It kind of helps their naturalistic idea that this dead man is gonna eat stuff
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Dead people don't eat anything, right? And that would be morbid to make them try
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But if he's a ghost if he's a vision of an angel He's not gonna need anything either because they don't need sustenance ethereal spiritual beings do not need physical sustenance
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But Jesus bodily resurrected and this is a core doctrine of the Christian faith because there is no salvation for sin
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If Jesus did not bodily resurrect because the whole basis of the judicial punishment was that Jesus is a man
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He had to be a man to pay for the sins of man He had to be like us.
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He had to be tempted in every way yet without sin He had to be acquainted with our struggle and with our trials and he was and he went
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Completely through life with no sin whatsoever So Jesus reclines at their table and he eats
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But also it's not just to show that he's alive that he's truly alive that he's bodily alive.
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It's also because resurrection brings us to a table and That is the destiny of the
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Christian walk that's the destiny What an amazing thing Before we get there
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I get ahead of myself We have to realize that as we go out and we proclaim this gospel
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When we have hope for our fellow man, and we call to repentance and forgiveness Well, we have to understand is that the story is sometimes slow to unveil you see the the scripture tells us that the earlier prophets
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That the Old Testament Saints that they longed to see the day where they where they they were right at the edge
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But they couldn't understand exactly what God was gonna do and they longed to see that day because the story was slow to unfold
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It took millennia right and you had Abraham and he saw a piece and Moses saw a little bit more and David saw more and then when you
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Get to Malachi he starts to see things With the clarity that there's gonna be a forerunner like John the
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Baptist who's going to make the way who's gonna be a voice in The wilderness and they start to see more clearly and then there's a gap silence and Jesus comes on the scene and after Jesus what we see is a lot of clarity a whole lot of clarity the
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New Covenant is clear. That's one of the ways that it's better than the Old Covenant. It's like a glass
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That's crystal clear. You can see everything inside of it It's an amazing gift that we've been given but we want things to be microwavable
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We want people to have faith just because we told them that they're sinners This takes more time sometimes and we should be patient There's a difference between hostile outright rejection where we dust the the dust of our off of our feet and walk away however
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Our friends or our brother or our sister telling us. Hey, I'm not really interested in that right now
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That is not the cue to dust off your feet from them and to walk away. Well, they're not interested
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I guess they're out. Yes, they're out of the kingdom and I'm a good Calvinist That means maybe God elected him, but it's not through me
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No, that's silly. That's silliness. What does Jesus do? He walks seven miles with these men.
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They're dense Do you understand how dumb these guys are? Do you think he has the nail -scarred hands?
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He's walking with them. He knows all of this stuff and he's telling them they're like, oh man, this guy's amazing.
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Who is this? This is not this is a great teacher. I kind of like that one
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They just killed and then we heard the graves and this guy shows up and he's talking to us. What's going on here?
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No, they don't know because look it's not a historical fact to be memorized to enter the kingdom of God Do you know who else believes that Jesus rose from the dead
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Satan? He believes it. He knows it happened It is a proposition to him
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But he has no faith because what he does is he hears the message of the resurrection and he rebels against it and he fights
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Against all of its implications and so it is with lost man, even when we understand even when we say, oh
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I know There's a God. Oh, I believe Jesus resurrected from the dead and then we go about and we break
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God's law And we do our own thing all the time. What we're doing is acting like Satan We're saying yeah, there is a God who died for mankind.
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That's really not that important to me, though You know, I guess I'll get on to more important things like, you know making money in my yard work
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It's stupid. It's absolutely ridiculous and God has God has no patience for that kind of unbelief
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Right, we are all commanded the human condition is no matter where you're from and no matter who you are you are commanded to worship the
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Lord God and To not worship him is to put yourself in a very very dangerous situation
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So these men the story is unveiling and Jesus shows patience. He keeps talking to him
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He keeps revealing more but he's waiting for this moment, right and then he gives him this moment I want to I want to read it.
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I want to read that last part It says they will come and declare his righteousness. Nope, not there He says he took the bread and blessed it and after breaking it.
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He was giving it to them We know what that sounds like, right? We know what that is. We do it every week and it says then their eyes were open and they recognized him and he vanished from their sight and They said to one another
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We're not our hearts burning within us while he was speaking to us on the road while he was opening the scriptures to us and they stood up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and found gathered together the 11 and those with them who were saying the
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Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon and they were relating their Experiences on the road and how he was recognized by them in the breaking of the bread
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Wow, that is that is quite interesting Okay, quite interesting, but let's look at the middle first before we go to the edges.
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What happens their heart is burning they are starting to understand the wisdom of scripture and they go and when they have faith and when
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Christ is revealed to them and They understand who they're having bread with. What do they do when he disappears?
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They go straight to the people of God Do they not they run straight to the people of God and then they encourage one another?
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Because the reports right Peters run into the grave and so is John and they've seen there's no one there and there's these women who have
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Who have said he's not here an angel told us he's gone. And so these these men they go back And they say wow, you know
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Jesus we saw him and this is what he told us and the faith grows
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Not because of naturalistic stuff not because they did an experiment and had premise one premise two and now a conclusion
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No, that's not what it is they ate they ate bread with the risen Lord and he told them everything in scripture that applied to them and They told him he told them how all scripture was about the
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Messiah and how this had to happen and then they Understand and they are on fire. They're on fire because he was speaking to them
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They're not on fire because they got some kind of crazy emotional high They're on fire because the Word of God came alive to them and our
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God is a consuming fire Do you understand what that text means? He's a consuming fire because he engulfs everything in his power
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And in context what's that's about when when the author of Hebrews says that God is a consuming fire
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He is talking about men pressing on towards the prize not getting weary. That's the admonition
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So what happens here these men press on they are given this fire and they go back to God's people and they give their report
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They are witnesses Witnesses that Paul will refer to later in first Corinthians 15 that show the absolute fact of Christ's resurrection
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That means that we have ladies and gentlemen a religion Did you know that we have a religion because of the eyewitness testimony and because it perfectly
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Coincides with what all the scripture before had said must happen Should Christians be confident?
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We're the only ones that should be confident Every other religion we have in the world steals from us it steals the parts they like like love and wise pithy sayings and it denies the part they don't like like the
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Retribution that a living powerful God will have against those who break his law. They don't like that part so much
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Spiritual food is needed. So these men go they're on fire and we have to ask we have to ask the question
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I know it's a duh answer, but they were walking with him talking to him seeing him
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They don't know who he is. He breaks bread gives it to him and they see who he is And so I ask you who opened their eyes
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How were these men saved? Did they arrive there through the reading?
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No, they were given faith. It's a mystery. They didn't have a burning bosom Like the
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Mormon facsimile of what it is to be alive spiritually. They didn't have a burning bosom
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They were in the presence of the Word of God They could not get enough of it you guys remember this right and I think we lose it to our shame and I wish we
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Could get it back when people first come to Christ there is a burning desire to be in the Word of God to know everything that he teaches and It hits so hard and we're grabbing it and we're spending hours in it
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And then over time we think well, we we mature out and then you know, maybe
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I can take her leave it every day No, these words are the words of life these words are the words of life if you want to please
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God if you want to grow in his kingdom if you want to Understand his law if you want to have sanctification, we don't like sin.
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Do we Christians? We hate it. We hate sin if you want to hate sin more, you know what the way to do that is to have your mind transformed
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Into the mind of God by the reading of his word. That's where sanctification comes from But see the knowledge of Scripture always points towards the realities that we proclaim
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It's not a book of fiction, but it's also not a natural book. It's not a natural book It asks us to believe things that are beyond what our eyes can see but these things are verified by eyewitnesses
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There is no naturalistic faith. There is a supernatural faith that is testified to by angels that was foretold hundreds and thousands of years before it happened and Then after it happened was seen by hundreds of witnesses who would die
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For the testimony of what they saw you see the resurrection
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It's the capstone and The exclamation point and the fulfillment of every promise of God if the resurrection doesn't happen.
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This whole book is meaningless the whole grounds of the Christian faith is on the resurrection because that's the way that the prophecy was foretold that that the serpents head was crushed by the resurrection it is the end of his kingdom and the beginning of this kingdom and Then 2 ,000 years
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I ask you we get discouraged brothers and sisters I know we do but when you look out and you see what's going on Is the kingdom growing or is it shrinking in 2 ,000 years?
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And unless you're a fool the answer is quite obviously it's growing The kingdom is growing from 11 to like 2 billion claiming it today
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That's quite a lot of growth. Wouldn't you say quite a lot of growth? There's a promise of multitudes of descendants that was made to Abraham that his descendants would be like the sands of the seashore and like the stars of The sky which means you can't count them
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If you ask a scientist, oh, they know so much. How many stars are there? I don't know The better optics we get the more stars we find right?
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When does it end? It doesn't end It just continues out trillions of stars, right?
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And We think well, you know narrow is the way yeah narrow is the way because there's only one way to Christ But there's gonna be a lot of people on that way there's gonna be a lot of people treading that way because the promise was that's fulfilled and it finds its yes in Jesus is that There will be multitudes of descendants
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Jesus Amplified the promise to Abraham. He didn't merely fulfill it
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He brought it out even further just like he did with Moses on the Sermon of the Mount You've heard it said that you should do this
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But I say right and what he did was he extended that law out of what you could see with your eyes into your heart
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Where God makes judicial decisions on your heart? So we have all of these promises
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We have the promise of a king of kings from the eternal line who will rule do we believe it? We have the promise of the final death of the prophets at the hands of Jerusalem and that judgment
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Would ink that would incur because the great high priest who need not cleanse his own sin has cleansed the sins of all
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Israel What is the hope of salvation for Israel? That was the title of the sermon because we get here now
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Who is Israel? Israel is the people of God. It's always been the people of God. It was the people of Abraham and in Christ It's the people of Christ who is the greater
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Abraham? So what's the hope of salvation for Israel faith in Christ? And how is faith received faith is received by the hearing of the word?
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How will they believe it if they don't hear it and how will they hear it if we don't preach it so we go and we make our appeal as ambassadors for Christ and We make that appeal wherever men and women are and we start here
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Because this is where we have the most impact and we are strategic as disciples Let's look at one one last thing and I've saved it for last
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What does it mean that they recognize the Lord through the breaking of bread? They're hearing the teaching They are
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Seeing what he looks like they are starting to put two and two together except it's when he hands them bread that they understand
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Do you understand this? People come to Christ not because of their theology.
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It's not because of curiosity. It's not because of knowledge. It's because it's given And what's given is a means of grace and we remember it
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Every week as we come up here That to be in the family of God is to be just that is to be in a family and families eat together
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And if you don't do that as a family, I encourage you to do it If you eat zero times a week together at the dinner table
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Make it a decision to eat one night this week at the dinner table together and the conversation will happen and your kids will remember
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I remember sitting at the small Circle table there was a lot of us and that table is in my house today
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And we sit at that table and we talk and I know that my girls and I know that Noah is gonna remember that someday
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That we sat and we ate together because God has made us that way He's made us to remember things better when we do it over food
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But more than that, it's a means of grace that God comes to feed his people, right? Remember when he comes to Peter and he says do you love me feed my lambs?
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Feed my lambs and so the table is the place where God feeds us. We're gonna sing this song very soon today
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It's the table that was longed for Psalm 23 5 says you prefer you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies
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You have anointed my head with oil my cup overflows In there's something about an overflowing cup at the table
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There's a yearning in our hearts for that table that's set with good food and good company and These men had the best the best company and the man who was breaking it was their very
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Savior so what that does is It results in Christian fellowship
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Christian fellowship, how is the Christian world going to grow? How do we look out at all that's bad and have hope?
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Well, we first all know that God changes hearts not us And we also understand that we have we have to recover something about Christianity and that's simply this
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Christians love living life together We're not an individualistic faith
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We're not a faith that's about what our thoughts are between our ears We are a faith that loves our brothers.
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We are a faith that bands together for a mission We are a faith that has our grounds on the one who cannot die who has promised us that we have nothing to fear
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The one who can't die Has told us to not be afraid So men, what do we fear?
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There is nothing to fear There is nothing to fear when you serve the God who lives When you serve the
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God who death has no hold over and who never sin. I'm gonna leave us with this reading.
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I love it Romans 9 30 through 33 What shall we say then
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That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness laid hold of righteousness Even the righteousness which is by faith
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But Israel pursuing a law of righteousness did not attain that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works
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They stumbled over the stumbling stone just as it is written behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense and the one who believes upon it
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Will not be put to shame friends if you're depending on your works
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The cross and the resurrection is a stumbling block and you will stumble and the results are a long fall
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And just as Israel before there is a decision to make and that decision is What of the cross what of the empty tomb?
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What do we make of that? Because if we put our hope in that stone if we put our hope in that rock
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Then we will not be put to shame and that includes Every sin that you have committed
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When you stand before the judgment seat of your God who knows every thought in your mind who knows every deed that you've done in secret
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Who knows every word that's preceded from your mouth who knows everything that's been done without faith
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You're gonna stand before that throne and do you know what? Even with all that you're not gonna feel ashamed and the reason you're not gonna feel ashamed is because there is no shame because our
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God conquered the power of sin and he will be there and Did you know that it will be him who is sitting at the judgment seat?
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He is not only the judge. He is also our interposer That's hard for us to imagine and the judge is going to have the books open and he himself is going to point at you
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And he's gonna say there is no sin and guilt here white robes perfect righteousness
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Come enter with me you have been faithful of a few things. I will make you master over many things
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Is that not the hope of the Christian life? We store it up here
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We fail we store it up there. We cannot fail Friends, let's do it.
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Let's have faith in the risen Lord. He is worthy of it. Let's pray Lord.
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What hope What amazing patience we see so much or that that the grave cannot contain you but also
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Lord the The earth itself does not contain you You are the Lord of the cosmos the Lord of the heavens
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King of Kings Lord of Lords your power and your authority Extends everywhere. There is not one place in the universe that you do not have authority over as you said all
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Authority on heaven in heaven and on earth has been given to you So Lord because of that We should have confidence in the ambassadors making the appeal making known the message of the good news of the gospel of the good news of peace of The King Lord, I pray that we would do that Lord if there are any here who the cross is a stumbling block.
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It's an offense to them How could it be so simple Lord? I pray that you would take away the spiritual blindness and that you would give
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Spiritual sight or that we would see the hopelessness of our sin, but that we also see the hope of your resurrection
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Lord may we not trust in our own works But we would trust in your perfect work
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Lord, I pray that that would be the case for every person here That if there are any who do not know you
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Lord that they would see that the veil would be torn off their eyes and they would see the ugliness of their sin but the great hope and the beauty of the cross and that they would repent of their sins and Follow you and Lord.
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We know at that point that they will be changed as we once were and Lord, we also trust that you will not stop the work in us that you will complete and perfect Every work that you have begun and you are mighty to do it
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Lord help this church to place our confidence in you Help us to walk in a manner that is worthy of the calling that you've given us and Lord we stake all of that and We base it all on Your life and your victory over sin and Satan and death
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Lord, may they be blessed as they go this Easter Sunday with families and Lord.