Book of Romans, 15:3 - "The Reproaches of Them Fell On Me," Pt. 1 (05/22/2022)

Park Meadows Church

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It's good to see all of you. I told you that after my mother went to heaven,

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I found a way to look at old newspaper articles. You can find all kinds of things on this thing called the internet.

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Have y 'all tried that? And so I found out one of the things I could see back then

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Facebook was like the society page on the newspaper. So my grandmother would put little stuff about my mom in there every week, just about.

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So she was about Maddie's age when she started playing piano for her Sunday school class in Corsicana.

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And she did that right up until she was in her 80s, didn't she? So you will be too

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Maddie, except more than the piano. You can play lots of instruments. That was pretty awesome.

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Thank you for that. Thank all of you for your prayers for our family.

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I started feeling better this week. One night, I don't remember which night, maybe I think

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I spent a day with Matt. It was that night I started feeling better. Matt ministered to me.

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He really did. And so thank you for your prayers. We are doing much better, at least

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I am. And I think most of the kids are too. So turn with me to Romans chapter 15.

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The good news is we've made it to a new chapter. The bad news is there's lots of verses in chapter 15.

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It's gonna take a while to get through it. But Glenda, thank you too.

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That was beautiful this morning. As always, you inspire me.

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Let's pray. Well, let me say hi to Susan Peace though. So great to have you visiting with us.

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She's been here quite a few times out towards Hill Country, quite a drive to get here. And we thank you for driving in.

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She won't want me to say anything, but she's a remarkable woman and a wonderful mom herself.

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All right, let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for this day that we have a day together, that you've given us freedom, that we still have in this country, in the world where there's less and less of it, even in the

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European countries, even around the world, other than in some cases,

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Lord, you've preserved Texas. And we thank you for that. But we know we've got brothers and sisters around this country that still hang on to their freedom.

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And that's because of you, Lord. Thank you. Help us to be salt and light while we have this freedom and while we can do it, even to help some of the other nations of the world that don't have it.

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And be with our families, be with each of us as we endure trials and temptations and keep us strong, keep our new man in control.

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And Lord, be with us during this time of study. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Good to have each of you and our internet family as well.

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Good to have you guys with us as always from around the country. And I'm excited about this message today.

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So let's get right into it. Romans chapter 15, we've kind of already covered verses one and two and three, because especially verse one and two was sort of really the end of Romans 14, chapter 14, because there's no chapters in the real

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Bible, right, in the originals. But I'll go ahead and read one and two, because really, we're starting out with verses three and four today.

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So Romans 15, one says, we then, by the way, the word then is how we know it refers to chapter 14.

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It's still talking about the things right above it. But we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.

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Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. For even

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Christ pleased not himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me.

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For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

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So I want to talk about those last two verses this morning. And you need to note verse three, because that is a quotation from the

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Old Testament. The apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, quoted from Psalm 69.

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That tells us something very interesting. So let me read verse three again and think about it. And I think the last part is a little hard to grasp exactly what it means.

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So I'm going to try to help with that right quick. But look at it. It says, for even Christ pleased not himself. So verse three is obviously talking about Jesus Christ.

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And then it quotes Psalm 69. And the reason that's important is there are a few of the

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Psalms that are known as Messianic Psalms. And what that means is, even though David penned it and the

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Holy Spirit wrote it, and some of it is about David's life, it's actually about Jesus using

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David as a type or a picture of Jesus. And teaching us about Jesus as we look at David and what he went through.

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So it's actually talking about Jesus in Psalm 69, not David. Now, it also talks about David, but the

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Holy Spirit is showing us in Romans 15, three, that the message he wants us, he the

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Holy Spirit wants us to get from Psalm 69 is about Jesus Christ, not so much about David.

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And it's clear, it's fascinating. It happens in several of the Psalms. And the way that we often know it's a

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Messianic Psalm is because the Holy Spirit tells us in the New Testament, that one's about Jesus.

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It's just that clear. But look what it says about our Lord. It says, even

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Jesus pleased not himself. So with Jesus, it was not about self, it was about people, other people, others.

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That is the predominant lesson we can learn if we're going to be Christians, is it's about people. It's not about money, it's not about things, it's about buildings, it's about people.

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Now, you need money and things and building to help people. So it's about that too. It's about all of it, but we got to keep our focus on people.

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And if you want to know what the greatest sin practically, I won't say greatest, but the greater of the sins is if you hurt one of Jesus's other sheep.

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Think about that. You hurt them verbally, you hurt them physically, but especially verbally.

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You say something that doesn't edify and build them, you say something that tears them down and hurts them, Lord takes note of it every time.

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Every time He takes note of it, because you don't touch God's anointed. And God's anointed is not the preacher, it's

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His people, it's His sheep. And so He's anointed us with the blood of Christ and with the oil of the

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Holy Spirit. And so you don't touch them, and the world needs to get that message, but they don't get it.

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But they certainly enjoy a lot of punishment because of it. You talked about some of it in Sunday school this morning.

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But look what it says about our Lord. It says, first of all, He is not selfish, it's not about Him, it's about others.

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But look what it says, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me. Now, I don't know about you, but that's not real clear what that means the first time you read it.

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And you have to stop thinking, who is he talking about here? What, you know, what are reproaches?

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Well, reproaches, you know, there's, you can look at formal definitions of it and so forth.

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I didn't look at the Greek so much as the English, because the English is a good, the

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King James English is a very good rendering of the actual Greek of this word reproaches. But so let me tell you what

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Webster says about it. It's an expression of rebuke or disapproval. But I want to give you, sometimes, you know, in the big dictionaries, it'll say old

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English or it'll say even say obsolete, like it's not used this way anymore. Well, think about it. When the

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King James was written in 1611, that's what's obsolete now, right? That's why people don't like it, even though it's the most accurate translation from the correct

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Greek of any English Bible still today. But obsolete, the obsolete meaning of this word reproach is one who is subjected to censure or scorn.

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And that's what it means here. So let's look at this verse then.

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The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. Who is, we think me is Jesus, wouldn't you agree?

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We know me is Jesus. But who is thee? Us sinners. No, no, that's what

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I thought when I first read it. I'm thinking, okay, who is that person?

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I named myself, I named us. It's God the Father. It's God the

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Father. The reproaches of them that reproached thee.

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Them is human, the fallen human race, the fallen humans in their natural state, all humans in there, even us in our natural state when we're not spiritual, when we're not walking filled with the spirit, we reproach

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God. We bring scorn and hatred and rebuke to God the

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Father, the creator of all that is, right? And so those who bring scorn to God, Jesus says here that the reproaches that went toward the

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Father now fell on me, Jesus said. Now, I want you to think about that for a minute, kind of gives me goosebumps because I've had time to think about it and you haven't.

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I've been thinking about it all week. Well, not all week, but especially that part, the last half of the week.

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And I'm thinking, wow, you know, what does that mean? So Jesus didn't just die for us.

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He died for the Father too. You do realize that, right? That's what propitiation means.

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He died as part of the bigger scope of salvation. One part of it is propitiation.

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It's what Jesus did for the Father when he died and what he did for the Father when he died was he satisfied.

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That's the best English word for the word in Greek. He satisfied God's holy, righteous, just, wrathful nature against sin, the sin of the human race.

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Jesus satisfied that for the Father so that he didn't have to slaughter every one of us.

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Now, think about that because that's what we deserve. You mentioned that in Sunday school too. The Father did not have to just snuff us out and start over, which is exactly what most of us in the room would have done had we been the

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Father. Or then you got your liberals, they would have just forgiven everybody as if it never happened, which that's not happened.

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God did not do that either, did he? What God did was a third thing. And you know, we'd like to think in twos, either or.

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Human brain is built that way. It's like a computer, zeros and ones, you know, it's like this or that.

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So either we should kill them all and start over or we should just save them all and everything's okay. He didn't do either one of them.

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He did what only God would have thought to do in his infinite wisdom and that is to send his son to die for some of them, an elect group of them.

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Horribly disliked doctrine today in the world, but it's on, as the great Charles Spurgeon, the

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Prince of Preachers, so many denominations call him that today. As he said, you would have to take a pen knife to the

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Holy Bible and rip out so many portions if you wanted to eliminate election and predestination from the

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Bible because he said it's on just about every page. And if you know it, if you know about it, you see it.

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You see it everywhere because that's God. By definition, God is sovereign. By very definition of the word

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God, if he is God, he is sovereign. And so the reproaches of natural man fall on God.

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And Jesus said he took that away and took it on himself so that people, the human race would hate him in place of the

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Father for one thing. Now think about that. But also he took away the Father's wrath from all of God's people that would ever live.

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And he did that when he was on the cross. But the interesting thing is, it is a direct quotation of Psalm 69, which the

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Holy Spirit had written 1 ,060 years earlier. And I say the Holy Spirit wrote it because the scripture says in the book of Acts that the

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Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David. David wrote Psalm 69.

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Now think about it. The Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David. So who is the one who spoke in Psalm 69?

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The Holy Spirit, not David. David was the penman. That's all he was. All of the writers of the

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Bible, the human writers, you know, all 40 of them were penmen.

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And the Holy Spirit is the author of it. And once you get that, the book comes alive to you when you study it, knowing God wrote it.

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All right. So verse four then says, for whatsoever things were written aforetime, that is talking about the

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Old Testament. So anything, now here's another great lesson to teach a new

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Christian if you're discipling somebody. Number one, realize God wrote every word of the Bible and every cross, the

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T and the dot of the I, God put it there and it's right where it's supposed to be and he preserved it. And it's God's word. First lesson you teach a new disciple.

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Secondly, you can teach them this. Everything that's written in the Old Testament was written for our learning who live in the end of time.

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And there's another scripture that says it that way. I'll show it to you in a minute. That tells me that everything in the

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Old Testament is edifying and for us to read. It's enlightening for us to read because just like Psalm 69 is actually about Jesus and you wouldn't know that as a new

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Christian probably without teachers to help you know it quickly, you would eventually learn it though because you would eventually read

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Romans 15 three and you would figure it out with the help of the Holy Spirit. But with a teacher, you compress time to learn things faster.

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It might take a preacher 40 years to learn some stuff he can teach you in 10 minutes. That's time compression.

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That's why we're supposed to go to church. That's why we need Sunday school classes. Teaching and all this.

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It helps us learn more faster because we don't have that much time. My mom proved that a few days ago.

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Her time is over here in some ways. Not totally because the influence she had is out to the third generation from starting with her.

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So she's still here in a sense. Spiritually, she's...

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Have you ever thought about this? I've learned a that's part of grieving

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I hear. It's one of the stages of grieving. First you deny it, then you get angry about it. And then like that, you whine a little bit.

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But I realize you think about the fact that when you get saved, you get baptized into the

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Spirit, right? You get baptized by the Spirit into Christ. I should say it that way. So you are connected to Jesus Christ and to the

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Father once you're born again. But guess who else you're connected to? Every other believer that ever...

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And you think of it like in church right here. They're like, we're all connected together. But do you realize we're connected to every believer that ever lived and ever will live, including your loved ones that are in heaven.

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You still have the exact same spiritual connection you did when they were here. It didn't even get less.

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It might've even gotten more, but you are connected to them as much as you were when they were here. It's like they moved to Chicago or something.

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You're still connected, except it's a little farther away than Chicago. And it's not near as liberal.

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So it's like you lived in Chicago and they moved to Texas, went to heaven, get it?

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That's a joke. But anyway, all right. Did you get that, Marion? I bet you liked that. He thinks

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Colorado is heaven, but Colorado is just a place you visit when you live in heaven.

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Then you go visit Colorado. So think about this, the

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Old Testament, every page that you read is picturing something about Jesus Christ.

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He's on every page in the Old Testament. And that's what it means when it says everything that was written before time in the

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Old Testament was written for our learning, for us to learn about who? Jesus Christ.

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And that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

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We're going to talk about that a little bit later, but first let me show you a parallel passage to verse four there in 1

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Corinthians 10 .6. If you can turn there right quick and look at it on your phone or in your

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Bible, wherever your Bible is, take a look at it and follow along with me.

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I'll give you a minute. Ephesians 10 .6. 1

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Corinthians 10 .6. Did I say Ephesians the first time or just that time? Okay.

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So it's Galatians 12 .9. You got it? 1 Corinthians 10 verse six.

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Nevermind. You'll never get there at this point. I'm just going to read it. Okay. Now these things were our examples to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.

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So now all of a sudden in the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse six, it's pointing back at the

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Old Testament, especially looking at a certain part of the

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Old Testament where like the book of Exodus and where the children of Israel are going through the wilderness.

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And it says, now these things were our examples. Sometimes the English word is in sample and brother

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Otis used to make a big deal out of that's different than an example. It's a stronger word than example.

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And it actually is. It's a better translation of the Greek word because the Greek word, actually our

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English word type comes from it. I don't know if I can pronounce it right in Greek. It's like typos or typos.

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I don't know how you pronounce it, but it's the same word as type in English. And it comes from the idea of a little, what do you call a thing that you can hit it and put an imprint on something?

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I'm omnipresent. All of a sudden I hear me over there. What would you call it? You can emboss it.

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It's like you, a dye is what I'm saying. It's like, like a dye, you put it on a piece of leather, you hit it and it puts that little insignia on the leather or on the wood.

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That's what the Greek word literally means. So what does it picture? So it pictures that when we read things in the old

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Testament, now these things are in samples or examples, they are types.

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So you may be reading about the story of the life of a person, a real literal historic person in the old

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Testament and the trouble that he's going through and the things that he does and all the things you see in the story is a picture of what

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Jesus Christ himself is teaching us to either be like, or teaching us what he is like. Are you with me?

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So that's what it means when it says example, the English words way too weak there, but the

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Greek word, I like the English word in sample, which we'll see in a minute to the intent that we should not lust after evil things.

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So we watched the old Testament saints lusting after evil things like onions, right?

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Is it that's evil? What makes it evil? Is it because God didn't give it to them and they wanted it?

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The only way you can lust is if you want something you either didn't earn or God didn't give to you. Someone else has it and you want that one.

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That's incorrect. We should not be that way. So what's it saying? Look at them and instead of talking about how weak they were, well, can you believe the

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Jews went through the water and now they're worshiping other idols and God's saying, yeah, that's you.

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It's a type of you because our idols are not the same as their idols, but they're just as evil.

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It's anything that takes our love and attention and worship away from God. So now these things were our examples to the intent.

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We should not lust after evil things as they did. So there it's a type for us. Now here's another lesson from the old

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Testament passage. Neither be idolaters as were some of them, as it is written, the people eat, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play and that's when they were, they made a

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God out of the gold. Remember that? A golden heifer to worship, but that's a type or a picture of whatever our

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God is. We don't make golden heifers, hopefully, although there's probably people in Hollywood doing it and Washington DC probably worshiping weird things you don't know about.

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Listen, I'm not preaching right now. That's just me being funny, but I'm probably right.

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But anyway, so we're supposed to look at them doing that and instead of thinking, look how stupid they are.

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They just went through the Red Sea and partied and they walked through it on dry ground and they made an idol and worshiped it.

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How stupid they are. And look what the first part of verse 8 says, neither let us do this.

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Neither let us do it. Sorry, that was verse 7, but look at verse 8. Neither let us commit fornication as some of them did and fell in one day, 3 in 20 ,000, 23 ,000 people.

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God just struck them dead because they were playing around that idol and that had sexual connotation and God killed them.

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So it says don't be like them. So what is that telling us? We still have problems with things that they had problems with.

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It may be in a different form, but it might be in the same form. Verse 9, neither let us tempt

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Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed of serpents. In verse 10, neither murmur you as some of them murmured.

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Do we ever murmur in churches? Oh boy, sometimes we do. And the bigger the church, the more murmuring is going on because there's more humans in it, right?

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And they were destroyed of the destroyer. Verse 11, now all these things happen to them as in samples.

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There's the great word that Otis loved because it's a stronger English word for an example. It means a type.

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It literally means like a type. And they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world or the age, aeon in Greek, the end of the age are come.

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It's written for us right now. Everything in the Old Testament is what this teaches. Everything in the Old Testament will give you deeper colors and meanings of the

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New Testament concepts. That's a great second thing to teach new disciples is so they understand that from the get -go.

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Because I've actually heard people in certain denominations say, well, why don't you preach? I've had said of me, you preach from the

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Old Testament too much. It's a New Testament church. Why do you do that? Well, they don't understand this, you see. There is an important difference between Old Testament, New Testament, but that doesn't mean that the

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Old Testament is not where we should focus because it's a type of all the New Testament truths.

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It gives deeper meanings of all of it. Wherefore, let him that thinketh he stand, take heed lest he fall.

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That's the greatest lesson when we look at the Jews. Because when we look at them and say how weak they are and how ridiculous they are when they walk through the

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Red Sea and then they come out the other side and make a calf and worship it, look at them. And he says, when you're thinking that way as a

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Gentile, take heed lest you fall also. And you know, one of the things I think about and have thought about more as I get older is

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I remember more than once Charlotte reading through the Old Testament, getting to the

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Kings and being so disappointed when they're so awesome. And then towards the end of their life, as they get old, they do terrible things and end poorly.

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And she goes, oh, it happened again, you know, like that when she's reading it. And gentlemen, we need to be careful as we grow older that we don't have a bad ending to a previously fairly well -led life where we have to keep running the race, keep fighting the fight.

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And I think that's a warning to all of us, ladies and gentlemen, as we grow older that we could get discouraged and get weakened and mess up.

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Let's don't do that, okay? In Park Meadows, we don't want to do that. So let's help one another and remind ourselves of this because, you know, all of these things happen to them as end samples for us.

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And they're written for those of us who live at the end of the church age. So there we go. Verse 12, wherefore let him that thinks he stand take heed lest he fall.

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There has, but look at how it ends. Now, this is amazing with this information we just got about all the stupid things that they did in the flesh and warns us not to be that way.

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Look at verse 13. I mean, you've used this verse a million times, but not in context. Today, it's in context.

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There has no temptation taken you, but such as is common to everyone else. So you can't blame it on the fact that, well,

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I got tempted above and beyond. No. Every temptation that will ever befall us has already happened to other people, including

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Jesus Christ. So there's no temptation. Let me just start over.

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There's, I got to start the first because it's worded funny. There has no temptation taken you, but such as common to man.

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But God is faithful, which means he'll do it every time, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able to resist.

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Isn't that amazing? Think about that verse. So there's never an excuse to sin, ever, because every time we're tempted,

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God gives us an out if we choose to take it. Think about that. Really important for all of us at every age, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape.

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Means you don't have to sin. You don't have to do that thing that you may be able to bury.

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Boy, that's beautiful. Now let's go back to Romans chapter 15, and let's look at the next verse. Verse 4.

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It's taught really in detail in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, but it's a parallel of verse 4. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of scriptures might have hope.

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So the word there, learning, is just a Greek word that means instruction, so that we may be instructed.

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But it also says through comfort of the scriptures. Now what's interesting is that word comfort is the same

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Greek word that the word hope, that the idea of the Holy Spirit being our comforter comes from.

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Paraklesis, same word that Holy Spirit, like the paraclete, the comforter, it's the same word as that.

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So think about it. You have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, and now the Holy Spirit calls the

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Word of God a comforter. Isn't that something? So you're reading a comforter, and you're being taught that by the comforter at the same time.

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And then the word hope is elpsis, which is an interesting

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Greek word that has totally changed in English, and you've heard me say it a million times.

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What it actually means in the Greek is a little stronger than the evolution of the word hope in English, because now we use it to mean

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I hope the Mavericks win the basketball game, but they probably won't. That's what we mean by it, right,

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Ben? We hope they'll win, but they probably won't. So it's a negative word, the word hope now, but in 1611, the

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English word hope was a very positive word, and the Greek word has remained the same. That's why God wrote the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, because it doesn't change anymore, but it actually means the joyful expectation of a certain future event.

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Think about that. The joyful expectation of a certain future event is what this word means. And so the

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Lord is saying these Old Testament scriptures give us hope. They give us a joyful expectation of all the things that God says are going to happen, the good things that he says are going to happen.

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Now, in Romans 15 3, where it talks about the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me, let's look at Psalm 69 with a little bit of time that we have.

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Turn to Psalm 69 in verse 1. So what we know about Romans 15 3 is it's telling us that Psalm 69 is talking about Jesus, not

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David. It can allude to David's life, but it is a picture of Jesus Christ.

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And so it's called a messianic psalm. These often describe

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King David's life, his sufferings, his prayers, but there are also in samples or types of Jesus Christ himself.

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So this particular psalm is particularly sweet because it gives us divine information about what was going on in the mind of Jesus Christ while he was on the cross.

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Now, you know that predominantly as you read the Gospels, predominantly he said nothing.

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As he was reviled, he reviled not again. As they spat upon him, he reviled not again.

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As they said, if your God come down from that cross, he said nothing. Predominantly he's quiet, isn't he?

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So we would know absolutely nothing about what was going on with him if we didn't have

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Psalm 69. So it shows the huge importance of the Old Testament for us to grow deeper in our knowledge of God.

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So I want you to think about this. I mean, it is incredible that we have this information telling us exactly what

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Jesus was thinking while he was on that cross dying for us.

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This is just one of the most incredible things we could study in the whole Bible. So as we consider that, let's reverently join

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Jesus and listen to his thoughts, remembering that he suffered for us in our place.

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So look at verse 1. This is going on in his mind while he is silent on the cross. Only the

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Holy Spirit would have known he was thinking this. Only the Holy Spirit could have given this to us.

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No one would have known this had the Holy Spirit not chosen in his sovereign will to give us

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Jesus's mind while he's on the cross. Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul.

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I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me.

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He's praying. He's talking to the Father while he is dying on the cross. I am weary of my crying.

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My throat is dried. My eyes fail where I wait for my God. Where are you? I don't see you.

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Where did you go? I've always lived with you. This is what he's thinking. So while the

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Savior was raised up above the earth on the cross, suffering in pain and agony, and yet being reviled and reviling not again, he silently withstood the cursing and the spitting and the accusations and the temptations, but on the inside there was a great battle going on even greater than that battle.

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Save me, O God, for the waters are come into my soul.

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I sink in deep mire. That's like a quicksand, a muddy, murky quicksand that you're falling deeper and deeper into, and you cannot get out of it.

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And the more you struggle, the deeper you fall into it. Where there is no standing,

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I can't stand up. It's like an eternal falling. Did you know that the scripture teaches that hell is a place of darkness and a place of eternal falling?

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And if you study physics, the inside of the center of the earth would be like that. It would feel as if you were falling forever if you were in there, and that happens to be where Hades is temporarily.

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It's in the center of this earth right now. And so he talks about this.

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I'm coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me. He cried out to his father with whom he had always been in all eternity, in all existence of anything that existed or even before it existed.

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He had always been with the father, and he cries out to him, but his father was not there for him.

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My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He was experiencing the very most horrible aspect of hell which is separation from God at this very time, and we're hearing what he's thinking while he's experiencing it.

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Think about that. He felt as though he was suffocating under the water of the sins of all the people of God who were fallen from the time of the

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Garden of Eden until the rapture of the church and beyond that, age into age, he felt that he was suffocating under the weight of all their sins and could not breathe.

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His soul was sinking in the mire of the bog of quicksand of sin and death of all the human race which he had loved from the beginning of time.

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I know this because of Proverbs chapter 8 verse 21, where it speaks of Jesus Christ before anything was created.

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Before Genesis 1 -1, when there was only God, there was not even heaven yet.

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We think God's in heaven. God's father is not in heaven because heaven has time in it.

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He's not in there. He is outside of everything that he created, including heaven. I'm talking about the father.

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So this is a time when it was like that, and Jesus was already with him. And it said in verse 21 of Proverbs 8, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance and I will fill their treasures.

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That's the first part of this passage. Jesus says, I want those that the father loves and that love the father,

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I'm going to make sure they inherit stuff. Now think about that. The modern, the preachers going back the last 200 years have said, well, the

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Christian's blessings are all just spiritual in heaven. I don't think so. Look at this. He says,

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I'm going to give them stuff. I'm going to give them substance and I'm going to fill their treasures while they're on the earth.

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Look at verse 22. The Lord possessed me. The father possessed the son.

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The father possessed his son, Jesus Christ, in the beginning of his way.

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Well, when did the father's way begin? Or you could say, well, maybe that's a reference to the son.

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When did the son's way begin? Well, the son's way began when the father began, and there's no beginning of the father because he's always existed.

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So that's forever. So the Lord, the father possessed the son of God in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.

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In other words, before he created anything. I, Jesus, was set up from everlasting.

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That is very interesting in the Hebrew because it's from beyond the vanishing point, is what it says in Hebrew.

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So you go back in time as far as you can go to where there is no time and go a step beyond that, and Jesus was already there with the father.

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Where there was no depth, there were no oceans, I was brought forth. And in the

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Hebrew, that sounds like he was created. In Hebrew, it doesn't say that at all. It just means

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I was with God. Said a little bit misleading in English because Jesus was never created, but he was brought forth at one point.

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He was brought forth into the world by being born of Mary. But even if you go back before anything was made, it says he was brought forth.

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It just means I am with the father if you read it carefully in Hebrew. When there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled, before the hills was

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I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, when he prepared the heavens,

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I was there. When he set a compass upon the face of the depth, when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the deep, when he gave to the sea its decree that the water should not pass beyond the shores, when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then

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I was by him as one brought up with him. See, that's a better rendering.

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As one brought up with him, he was not created, he was always with the father. And I was daily the father's delight, rejoicing always before him, before anything was created, rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth once it was created.

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Now, I love this. Look what it says about Jesus. I rejoiced in the habitable part of his earth, the father's earth.

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I am come, I'm sorry, and my delights were with the sons of men.

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Now, think about that. Jesus, before time began, is with the father.

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He can look forward and see when everything would be created and the earth would become habitable and see human beings, and Jesus said my delight was with them.

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Of all the, you take the universe, all the other stars, solar systems, we don't know what's out there, do we?

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We know whatever they are, something's flying around and flying saucers, the military's finally admitted it. They exist, and there's something in them.

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We don't know what's in them. Something's in them. You read Ezekiel 1. God rode one of them once.

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Jesus did. He was in a vehicle at one time. Read Ezekiel chapter 1 if you don't believe it. It's an unidentified flying object, and Jesus is in it.

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We don't know about all that. It's out there, but the thing that we do know is Jesus could see all of that too, but his delight was with humans, that creation of God that would be called human beings, and because his delight was with humans is the only reason the father saved some of us and gave us as a love gift to him.

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Only reason. The father could have just snuffed it out and started over, but he loved his son so much and knew he loved the earth of all the planets of the universe.

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Jesus loved the earth and he loved the human beings on the earth as he foresaw them, and so the father chose of his own will to save a few of them from a completely fallen race that all deserved to be destroyed, and if that's you this morning, rejoice in it because you had nothing to do with it other than receiving it as a free gift and being awakened to the fact that, wow,

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I'm one of God's children. I'm in his family because he chose me to be in his family.

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I'm special. I'm special above all the people of the earth because he chose me to be in his family and to be a brother of Jesus Christ.

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Wow, all of that's going on and Jesus is seeing it all right there in that passage.

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Now think about that. All of that had taken place before anything was created, and now creation happens.

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Everything we know from scripture that happened in the Garden of Eden and after the Garden of Eden and all the way down through Moses and all the way down to the times of Jesus Christ and the apostles and all of that has happened, and now

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Jesus is on the cross dying in silence and battling in his mind saying, where are you

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God? There's never been a time I wasn't with you. Where are you? Save me.

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I'm drowning in the sin of these people. Save me. I'm experiencing hell itself for these people.

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Are you going to leave me here? Now you remember he was not only God, he was a man, and as a man he's crying out, are you going to leave me in this darkness?

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Because he was experiencing the darkness. Psalm 69, one, save me, oh

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God, for the waters are coming to my soul. I sink in the deep mire where there is no way to stand.

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I'm eternally falling. I come into deep waters where the floods overflow me.

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Then his mind focused for a moment on his own suffering. You would think he wasn't thinking about that because he's silent, right?

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But he focuses on his own suffering, and he says in verse three, I am weary of my crying and my pain.

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My throat is dried. He's beginning to suffer physical death, and his throat was drying out.

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My eyes fail while I wait for my God. It's like he's looking throughout all of heaven and beyond, and he can't see

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God anymore. Don't you know that lost human beings are blinded to God?

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They can't see God anymore. You think, how come they don't all get saved? Don't we kind of think that way?

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How do they not see the design in the universe, the design in a human eyeball, the design in everything, everywhere?

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How do they not see that? They say there is no God. Jesus was blinded like that during this moment.

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Think about it. He was experiencing the life of a lost man because of us and for us.

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God, I can't see you anymore. You have removed yourself from my ability to gaze upon you anymore.

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He had cried out beyond the third heaven, outside the very universe of all physicality, space, and time to the place that is not a place where the invisible creator of the universe, his father, dwelt outside of space and time, unapproachable by sin, and he cried that far, and he still got no response.

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John 1 .18 says, no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the father, he has declared him.

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John 3 .13 says, and no man has ascended up to heaven but him that came down from heaven, even the son of man which is in heaven.

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Interesting verse because he was on the earth telling this to disciples and said at the same time, I'm in heaven. Think about that.

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See if you can figure that one out. John 16 .27, for the father himself loves you because you have loved me,

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Jesus said, and believe that I am come out from God. So Jesus said, no man seen

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God but me, and I proceeded forth and came out from God and came to you so that I could save you.

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And I came forth from the father and am come into the world, and again I leave the world and go to the father.

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John 17 .7 says, now they have known that all things whatsoever thou has given me are of the father.

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For I have given unto them the words which the father gave me, Jesus said, and they have received them, and he's talking about saved people, they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from God.

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I proceeded forth and came out from God, and they have believed that God sent me.

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I pray for them. Now listen to this, I pray not for the world. Boy, that wouldn't fit today's doctrine, would it?

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Jesus said, I don't even pray for the goats. I don't pray for the goats. I don't pray for the tares.

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I pray for the sheep. I pray for the wheat. I pray for God's children everywhere, and I don't pray for the world.

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Wow, that's astounding. But for them, I don't pray for the world, but for them which thou has given me.

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Listen, as the love gift, God saved some, a small remnant of a fallen race, and gave them to Jesus because before time began,

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Jesus loved the earth and the inhabitants of the earth, which are human beings. Wow, I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given me, for they are yours.

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They belong to the Father, and the Father gave them to me. Wow, this is great information that the

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Holy Spirit's giving us here, that most people in this world, in the churches today, don't even know this stuff. John 8 42 says,

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Jesus said to them, if God were your Father, now he's talking to the religious leaders of the world at the time

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Jesus, God with us, was here, and they're the ones that killed

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Jesus together with the Gentile Romans, but the Jewish religious leaders are the ones that really killed him.

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And Jesus said to those people, when he looked them face to face, he said, if God were your Father, you would love me.

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For I proceeded forth and came out from God, reads like that in the Greek. I proceeded forth and came out from God, so you would have to love me if you were real, but you're just a religious leader.

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You don't even know God. Neither came out of myself, but God sent me here.

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Why do you not understand my speech? Even because you cannot hear my word.

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He didn't say you won't choose to do it, he said you can't. If I tell it to you, you can't hear it.

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And I'm going to speak in parables, so even if you heard it, you wouldn't understand it, believe it, because then I'd have to save you, but I'm not saving you, because I only save the ones the

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Father tell me to save, because they're his, and he gave them to me. Good doctrine, brother David.

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You're of your father, the devil. And anyone who doesn't like this doctrine, by the way, might possibly be of their father, the devil, unless they're a lost sheep and still just can't see it yet, right?

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They could be that. So they're either a goat or a lost sheep, one of the two, but they're not seeing it yet. You're of your father, the devil.

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Now, Jesus could tell the difference between a lost sheep and a goat, though, and these guys were goats. He's talking to goats, these religious leaders.

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You are of your father, the devil, and the lust of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him, and when he speaks, it's a lie, and when he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.

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And you go back to Proverbs 8 30, it says, then Jesus was by the father as one brought up with him, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before God, and in Psalm 69 3 says,

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I am weary of my crying, my throat is dry, my eyes fail while I seek for God, and I cannot see him, just like a lost person, because he was experiencing separation from God in our place.

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He cried, Jesus cried out to God until he was weary of crying.

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He watched for his father until his eyes failed for wanting and waiting upon a

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God who had turned his back and was gone. He was completely filled with your sins and mine, and the father turned away.

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Separation from the father, the blackness of darkness in the deep mire of sin from which one may never escape is where Jesus found himself, and as a man, he didn't know if he'd ever come out of that or not.

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At this moment in time, he did not know. He only by faith could have hoped he would come out from this, because all he saw was hell for us.

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He was our substitution. He was a substitution.

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He was an imputation of sin that was placed upon him so that his righteousness could be placed on us.

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Isaiah 53 says, who's believed our report and to whom is the arm of the

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Lord revealed, for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant. That's Jesus, right, when he was born on the earth.

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As the root of Jesse out of the dry ground, he has no form or comeliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we would desire him.

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You know, people talk about all the time, well, people are basically good, and they're all seeking God, but the

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Bible says there's nothing that when you looked at Jesus, there's nothing that naturally would make you want him.

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There's nothing naturally looking at him that would make you go, oh, I just want to be his friend, follow him, and be good with him.

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Nothing natural that would cause that. You still had to be called by the Holy Spirit and born again, your eyes open, and then you would see him totally differently.

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You would see him as God. He is despised and rejected of men.

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That's the natural state we come here in. So all these religions and Christianities that say, well, you just choose

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Christ is how you get saved, they're all wrong because no one would choose him. There's nothing beautiful in him that would make you want to choose him if you're lost.

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He's despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him.

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He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has carried our griefs, even while we hated him, while we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us, right?

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We were still hating him when he saved us. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.

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So let me tell you something, and Psalm 69, if we had time to go back and read some more of it this morning, you would see that the next verses that are coming up, in his mind, he is saying, look,

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I am suffering for these people, and while they watched me suffer, they're reproaching me for the suffering as if if I were

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God, I could come down. So the very suffering I'm doing, they're mocking me for it.

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It talks about it in Isaiah 53. Such he has borne our griefs, he carried our sorrows, and yet we esteem him not as if God was smiting him and afflicting him.

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See, you see the point? The people were saying, well, he can't be right with God or God wouldn't let this happen to him.

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Well, Jesus knew this in his heart and mind when he was on the cross, and according to Isaiah 53, he knew it before he ever came into time and space.

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He knew it would be this way, and he agreed to do it anyway. But he was wounded for our transgressions, that substitutionary death.

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He was wounded in our place. We should have been the ones that were wounded, and he was bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of the peace of all of us, that chastisement was on him, and with his stripes, we are healed.

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And that has nothing to do with physical healing, by the way. Well, it does. It does have something to do with it, because when the rapture happens, or even before that, like my mom, my mom just got healed the other day.

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Did y 'all hear about it? She was really sick, and she got totally healed, where there's nothing wrong with her, and it was the stripes that Jesus took on that cross that caused that to happen, and that's the context of this verse.

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Otherwise, how come you guys that believe in the faith healing, why is your grandmother in the grave? Why didn't you raise her, right?

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Why does your mother die like mine did? Because if I could have laid on top of her and brought her life back like you guys think you can,

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I would have done it, and I would love to have your gift, if it was from the Holy Spirit, but if it's not,

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I don't want it. You see what I'm saying? But Jesus died so that we could be, our souls could be healed, so that eventually our bodies will be perfect and healed from everything, and that's the proper interpretation of Isaiah 53 verse 6.

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We've turned everyone, I should say verse 5. Verse 6 says, all we like sheep have gone astray and turned everyone in his own way, and the

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Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us. He took our sins and put them on him, and here we see him on the cross, and on the inside of his heart and mind, he is struggling with the fact that he has taken the sins of all of God's people upon him, and yet he's being reproached for it.

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The very thing he's doing to save us, he's being mocked for it, and he chose to do it anyway.

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He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

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See, he was silent on the outside, but on the inside, there was a struggle going on. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shears, the lamb is dumb, the lamb does not speak, the lamb is quiet, so he opened not his mouth, and yet on the inside, in his mind, he was crying out to his father to no avail, and that's where this leaves us for today, because we're out of time, but we're going to pick it up,

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Lord willing, next time, and we're going to see what else happened, because it's not going to end in darkness.

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Let's stand. Brother Bill, why don't you pose in prayer.