Questions To Consider (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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We're going to continue this morning with something we started two weeks ago. We're looking at the 22 questions of John Wesley's Holy Club.

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And one thing that I felt I should clear up before we get started here is that the origin of the name, what the

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Holy Club was, was a group of young men in college who got together and decided that they would live their lives before the

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Lord, as unto the Lord. But they didn't give themselves this name.

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You would think that that would be a little much. And truly the name was given to them in derision by their friends, or at least people who knew about them.

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They were called the Holy Club, similar to today the Holy Joes or whatever it was.

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And so it's not a name that they picked for themselves. And it's interesting that, of course, we're in the very early 1700s at this time.

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And yet what does the Bible say about that? If you will live, all who will live holy, will what?

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You will face opposition. You will face ridicule. You will face derision just because you have decided that you want to live your life before the

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Lord. In our society in particular, it seems that you can do anything you want except purpose in your life to live a holy life.

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We're all for live and let live except for if you decide that you want to live a holy life.

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And I think one of the reasons for this is that it bothers people to see someone doing what they know deep in their heart of hearts that they should be doing.

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And they're not. They don't want to. And so that was the origin of this club.

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And it never had more than 25 members, tops. However, it was the roots of what would eventually become

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Methodism as practiced by the Wesleys. And I emphasize that because Methodism as it exists today is a far cry as practiced by the

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Wesleys. So enough said about that. But by way of review, they came up with these 22 questions.

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And by way of review, question number one was, am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am?

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In other words, am I a hypocrite? And the first six questions all flow out of that question because the other questions were, am

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I honest in all my acts and words or do I exaggerate? Do I confidentially pass on what was told to me in confidence?

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Can I be trusted? Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits? And am I self -conscious, self -pitying, or self -justifying?

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All of those things come out of that first question. Am I trying to convey the impression that I am better than I really am or that I am different than I really am?

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Am I one way when I'm by myself and another way in public? And we talked about that a little bit.

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We won't go back over the whole thing. But again, the roots of the word hypocrisy or hypocrite means without wax.

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And it's a pottery term. And it comes from the days when potters made their pots and occasionally when they dried, there would be cracks in the pot.

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And an unscrupulous potter would fill that with wax and put it out for sale. And, of course, it would look good.

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It would look like it was appropriate to the purpose for which it had been made until you started to use it.

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And then the wax would come out and the pot would start to leak. So all of these things.

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Am I really what I claim to be? When I get to church on Sunday, have

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I put on my religious suit and I act one way in church and another way for the remaining six days of the week?

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So that's the issue that they were dealing with. And then question number seven was did the

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Bible live in me today? And this is still by way of review. Does the Bible live in me today? And the next series of questions flow out of that.

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And they are did I give it time to speak to me every day? Am I enjoying prayer?

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When did I last speak to someone else about my faith? And do I pray about the money that I spend?

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All of those things come out of do I let the Scripture live in me? And, again, we talked about that just a little bit.

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When we have our personal devotions, what is our objective? Is our objective simply to move the marker so that we can go off feeling good about ourselves?

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Or is our objective to really let whatever this passage is that we have read speak to us?

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And that takes time. So that if there is a whatever period of time you have for your devotion time, for your

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Scripture reading, for what have you, budget that time so that there is time to reflect on what you have read.

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Let it speak to you. And ask yourself the question, you know, ask yourself the question, have

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I ever altered my behavior in any way based on what I have read in the

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Scripture? Has the Scripture spoken to me? Or is it just some literature that you read?

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I mean all of us read various things from day to day. Some of it for business and some of us read for pleasure.

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Others don't. But whatever. Or are you reading this with the intent that it modify your life?

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Are you reading the Scripture with the intent that it conform you more to the image of Christ, which is

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God's will for your life? Okay. Still reviewing. One more review question.

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And this one kind of at first glance you're wondering, what is this doing in a list of spiritual questions?

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And it's, do I get to bed on time and get up on time? What on earth has that got to do with spiritual issues?

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But the root of that question is really, am I self -disciplined? Am I self -disciplined?

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Whether it's the matter of getting to bed when I should, getting up when

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I should, getting to work on time, time management tells you a lot about a person's self -discipline.

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You run into people, you ever run into a person who is always late, always. It does not matter how much warning you give them, they're going to be late.

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Count on it. And so what do we tend to do? We tend to allow for that, don't we? And we adjust the times that we give them to make sure that they get where we want them to be.

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But that's a matter of self -discipline. It's also a matter of how do you see yourself in relationship to those that are around you.

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And you may think this is a bit of a stretch, but if someone who is constantly late, what you are really saying, because we all acknowledge there are legitimate reasons sometimes when it's unavoidable and you're going to be late, that's just the way it goes.

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But for someone who is constantly late, what you're really saying is that my time is more valuable than your time.

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And my time, and by extension I, am more important than you are.

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And that reflects a mental attitude. And that is one of the mental attitudes we are not to have because what does the

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Bible tell us? We are to regard our brethren as what? Better than ourselves.

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We are supposed to pay at least as much time thinking about their needs as our needs.

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And when you think about it, in a church group like this, it is a much better deal if we actually live that way because if I spend my time worrying about me, how many people are worrying about me?

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Just one. But if we spend our time all worrying about each other or thinking about each other, then you've got 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 people worrying and thinking about your problems, don't you?

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And it's really a much better deal. Yeah, and I'm using the term worry advisedly there.

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You know, worry is a sin too, so we won't go into that today. It's a different lesson. But anyway, that brings us up to where we left off.

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Question number 13. Do I disobey God in anything? Do I disobey

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God in anything? Am I conscious of doing something deliberately that I know is a violation of what

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God wants for me? Either it is something that is specifically forbidden in Scripture or it is something that is specifically given in Scripture that you are to do this because, you know,

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Scripture is not totally thou shalt not. There's also thou shalt. And so am

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I avoiding either one of those things or is it something that bothers my conscience to do?

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And we'll hit this a little bit more in depth. Is it something that bothers my conscience to do but I want to do it and so I'm going to go ahead?

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You know, am I doing anything that is disobedient to God? And what does

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Paul say in 1 Corinthians? 1 Corinthians 1031. We are to do everything, do all to his glory, aren't we?

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Whatever we do, whether it's work, whether it's play, whether whatever the activity is, we are to do it to his glory.

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The idea that there is a spiritual side over here, you know, and this is spiritual stuff.

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And over here, this side over here, this is secular stuff, you know.

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And that idea is not supported in Scripture. Everything in the life of the believer is to be done under his glory.

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And everything in the life of the believer is to be treated as if we are doing it unto him.

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It is all a matter of worship. Paul says, you know, don't treat one day above another.

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Now, yes, we have one specific day that we set it apart specifically for the worship of the

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Lord to reflect on him. And indeed, we should be doing that because God gave us the day of rest.

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But every other day should also be as unto the Lord as well.

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In our business dealings with the individuals that we deal with at work, in whatever it is, in our recreation, in whatever concerns us, for children in our going to school, all of it should be done as unto the

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Lord. Living the Christian life is to be a practical thing.

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And that, of course, is what rubs modern society the wrong way is that, you know, you can believe anything you want.

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It's fine with them as long as you, heaven forbid, should let this practically affect your life.

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You know, you can't do that. You can't let your beliefs practically affect your life.

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Although, as we pointed out last time, if you don't let it affect your life, you don't really believe it.

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Because believing implies obedience. As we've used the illustration before, you can say that you believe the airplane will fly.

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You can say that you believe the pilot knows what he's doing and knows how to get to whatever city you're trying to get to.

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But unless you get on the airplane, you don't really believe that. Because believing implies action.

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Well, it's the same thing. If you say, I believe certain things about Jesus Christ.

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I believe certain things about the Bible. I believe certain things about my heavenly

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Father. But if you don't act on those things, then you don't really believe it.

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Then you don't really believe it. But that is what gets us crossways with society is that, you know, everything is fine until you start letting it affect your life.

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Although the idea, frankly, is how you can hold a belief and not have it affect the way you view life and the decisions you make and all of that.

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That's a ludicrous concept when you think about it. But nonetheless, you know, that's the objections that you hear from time to time in the press and elsewhere about certain individuals.

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So do I disobey God in anything? Obedience also implies respect.

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There's a parable of two sons. In Matthew Chapter 21, Jesus gave a parable of two sons.

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And the first son, his father says to him, go and work in the vineyard. And the son says, no,

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I'm not going to do that. And he goes off. But after a while, he begins to bother his conscience. He has a change of heart, and he goes to work.

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Son number two, who apparently took the How to Win Friends and Influence People course, he says, sure,

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Dad. And then he goes off and does whatever he wants to do. And Jesus asked the question, which of the two did their father's will?

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And the answer is obviously the first one. Even though he said, you know, I'm not going to do it, he's the one that wound up in the vineyard working, not the other one who gave lip service to what father wanted.

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And so, again, we are to, if we have respect, if we have, if we esteem highly our heavenly father, we will do what he says.

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We will obey. So moving on, and this goes back to what we were talking about earlier.

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Do I insist on something that makes about which my conscience is uneasy? Is there something that I want to do or that I wind up doing that makes my conscience uneasy?

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And there's two ways to look at this. Let's look for a moment at 1

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Corinthians 8. 1

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Corinthians 8, and starting in verse 7, Paul is speaking.

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However, there is not in every man that knowledge, for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled.

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But food commendeth us not to God, for neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse.

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But take heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak.

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So here's the first issue. What Paul's talking about, in his day, the best meat market in town where you got the best steak was down at the local temple because people would bring in meat, offer it to the idol, and then the priest there would take this basically and sell it in the temple meat market or in the pagan meat market, and that's where you got the good steak.

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And there were those who were believers that they understood, I can buy that, that meat is just meat.

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Where it came from is irrelevant. I can buy that, I can eat that, I can enjoy it, praise

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God for it. But other individuals, and by implication they were newer in the faith, would be very bothered by that.

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How could you be eating something that came out of the pagan temple? And so this is the first point.

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Paul is saying, okay, you're absolutely right, meat eaters. Meat eaters, you're right.

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Where the food comes from is irrelevant. You set it before you, you thank

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God for it, you eat it, you enjoy it. However, if you're having some of the brethren over to dinner and you know that this bothers them, don't serve steak to those folks because it's going to bother them.

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Don't make them do something. They might eat it because they don't want to make a fuss in your house, but it's going to bother their conscience.

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And so don't you put a stumbling block before that person. That's the real thrust of this particular point.

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If someone can see you do something and wind up going against their own conscience, then back off from that.

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That's loving the brethren. That's loving the brethren. So that's one thing he talks about.

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Move on down just a little bit in the passage to 1 Corinthians 10, and we'll see as he expands the same idea.

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In verse 23, all things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.

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All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. That is, they don't build up. Let no man seek his own, but every man another man's wealth.

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Whatever is sold in the market, that eat, asking no questions for conscious sake. For the earth is the

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Lord's and the fullness thereof. Quoting the Psalms there. If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast and you be disposed to go, whatever is set before you, eat, asking no questions for conscious sake.

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In other words, if you get invited out to an unbeliever's house and they set something in front of you, you eat it.

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Don't make a fuss about it. But if any man say to you, this is offered in sacrifice to idols, then eat not for his sake that showed it and for conscious sake.

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For the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. He makes the same point again. So if it bothers the person that's serving it to you, or if it's bothering someone that's with you, then you forbear.

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And think of their conscience. It's their conscience, not yours, that he's talking about here.

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And then finally, look at Romans. Look in Romans chapter 14. Romans chapter 14 and verse 20.

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In fact, back up one verse, verse 19. Let us, therefore, follow after the things which make for peace and things from which one may edify another.

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For food destroyed not the work of God. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for that man who eateth with offense.

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Now, what's he mean by that? He said, if it bothers, that's where it comes down to. If it bothers your conscience, don't do it.

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If it bothers your conscience, don't do it. So that you live your life before the

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Lord. Each of us is to live our lives before the Lord. And so to those of us to whom these taboos, we'll call them, don't bother us.

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However, don't flaunt that in front of what Paul calls weaker brethren.

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Don't rub somebody's nose in that. Oh, I can eat meat. Rub somebody's nose in it.

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Don't do that. That is not displaying love for the brethren. And for those of you,

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Paul says, who are bothered by these things, don't do them. Don't do them.

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Because if your conscience, God gave us our conscience. It's that little thing that sort of jabs us occasionally.

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To make you stop and think about what are you doing.

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Is this something that the Lord would have you to do? Is this the proper thing to do? It is a guard.

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Your conscience is a guard. And we are to encourage our conscience.

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We are not to have our conscience seared. And that's another simile and metaphor that is used in the

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Scripture about someone who ignores their conscience. Because the danger to that is, every time you ignore your conscience, it's a little bit easier the next time to do it again.

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And if you've ever been burned, what happens? The nerve endings at the site of the burn get destroyed, don't they?

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So that you no longer have any feeling there. And that's what Paul means when he says, you have your conscience seared with a hot iron.

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If you reject your conscience as warning often enough, it's not going to warn you anymore.

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You're going to have it seared and it loses the feeling, it loses the sensitivity. Yes. What Charlie said is that, is it possible that as you associate with fellow believers, you will be resensitized in certain areas?

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And that's true. That's definitely a point that I think can be made here.

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And that's another reason to associate with fellow believers. That's another reason why we're not supposed to be the lone ranger out there.

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The lone Christian riding along. We're not supposed to be like that. We're supposed to get with fellow like -minded believers.

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Because that has an effect upon us in both directions. It keeps us from going too far in the direction of liberty.

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It also keeps us from going too far in the direction of asceticism. By asceticism,

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I mean all of the taste not, touch not, don't do this, don't do that. We don't drink and we don't chew and we don't go with girls that do.

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You know how that goes. Anyway, so it keeps you more down the middle of the road.

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There's safety in numbers. There's strength in numbers, which is why we are to associate with our fellow believers.

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Day in, week in, week out. And how we're supposed to go with that. Yes. I did not prime that question.

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Ah. Yeah, the check's in the mail. The question was, is our conscience the equivalent to the indwelling

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Holy Spirit or does the Holy Spirit work through the conscience? My answer to that would be that the Holy Spirit works through the conscience.

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The conscience is one of those things that the Holy Spirit uses, one of the tools that the

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Holy Spirit uses, again, to keep us on the straight and narrow. Yes, Dave. Exactly.

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Yes, two very good points. It is true, and Paul makes this point again in Romans, is that even in the unbeliever, there is a vestige left.

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We are created, as we've gone into several times the last few weeks, we are created in God's image.

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That's what makes man different from all of the other animals. We alone are created in God's image.

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And even in fallen man, there is an echo of that left. There is an echo of that left.

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In fact, Francis Schaeffer makes the point several times that society, as society runs, the extent to which it runs well is based on the echo of God's image implanted in us.

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Even unbelieving man, deep down, they suppress it, as Paul says.

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They suppress that knowledge, but the knowledge was there. And if you dig down far enough, in most people, it's still down there, such as, you know, they know that, why should you not murder?

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Well, you should not murder because men are created in God's image. And if you dig down far enough, that echo, the echo of that memory is still there.

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But the conscience is, it's your warning system. And it does need to be programmed, if you will.

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It needs to be sensitized. And taking in the word of God is one of the reasons, is one of the best ways to do that.

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That's one of the reasons we should memorize scripture. Because even if you can't, off the top of your head, call off chapter and verse, you know, and start rattling it off, the fact that you've memorized it, it's there.

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It's running around inside the gray matter. And it will be brought to the surface as necessary.

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And so this is why those of you with small children have to memorize scripture. You know, it won't hurt them.

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It might do them some good one of these days. The same thing, and I've made this remark before too, if I had a chance to go back and raise my kids again, one of the differences that I would do is that this time

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I think I would catechize them some. I would have them memorize some of the catechism.

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A little catechism never hurt anybody. And, you know, so they learn these things and learn these ideas.

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So anyway, let's move along, though, because I want to get to the end of this before we're out of time. The next one, and we're starting to get now into questions that concern our personal lives.

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Question 15, am I defeated in any part of my life? Am I defeated in any part of my life?

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Is there any particular sin that gets the better of me at any given time?

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Is there, am I constantly, it seems to be, quote, under the circumstances, unquote, you know, as one friend of mine used to put it, what are you doing under there?

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And am I letting my circumstances affect my basic approach to life?

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How is it going? You know, is what the, another way of phrasing this is what the

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Bible says about my life more real to me than what the exterior circumstances of my life seem to be.

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Because chatting this morning, take the story of Job. Take the story of Job.

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During that whole thing, there was only one individual that knew what was going on. And it wasn't

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Job, and it wasn't his three friends, and it wasn't Job's wife. God was the only person that knew what was going on in that whole thing.

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Everybody else was clueless. And life is like that a great deal of the time.

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We don't know what is going on, but you can count on it. Things are not what they seem. And God does know what's going on.

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And so to be defeated in life, there are times when, you know, we go through life, and man, everything is great, and we're just bopping along and having a great time.

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And there are other times when, you know, you just put your head down and plow through because it seems like everything is against you.

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Nothing is going your way and all of that. And yet, you know, what do you do at times like that?

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You just, as Brother Dave put it, you keep on keeping on at that point. You just put your head down and go.

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Stick to the Word, you know, stick to prayer, and put your head down and keep plowing because at some point, it's going to open up again.

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And it will either all become clear or it won't. It may not be until eternity that it becomes clear.

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But you can rest in the fact that God knows what He's doing, and God has His plan, and whatever

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God brings into your life is for your best. Count on that. Whatever God brings into your life is for your best.

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You should have Christian common sense in things like this.

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Here's a quote. The foes from whom we pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites, and follies.

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And against these, there is always need that we should war. Now, I would think that the person that made that quote, he sort of, do you get the idea that maybe he was thinking of personal responsibility in that quote?

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That was from Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States. And, you know, we do.

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Now there's an excuse for everything. We can find an excuse for everything, can't we? Nothing's our fault.

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We have built this curious society in which nothing is my fault, but everything is somebody's fault, and I've got to find that person and sue them, whoever that is.

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And don't we function like that? You know, but nothing's my fault. And yet,

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T .R. did not agree with that, and the Bible doesn't agree with that either. The Bible says we're sinners, and all of these things come from within us.

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You know, the problem is ourselves. We have met the enemy, and he is us. The heart of man is desperately wicked.

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Who can know it, says Jeremiah. And so, we are to have

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Christian common sense as we do with these things. And as we go through life, apply a certain amount of common sense to your life.

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You say, oh, I'm so defeated in this area or that area. Well, first of all, the writer of Hebrews talks about the sin that does so easily beset us, the besetting sin.

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And every one of us has in some area of our lives, we have a besetting sin, some area of our lives in which we are prone to sin.

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And it's different for every individual. But you need to know what your besetting sin is and avoid circumstances where it might be tempted.

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It's sort of like the old joke where the guy goes to the doctor and says, doctor, I broke my arm in three places, and he says, stay out of those places.

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Fifty dollars, please. Well, but yeah, if you know you're going to get your arm broke in certain places, stay out of those places.

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Don't go trying to stress your spiritual muscles, you know, to see how strong you are and how easily, how well you can resist this area, whatever it is.

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Stay away, you know, flee, the Bible says. And so the other thing you do as a positive thing to combat this feeling of defeat in your life is keep your eye on the finish line.

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Keep your eye on the finish line. Now, when a runner runs, he does not watch his feet.

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He does not watch the guy next to him. For sure he doesn't look over his shoulder to see if somebody is gaining on him.

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He keeps his attention focused on the finish line. A sprinter will lock his eyes on the finish line right from the blocks.

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And as soon as that gun goes, he's gone and headed for that finish line. And even a marathoner, he's got his mind focused not on how tired he is right now or how sore his legs are getting or any of the rest of it.

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He is focused on the finish line. Because if you talk to a marathoner, they'll all tell you that around 15, 16 miles along in that area, you do what's called hitting the wall.

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Where it's like you can't take another step. You're just done.

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You're exhausted. And yet, there's 10 more miles to go before the finish line. And the way they combat that is they focus on that finish line.

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Well, we do the same thing with our spiritual lives. There is ultimate salvation.

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This is what Paul refers to, I think, when he's talking about the helmet of salvation in Ephesians. It's the knowledge, the certain knowledge that this isn't going to last forever.

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There is a finish line. Someday, we are going to be in heaven with our heavenly father.

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We will be there. It will be over. We will have our glorified bodies. And we will have salvation in the ultimate sense.

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And that mental attitude is a big defense against feelings of defeat.

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It gives you the idea that no matter how hard it's getting right now today, it's not going to last forever.

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It is going to end. So keep at it. Keep at it.

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Keep going. And the writer of Hebrews tells you, you know, lots of folks, the great cloud of witnesses he refers to.

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You know, other folks have gotten there before you. And in a way, they're watching.

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You know, they're encouraging. They're watching. So keep going. Keep going. Keep at it. So now we start to look at some things that are more in the personal area.

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Question 16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful, or all of the above?

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Or all of the above? What kind of a person am I with regard to the outside world, to the people that I deal with, to my fellow

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Christians? You know, there are individuals in this world who are not sweetness and light.

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I hate to tell you that. But it's true. And they're all of these things.

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They're jealous. They're impure. They're critical. They're irritable. They're touchy. They're distrustful. All of that sort of stuff.

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And you know what? Nobody likes to be around people like that, do they? Because what does the

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Bible say? How are we supposed to be? How are we supposed to act?

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Well, it's interesting. The Bible has quite a bit to say about that. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, that's the chapter you always go to when you want to talk about personal conduct.

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All right. Here's the list of stuff that is supposed to characterize the believer.

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Patient. Not jealous. Patient. Kind. He doesn't envy.

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That's the exact opposite of being jealous, isn't it? He doesn't envy.

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When someone else, you know, when someone else comes into a great windfall, you know, you're struggling with life.

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Your bills are mounting up. Somebody else in the church comes into a great windfall some way or another.

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They get a big promotion or a great uncle, whatever, dies and leaves them a legacy, whatever it is.

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Do you genuinely rejoice for them? Do you genuinely rejoice for them?

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Say, praise the Lord. The Lord has met their need. You know, or is it, well, why couldn't that be me?

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Why couldn't that be me? You know, I'm in a lot worse shape, Lord, than so and so is. You know, it should have been me.

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No, no. The Christian rejoices with the brethren.

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The Christian mourns with the brethren. He doesn't envy. He doesn't get puffed up because, yeah,

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Daniel. Yeah. It's very easy to rejoice with the brethren.

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Right. Once you want to fill up the tank, you'll see someone get something for you.

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Yeah. And that is a problem. That is a problem.

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All of us, I think, have felt that when someone, particularly men in our work situation, because, you know, some people are better politicians than others.

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And we have to admit it that sometimes the politicians get ahead at the expense of others, don't they? And when you see someone else get the job that you should have, that you had your eye on and you should have had, and maybe you really should have had it.

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Maybe you were better qualified. It's just that you're not as good a politician or maybe you just, you don't play the politics.

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Then what? This is when God is testing you as well. How are you going to react to that?

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How are you going to react to that? Are you going to continue? Are you going to continue to be as supportive?

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Maybe this other person is your new boss. Are you going to continue to be supportive to that person?

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Or maybe your boss is a jerk and maybe he really is. But are you going to support him anyway?

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Because he is the person that God put into that position over you.

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The powers that be are what? Ordained of God, right? Dave? Well, we're assuming it was someone lost.

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Yeah. And that is the proper perspective.

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The ungodly, the unsaved are on a slippery slope. Bruce? That's exactly.

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And Jesus made that point, didn't he? Several times. He said the Pharisees love the best seats.

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They love to be greeted in the marketplace. They do what they do to be seen before men.

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That's the reward they want. And they have it. They have their reward. Implying, but that's the only reward they're going to get.

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So they should enjoy it now. But, yes, the

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Christian is not puffed up. He doesn't exalt himself at the expense of other people. He doesn't puff himself up.

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That, in a way, goes back to the first question. Am I consciously or unconsciously exerting the impression that I'm better than I really am?

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This whole thing about, you know, you don't advance yourself. You don't build yourself up.

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You wait for God to advance you. Because I can tell you, if God promotes you, you are promoted.

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If God promotes you, you are promoted. Look at Daniel. Daniel was advanced in a pagan kingdom.

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He was advanced to the highest place and kept there through three successive rulers.

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And that's very unusual because normally in those days, as soon as the new ruler came to power, the first thing he did was cut off the heads of everybody that served the old guy, but not

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Daniel. So, if God puts you up there, you're there and you're going to stay.

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Then what else does it say? It says you're not easily provoked. You don't think evil.

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You don't think evil. To rephrase that a little bit, you always think the best in any given situation.

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And how often do we, when something happens, we put the worst possible interpretation on it.

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We just go there, you know, right there. When there are other possible interpretations, but we don't allow for just plain old things happening.

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There's a lot of that in the world. We don't allow for the fact that we live in a fallen world.

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And stuff happens in this fallen world simply because it is fallen. But, oh no, we've got to go to the worst possible.

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We assign the worst possible motives to something that happens. We look at the worst possible interpretation of something.

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But Paul says Christians don't do that. Christians don't think evil.

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By contrast, they rejoice in the truth. And Christians hope and Christians endure all of these things.

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The exact opposite of all of these characteristics that were put here. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?

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And nobody likes to be around a person that's like that. Nobody likes to be around a person that's like that.

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And particularly not when they start taking it out on other people. You, for example.

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In one of our other churches, there was a woman in this church.

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And she took 1 Timothy 4 -2, I believe it is, very seriously. Where it says, exhort, rebuke.

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And she thought there was a rebuking ministry. And she was in charge of it. And the week was wasted if she couldn't find somebody to rebuke about something.

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But she wasted very few weeks, let me tell you. But, you know, nobody wanted to be around her.

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Because she was always so negative about everything. And it was always these little niggly things, you know.

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Usually issues of personal liberty. That you weren't doing whatever she thought that you ought to do. And so, you know, we won't spend a lot of time there.

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The next question is, how do I spend my spare time? What do I use my spare time for?

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Because we can't keep at work all the time. You know, we can't.

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There has to be some down time. There has to be time where we do things that refresh us.

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And that rejuvenate and recharge our batteries. And it's different for each one of us.

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You know, for my youngest son, to him, the most relaxing thing he could possibly do is go out and get on his bicycle and ride it for 50 or 60 miles.

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Amen. Yeah. Thank you, brother. Or go out and find a rock face that goes up like that and climb it.

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You know, hang off his fingernails going up that. And he finds that very relaxing. And he had a great time, you know.

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And fine. But whatever else did you find to do that recharges your batteries?

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But how do you do that? How do you do that? What types of things are we supposed to concentrate our time on?

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Well, Philippians 4 .8 says this. If it's pure, if it's lovely, if it's a good report, if it's virtuous, and if it's praiseworthy, those are the things that we are to think on or to concentrate our time on.

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And does what we do for recreation fit into those categories? Does what we do for recreation fit into those categories?

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We're to ask ourselves those questions. And we have to speed up a little bit here.

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Am I proud? And that sort of goes through the whole thing. All of the rest of these questions come right out of that one.

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Where you can look at Proverbs, Proverbs 16, 18, Proverbs 6, 17, where it talks about proud.

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It's interesting that in Proverbs it has a list of sins. There are not many lists of sins in the

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Bible, by the way. Proverbs is one of them. And right at the beginning of it, if you read the King James, number one is a proud look.

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A proud look and a lying tongue is number two. You have to get to number three before you get to the first overt action.

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So that's interesting. And what does Proverbs say about pride? Pride goeth before destruction.

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And sin, all sin can get lumped back into pride, if you will.

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Pride was the first sin in the universe. Because what did Lucifer say? He said, I will be like the most high.

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I'm not satisfied to be the first of creation. I am going to be like God. And so, am

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I proud? And finally, a couple more things, and very quickly. Do I thank

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God that I'm not as other people, especially like the Pharisees? You know, I'm not like that.

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Who despised the publican? If you think, if you're like the Pharisees that despised the publican, then you didn't learn the right lesson out of that illustration.

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Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward, or disregard? If so, what am

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I doing about it? What does the Bible tell us? We are to love the brethren as ourselves.

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We are to at least esteem them as highly as we do ourselves. And so, this also ties back to question number 16.

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Do I hold grudges? Am I unforgiving? All of those things, the theological name for all of those things is sin.

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And then question 21, do I grumble or contain constantly? We could do an entire lesson on this.

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But suffice it to say that that's another type of person nobody wants to be around. Somebody who is always grumbling, always complaining.

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Because what's happening when you're doing that? When you're doing that, you are rejecting what

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God has brought into your life. If it's a constant thing. Now, all of us complain from time to time.

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All of us grumble from time to time. We're all, after all, sinners saved by grace at best. But nonetheless,

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I'm talking about the type of person that always is complaining. You know, the Eeyore type of personality.

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You all know who Eeyore is, the little donkey in Winnie the Pooh? You know, if you went outside and said, oh, isn't it a beautiful day?

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Eeyore says, yeah, but it's probably going to rain. Or, you know, oh, isn't it marvelous what the

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Lord has created? Yeah, but, you know, it's probably going to come a hurricane or something. You know, that kind of attitude.

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That does not honor the Lord. The Lord does not like that. And neither does anybody else.

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So, and finally, the question that sums up everything else, is Christ real to me?

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Is Christ real to me? If Christ is real to you, if Christ is real to you, then you will do what he says.

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If Christ is real to us, we will do what he says. We will listen to his word because he has spoken to us.

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He has spoken to us in the pages of his word. And he gives it to us in a permanent form so that we can go back to it and constantly look at it again because we have to be reminded, don't we?

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You know, think of how much more blessed we are today than the early

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Christians were. If they could read, which they probably couldn't, they might have one book, what are now one of our books, they might have had one of Paul's letters or a partial copy of that because the only way to get a copy was to sit down and write it out, longhand.

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And so, what do we have? Not only do we have the complete canon of scripture, we've got it in a whole plethora of versions.

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You know, I would guarantee, I would be willing that every one of you has probably got at least two different versions of the

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Bible in your house and maybe three or four or five or six, whatever it is.

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We've got all of that. We are blessed, people. We are blessed and Christ should be real to us, meaning that he's really there, he's really there, he really affects what we do and what he thinks and what he directs have practical implications in our lives.

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That's what the whole thing is all about. That's what all of these questions are all about. Is Christ real to you?

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So let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you, number one, that you have sent your son to be our substitute, that you sent your son to die in our place, that you sent your son to bear our sins on the cross.

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We thank you, Lord, that he is a real person, that he is alive at this moment, that he is seated at the right hand of the

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Father and that he is pleading for us. And, Lord, we would pray that you would make him real to us.

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Let us see him as a real living person to whom we owe our allegiance and to whom we owe our obedience.