Religion Can Be Good

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Alright, open up your Bibles with me.
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And let's turn to James chapter 1.
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And we're going to finish chapter 1.
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How long have I been doing this? 3 months? And we're just now getting to the end of chapter 1? That's alright.
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I ain't in the business of going fast.
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And this is actually one of my favorite passages to use when I'm talking to folks about the church.
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Because one of the things you will hear people all the time today say, I don't like religion.
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Or I hate religion.
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Or I'm not about a religion, I'm about a relationship.
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You've probably even said it.
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Some of you have said it.
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Put that in your mind as we read the text.
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Alright.
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James chapter 1 verse 26.
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If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.
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Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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Father, as I pray to these men who I know You love and who I love, I pray first, Father, that You would by Your mercy and grace keep me from error.
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Because Your Word is worth the truth.
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Your Word is the truth.
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I pray that You would keep me from saying anything that would be in opposition to Your Word.
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I pray that they would be mindful and attentive to what is being said from Your Word.
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And anything I say that's in error would be wiped from their minds.
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And Father, as we look at the Word today and it talks about pure and undefiled religion, true religion, let us, Father, consider the opposite of that, which is worldly, ungodly, sensuous, fleshly religion, which has so encapsulated so much of our world.
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Father, be with us as we study.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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A few years ago, that phrase, it's not a religion, it's a relationship, got pretty much locked into the evangelical vernacular.
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People liked it.
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Because here's the issue people had.
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People would say things like, I don't like religious people.
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Or they would say something like this, Jesus only took issue with the religious people.
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Jesus only came to go against the religious people.
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Jesus wasn't against the prostitutes because He would let them come to Him.
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He wasn't against the tax collectors because He would let them come to Him.
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He wasn't against the people of sin and transgression.
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He was against the religious people.
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And I understand the heart of the argument.
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Because can't we all agree that some of the worst folks in history have been religious people? Man, I can't get a stronger amen than that.
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Are y'all in there? Wait, you didn't get your coffee this morning? Some of the worst people in history have been religious folks.
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Thank you, thank you.
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I like that, I got my man right there.
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Don't want to knock me out.
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Alright.
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It's the truth.
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You look at the Spanish Inquisition.
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That was a religious exercise.
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You look at the Crusades.
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That was a religious exercise.
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You look at the towers falling on 9-11.
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That was a religious exercise, wouldn't you agree? The men were doing what they were doing for their God on behalf of what they believed Him to be commanding them to do.
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So we could say that 9-11 was a religious thing.
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You see these guys on television that are putting the people in little orange jumpsuits and they take the knives and they drag it across their neck until they take their head clean off.
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And what are they saying as they do that? Allahu Akbar.
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Praise God.
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It's Arabic.
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Praise God.
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So I think we can agree at least tacitly that religion can be used for nefarious ends.
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It can be a nefarious mean to a nefarious end, right? And you can take this back to even the time of Jesus Christ.
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The Pharisees were some pretty scoundrelous men.
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They allowed for things, the Bible talks about some things that they would allow for people to do.
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How many of you know what the Korban rule is? It's in the New Testament.
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The Korban rule was, let's say you had money that you had amassed and you should be helping your parents in their aged condition.
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Well, you could take that money and you could dedicate that money to the temple.
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And then your parents wouldn't have access to it.
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You would, they wouldn't.
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And so you could say to your parents, my money is Korban, I don't have anything for you.
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And the Pharisees allowed that to have actually encouraged it because that money that was dedicated to them was for their use as well.
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It was sort of like an early first century TBN scam.
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Right? I'm sorry, I rock on TBN hard.
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So if you're a TBN aficionado, I may hurt your feelings.
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And that's okay.
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Because I've had my feelings hurt and I'm still alive.
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See, people today think you get your feelings hurt, you're going to die.
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You are not going to die.
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You will survive.
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The Korban rule is an amazing thing because Jesus said, you have forgotten the law.
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You've rejected the law which says to honor your father and mother by doing what you're doing.
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And you're doing it with a religious purpose.
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So you understand now why people would begin to say religion is bad.
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Let me ask you this.
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Have any of you, and you be honest, have any of you ever been mistreated by somebody who was, by their own boasting, a religious person? You ever been mistreated by a religious person? I had people try to have me removed as a pastor.
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In 2008.
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There were people in the church who tried to rise up and have me removed.
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Even went to other pastors in the area and tried to get them involved.
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Not because I was doing anything nefarious or anything ungodly, but because I believed in the sovereignty of God and election.
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They didn't like that teaching.
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And so they tried to have me removed.
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By God's grace, they left, I didn't.
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And I'm still there.
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But, the point is, they considered themselves very religious.
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What did Jesus say about the Pharisees? He said, you consider yourself very religious, but you are whitewashed sepulchres.
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You're whitewashed tombs.
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They're basically like this.
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You got dead bones inside of you, but the outside looks good because it's clean.
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So like if you go out to the National Cemetery out on Laney Road, I'll be out there tomorrow morning.
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We're going to lay this lady to rest.
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Her husband fought in Vietnam.
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That cemetery is beautiful.
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Every one of those marble headstones is meticulously manicured.
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It's kept white and pure and beautiful.
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But down in that ground is dead bones.
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They're rotting, decaying.
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If you open up that ground, just the stench itself would knock you over.
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Right? Because it's dead bones.
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And that's what Jesus said religion is when it's all on the outside.
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You see, what I want to tell you today is the problem is not really with religion.
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The problem is external religion.
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And the problem is false religion.
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But it's not religion itself.
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Because James uses the word religion in this passage in a positive way.
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And so we don't need to just adopt a bumper sticker.
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When I say a bumper sticker, I'm not religious.
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I have a relationship.
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That's a bumper sticker.
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That's not theology.
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That's a t-shirt slogan.
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Right? That's something we write on the side of a billboard.
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That's not theology.
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Theology looks at the whole.
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Theology looks at everything.
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And says, okay, if we're going to talk about religion, we have to say this.
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There are external religion.
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I bet that noise does bother you.
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I'm sorry.
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I bet you had a better one.
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And there is false religion.
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And both of those are wrong.
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Ow, stop.
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I don't want to encourage your anger there, pup.
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I'm sorry.
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Let's talk for a second about external religion.
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Somebody can be in a church that preaches the truth and still be lost.
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Agree? Agree.
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Somebody...
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What would it...
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Why would, though, they be able to be a part of that church if they're lost? Outward appearance.
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Because they have an outward appearance.
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Thank you, brother.
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That's exactly right.
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Because they've made a profession of faith.
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Is it possible to make a profession of faith and not be truly a Christian? Yeah.
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Jesus said, Not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father.
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For many will come to me on that day and say, Lord, Lord, have we not done this? Have we not done that? Have we not done the other? And he will say, depart from me.
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I never knew you.
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You workers of iniquity.
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Right? So, Jesus said, you can make a profession without being saved.
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This is the hardest part because we hear the Bible and it says, He who shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
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And you say, so is this a contradiction in Scripture? Because over here it says you can make a profession and not be saved.
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Over here it says, if you call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved.
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Is that a contradiction? No, it's not a contradiction.
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You have to understand both of them in their context.
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When Jesus is talking about those who say unto Me, Lord, Lord, He's specifically talking about someone who is in that profession professing something that is not true.
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So now you go over to everyone who calls Me, Lord, Lord.
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Does that have to be true for it to be effective? Yes, the answer is yes.
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Don't make me confuse you.
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Can you call upon the Lord in false profession and expect that He will save you? You say, well, why would anybody ever do that? Why would anybody ever make a false profession of faith? Come on, give me an answer.
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Why would anybody? Outward appearance? Look good? People-pleaser.
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I'm going to go with that one.
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All of them are right.
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But I think about this.
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I think about little kids.
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You know, we're very careful in our church not to accept children into membership very, very young.
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Now, I'm not saying we'll deny them as welcoming them as believers, but we don't accept them as members as very young because we know how easy it is for children to be manipulated into decisions that are not genuine.
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In fact, I tease my Baptist brothers because I say, if you all keep baptizing younger and younger kids, you're going to have to quit bothering the Presbyterians.
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Because they're almost baptizing.
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Maybe they're baptizing three-year-olds, four-year-olds.
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I mean, they're getting close to that infant baptism.
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Right? In fact, there was a church up north that built a baptistry to look like a firetruck.
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And when you put the kid in the baptistry and you baptize them, the firetruck had a siren and lights.
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Woo! Now you tell me what five-year-old ain't going to want to dive into the firetruck baptistry.
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And so they have a vacation Bible school.
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They invite 100 kids to their vacation Bible school, and 75 of them want to get into the firetruck baptistry.
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And now they've got 75 extra baptisms that they can add to the list at the end of the year to show to the Southern Baptist Convention how well we're doing with our baptisms.
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And I'm not here to poo-poo on the SBC.
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I could say this about any other group.
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The point is, is that not the heart of external religion? Not only in the child who doesn't know any better, but in the group that's trying to encourage the child to make the decision to make the group look better.
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To identify themselves as the true work of God.
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Look what we did.
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We got 75 people saved.
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How many of you have ever heard of Judgment House? You know what Judgment House is? Every Halloween or somewhere around Halloween, they'll have a play.
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And it's like a walk-through play.
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You walk into the first room, there's a kid arguing with his parents.
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You walk into the next room, he's fighting at school.
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You walk into the next room, he's doing drugs.
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You walk into the next room, he's committing suicide.
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It's real dark.
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I mean, it's bad.
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It's like, yeah, no, it's a walk-through play and every year it's something.
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One year it was a mass shooting.
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One year it was a terrorist attack.
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I mean, it's always something really drastic.
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They don't do anything about going to Disney World.
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It's always bad.
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And they walk through and by the end, you go to hell.
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You walk through hell.
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You say, Pastor Keith, how do you know about this? I played the devil one year.
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I did.
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I promise you, I'm not lying.
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I played the devil in hell for a judgment house.
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This was a long, long time ago.
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So after they've walked everybody through judgment house and they've walked them through hell, then they take you to heaven where you get to walk in and see Jesus.
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And Jesus is standing there with His arms wide open and there's amazing grace playing and He hugs you and He welcomes you.
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And then they take you into a little room.
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What's the little room for? No, it's decision time.
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It's decision time.
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They bring you into the little room and they've got a little guy there with a book and he says, Now, do you know that you know that you know if you were to die tonight that you would go to heaven? And of course, these people just saw a picture of hell and they're scared to death.
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Emotion is times ten.
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And so they're, no, I don't know.
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Well, pray this prayer after me.
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Say, I believe.
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I believe.
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In Jesus.
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In Jesus.
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And I repent.
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Or whatever.
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I don't even know the sinner's prayer.
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I don't even use the sinner's prayer.
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I know it so little I can't recite it.
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I don't even know how it goes.
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Because I don't believe in it.
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But we can talk about that another time.
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Sinner's prayer is when you repent, I don't have to teach you how to go to God.
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I don't have to teach you how to pray.
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I don't have to give you something to recite.
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It's not a recitation.
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When your heart's broken before God, you'll call out to Him in repentance and faith.
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And how that sounds is going to be different from you than it is from me.
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But I don't have to teach you to recite something.
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That's the sinner's prayer.
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But they do that little sinner's prayer.
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And then they say, you are now saved.
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We do an evangelism booth out at the fair.
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Our booth is giving the Gospel tracts out, talking to people about the Gospel.
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There's a booth right next to ours that's an independent fundamentalist Baptist church.
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They're doing a similar thing.
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But the difference is this.
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They take people back into the booth and sit with them and try to get them to pray the sinner's prayer.
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So they can mark off.
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And at the end of the week, they'll say, we got 50 decisions this week.
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And as the people are walking out, they're saying, now you know that you're saved now, right? And they'll go, uh-huh.
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And they'll walk on and walk right back into life.
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Nothing's changed.
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No brokenness over sin.
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No recognition of the reason for the atonement.
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None of that.
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Just you prayed a prayer and you're saved.
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That is external religion.
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And it's false.
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I'm going to stop.
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I promise.
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That is the danger of external religion.
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It's man-manipulated, man-made, manufactured religion.
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You go to a church and there's a preaching of this massive emotional appeal.
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And then the lights get low.
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And the music gets high.
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And everything begins to push you to the front so that you can make that decision.
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I once was asked by a guy, because we don't do invitations at our church, at least not at the end of service, not the traditional invitation.
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And somebody says, well, how's a person supposed to get saved? I said, maybe the way they did for the first 1,850 years of the church before the church started doing that.
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You realize that the idea of people coming forward in a worship service was not done for the first 1,850 years of the church.
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That was introduced by the Methodists who created something called the mourner's bench.
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It was a bench at the front where everybody would come up and cry on that bench.
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And that became adopted by the tent revivalists who would go out and begin to call people forward.
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The calling people forward at the end of a worship service as an expression of faith was not done for 1,800 years.
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And somebody asked me, how are you going to get them saved if you don't do that? Call them to repentance and faith and trust that God's the One who's going to save them.
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Call them to repentance and faith and know that it can happen right then.
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It can happen in the car on the way home.
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It can happen in the bed that night.
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It can happen while I'm preaching.
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I've had people get saved in the middle of a sermon.
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You understand what I'm saying? We do a lot to produce external religious exercises.
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We do a lot to produce external religion.
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And it does very little, if nothing, to affect the heart.
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That's James' issue here in the text.
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It's that if you have a religion that's on the outside, but it hasn't affected your heart, it is not pure and undefiled religion.
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It's not the word religion that's the problem.
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It's the type of religion you've got.
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You've got the wrong kind if it's only external.
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Whether it's done to please people or done to show...
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I honestly believe some people get saved because they need a group to join.
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The church offers community and some people are lonely and they need community.
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Or the church offers structure and some people feel lost in their lives and they need structure.
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Very, very many people come into a relationship with the church without coming into a relationship with Christ.
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And then you have religion that's not pure and undefiled.
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You see.
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In fact, I think it was A.W.
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Tozer who said thousands if not millions of people have come into a position where they have made a profession of faith in Christ and yet have not been saved.
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In fact, Billy Graham made the confession that many of the people that come forward at his conferences, at his big crusades, were not saved.
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And he knew it.
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I'm not here to say anything bad about him or anything like that, but the idea that they were using that as a tool.
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And somebody says, well, what if only a few of them got saved? Isn't that worth it? Not if you sent the other 99 home thinking they were and they weren't.
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I don't have a problem with the few that got saved.
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I've got a problem with the thousands that go home thinking they're saved and have not been changed.
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That's the problem.
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That's external religion.
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And external religion is very dangerous.
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It's what the Pharisees had and down through the ages it has been a blight on the church.
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How do you know someone is false? How do you know someone is not bearing pure and undefiled religion? It will demonstrate itself in how they live and love others.
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That's what James tells us here.
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In fact, he goes on in chapter 2.
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And you know the chapter distinctions are artificial.
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That came later.
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James didn't write a big number 2 and start.
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This was all one thing to him.
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And it starts in chapter 2.
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Right after talking about caring about widows and orphans, he goes into talking about people who we might consider less than ourselves because he says the one who shows partiality is not showing love.
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He said when the rich man comes into your assembly, you put the rich man in the good seat.
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When the other man who is poor comes into your assembly, you tell him you go sit over here or sit down here.
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He said have you not shown your wicked heart by showing partiality to the rich man and showing lack of partiality to the poor man? So James' whole issue here is our faith, if it be genuine, will manifest itself in how we treat other people.
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How we demonstrate love and how we live is the hallmark of true Christian faith.
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It will not just be external.
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It will be from a heart that genuinely loves.
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And the other thing I had up here, I said we had external religion and then there's false religion.
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Before I say any more about the text, I just want to point out the fact there are people who have genuine heart, in their heart they're genuinely sincere, but they're sincere about something that's not true.
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It takes sincerity to fly into a building, y'all.
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I mean really, it does.
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It takes sincerity to kill yourself for your faith.
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But that doesn't make it true.
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Right? False religion is dangerous in the same way external religion is because both of them are opposed to true religion.
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True religion is pure and undefiled.
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Is Islam pure and undefiled? It is? Islam is pure and undefiled.
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Oh, pure and undefiled.
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I confused you.
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I confused you.
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Islam preaches and teaches many things that are against the Bible.
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And you say, well, there are some things that it agrees with the Bible on.
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Yeah.
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Broken clocks, right? Twice a day.
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That's all right.
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I'm not going to say everything the Islam believes is wrong, but I will say this, it's the wrong God, it's the wrong Jesus, it's the wrong understanding of man, and it's the wrong understanding of sin.
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That's enough to make it heresy and dangerous.
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Actually, it wouldn't be heresy because it doesn't claim to be Christianity.
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Heresy is false religion that claims to be Christian.
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Something like Mormonism would be heresy or Jehovah Witness would be heresy.
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That's claiming a fidelity to Christ in the scriptures, but it's teaching something false.
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We would say the difference between that and Islam would be Islam is a false religion.
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It's an entire system that doesn't claim to be Christian and yet it's still false.
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What does Islam teach about Jesus? He was a prophet.
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Arabic for prophet.
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He is a teacher of Allah, a prophet of Allah, and teaches he was a Messiah.
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Did you know that? Islam teaches Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, but that doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean what the Bible says it means.
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You know what I mean? It's like calling him the Messiah.
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Okay, what does it mean to you? Yeah, it means he's anointed one of the Jews.
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What do they think about the Jews? Not a lot, right? In fact, what does Islam believe puts them in the position with Abraham different than the position with the Jews? Yes? It's an assumption to do with Ishmael and Isaac.
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Yeah, they believe Abraham offered Ishmael up on the mountain, not Isaac.
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They believe Ishmael was the favorite and loved son of Abraham and Ishmael is their ancestor and so Ishmael becomes the focal point of the religion.
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I did a paper years ago.
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It was called Three Religions, One God.
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And what I argued, I did not argue, be clear, I did not argue that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God.
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What I argued is that Christian, Jews, and Muslims all claim to worship the same God because all of them claim to worship the God of Abraham.
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You understand that, right? The Arabic, the Muslim says I'm worshiping the God Abraham worshipped.
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The Jew says I'm worshiping the God Abraham worshipped.
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The Christian says I'm worshiping the God Abraham worshiped.
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The problem is they're all three different gods so they can't all be right.
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See, the Muslim says Jesus Christ is not God.
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He's not God in the flesh.
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The Trinity is false.
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And God himself created Jesus as a prophet.
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The Bible doesn't say that.
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So they are rejecting what the Bible says about Jesus.
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The Jewish person says something similar about Jesus.
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He's a prophet.
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But that he is not Yahweh in the flesh.
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So they both would actually stand opposed to the true faith which says that Jesus Christ is not just a mere man but he is in fact the God-man.
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He is truly God and truly man.
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And that's the faith of Christianity and has been for the last 2,000 years.
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And so when we talk about false religion what is the what is the marking point for all false religion? I'll show you.
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It's very easy.
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The marking point for all false religion is Jesus.
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Where you fall on Jesus will be whether you are falling on the right or wrong side of religion.
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You say, but wait a minute.
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The Mormons believe in Jesus.
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What do they believe about Jesus? Yeah.
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They believe God was a man.
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Mormons believe God was once a man.
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He lived on a planet called Kolah.
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Actually on a planet that surrounded a star called Kolah.
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Because of his adherence to Mormon teachings he became a God himself.
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And by celestial marriage was able to populate his own world and become the God of this world.
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Yahweh was once a man on another planet.
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They believe in the perpetual existence of gods.
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Meaning that there is an eternal regression of gods and there's always been gods going back forever.
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And they've always became gods.
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And through that and you can become a God too.
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If you talk to a Jehovah or if you talk to a Mormon one of those little guys on the ten speed ask him, do you believe that you can become a God? If he is honest with you he will say yes.
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I believe I can become a God.
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Well yeah, I'd be a really bad God.
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I would be the worst God.
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I'm like the opposite of Donald Trump.
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Because he's the best at everything.
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I'm the worst.
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I'm joking.
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You know how he always says I got the best.
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I am the best.
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You know.
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And if he thought if he was a Mormon he'd say I'd be the best God.
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But the point of it is what's the view of Jesus and Mormonism? Jesus is the spirit child of Yahweh and he's the spirit brother of Lucifer.
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Because we're all spirit children of Yahweh.
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Or actually Elohim is the name of their yeah, excuse me.
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Jesus is Yahweh.
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In Mormonism Elohim is the God who was a man on another planet.
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So they mix all that up.
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Is that Christianity? Is that true and false? Pure and undefiled religion? It's not pure and undefiled religion.
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I keep confusing you guys.
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Is it pure? No.
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Is it undefiled? No.
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It's defiled.
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It's impure.
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It's false.
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And we could do that all the way down the line.
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Where you stand with Jesus is where you stand in your religion.
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And then there's a second step.
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Because once you have the right Jesus then you have to understand what Jesus did.
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Because the next question is this.
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Do you have a religion that says do? Or do you have a religion that says done? You've probably heard that before.
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But just in case you haven't.
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There's two basic religions that come off of Jesus.
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There is the do and there is the done.
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The do says this.
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You believe in Jesus so do this, this, this, this, this and you will earn heaven.
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You will earn heaven by what you do.
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Let me tell you this.
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I don't know who all comes here and I'm sure Brother Mark ensures that everybody who comes here is preaching the true Gospel.
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But if you ever hear anyone here or elsewhere that tells you you have to do this to earn heaven, feel free to tell them Pastor Keith said you're a liar.
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Heaven is not earned by anything you do.
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What's that? Justification is by faith alone.
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But that's only part of it because you have to understand what that means.
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See people say that.
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Sola Fide.
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Justification by faith alone.
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What does that mean? Faith in Jesus and what He did.
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Because what He did is done.
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Is done.
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What Jesus did is done.
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When He was on the cross and He died, what did He say? Last words.
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It's finished.
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It's done.
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It is done.
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Paid in full.
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The Greek term tetelestai.
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Jesus didn't speak Greek so I'm careful how I say this because He didn't say tetelestai but the translation of what He said Greek term tetelestai means paid in full.
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Like if you've been paying on a car for a while and you finally got that last payment and you come up and you set that payment down on the guy's desk and you say I'm done.
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All of the debt that I owed you is paid.
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All of the responsibility that I had toward you is completed.
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I no longer have obligation.
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It's fulfilled.
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What did Jesus say? I didn't come to abolish the law but I did come to do something.
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Fulfill the law.
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When He died on the cross He fulfilled the law.
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Completely.
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Forever.
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It was done.
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So now you stand before God.
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You stand before God in one of two ways.
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You stand before God saying I've done this.
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I've done that.
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I do, do, do, do, do all these things.
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And guess what? I never knew you.
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That's what the people who said Lord, Lord going back to that passage that's what they said.
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Lord, Lord have we not done this? Have we not done that? Have we not done the other? Guess what? If that is your answer on judgment day God look at what I did.
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You are lost.
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If you're going to carry a list of your accomplishments to the throne of grace know this, the Bible says all your righteousnesses are like filthy, dirty rags.
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You're going to carry a bag of dirty rags to the throne and say here's my offering for my sins? No.
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You have nothing to bring.
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The very best you could do is nothing.
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That's the due religion.
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And that's every other religion except for the religion of Jesus Christ.
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Every other religion says you have to do this.
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Five pillars of Islam.
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613 laws of the Jewish Torah.
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Whatever.
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You show me the religion and I'll show you what you have to do to be saved.
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You show me Christ and I'll show you what was done so that you can be saved.
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That's the difference.
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And that's the difference between true and false religion.
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But may it never be said that because what has been done has been done that it doesn't leave us with a call from God to follow Him.
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Jesus said any man who comes after Me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.
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So what is my doing in my faith? Do I do in my faith? James says yes.
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True and undefiled religion does certain things.
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What does he say in verse 26? He says he bridles his tongue.
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He also cares about widows and orphans.
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You know, we used to not rely on the state to do that.
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The church used to do that.
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Missions and homes.
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Hospitals.
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Baptist hospital.
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That wasn't started by a bunch of Mormons, just so you know.
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It was started by a bunch of Baptists.
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Right? We cared about people.
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But we didn't care about people because we thought it was earning something.
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We cared about people because God cared about us.
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We cared about people because God loved us.
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While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, so we go out in the world and we love other people because God first loved us.
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And what did Jesus say? Well, that's true.
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He did say, He said a lot of things, Pastor.
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Jesus said, If you love Me, you keep My commandments.
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And what's Jesus' great commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
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That's pure and undefiled religion.
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James expresses it in multiple ways.
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How we treat the orphans and the widows.
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Why the orphans and the widows? Because they're the weakest among us.
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That which you have done to the least of these you have done also to Me.
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So we love the orphans and the widows because they're the weakest among us.
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We love the poor man.
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In chapter 2, we're going to talk about this next week.
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We love the poor man because he can give us nothing.
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It's like one commentator said.
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He said, You've never lived until you've done something for someone who could never ever repay you.
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That's love.
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That's agape.
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That's loving self-sacrificially without expecting anything in return.
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And that's the way God loved you.
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And that's the call He gives us to love each other.
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Not to be saved.
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What's done is done.
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And what we do is in response to what is done.
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Not to earn, but to glorify He who did it all.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for the opportunity again to share Your Gospel.
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I thank You for these men.
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I pray, Lord, that we would understand that what's done is done in Christ.
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And we can add not one single minute thing to it, but we trust in Him alone.
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And everything that we do, Lord, is in response, is in gratitude for Him.
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Not to add to the cross, but to glorify the cross.
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To point to Jesus and say, There is the motivation for my love.
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I love because He first loved me.
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And I pray it in His name.
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Amen.