Enemy Love (part 2) - [Matthew 5:45-47]

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Are you different? What makes you different? Is there anything about you that people would find odd, peculiar, striking?

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I don't mean idiosyncratic behaviors. I mean, based on what you used to be before you were a

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Christian. Are you different now than what you were then?

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If somebody met the old you and the new you and they'd say, there's something different about you, the people at work, people at home, people at school, maybe in your own family, maybe your own self, you'd think,

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I'm different. I'm not the person I used to be. Martin Lloyd -Jones asked this question, or he led up to this question, and then he said, it is the most profound question a man can ever face in this life and the world.

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Is there anything special about you? I'm not asking whether you are living a good, moral, upright life.

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I'm not asking whether you say your prayers or whether you go to church regularly. I'm asking none of those things.

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There are people who do all that and are still who are not Christians. If that is all, what do ye more than others?

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What is there special about you? Is there anything of this special quality about you?

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And here comes the question of the hour. Is there something of your Father about you?

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Is there something of your Heavenly Father about you? God says that when we became

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Christians, we have been partakers of the divine nature. You've heard the slogans, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

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You've heard the slogan, like father, like son. If you'll turn your Bibles to Matthew 5, you'll see also that we should be acting like our fathers.

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And in this particular case, in a very strange and weird and noble way, that is we will act like our

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Father in heaven when we love our enemies. We all struggle with assurance of salvation some point in our life.

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And did you know today after we examine this passage, the Lord will use this passage to teach us that as we love enemies more, we will have a greater assurance of salvation.

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That is to say, before you're saved, you don't love your enemies unless you can get something from them.

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But after you're saved, the divine nature is in you, you're a child of God and you will in fact reflect

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God in His love of enemies. And so too you, and so too for myself as well, will begin to love our enemies.

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It's a supernatural thing and you'll say to yourself, I never really loved my enemies before and now

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I do. I have to be a child of God. I would never want to do that. I never could do that. Why would

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I ever love my enemies? People have all kinds of assurance of salvation.

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Some people think if you get baptized and take communion, you're in. Some people think, well,

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I just prayed the prayer, I'm in. Others think, well, you know, I've had an experience, therefore

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I must be in. Yet today Jesus is going to help us to say one of the ways of assurance that you can be settled in your heart to know that you're a

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Christian. There are many ways, but Christ today will focus our attention on when we're loving our enemies, it shows that we have been changed supernaturally by God.

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And I want everyone here to have assurance. Is it a good thing to have assurance? It's a bad thing if you're not saved to have assurance, but if you are a

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Christian, it's good to have assurance. And you know, the predominant religion in New England says it is a mortal sin called the sin of presumption to have assurance of salvation.

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That's not what Jesus would say. Jesus would say to the people listening on the

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Sermon on the Mount, as you begin to love your enemies more and more, it will reveal that your heart has been changed because as God loves his enemies, so too as a child of God, as children of the living

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God, we too will in baby steps at least love our enemies. A fascinating, fascinating passage.

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Last week we looked at how to love our enemies. Today we're going to ask the question, why would we ever love our enemies?

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Matthew chapter five, six and seven, as you know, called the Sermon on the Mount. This is probably my favorite sermon of all time.

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And it's just one of those sermons that is striking. It's interesting, it's counterintuitive, and it comes from the greatest preacher of all time.

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And we do ourselves a favor as we plunge into the depths of this so that we can honor

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Christ and his word. Jesus is in the midst of telling a bunch of Pharisees that it's not external religion that counts.

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It's what? Internal. It's just not the external do's and don'ts. It's from the heart.

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Jesus says it's not just you're in the nation of Israel, therefore everything's fine, but you need to have a change of your heart.

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And he gives these black and white statements, six of them total, to drive home to all the people that your righteousness has to be more than the most religious people.

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If anyone here wants to get to heaven, pick the most religious person that you know. Mother Teresa, the

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Pope, Billy Graham, Gandhi. You pick the most religious person in your mind.

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And God says his standards are so high that to get to heaven, you have to have more religion.

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You have to be more righteous than they are or you'll never make it in. What he's trying to drive us from is our own self -righteous being good, being religious, and then he's trying to drive us to the grace of God where God provides the internal motivation.

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God provides our sanctification. God provides our salvation. And so Jesus, like a good surgeon, starts to dig down into the heart of the matter.

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How many people ever have seen surgery? In the operating room here? Several of you have. It's an amazing thing.

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For six to eight years, I worked in the operating room and you just walk in. And at the beginning, you're very nervous because you've never seen these things before and I didn't want to be the first person to faint in the operating room and I've got to have my little hair thing on and I wouldn't need one of those today, but I had a big one back in the day and I have to have something for any facial hair and I've got booties and clothes and everything and you walk in and the patient's kind of laying there, half out of it, but you know, hello, and they think

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I'm a doctor because I've got all the garb on. You know, hi doctor. Hello. It'll be a quick procedure today, man.

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Then the drapes go up so you can't see the face and then all the things are laid open and then the scalpel is handed to the doctor, man or woman, and the first cut is always the most amazing because you just see that very sharp scalpel and then you see the tissue, the epidermis go, you see some of the layers of fat and then the thing just opens up.

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That's exactly what's happening here with Jesus except it's not with a scalpel, it's His words because human beings have this fat layer, this calcified layer on top of their heart that somehow makes them say,

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I'm good before God. God loves me the way I am compared to other people,

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I'm good. And Jesus wants to open everything up and say, you know, you might feel good on the outside but on the inside there's a malignant tumor and it's going to kill you except this one kills spiritually.

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And so God in His love uses these hard words. God in His kindness says, I'm not going to leave you the way you are.

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You deserve judgment when you sinned in Adam but I'm coming to give you mercy and kindness and grace.

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And so when I see these words from Jesus, I don't think, how could you? What a harsh, unloving

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God we serve. I think of a God who loves us enough to perform that surgery in us so that we might live.

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And Jesus just fillets them open here by saying, internal righteousness is demanded by me, the new king.

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Yes, Moses was on Sinai and he was God's servant but I am now here on the new Sinai, the new

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Sermon on the Mount. I'm here and I'm telling you it's from the inside out. It's not good enough just to murder,

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He says, you can't even be angry with your brother. It's not good enough just to be clean sexually, pure sexually, it's with your thought life as well.

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He talks about divorce and remarriage, truth, personal rights, and then we move into this sixth antithesis.

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This, you have heard it say, but I say to you, issue about loving your enemies.

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And let's go to 543. A slap in the face of the Pharisees and other false, righteous, reacting people and He says, you have heard it was said, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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And then the Pharisees added something blasphemous and flagrant and hate your enemies.

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When I used to play basketball, I hated it when somebody came running up behind me when I was going to do a layup because they just fouled me in a flagrant way.

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You've heard of the term flagrant foul? And so, I hear the Pharisees have taken

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God's word, they're the owners and keepers and they're to be diligent students and teaching people and now they've flagrantly added.

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What's worse than taking something away from the Bible? Well, adding something is just as bad. And they add, you've got to hate your enemy and they were good at it.

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But Jesus said, verse 44, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

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Pushing it past Old Testament law, even He gives the new law, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

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And Jesus is going to give commands in the Sermon on the Mount that only unbelievers can obey.

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Say, I could never obey those things. That's the point. He's going to give these commands so He exposes people who say, well,

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I'm a Christian on the outside but I can never do these and I never do them. Jesus wants that person to know assurance is found only in Christ's perfect work.

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And then Jesus gives a reason to love enemies. Last week again, we looked at how to love your enemies.

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Today we'll focus on verses 45 and following to ask the question, why would we ever love our enemies?

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And Jesus gives the answer and the answer is that you might manifest who you are on the inside, that you might reflect

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God as a good father. And He gives us a verse, verse 45. So that, notice there's a comma at the end of verse 44 and a lead in here in verse 45.

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So that, why do you love and pray? So that you may be the sons or be sons of your

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Father who is in heaven. That you might be sons. He doesn't say if you love then you become sons because that would be works of salvation.

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He says, what's revealed in your heart will come out in your actions and if God has changed you and you are a child, you'll begin to love people like that.

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To be a son of was to be someone like something. And He says, you know, if you ever want to know if you're a

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Christian or not, these were pre -cross people, but if you want to know if you're redeemed or not or regenerated or if you want to know if you're a

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Christian or not, you ask yourself the question. As I begin to love my enemies more, something that's a supernatural thing to do,

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I would never do it on my own. The settled fact of my sonship or my daughtership becomes more real in my heart because I realize

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God says to do this. I would never do it on my own, yet I do it. God says to do it and He does it

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Himself and I do it. I am imitating God. I am like God and our sonship is made more clear in our hearts.

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This is an incentive, our motivation to do something so that you may be sons of your

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Father to reflect His character. I like this quote by Plummer, to return evil for good is devilish.

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To return good for good is human. To return good for evil is divine.

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How would the Father's love be shown to His enemies? The rest of the verse tells us specifically.

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How does God show love to His enemies? For He causes His Son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

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Can you imagine that love that is indiscriminate, that love that is repeated, that love that just pours out on enemies?

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That is amazing. And I thought to myself, there are probably two words in this very verse that would take me a week to preach.

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And when I read through these quickly, I just miss it. Slow is good, because you can see the text.

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You notice what it says there? For He causes the sun, is that what your text says? Whose sun is it?

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That's a whole sermon right there. His sun, His moon, His stars,

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His universe. Who owns it all? He's the one that owns it all, that creates it all.

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Psalm 119 says that all these things are His servants. He owns it all, and He causes this good thing to fall on everyone indiscriminately.

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Did you know the Bible never really says, it rains? The Bible doesn't say, it snows.

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What does the Bible say? It puts an actor behind the action, and that actor is

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God. And it says, God sends the rain. God makes it snow.

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God causes His Son to rise. This is not simple nature. This is not simple evolution.

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These things are God's servants, and He uses them to serve Him. Deuteronomy 11 says,

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He will give the rain for your land. John Calvin said, it is certain that not one drop of rain falls without God's sure command.

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And I would add this to that statement. It is certain that not one ray of sun shines without God's sure command.

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And He shines it down only on the redeemed people. You go down the street to the

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Moose Lodge or the Elk's Lodge or the Minnesota Twins Lodge or something, and there's no sun over there.

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Because they're all pagans on Sunday, and they're ungodly down there, right? We get the sun, they over there get nothing.

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It's hailing over them. No, He causes on purpose. His universe,

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His Son, He causes. It doesn't allow, He doesn't allow, permit, or maybe slips up once in a while,

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He forgets, and kind of some sun comes down on a pagan's face. But He causes the sun to shine down on a man who says in his heart, there's no

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God, yet his face is warmed by the sun. God loves

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His enemies. He sends and governs His lightning, His clouds,

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His wind, His evaporation. And He does it on people.

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What does the text say? To rise on the evil and the good. It's kind of a bad translation if you have the new

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American standard. It says literally, causes to rise on evil and good.

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If you want to say, here's a group of people, you call them the evil. If you want to say in the original language, here's some people, and I'm going to describe their character, you don't put the the in there.

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You say, the people, it's this group over here. If you want to describe their character, you take out the word the and just say, and He has the sun to be raised up on evil.

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By nature, by character, these people are evil. He's describing this group as evil and good in order to make it bold so everyone would say,

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God's marvelously loving people who hate Him. They're by character evil, and He still sends the sun.

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He causes it to happen. And theologians call this common what?

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Common grace. There's two kinds of grace, really, in the Bible. There's common grace that God says

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He, without discrimination, gives His blessings. And there's another kind of grace that is more discriminating.

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What kind of grace is that called? Uncommon grace. Let's use that. There's general grace, and there's specific grace.

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There's common grace, and there's uncommon grace. These over here would say indiscriminate.

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You can be pagan. You can be Hindu. You can be Muslim. You can be old. You can be young. You can be a

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Ninevite. You can be anybody. God says the sun is for you. He says,

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I'll restrain sin on your account. There's government. I'll restrain animals.

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Remember what happened in Genesis chapter 9 when the animals got out of the ark? How would you like to have tigers chasing you all the time, not just in the

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San Francisco Zoo? They would, except in John... I wasn't trying to be funny about it. You guys laugh.

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In Genesis chapter 9, it says God put the fear of man into them so they run away. So I have a question for you.

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If you're a Christian, and you see a lion in the middle of... or a tiger in northern India, do you just go, you know what?

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Everything's cool, because animals run away. But the pagan walks by the tiger. No, it's restraining grace of God.

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He says, you know what? I'll have the sun shine down on the enemies. I'll give the enemies pleasure of family, wife, intimacy, art, music, culture.

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He gives and gives and gives commonly to all.

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We just call that common grace. One man asked the question to define it. How is it that this sin -cursed world enjoys so much favor and kindness at the hand of its holy and everlasting creator?

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Answer, because God loves his enemies. God gives...

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talents, aptitudes, skill. He gives food in abundance, mangoes and pistachios, not just all briars and thorns.

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He gives to his enemies over and over and over. Psalm 65 says, you water its ridges abundantly.

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Psalm 145, the Lord is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works.

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You open your hand, God, and satisfy the desire of only the elect. Is that what it says?

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Of every living thing. God loves his enemies. Now, certainly, there's a common love that's manifest in goodness to people and restraint of sin and other things, and there's an uncommon love, and that uncommon love is giving

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Jesus for them. In other words, there's a love of a creator and there's a love of a savior, and those are different.

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But here, Jesus is saying, God loves his enemies. And if you are really...

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What do they call that phrase they used to say? You're something off the old block. You're a chip off the old block.

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Is that what it is? Yeah. You're a chip off the old block. If your dad loves enemies, what will you do?

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You'll love enemies. And as you begin to love your enemies, you'll say to yourself, I must be a Christian because I didn't used to love my enemies.

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I waited to get them back. I used to think that revenge was a dish best served what? Cold. That's right.

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It's one thing for Jesus to say in John 13, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

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It's another thing that you may know that you're a disciple when you love your enemies. God loves the unlovely.

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God loves the unlovable. God loves those undeserving of love. Do you?

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God sends the rain on the head of your enemy.

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God gives joy and pleasure to your enemies. God gives music to your enemies.

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God causes warm sun to shine on the face of your enemy. And if you love that enemy, that love might be immature love.

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That love might be against your better mental judgment in a sense, your worldly judgment.

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But if you say, God, I don't feel love. I don't have a romantic love, but you love your enemy. You tell me to love my enemy.

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I'm going to love my enemy. That is a sign of sonship. God doesn't love his enemies by waiting for them to do something.

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God's love is an action love, not a reaction love. And that's what Jesus is after. Why don't we turn to the book of Jonah, please?

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And I want to give you a little walk through the book of Jonah to talk about God's love for enemies and how we ought to think about our enemies and how we can see the marvelous nature of God's character to his enemies in the book of Jonah.

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Turn to the book of Jonah. If you don't know where it is, you can flip around for a long time or you can go to the table of contents.

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And if you're sitting there and you think, well, then if I flip to the table of contents, people will wonder, why don't

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I know the book of Jonah? Well, we don't really care if you know it or you don't. We hope you know where it is, but it's found right in the middle.

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I personally don't have to worry about that problem because I have tabs on my Bible. And so you have a dispensation.

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The pastor has tabs. You may now have tabs. When I saw John MacArthur had tabs on his

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Bible, I went and got tabs. I used to be a janitor at Grace Church. I cleaned his office. And so the first thing

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I did is I went over to his Bible, picked up his Bible when no one was looking, opened it up. It fell indiscriminately to Titus chapter 1.

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And it said, it only had two words underlined on the whole page, above reproach. It was the only thing underlined.

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And then I looked to make sure he had tabs. That was all I did. Set. Jonah. We know about this book.

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And in this book, you've got Jonah, a missionary who's a foreign missionary to people that he doesn't really love and who are enemies of Israel.

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Back at home, Hosea is the prophet. He's the hometown preacher. Jonah's the one sent out to the

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Gentiles. Nineveh is a great city. You can read about the population, large population.

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You can read about the 100 feet high walls, 50 foot thick walls around the city.

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You can read about some of their rivalries that were perennial against Israel and how difficult they were of an enemy.

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And here, basically, Jonah gets the call. Go to Nineveh and begin to preach the gospel.

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That's like one of you getting the call. Go to Tehran, Iran, and go to the center of town and begin to preach the gospel.

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Jesus alone is God. Who wants to sign up for that short -term mission trip?

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It'll be very short because you'll be dead soon. And here

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Jonah goes. You know the story in chapter 1 and chapter 2 with the fish and the sailors and all those things.

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We're going to move now quickly to chapter 3, and we're going to see that one of the purposes of this book of Jonah is to teach the

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Israelites that God loves other nations. He loves enemy nations. And if God loves enemy nations, then we who call ourselves followers of God should do what?

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Fall in step and be like God. This is a great passage about the love of God for sinners and for enemies and how

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God is gracious to those who aren't even his people. And it comes from Jonah, the son of Amittai.

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Amittai, Jonah means dove, and Amittai is the same root word where we get amen. Jonah's last name is like amen.

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You got Jonah, amen. All right, but he didn't act like that too much. Chapter 3, verse 1.

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Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, time to go, basically, in verse 2.

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Arise. These three commands you'll find all the time in chapter 1 and chapter 3. Arise, go, and proclaim to Nineveh, the great city.

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Proclaim to it the proclamation which I'm going to tell you. 550 miles away is where he goes.

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And we don't know the time frame. If you look at verse 1, it says, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah. So far, Jonah has been swallowed by the fish.

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He's been spit up by the fish, and he's now on land. And he either gets the command right while he's on land or some other time.

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I happen to think that he gets up on land, he crawls up there, and here comes the word of the Lord to Jonah.

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You've just been out of the fish. I've got some marching orders for you. 550 miles he must go.

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And he's got to go to this great city. And he doesn't know what the message is going to be.

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The message always is from God to the prophet. And when it's Jonah's time to know, God will tell

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Jonah. Arise, go, proclaim. I'm going to preach my message, no additions, no subtractions.

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That's all you need to know. Go. Well, verse 3, so Jonah rose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the

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Lord. It seems like he's getting better. Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. It just did that earlier, a three -days walk.

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Not to walk through it, but to walk around it. It was this huge city, great city. Building programs in the city.

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I read about Sennacherib in the early 7th century made Nineveh the capital of Assyria and had all kinds of building programs, almost like Herod would in Israel.

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Then Jonah began to go through the city, one day's walk. So it's first day. And he cried out, and here's his message from God.

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Yet 40 days in Nineveh will be overthrown. This is amazing. Same language, Sodom and Gomorrah is going to be overthrown.

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This city is going to be overthrown. Unlike Sodom and Gomorrah that only had a few hours notice before Sulphur was going to come down,

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God in His goodness and His gracious gives Nineveh how many days? 40, from a few hours to 40 days.

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And one man called this city Nineveh, this Sodom of a city. Five Hebrew words repeated over and over and over and over.

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No mention of grace, but it must be assumed because there's 40 days for repentance. And the wildest, craziest thing happened.

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Then the people of Nineveh believed in God. I literally think that's how

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I want to read it. It's amazing. And then they did a bunch of Jewish stuff. They called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.

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That is an amazing response. God provides, He tends the good soil, and the seed falls on good soil, and up comes the fruit.

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This is Jonah who didn't want to go. This is Jonah who we're going to find out never wanted to go. And sometimes you have a godly preacher like Jeremiah, and no one wants to listen to him.

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And now you have an ungodly preacher like Jonah, and everybody listens and believes. Next time you see 10 billion people on TV following somebody, it doesn't mean that somebody they're following is good.

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Listen to this Jeremiah for a second. When Jeremiah finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him saying,

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You must die. Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord saying, This house will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate without an inhabitant.

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And all the people gathered about Jeremiah and the house of the Lord. He's surrounded. Then the priests and the prophets spoke to the officials and all the people saying,

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A death sentence for this man, for he has prophesied against this city. And you have heard this in all your hearing.

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And Jeremiah spoke to the officials and to the people saying, The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city, all the words that you have heard.

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Now therefore, amend your ways and your deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God. As for me, behold,

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I'm in your hands. Do with me as is good and right in your sight. Only know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood on yourselves and on this city and on its inhabitants.

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For truly the Lord God has sent me to speak to these words in all your hearing. Then the officials and all the people said to the priests and the prophets,

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No death sentence for this man, for he has spoken the word of the Lord our God. Here's Jeremiah, a good preacher, sent to the city.

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You better repent or else. And they say, We're going to kill you. And it's in Israel. Jonah gets sent off.

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He doesn't even want to go. He's acting sinful. He has one message, five words, and they all repent. Sounds like it's the power of the gospel to me.

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And then these Ninevites start doing a bunch of Jewish stuff in this eastern way.

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They put on sackcloth. That's not normal for them. If the

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Assyrian gods needed appeasement, there would be libations and supplications, but there wouldn't be sackcloth.

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They either heard about it or Jonah told them. And they began to repent. Jesus said they repented in Luke 11, 32, at the preaching of Jonah.

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One prophet, one sermon, one God, one revival. You don't pray revivals down.

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Revivals are a sovereign act of God. When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he wasn't the first to hear, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat on the ashes.

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They think this is Asher Dan III, historically, and he gets this, and the first thing that goes, he's down off the throne because he's no longer judge.

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And off goes the robe. These robes were a big deal. And these are the robes that when Achan wanted to steal something in Ai, what did he say?

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I want the silver, I want the gold, and I want that robe. And he says, you know, off goes the robe, the splendid apparel.

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He's no longer the king because there's a king. His name is Yahweh. And in ashes and despair and disgust, he's no longer worshipping

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Dagon, the fish god. He's no longer worshipping Nash, the Assyrian fish goddess.

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He's worshipping the god of the universe. And can you imagine what Jonah must have looked like when he was going through the city, by the way?

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I did a little research. It's funny what you can type in Google. Fish gastric juices affects on human skin.

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Only me, this morning, about 5 o 'clock in the morning, couldn't sleep, and thought, might as well do some Google searching. I couldn't find anything, though, sadly, but I could find in our stomachs, we have digestive juices for what purpose?

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To digest things, to break things down. And so we have pepsin. For those of you that have too many juices, you have pepsin.

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Renin, it's called, hydrochloric acid, mucus, everything just breaks it down. Can you imagine Jonah's in that, the belly of this fish?

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And can you imagine what he must look like? His clothes and his face, and just kind of blotches and gets out on the beach, and it's off to preach.

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And He, verse 7, the king issued a proclamation and said, In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing.

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Do not let them eat or drink water. You know what? God could have wiped us out, and that includes all the animals, too, would have been destroyed.

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So everybody's going to show this corporate repentance. Verse 8, both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and let the men call on God, literally, with strength, with conviction, with radical devotion, that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands.

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Literally, let them, plural, each turn from his singular evil way.

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We as a nation and we as individuals, the message is driven home. Who knows?

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Verse 9, God may turn and relent and withdraw his burning anger so that we shall not perish.

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God isn't like us, the cruel, barbaric Ninevites. When God saw their deeds, that they turn from their wicked way, verse 10, then

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God relented concerning the calamity, which He had declared He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.

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It was genuine, real repentance. But Jonah didn't get it. By the way,

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Nineveh did get it later on as Nahum prophesied that if they didn't turn from their sin,

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God would judge them, and eventually that happened. But Jonah doesn't get it right now. He doesn't understand God loves

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His enemies, so it's time for school. This is Ninevite School 101, chapter 4, verse 1.

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I don't know about you, but when I preach and one person says they believe, that's a great year, right?

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Because it's all divine grace. It's not through my preaching or anything else. When someone responds to the Word of God, it is an act of God through a person.

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How would Jonah feel? And it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry.

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His worst fears are realized. He hated it. This was a little temper tantrum.

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Fuming, steaming like a little baby. He wanted to just throw the dynamite in with a long fuse, long enough so he could get out of town and let the whole thing blow up.

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It displeased Jonah. The Ninevites repented. God was pleased.

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He relented. The Ninevites repented. Jonah was displeased, and he crying like a baby.

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Literally, Jonah was hot. He was hot, bitter.

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How strange that is. He was burned up with emotional passion. Literal translation is, but it was evil to Jonah with great evil.

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The Ninevites used to be evil, and now the heart of the prophet, who doesn't love his enemies, is evil.

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God was happy. Jonah was mad. What a contrast between God's love of enemies and Jonah's displeasure.

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He was angry that God didn't give them justice, and he prayed to the Lord and said, Please, Lord, was not this what

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I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this,

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I fled to Tarshish, for I knew Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.

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I knew it. I knew it. That's exactly how he prayed.

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I knew it. How could you? Warren Wiersbe said, The heart of every problem is the problem of the heart.

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Just like his prayer with I, me, and mine. He was selfish. He was short sighted. And he sarcastically quotes those great verses from Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7 about this great

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God. I knew you were like that. Now everybody's going to see that these guys have repented, and now

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Israel's going to go to pot, too, because there's going to be no enemy to judge them, whatever the rationale was. He was displeased.

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But he had good theology proper. You can know a lot of theology and still not have a clue. He said,

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Look, God is gracious. See that in the text? Used only of God in the Bible. Grace towards others who have no claim on it.

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They don't deserve it. They're not able to get it on their own. God just graciously gives them. Compassionate, another word only used of God in the

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Scriptures. Certainly, that wasn't Jonah, but that was God. Slow to anger.

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God's got a long fuse. He's patient. He's long suffering. And abounding in love. By the way, that love is the Hebrew word for Jewish love, covenant nation love.

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Chesed, it's the kind of love that God has for the nation, and he's got it for the Gentiles now. How could you,

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God? I knew it. Yet God would just as soon forgive as he would destroy.

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Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.

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Chapter 2, he's praying, God, get me out of this fish belly. Save me. Save my life.

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Now God does that, and God now saves the Ninevites from eternal destruction, and then now here comes thumb insert into mouth for Jonah.

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Just kill me. I just want to die. Over my dead body, it might mean.

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And the Lord said, penetrating question. By the way, the

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Lord could say, and by the way, I'm going to kill you with a lion, because there have been other disobedient prophets in the

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Bible, like 1 Kings 19, where the prophets disobeyed, and God said, okay, you know what you get for being a disobedient prophet?

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A lion's going to eat you. And here, instead of giving the lion to Jonah, just like described in Exodus chapter 34 and just a few verses ago,

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God is not only gracious with Nineveh this way, he's gracious to Jonah this way. And he asked the question to get to the heart of the matter.

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Do you have good reason to be angry? So patient, so kind. Do you realize that I spared you when you're disobedient,

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Jonah? If anybody has a justification of anger, it's God, not you,

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Jonah. Are you right to be angry? I just love the way God asks questions so many times to get to the heart of the matter.

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Adam, where are you? Where is your brother Abel? Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

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Do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? Verse 5, then,

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Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city.

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You know, God might be patient, but he's not that patient, so I've got to go get a good seat because the 4th of July fireworks are still coming.

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I've got to get far enough out of town so I can kind of sit up on the mountain that I can see the blast of sulfur coming down like Sodom and Gomorrah, except Sodom and Gomorrah was not as bad as this place is, and I've got to just get out of town just enough to see the fireworks.

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It could have been what he was thinking. Maybe they'll revert back to ungodliness and then it's destruction.

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Get my binoculars out just to watch. Well, it's kind of hot out there.

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It's hot out in the Mediterranean sun. He made a shelter for himself and sat under it so he could see what would happen. Some people want to know how he could make a shelter and how they could make all these things.

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It's kind of like a little booth, leafy hut, but that's nothing. Verse 6,

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So the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort.

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Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. And so people say, well, there's these certain plants that grow really fast.

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This is a supernatural fast -growing plant. This was not one of these time -delay things. Here goes the plant, and it just comes up and comes over him.

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Some say it was a castor bean plant. Some people say it was a vine or a shrub.

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When Jerome changed the traditional rendering of this word from gourd to identify it with a castor oil plant, a riot broke out east of Carthage.

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I don't know what it is, but the riot is not in Carthage here. The riot is in Jonah's heart.

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The unrelenting rays of sun from Assyria. And it says in the text,

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And Jonah did a backflip. Well, it doesn't really say that, but that was what his heart was doing. He rejoiced over the vine with great rejoicing.

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I mean, he was beside himself. He was so happy, he was delirious. Here comes this plant out of nowhere.

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They give him the shade, and he is high -fiving. He is on cloud nine. He was so happy.

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But it's time to go back to school. The hallelujah chorus of Jonah is about ready to be over with.

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And God in His sovereignty, we see this word all the time, appointed to prepare, not just preparing the wind and the ocean storm, not just preparing and appointing a plant, but now preparing and appointing a worm.

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This is real worm theology, y 'all, right here. You want worm theology? God is sovereign over the worms.

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When the dawn came the next day, it attacked the plant and withered. This is God's worm, ready for your service.

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Many people say, well, there's a special cut worm that can do this. I don't know what it was, some kind of supernatural cutting ability, some kind of black caterpillar.

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I don't care. God just took care of Jonah. Cut him down. And the sun came up. God appointed a what?

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Here's another appointment, another preparation. God appointed a scorching east wind, seraco, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, death is better for me than life.

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Exact same Hebrew word as attacked in verse 7. Here, strikes. Now, seracos are interesting.

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Just to give you a quick little background, the geography of the Bible says on page 67 that at 16 to 22 degrees above average, at times of a seraco, every scrap of moisture seems to have been extracted from the air so that one has the curious feeling that one's skin has been drawn much tighter than usual.

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Another man said that the hot air is so full of positive ions in a seraco that it affects the levels of serotonin and other brain neurotransmitters, causing exhaustion, depression, feelings of uncertainty and unreality, and occasionally bizarre behavior.

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Then God, verse 9, said to Jonah, here comes the question that will wrap us back to think about God and enemies and love.

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Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant? I have good reason to be angry even unto death.

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I mean, God could just smite him right there. Even unto death.

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Verse 10, Then the Lord said, You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work, which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished.

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You had compassion, the Hebrew is you had a little tear come out of your eye, as it were, because you loved it so much.

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You pitied a plant. I mean, I'll never forget the time we had one of those little betta fish.

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Somebody gave us as a present, you know, thanks for the present. And did one of you give me that? I'm sorry if you did.

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No? I thought maybe who did, but I maybe gave it back to him. So I didn't know what to do. It's the middle of summer. I got to go to California. So I just brought the little betta fish down to the little pond in Lancaster, figuring

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I'd let it swim away. It was better than the toilet to flush it down. I thought, I'll just let it swim away, nice little betta fish.

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Maybe it'll find another little betta fish to fight. Who knows? Just go. And I kind of felt bad about it, you know.

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It's going to die in a day, some little fish. Heathen are going to be killed temporally and destroyed eternally.

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And he's jumping up and down about some little gourd and some little plant.

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I can hear Jonah in Jonathan Swift's scathing lines. We are God's chosen few.

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All others will be damned. There is no place in heaven for you. We can't have heaven crammed.

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Verse 11, it's supposed to end like this. It's supposed to make you ask the question personally.

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How do I respond? What's my best response? Do I love my enemies?

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Do I have compassion over my dog versus souls? Et cetera, et cetera. This is supposed to end this way with a question.

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The only other prophet in the Old Testament that ends with a question is

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Nahum over the destruction of Nineveh. But here's over the compassion God has on the Ninevites. And should

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I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120 ,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand as well as many animals?

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Maybe it's 120 ,000 children who don't know left from right and there's 600 ,000 more. Maybe there's just 120 ,000.

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That's probably more like it with the size of that city. And these people, even though they're adults, they're spiritually like kids.

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They don't know right from left spiritually. They have no idea what's going on. And you want me to kill them? You want me to kill the animals too when you're trying to go for a shrub?

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And here the book closes with a question mark so you answer the question. No response of Jonah because God wants your response essentially.

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The goodness of God and the meanness of Jonah. God loving his enemies and Jonah hating his enemies.

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It's a great way to end a book. Doesn't say happily ever after. The Jewish tradition adds something to try to taper it off and it says,

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In that hour Jonah fell on his face and said, Govern your world according to the measure of mercy as it is said to the

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Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness. That's not inspired but that's the answer.

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God loves and pities lost souls, his enemies. Ought we not to do the same and show that we're like God?

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Jesus gives us four final questions and we'll wrap up there. Back to Matthew. Four questions to drive the point home.

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We're going to go through them very fast. They don't need exposition. They don't need follow -up. As Jonah ended with the question, so we might be pricked in our consciences and in our hearts that we might love our enemies and show that we're like God.

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Not to earn God's favor because God's grace is given. Unmerited favor is what grace is.

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But if we are children of God, we will love our enemies. And when we don't, we won't like it. We'll ask for forgiveness.

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We'll ask the Spirit of God to help us to do it. We'll look to Christ and say, Jesus loved his enemies. God, I want to be more like Christ.

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But here on the Sermon on the Mount, after he says in verse 45, this great son that he causes to shine down on the evil and the good with indiscriminate common grace and love.

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Four quick questions to drive home the point. Four penetrating questions.

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You can ask them to yourself if you'd like. Question 1, verse 46 of Matthew 5. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

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The answer is there is no reward. There is no gain. There is no recognition from God that you've done something morally applaudable.

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It's not laudable conduct. It's nothing that you wouldn't do when you weren't saved. Question 2, kind of the second lightning strike question.

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Like a surgeon goes straight to the heart of the issues. Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

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And the answer is what? They do. The tax collectors do the same. The tax farmers, they did it.

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Do you know the Taliban, they're nice to each other? Do you know Al -Qaeda is nice to each other? Do you know gangs in Los Angeles are nice to each other?

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If you're nice to other people that are nice to you, then it doesn't show that you have the father's nature.

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But if you're nice to people who aren't nice to you and who don't like you and who hate you, you show the father's character. Matthew knew that stigma as a tax collector.

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Question 3, if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

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Answer, nothing. God expects more out of us since we're saved. We have the resources.

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We have the example. We have the text. Unbelievers have family love, or at least they should. They're image bearers of God.

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They do that, but since we've been given the divine nature that dwells within us, we should do more. And then finally, the question

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Jesus gives them to end the sixth antithetical statements, do not even,

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I'll change the translation so you can get the point, do not even the dogs do the same?

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Don't even the Gentiles do the same? Jews called Gentiles dogs.

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They called them unclean. They did not go into the praetorium lest they be defiled. Don't the

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Gentiles love other Gentiles? Don't scallywags love other scallywags? Don't scoundrels love other scoundrels?

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Is there no honor among thieves? And if you want to manifest your sonship, then you'll do what

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God does. J. Oswald Sanders says, the master expects from his disciples such conduct as can only be explained in terms of supernatural.

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What more are you doing than these? Friends, Jesus basically said, we aren't going to want to love our enemies, but we ought to.

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We've been given an example that the father loves his enemies. If we want to show our sonship, if we want to increase insurance to salvation, that is the way to do it.

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So I ask you as I did when I started, is there anything different about you? Is there something special about you?

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When people look at you, they say, you know, that's not him. That's a different person. I thought he was going through a phase.

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That's what happened when I first got saved. Well, he was in the drug phase and he was in the this phase and he was in that phase and now he's in the

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Jesus freak, I'm born again phase. Well, the only thing I could do is say,

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God, help me to live such a life that I silence those people and they bow the knee to Christ. Our enemies don't like us and we are to love them.

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And so I ask Lloyd -Jones question in closing. Is there something of your father about you?

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Let's pray. Lord, thank you for these words. Thank you for the text of Jonah.

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What a wonderful illustration of how you love your enemies. And Lord, we would confess now as Christian people that while we were enemies, while we were ungodly, while we were sinners, you loved us.

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And it wasn't just a common love, but it was uncommon, so uncommon that you would have your son. Add humanity, perfect humanity and live a perfect life and die for our sins and be raised from the dead.

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Send it into heaven. Be our advocate. We thank you, Lord, for that. We thank you that we have a new nature.

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We're not who we used to be. Lord, we have a long way to go, but we are changed. We are redeemed. We are regenerated.

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Father, you have made us born from above. Thank you for letting us have times where we can do things that can only be explained by your goodness and kindness.

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And I'd ask that you'd help us to increase our assurance as we obey the Bible generally and we obey the

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Bible here specifically, Christ Jesus. And so thank you, Lord. I pray for those who are here today who trust in their own righteousness, who think they're good enough, who have been taught baptism or something else will get them to heaven.

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Lord, I pray that you would tear away that cloak of righteousness and let them feel what it's like to stand before you without any covering, naked and ashamed as it were, that they might run to the cross of Calvary and repent and believe in the risen

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Savior. May that be so today, Lord, for your kindness and goodness' sake. Amen.