Sons of Light, Part 2

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Sunday School - Back To Basics Part 3

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I'll turn your Bibles, please, to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. Once again, we will look to verses 4 through 11.

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That's our text for this morning. As most of you will realize, this is going to be our second message from those same verses.

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Last week we focused on what it means to be sons of the light, and this morning we're going to delve into the other side of that equation.

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What it means to not be of the other side of that. What it means to not be of the dark.

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And the Apostle Paul here makes the contrast between light and dark crystal clear.

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Light, if you are in the Lord Jesus Christ, is your new nature. We walk in the light as he is the light.

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And Paul tells the Thessalonians, by this living word, he tells us that we must live according to the light of God, of which we are, and in so doing be separate from the darkness out of which we were called and redeemed.

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So with that brief introduction, please stand for the reading of God's Word, 1 Thessalonians 5 and 4 through 11.

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But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of the light, children of the day.

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We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

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For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

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For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him.

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Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you're doing. May God bless the reading.

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Now the proclamation of his Word, please be seated. Yeah, I think most of us would agree, our experience would teach us that sometimes you cannot appreciate one thing until you are confronted with the opposite number of another of that thing.

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It's sort of like bank tellers who are trained to spot counterfeits by handling only good bills and proper bills.

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It's amazing how accurately they can just a single touch as they're flipping through a stack of bills say this one is a counterfeit.

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This is the opposite of what I've been trained to recognize. And sometimes we can't appreciate the one until we run into the opposite.

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Now I was raised by a couple who were more in love with each other and devoted to one another than practically anyone else

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I had ever known then or even now. It would be no exaggeration to say that they were as much, if not more, in love after 50 years of marriage as they had been when they first met.

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Well, I had a friend in my early years of high school named Rick, and we would hang out at Rick's house because at Rick's house there was a garage and we could park cars in the garage and be out of the sun and tinker with each other's cars.

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And Rick had a dad who was a super cool guy. First of all, he's cool because he had a house with a garage we could park cars in.

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He'd let us work on cars in his garage and despite the fact that we were kind of obnoxious teenagers, he seemed to like us all.

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He was a super cool guy. Well, one particular Saturday when a bunch of us were at the house tinkering with cars, we all came in for lunch.

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He called us and said, we have some lunch for you. So we came inside and we were all sitting around the living room having our lunch, talking about how to get

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Andy's Camaro's points dialed in just right. And we were arguing about it. Of course, it turned out

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I was right. When we did it my way, the car ran great. But that's an aside. While we're having lunch though, all of a sudden,

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Mr. Cool, my friend Rick's father, started yelling. And using language such as I had heard before in the words, but never used or heard in the context of somebody at home.

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I'd never heard anything like that before. And I noticed very quickly that he was yelling at and using this language towards his wife.

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He was yelling and using this obnoxious language towards his wife in front of all of us.

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There's something he didn't like about a sandwich of all things. Something apparently she should have known and should have accounted for.

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Like I said, I'd heard this kind of language before, but never in that kind of a context. It never dawned on me, because of the way

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I was raised, that a man would actually speak to his wife or even think about his wife in that way.

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I never imagined that it could really happen. It was outside my whole realm of experience, and yet there it was.

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I went home though that day with a renewed, or should say a new appreciation for what

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I had in that home. I'd never thought about it before. It was just the way things were. I just assumed my parents were an ordinary run -of -the -mill couple, and that everyone was like they were.

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But having seen with my own eyes, having heard with my own ears, in my good friend's home from Mr.

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Kuhl's mouth, and I stopped thinking of him as Mr. Kuhl at that moment, when I heard and saw for myself the opposite, then

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I realized how rare and how precious was what I was experiencing with my parents.

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I didn't appreciate the example they were until I saw its opposite.

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So I had this appreciation, which I'd never had before, by that experience.

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Well, Paul in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verses 4 through 11, he's made just that sort of a contrast for us, has he not?

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He says, But you are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We are not of the light or the darkness.

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Now last week we focused in on the light. We focused on the light. Walking in the light is to live by the

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Word of God, to be in his presence. You may recall that I pointed out how the first of God's creative works was let there be light, and that was the first day, and not until the fourth day did we have the sun, which gave the light.

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I may have overemphasized the metaphorical use of light in the Bible. It's usually a metaphor for walking with God in his presence, in the ways of God as revealed in his

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Word, and it is often, or most often, a metaphor. And I may have emphasized that to the point that we lose sight of the fact that on the first day there was light.

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And so the Bible opens with the way the Bible closes in Revelation 21, where there's no sun or moon, but the glory of God is the light, and the

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Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, is the lamp. So I hope

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I didn't emphasize that to the point that you thought that light is only a metaphor, while on the first day

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God's first creative act was to create that ordering, that chaos reducing, light that was himself.

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Well, this week we're going to look at the opposite number to what we preached last week about being sons of the light and sons of the day.

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This week we look at sin. In Paul's language here, darkness and night represent sin.

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Deeds that need to be hidden, the opposite of light. Our catechism, which was just read to you by Pastor Owens, says that sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.

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And that of course is correct. It's well stated, and it's completely supported by scripture.

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To disobey God in whom there's no darkness at all is sin. It is to be in darkness.

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Well, defining sin as non -conformity to God's law, either by omission or commission, while it's not a misdefinition of sin,

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I think in some way it under defines sin. It's correct.

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It says that anything we do that's outside of God's law, whether it's something we're supposed to do and we don't, something that we're not supposed to do and we do, that is sin.

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That is sin indeed. But let me add just a little bit to that. That is a sin.

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That then represents a sinful act, a deed that belongs to the darkness, a deed that belongs to the night.

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But what I want you to come away with this morning is that sin is so much more than just an act, a thing you do or a thing you fail to do.

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It is that, but it is so much more. You see, sin is a nature. Sin is a state of being.

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Sin is an almost palpable thing that is so much worse than we usually think of it. We sang a few minutes ago,

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I know my sin in all its greatness. No, you don't.

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Neither do I. This morning, I want to expand our horizon of sin in order that our view of Christ is raised even higher.

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Because the further down we can push sin into the abominable abyss and see it for what it really is, the higher we will think of Christ.

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And the more we will appreciate the redemption we have in him and the suffering that he endured to bring that redemption to us.

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My goal this morning is to show the true darkness of sin. Seeing sin for what it is is going to magnify our appreciation for the opposite,

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God's righteousness. Seeing sin for what it really is should make us all the more ready to repent of our deeds.

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Seeing sin through God's eyes by the words of his spirit that he gave to this apostle Paul should leave us awestruck at the change of nature that he gives us.

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Should give us renewed determination to live more and more according to what we truly are, sons of the light, sons of the day, no longer of the darkness.

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For we are not of the night, said the apostle. We are not of the darkness, but we need to look at what that darkness is, what that night really is.

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We need to understand sin and get a greater appreciation for how abominable it is in God's eyes.

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And by that have a greater appreciation for the glory we have in Christ Jesus. And for what it means that when we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

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It's not just a wave of the hand in some casual way. We need to look at what's really being forgiven here.

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Night and darkness is the old nature. We need to appreciate the new by looking at the horrors of the old.

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Now Paul's doctrine of sin is not as prominent in the Thessalonian letters, the first or the second of them, as it is in others.

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So I'm going to draw our attention to the one place where I think sin's true nature is most graphically portrayed to us.

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It's from the same apostle Paul, so we're going to get his thoughts, though we have to step outside of the Thessalonian letters to get this deeper description of sin.

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And we're going to do that from Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5, and I'm going to read to you verses 13 through 16.

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We're going to spend just a moment in the context, just to draw some parameters here for you.

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I'm going to make just a couple comments as I read, and then we're going to jump into this and be sure that we do understand what it is that is the night and darkness which we no longer are of.

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Galatians 5 beginning at verse 13. Let's just stop for a moment.

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What do these two verses say? Here's what it is to walk in the light. To use our freedom not for the flesh, not to serve ourselves, but to serve one another in Christ's name.

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And it goes on with what Jesus says is the other command is like it. What's the great command? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

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And this is the other command that Jesus says is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So can we say the verses 13 and 14 is like what he tells the

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Thessalonians? This is walking in the light, serving each other in Christ's name, with love.

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Verse 15. Clearly, darkness.

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And verse 16, back to the light. Paul is calling this

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Galatian church to a loving unity, to a loving mutually serving unity.

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Loving Christ Jesus, and because of Christ Jesus, loving those for whom he also died.

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What he's calling them to do is not to divide into factions, especially Jew and Gentile factions. Now what happened here in Galatians, and we'll only spend a moment on this just so you can understand the context, is the

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Judaizers, the so -called Judaizers come to the church in Galatia and try to bring the Jewish law in as a means of accomplishing that which is only accomplished by and through the

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Spirit of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Now Paul sided against the

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Judaizers. And what he's telling the church is that for you

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Gentiles, because I sided with the Judaizers and bringing the Jewish law in, and I was on their side, or I was on your side as it were, against the

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Judaizers, don't you think you can lord it over the Jews? And you Jews don't be bitter, because you're still called to be a unified body together in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That's just a bare thumbnail sketch of the background there that brings us to verses 13 -16, this description of sin that I want to bring to you this morning.

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I can paraphrase what Paul tells the Galatians. It's something like this, Your freedom in Christ must not be employed for any purpose other than to serve him by loving one another.

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To do otherwise is to sin by fulfilling the desires of your flesh, by reverting to your old nature, which as I told the

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Thessalonians is the darkness to which you no longer belong. So how bad is sin?

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Do you appreciate the righteousness that we have in Christ? How high do you raise his cross?

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How deep do you realize his sufferings to have been? The answer is to know how bad sin really is.

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And I think part of that answer, and the only one we're going to develop for, the only verse we're going to use to develop it this morning, is verse 15 in Galatians chapter 5.

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The words there that are used are stark. They are profound. Those words are little used in our

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New Testament. The Galatians were warned against the sin of disunity, but these words warn us of any reversion back to the old self.

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And so we're going to begin to understand how dark and how awful sin really is, and appreciate how glorious Christ's redemption is, with just a very, very quick review of these three words.

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Bite. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another. Bite is used only here in the

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New Testament, Galatians 5 .15. In the Old Testament, it is always used of a violent, harmful, poisonous bite of a serpent or of a snake, as in the book of Numbers, when

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God was angry with the Israelites, and he sent the serpents, the snakes among them, and many died. And that's when

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Moses made the bronze serpent and lifted it up, and those who looked with eyes of faith upon it, that of course being a precursor of the redemption we have in Christ.

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Jesus were healed of their bites. That's kind of bite. That's this very word.

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But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another.

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The second word is devour. Devour is always used of avarice and greed.

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In Jesus's parable of the the sower and the seeds, it's the devil's birds that are along the wayside that are devouring the

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Word of God that is sown by the Son of Man. The prodigal son's older brother complains to their father.

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He says, this younger son of yours has devoured your wealth with prostitutes and immoral living.

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Jesus used this word against the Pharisees who devoured widow's houses.

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If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another, and consumed.

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Consumed is used only twice in our New Testament, here in Galatians 5 .15, and then in Luke chapter 9 verse 54.

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And in Luke 9 .54, the disciples wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume the inhospitable

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Samaritans. They said, Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven? And Jesus basically says, we don't have time for this.

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I have to get to Jerusalem. But to consume, to leave nothing behind. In the

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Old Testament, it's used to describe such things as famines, and how a family would consume all the people's food so they they're desperate and starving.

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So if you bite, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another.

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Let me ask you two questions with just that really brief description of those three words that Paul uses in Galatians 5 .15.

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I want to ask two questions, and the second will come from your answer to the first. Don't raise hands. Don't call out.

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I want you to think of this yourself. The first question is this, when I read that verse, which

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I've read three or four times already, about biting and devouring and consuming, after those quick definitions

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I gave you, what picture comes to your mind? Now that you have some background on those three words, biting and devouring and consuming, think for a moment.

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What picture is coming to your mind? So whatever picture you came up with,

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I want you to hold that in your mind for a moment, because my second question relates to that. Is that thing, that picture that for you puts together, if you bite and devour one another, watch out, lest you are consumed by one another, whatever picture you got for that, is it the darkest, grossest, most appalling thing that you've ever thought of?

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Is it the darkest, grossest, most appalling thing you can even imagine? Well, it should be.

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It should be. Sin is so much more than just an act of disobedience. Now here's what

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I think the scriptures accuse us of, when we who are sons of the light and sons of the day, when we go to that darkness of which we are not.

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What's that picture that we should get? But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

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It's cannibalism. It's that awful. It's that dark.

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It's that horrific. Paul's words in Galatians 5 .15

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combine for a picture of people so determined to sin that they bite each other like serpents, they devour each other like beasts staring into another animal's flesh, and they consume one another, the way buzzards leave the bone of a carcass picked clean.

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Was your image of sin that dark? I ask you, was your image of sin that deep and that dark?

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Paul's was. I believe God's is. If I could reword our catechism answer, it'd be something like this.

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Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God is a sinful act.

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But sin itself is a thing. Sin itself is an entity of its own that is deeper and darker and so much worse than an omission or a commission.

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We need to think of the nature from which our sins spring forth. How do we understand this?

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Why is it so dark? Is there any other scripture to support what I'm saying here? If you want to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 28,

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I can show you this. Deuteronomy chapter 28 and verse 53, close to the end of the curses for disobedience.

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And remember that Moses promised blessings? And he will bless the fruit of your womb.

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He will bless your crops. He will bless everything if you obey him. And here is towards the end of the curses if you disobey, mainly by idolatry.

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Deuteronomy chapter 28 verse 53. Listen to this. This is the price of sin.

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This is all the way back to Israel's day. This is after Sinai. This is Israel as they're ready to cross the

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Jordan and go into the promised land as being warned that if you sin against the Lord with high -handed presumptuous sin as we like to call it, if you sin mainly by worshiping other gods by idolatry, this is

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God's justice that will come upon you. God's justice is what we call lex talionis, and that means simply that the punishment fits the crime.

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The crime anticipated here was not just disobedience to the details of God's law, although it is that.

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It is the crime of reverting back to the old nature from which God's mighty arm had redeemed them.

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Of course, they've been redeemed from Egypt by mighty acts, by mighty miracles, by destruction of Egypt in the ten plagues.

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And they were a new people. God fulfilled his promise to Abraham by making them the nation Israel. They were something new, and to revert back to the old would result in this that I read from Deuteronomy 28 -53.

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How dark is sin? Darkness a metaphor for sin.

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That's easy. Darkness speaks of the cover we need when we pander to the old man, the one

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Jesus died to do away with. When we see news clips of pride parades as we had last month, we see darkness celebrated in broad daylight.

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No cover needed, but the sun shining on and exposing things that the Bible says in Ephesians 5 -3 ought not to be even mentioned among God's people.

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That darkness of which you are no longer. How dark is sin?

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This description Paul gives in Galatians 5 -15, which is no easier to hear than Deuteronomy 28 -53.

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Sin is so dark and so deep. It's so horrendous in God's sight that his punishment is to give the people what sin ultimately is.

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And what is it? It turns men into beasts or less. Think of these scriptures, 1

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Peter 5 -8. Peter says of the devil that he prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

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He's a beast. Think of Psalm 73 -22 where Asaph, the author of that psalm, he describes himself when he was sinning in his envy of the arrogant and comfortable people.

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He says, when my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in the heart, I was brutish and ignorant.

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I was like a beast before you. In Daniel chapter 4, you remember

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King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream, and that dream included this warning, let his mind be changed from a man and a man's, and let a beast's mind be given to him.

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That warning which was interpreted to him by the prophet Daniel, and which Nebuchadnezzar ignored.

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He went on his balcony. He looked down and said, look what I have done. And immediately he's driven out into the environs of the beasts.

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He's on his all fours mowing and eating with the cattle. He ignored the warning even after Daniel gave the interpretation.

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What did his sin do to him? It made him like a beast.

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Now not just him. You know, these are not just warnings. These are things that have happened in history.

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Where God gives to a sinning people, this very thing that he warned against, and causes them to be those who bite, devour, and consume one another in the worst possible way we can imagine.

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In 2nd Kings chapter 6, we read of the

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Syrian invasion of, or excuse me, yeah, the Syrian invasion of Samaria, which was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel.

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And beginning at verse 25, we read of that struggle.

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And there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it, until a donkey's head was sold for 80 shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a cob of doves dung for five shekels of silver.

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Now as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, help my lord, O king.

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And he said, if the lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press?

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Of course, what he meant was the threshing floor had nothing to thresh. There was no food there. The wine press had no grapes to press.

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There was a famine in the land because of the Syrian invasion, and no food could get into the city, because the

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Syrians were guarding against that. So they're having starvation within the walls of the besieged city.

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Then the king asked her, what is your trouble? She answered, and as I read this, think of what

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I read from Deuteronomy 28 .53, and think of what it says in Galatians 5 .15.

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This woman said to me, give your son that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.

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So we boiled my son and ate him, and on the next day I said to her, give your son that we may eat him, but she has hidden her son.

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That's sin. This is what Deuteronomy 28 .53 promised for sin against God.

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And this is what Paul says to the Galatian church and to our church today by this living word.

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What it means to sin is biting, devouring, and consuming. It's becoming like the beasts.

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We can't say to this, well, praise God that was for them back then. Paul warns us today that when we revert to sin, when we go back to that darkness, this is what we become, animalistic, beastly people, belonging to the night and the darkness of the old man.

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There's a very clear warning in all this. Do not play around with sin. Sin is so much more dangerous than you ever imagined.

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Sin is so much more than just your commissions and omissions, which it is, those are sinful indeed.

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But you need to consider also the harm that you do when you sin, harm to yourself and harm to others.

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And more than just going into the darkness of the night, just letting your toe go in there a little bit and pulling it back out.

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The depth and the darkness and the density of that darkness is so much more than we usually think.

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Sin is something not to play around with. Our words have a power to harm and destroy beyond anything we usually even think of.

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They bite, they devour, they devour and they consume. May as well be a flesh -eating animal. You ever heard of Timothy Treadwell?

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Well, this man named Timothy Treadwell had a particular love for grizzly bears. And he believed himself to be a sort of a bear whisperer.

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And he'd go up into their their natural environment up in Alaska and along the rivers where they were feeding on the salmon.

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And he would walk right up to these bears and he had this quote -unquote special relationship with them. I can't remember where I saw him interviewed.

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I thought it was the Tonight Show back when Johnny Carson was doing that. But I couldn't find it on YouTube to tell you for sure, but I know

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I saw him interviewed. I was thinking this guy's a nut walking up to a wild uncaged grizzly bear in their own environment when they're hungry.

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I used to hunt quite a lot in California. Black bears in California are a fraction the size of grizzly bears and I had a .30

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-06 rifle. And I'd every now and then see a bear and I've seen only four or five ever just seeing them and even 80 -90 yards away.

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You think, boy, I hope he doesn't turn and want anything to do with me because I don't know if I have time to get the gun off my my shoulder and aim it and take the safety off and all that.

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These were grizzlies. Well, he was messing with much more dangerous beasts.

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In October of 2003, while he and his girlfriend were camped near the grizzlies' feeding ground, a large male grizzly bear visited their tent and tore them to pieces and then consumed them.

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Treadwell had his recorder on at the time. The rangers who found what was left played the recording and it was said that they cried when they heard the screams that were recorded the agonies they endured from this beast biting, devouring, and consuming.

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This is what we risk when we give in to sin. Wild beasts tearing in and consuming one another, doing that kind of harm.

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I don't think the apostle Paul was just being poetic about biting, devouring, and consuming. I don't think

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Deuteronomy 28 .53 was just put out there as some poetic sort of darkness.

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It was a real warning and prophecy, which in time and space, as I read from 2nd

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Kings 6, actually came true. Well, how does this help us to appreciate our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the more? Well, Jesus Christ said,

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I am the light of the world. He's the complete opposite of these things. The apostle of the

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Hebrews says that Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are. He stood face to face with the darkness just as you and I do, yet He, unlike us, without sin.

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How does this lift up the Lord Jesus Christ? With this awful, dark, hard to hear, hard to understand picture of sin.

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This is what Jesus endured when He hung on the cross. He became sin for us, and I don't mean

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He became like what I described. I mean what He endured on the cross. In the 22nd

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Psalm, which is one of the clearest prophecies of the Lord Jesus Christ and His cross, in verses 12 and 13, we read,

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This is a prophecy of the cross, and what is the prophet who is King David, Israel's poet, seeing?

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He's seeing somehow the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross and the mockery that He endured as these bulls of Bashan surrounded

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Him, like roaring lions, like beasts in their darkness and their sin.

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Verse 16 of that psalm says, This is what

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Jesus Christ endured. He endured this kind of darkness, this kind of sin from the hands of men, as Deuteronomy 28 .53

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was a warning that was fulfilled in time and space in history. So also

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Psalm 22. We read in John 19 .24, John chapter 19, verse 24, where the

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Roman soldier seeing what a valuable tunic he had because it didn't have a seam. It was all sewn of one piece.

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They said, Let us not tear his tunic, but cast lots for it, and see whose it shall be. This was to fulfill the scripture, which says,

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Is it not subhuman? Is it not that kind of a darkness? That while a man is suffering that kind of a death to casually set prices for his clothes, his tunics?

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Matthew 27. Verse 39. Do you hear the ring of Psalm 22?

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The cows of Bashan, the ravening and roaring lions, the dogs, the mongrels tearing at his flesh as it were, the ravenous lions like you and I, biting, devouring, consuming, shouting,

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If you're the Son of God, come down from the cross. The only sinless man ever to live consigned to the cruelest death ever devised by biting, devouring, and consuming humans, or what were supposed to be humans.

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2 Corinthians 5 .21 says that he who knew no sin became sin for us. Well, Jesus Christ knew all about sin.

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He knew about sin better and more thoroughly than you or I ever will. Not because he had any acquaintance with sin.

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Tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin. He who knew no sin, and yet he confronted sin throughout his earthly life.

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And because of his perfections, because of his holiness, and because he could not sin, the sin which he confronted, he knew so much better than you or I ever would.

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For him, it was a stranger. Because he was God, he knows it better than we, but in personal acquaintance, he was a stranger.

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But for you and me, when sin comes along and we step back into that darkness, for us, it's more like, hello, old friend.

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Surely good to see you once again. Though what's not is darkness, is stepping into becoming a biting, devouring, consuming beast.

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Yet sin Jesus became, sin Jesus endured. God made him to be sin so that he might save us from our sins.

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And while he suffered for my sins, sin was brought against him. Wild bulls and ravenous lions, mongrel and vicious dogs.

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But they weren't any of that, were they? They were men. They were men.

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They were the cream of society. They were men who by their sin so obscured the image of God in them, they became less men than the wildest animal.

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Well, this is what he suffered to make you sons of the light and sons of the day. He endured being bitten and devoured and consumed so that you or I would not be.

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And so you and I would not be forever. Paul says, watch out that you're not consumed, this biting, this devouring.

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What awaits those who live in that darkness, who are that darkness?

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It's to be bitten and devoured and consumed forever, for all eternity.

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A worm that never dies, a worm that never has its fill of the suffering that it causes. Sin being so dark as that.

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What hope do we have? Let me ask you, does that not raise your view of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and his perfections? Your appreciation for what he did on the cross and what he suffered on your behalf to bring you to God?

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Ephesians 1 19 says that this is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

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That's the power that brings those who bite and devour and consume into true humanity.

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Making you sons of God, sons of the light, sons of the day. Nothing you can do on your own.

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No, we cannot accomplish this. God, Jesus said with man this is impossible, but nothing shall be impossible for God, even turning a biting, devouring, consuming beast into a

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God -fearing man or woman who love his son Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus on the cross and Jesus by his spirit doesn't just make you better.

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As though we needed a tweak here and there or just an adjustment like my friend's cars in Mr.

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Kuhl's garage where we just had to get to dwell one little degree closer to make the car perfect.

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No, it's not like that at all. You don't need an oil change from inside out. You need a whole new person.

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You need redemption. You need recreation. Jesus said to Nicodemus, you must be born again by the washing, by the regeneration, by the renewal of God's Holy Spirit who goes where he will.

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And no one can force him. No one can predict him following God's will and bringing this redemption upon those who will repent and believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. No, not rebuilt, not adjusted, not but remade completely, not brought from darkness into the shade, but from pitch black beastliness into the dazzling light of Christ to become sons of the light.

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Sons of the light, come out of the darkness. Realize that you're in this kind of darkness, how deep and how dense it is according to scripture, according to God's word.

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You know, the novel Papillon was made into a movie. Papillon is a true story of a man who in 1933 was sentenced to the infamous

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French prison colony in French Guiana. At one point he was put in solitary confinement, which is a place where you're not allowed to speak.

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It was total silence and a word from your mouth would increase your sentence.

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Well, he was further punished by having the top of his cell, which was the only place he could get any light, covered with a tarp.

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Darkness for a year, no light allowed. And when he finally emerged, he couldn't face the sun.

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Even with his eyes jammed closed and his arm over his eyes, he couldn't stand the sun.

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He had been in darkness so long that the light was a forgotten memory. It was a stranger to him.

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It actually hurt him. He could no more see through the brilliance of the light than he could see while he was in that dark prison.

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Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? This is the darkness that he endured to bring you to the light.

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This is the darkness. This is what we become when we willingly step back into it.

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Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Is your faith in him? Have you put any trust in him?

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All your trust in him? You've lived in darkness long enough.

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This is the darkness the Bible says that you are in. You are of the darkness. You are of the night.

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Sin has made you like a beast. You're like a bat that lives in a dark cave by day and only comes out at night for that cover.

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Ephesians chapter 5 verses 12 to 14 describes it this way, For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

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But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. For anything that becomes visible is light.

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Therefore it says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

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Step into the light. Put your faith, your hope, your trust for salvation in Jesus Christ.

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Understand that without him you are in that darkness, beastly, deep, dense darkness.

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You can't hide from. Psalm 139 verse 11 says, If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night.

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Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

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The darkness won't cover you. My parents used to listen to the Kingston Trio.

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This is a folk song group. They might still be around though a little bit aged. And I really liked the song that they had,

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Oh sinner man, where you going to run to? Oh sinner man, where you going to run to? Oh sinner man, where you going to run to?

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Oh, oh on that day. Well, I didn't have any idea of sin or sinner.

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I didn't even know the word. I thought they were saying, oh sinner man. You know, like those Westerns we used to watch, or I used to watch when

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I was a kid? He's the cinnamon kid, the Waco kid. He's the Texas fast draw. Oh, cinnamon.

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I thought it was a Western type of thing. Years and years later, I realized, no, a sinner man.

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Where are you gonna run to? Oh, on that day. Of course, as a

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Christian, I knew what that day meant. It's the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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It's that day when in Revelation 6 and verses 16 and 17, people cry out to the rocks,

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Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.

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For great is the, for the, excuse me, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?

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No, the rocks won't hide you. The darkness won't hide you. Live in darkness now, and be in darkness forever.

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Live in darkness forever. Stay in the darkness now, and darkness is eternity.

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When he comes back, there'll be no hiding, no running, no cover.

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The light awaits you. Your cover on that great day is not the darkness. God sees right through it.

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You will not be the rocks. Jesus made the rocks, and he will lift them off you with a mere glance, and in the light of his countenance will blind you and will demand an answer for your sin, for your biting and devouring and consuming sin.

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The only answer that will save you, and this answer must be made now while he awaits his coming.

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This answer must be made now while you have breath of life within you. The only answer that will save you is this,

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Jesus, you are the answer for my sin. You and you alone, by your cross and your cross alone, by your grace and by your grace alone, you are the answer to my sin.

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That answer must be made today, before that day comes. Because once that day comes, not the rocks, not the darkness, nothing will save you from his wrath.

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Repent today, repent now, repent this moment, and believe in Jesus Christ and the promise of his word.

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Because the redemption that he has worked, the salvation that he has gained, that salvation is so much more light than you realize.

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And God willing, you will see that light more brightly and more clearly. Because sin, according to the scripture, and if I've in any way made it more clear to you, how dark, how dense, how awful it really is, does that not glorify

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Jesus Christ all the more? And God willing, if you don't know him, does it make you want to come to him and know the light that is

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Jesus Christ and be rescued from this present darkness, to be redeemed in your humanity?

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We learn what many things are by encountering their opposite, as I did when my friend's dad,

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Mr. Kuhl, was so not Mr. Kuhl with his wife. And I appreciated all the more the love and the example of my parents.

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Let that be how it is for us here, as now we see the light that is

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Jesus Christ, and see a little more clearly by knowing better its opposite, his darkness.

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Amen? Grace Heavenly Father, we thank you again for the day that you've given us, for bringing us together, and I thank you now for the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Again, Father, for the suffering that he endured on our behalf, for the darkness that he endured in order to bring us to the light, to the light of God.

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Be ever a lamp to our feet, Father, and may we walk in the light as Jesus is the light, for we ask it in his name.