Book of James - Ch. 5, Vs. 10-20 (04/02/2000)

Park Meadows Church

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Fourth verse, please. David left off someplace near here, but there was a comment here that I wanted to make concerning this verse.

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Behold, the hire of the laborers who has reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the

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Lord of the Sabbath. I knew a deacon once in a

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Baptist church that bragged about buying an antique piece of furniture from a little old lady because she didn't know the price of it.

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He got it for nearly nothing, and he was so proud of that. Then he turned around and sold it for a tremendous profit.

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Russell, was that right? Now, what do you mean probably?

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Well, he's no longer with us, by the way.

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You have lived in pleasure, you've lived delicately, lived luxuriously, been given to the soft and luxurious life on earth, and you have been wanton.

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Wanton means to waste or to squander, be extravagant, or one who is immoral.

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You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter, thinking about a fat calf you were fattening for slaughter.

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You have condemned and killed the just, and he does not resist you.

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Be patient, therefore, brethren, be patient unto the coming of the

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Lord. Behold the husbandman, and hath long patience for it.

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Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receives the early and latter rain.

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Do not try to overthrow the rich. That's God's work, if it needs to be done.

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Be also patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

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Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest you be condemned.

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Behold, the judge standeth at the door. And it was this word, door,

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I wanted to get to. Jesus is called the door.

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Now, Clarence, what's the purpose of a door? Okay, it's a, what?

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Alright. Now, Brother David was talking about the sheep this morning.

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Go back to that same thought in your mind. The sheepfold was usually man -made in that open country, and would be of different material.

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But anything that would protect the sheep for the night.

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And the gate to it was an opening just large enough for one sheep to pass through at a time.

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The shepherd would station himself at that gate. And as the sheep came, he would inspect each one.

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He would look them over for cuts, bruises, burrs, anything that might damage the sheep.

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And he would anoint it with oil, or took care of whatever it needed to be. And he would call each one by name as they passed through.

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And he would do the same thing of a morning as they went out. Now at night, after the last one had come in, this shepherd would lay down across that gate, put his own body as the door, so there could be nothing get in or out without his knowing it.

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He protected the sheep. Jesus is that door.

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The sheepfold is Christ. We're in Christ. Each day as we retire and drift into a state of unconscious vulnerability, he inspects us and protects us.

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This is a type of judging. So, Russell, we should never end a day without our life being in order.

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The judge is coming. He tells us to not judge because, well,

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Bill, why shouldn't we judge? Okay.

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We do not know. Therefore, Roger, about 99 .9

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% of our judging would be condemning. Our condemning is always based on visual circumstances.

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When we judge, we then are finding fault with the circumstances.

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Now, Fred, who is it that controls our circumstances? God. So when we find fault with the circumstances, with whom are we finding fault?

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Right. Even if we don't like the weather and say so.

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We call it providence of God or an act of God. He doesn't tell us we have to understand all of it.

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We do have to acknowledge that he is in control. When you pray, do not pray against people.

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Learn that. Pray against the evil influences that cause them to say or do whatever they did.

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Now, turn to Philippians 2 .14, and I want you to memorize this.

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Bill, read it. Boy, Russell, what's that mean?

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How many of you go through a complete day, 24 hours, without finding fault with something?

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Did I see Clarence's hand going? Oh. Oh. He is very pitiful and of tender mercy to endure a cheerful continuance, never taking your eye from the goal.

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Consider him that waits for a crop of corn or wheat or some grain. He shows patience.

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He cannot rush it, cannot do anything to hurry it along.

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So, would we not then wait patiently for our crown, which is far more precious than corn?

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Why do men count time so long?

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Of course, I know the older you get, the shorter it is, but why do we consider time to be such a lengthy thing of our life?

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Because we judge it by our life. How many of you remember when you were a small child and you couldn't wait until you were a teenager, but you had to wait?

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You couldn't wait until you could go to grandma's, but you had to wait? It seemed like forever, didn't it?

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Well, in 2 Peter 3, verse 8, it says this, But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the

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Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.

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Clarence, what do you think he's talking about? What's he trying to teach us? That's right.

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Everything in our life is relative to time. You've driven down the road or been a passenger in a car traveling 60 miles an hour and count the fence posts that are going by.

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Well, it's hard to do, because you have a sensation of speed.

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But if you're in an airplane at 30 ,000 foot traveling 600 miles an hour, you don't have a sensation of speed.

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Why? No fence posts.

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If there were fence posts, boy, you'd be scared to death.

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But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by earth, neither by any other oath, but let your yea be yea and your nay be nay, lest you fall into condemnation.

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Now, Roger says we're supposed to say yes or no, not maybe, and to not swear by anything.

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Did you ever hear the expression, by my mother's grave it is so, or I swear by the

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Bible that this is true? Greg, what does that do to your credibility?

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It's watering down your credibility and you're shifting part of the responsibility of yourself to something else.

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Did you ever make an excuse and say, but the train held me up, but somebody got in my way, but I just couldn't get away from my house in time, but I overslept?

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Those are excuses. When you put a but on it, you're trying to justify what you did.

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Don't do that. Don't use but anymore. In fact, don't swear by anything anymore.

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13. Is any among you that is afflicted? Let him pray.

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Is he merry? Let him sing. Is any sick among you?

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Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

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Lord. Now why was this necessary at this time? Why didn't they take him to the hospital?

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Didn't have any. What about the clinic? Closed. Alright, so this was good advice.

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It's still good advice, but it's applied a little bit differently. The word anoint, you see in the 14th, anoint him with oil.

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David, what kind of oil? Olive oil.

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How many uses does olive oil have? It can do what?

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Cook with it? There's just lots of uses. You can burn, use it for light.

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Well, this was the best medicine they had. These two words, there's two words in the

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Greek for anoint. The one is

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C -H -I -O. But this one, this word for anoint is alphio, and it's referring to Christ.

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No, excuse me, the first one refers to Christ. This one refers to medicine.

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Alphio, anoint. Turn to John 9 .6.

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Roger, when you get there, read it. Alright, what was the medicine used?

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Alright, so that was what was used for the anointing. In verse 14 that we just read, here's what we have.

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We have the advice to pray and to get the very best medical help possible.

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Some of the time we pray as though it's the will of God that every Christian get well.

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And if we follow that line of thinking, Joy, then we'd have to say that we expect every

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Christian to live forever here in this body. Can't be like that. Confess your faults one to another.

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Now, can man forgive another man's sin?

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Can one man confess for another man? Prayer blesses the person praying.

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When Noah was in the ark, Fred, and he sent forth a dove, you remember that?

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And what happened the first time he sent the dove out? First time.

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Alright? Now, I want you to understand that Noah was blessed when the dove returned with an olive branch.

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He was also blessed when he didn't return at all. What? That's right.

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He was also blessed when he didn't return at all.

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What? That's right.

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He tells us to confess our faults one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

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The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Now, about this confessing our faults to one another.

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Several years ago, there come into existence, and I've forgotten what they called them, but several

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Christians would meet together in somebody's home and they would all confess their faults.

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You remember anything like that? Yes. That quickly deteriorated into a gossip session.

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Now, what's the Lord say about gossip? What? Don't even listen to it.

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If you won't listen, that takes the fun out of it. Now, we are to confess a fault to who?

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Who else? Right.

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The one you have wronged or that has wronged you. We're told to go to them.

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They may not even know it and discuss it with them.

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Now, we should always confess our sins to God because all sins are against God.

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They're not against each other. We can wrong each other and hurt each other, but we do not sin against each other.

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We sin when we do that, but I want you to understand sin is always against God. You can do nothing without Him being involved in it.

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So, confess your sins to the one that is involved in it. Never confess it to the church unless the church was involved in it.

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In other words, settle everything on the very lowest possible step.

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One other thing about confession I would have you know. When we confess to the

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Lord a sin and He forgives us, when does He forgive us?

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Well, when you have sinned, how do you feel? What's another word for it?

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Guilt. How did you get that guilt? Right.

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Now, when you confess and truly confess, what happens to the guilt? Who takes it away?

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Why won't He take it away when we act like we've confessed? All right.

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When someone has wronged you and they ask your forgiveness, you should always forgive them in your heart.

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But you have to make a judgment. Is he asking just to get on the good side of me again?

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Or is he truly sorry for what happened? If he is contrite, if he is definitely sorry, then forgive him verbally.

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Always forgive him in your heart, but never verbally until he sincerely asks for it.

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So the next time somebody wrongs you, don't automatically say, Oh, that's all right, just forget it.

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That may be all right and you may just forget it, but don't tell that person that. Because you haven't helped them one bit.

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They'll do it again. So we should treat those that wrong us as He does us when we have sinned against Him.

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You understand? Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are.

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In other words, he was human. And he prayed earnestly that it might not rain.

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And it rained not on the earth for the space of three years and six months. We think we've been in a drought.

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Now, how did Elijah know to pray concerning it not raining?

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All right, all right. But you have to go way back to Deuteronomy to find that.

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But he did tell him. Now, later, then he told him to go pray because he's going to send rain.

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So he went and he prayed and it started raining.

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It's sad, but there are preachers, and I know one personally, that claims that Elijah caused it to not rain and then he caused it to rain.

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He got God to do that which he had asked. Well, folks, that's not true.

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What do I mean when you've heard me say it so many times, God does not react to man?

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What does that mean, Bill? All right.

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Now, if He did react to man, what would that make

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Him, Clarence? Would He not be sovereign? He would be a servant, subservient to us.

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Russell, can that ever be? No way. So just know it's absolutely true that He does not react to man.

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He is not a man that He should lie. He is not a man that He should have passions, as we do.

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He doesn't. He's the same forever, absolutely the same.

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He never changes. In 18, and He prayed again, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth brought forth fruit.

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Brethren, if any of you, talking about Christians, do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know that he which converted the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins.

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Let's start at the back end. To hide a great multitude of sins, how would this come about?

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Why is that true? Well, let's start at the front end.

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Let him know that he which converteth the sinner. What does convert mean?

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All right, to turn around. So here He has caused someone to understand, or the

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Holy Spirit through you has caused someone to understand that what He did was wrong. He's converted from that.

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It doesn't mean salvation now. And He shall save a soul from death.

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This death is physical death. As far as we are concerned,

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He will live longer. But that's from man's viewpoint. And He shall hide a multitude of sins.

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David, how can a person that has confessed his sin, been converted or turned back on the right track, how is it that with that person a multitude of sins will be hidden?

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That's it, exactly. If he had gone on as he was going, there would be a multitude of sins that he would commit.

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But now there won't. So it's true.

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Confess. That brings us to the end of the book of James. The Lord willing, next

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Sunday we'll start Genesis. I guess Genesis is my passion.

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I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy studying Genesis. I hope you do.

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And I would like for everybody to be here and others also. Is there a word from anyone?