The Joy of Advent

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Romans chapter 8.
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And for our text this morning we are going to read Romans 8 verses 35 to 39.
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Now this is sort of an odd place to start because Paul's thought really begins much higher in the text and this is, we're kind of coming in in the middle of a paragraph.
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But I'm not doing this without purpose.
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If I started back at verse 28, I'd never make it to verse 35 in one sermon.
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And so I want you to understand, I understand there's a context here and I do, I plan to mention it.
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But if I, again, if I were to try to exegete all this, I just wouldn't have time.
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I really want to focus on verses 35 to 39 this morning.
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I want to invite you to stand with me as we read the text and then we're going to begin the sermon.
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Romans 8, 35.
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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long.
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We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
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No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
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For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus.
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Our Lord, may God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word.
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May God write its eternal truths on our heart.
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And may God keep me from error as I preach.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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If you are a poetry or literary buff, a person who enjoys reading, especially classical reading, then you are probably very familiar with the name Edgar Allan Poe.
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Edgar Allan Poe was a tragic figure in American literature.
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His parents were penniless actors who died when he was very young.
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He went on to live with strangers in an unhealthy home atmosphere.
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As a young man, he fell in love, was married, and his one true love died, leaving him a broken and alcohol addicted man.
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It is no wonder then, knowing a little brief snippet of his life history, that his writings are filled with despair.
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Shortly after his wife's death, he wrote his most famous poem.
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It is entitled The Raven.
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Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore.
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The story tells in this poem of a depressed man filled with grief, going mad in his study because of the death of his beloved wife, Lenore.
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And the word that echoes in almost every verse of the poem is the haunting word, never more.
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Is there anything beyond the grave? Will I have life after death? Will I ever again see my beloved Lenore? Will I ever again have hope? Nevermore, nevermore, nevermore.
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And the poem ends.
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And my soul from that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted.
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Nevermore.
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Poe is a man whose life was consumed with grief.
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And this showed up in his writings most plainly in this poem.
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This is Christmas week, and today is the fourth Sunday in Advent.
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Today is the day where we're supposed to be looking at the theme of joy.
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Yet for so many, this time of year brings not a sense of joy, but rather a sense of sadness.
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Of grief, of brokenness.
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It's a time of loss and loneliness that can seem to overshadow any sense of joy that would normally be present.
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And it doesn't help that Christmas time by itself, even if even if you don't have grief associated with it, Christmas time by itself is a stressful time.
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It's a time where things are so busy and it seems as if nothing stops for a month straight and you're just go, go, go, go, go.
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The weather changes from comfortable to ice cold.
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The daylight hours are lessened.
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We spend more time moving about in the darkness.
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All of this can weigh very heavy on a person's emotional state.
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In addition, this has been a difficult year for our church.
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I thought about this as my wife and I were talking this week about the sermon.
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We often do, we often sit when we have time and talk about what I'm going to preach and told her I was preaching about joy and that I was going to talk a little bit about grief.
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And she said, Keith, at the beginning of this year, we lost one church member a month for four months in a row.
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And I had almost forgotten that it had been so soon and how much we'd lost this year.
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So it would certainly be understandable if some of us were looking forward to this week of Christmas with a sense of dreadful grief rather than joyful elation.
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Yet we know that for believers in Christ, we are supposed to be marked by joy.
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That's one of the fruits of the spirit.
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Love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness.
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It's all in there.
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It's joy is who and how we're supposed to be.
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Even James tells us, take joy in your trials.
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James chapter one and verse two, one of the most difficult passages in the New Testament to apply.
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Take joy in your trials, knowing that your trials produce patience and patience, maturity.
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It's a command, but it's not an easy one.
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And as believers, we are not exempt from sadness and melancholy feelings.
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In his 20s, Charles Spurgeon pastored the largest Protestant church in the world.
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At the time.
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American tourists would go to London or go to England and they would return and they would be asked two questions.
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Did you see the king? Did you hear Spurgeon? That was the level of his popularity.
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Did you see the queen? Did you hear Spurgeon? His sermons are immortal.
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They have gone well past his grave.
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Even today, there are those of you who tell me you read sermons from him now, well over 100 years after his death.
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A man with such success in the gospel, you would think would be on top of the world all the time.
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Filled with just in just in raptured happiness all the time.
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And yet.
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Spurgeon himself was not made of stone.
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He suffered physical and emotional distresses, and he was quoted once as saying during a sermon, quote, I do not suppose there is any person in this assembly who ever has stronger fits of depression of spirit than I myself have personally.
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He called it the dark night of the soul.
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And my point in telling you that is that I want you to understand that grief is not unnatural even for the believer.
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It's not something that's forbidden to believers either.
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Read your Bible and read about faithful people and you will see them expressing genuine grief.
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Abraham grieved at the death of his wife.
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The 12 sons of Israel grieved at the loss of their father.
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David grieved the death of his son, and even Jesus Christ wept at the graveside of a friend.
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And he knew he was going to raise him from the dead.
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That's the amazing thing.
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Jesus knew in less than an hour that old boy going to be walking around again.
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And yet he wept.
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I've worked in the funeral business for over 20 years doing different jobs.
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Now I serve as a minister.
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But in my teen years, I served as an assistant and worked alongside.
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That's what I thought I was going to be when I grew up.
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And I've seen firsthand the difficulty that families face when they are stricken with grief.
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So I want you to know right now what I do not want to do in this sermon.
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All this is just introduction to simply say this.
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I don't ever want this sermon to be taken as a sentimentality because that's what the world offers.
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You go through something bad, the world offers this.
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Don't worry.
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Be happy.
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Or, you know, it's going to be all right or it's OK or whatever.
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The world offers a Band-Aid to a wound that is gushing and it's no help.
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This is why oftentimes if I ever come to visit you and you've gone through something difficult, I try not to say a whole lot.
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Unless I'm bringing to you the word of God, because what the world has to offer you in words is often very unhelpful.
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And I give you this one thing, if I can ever help you, if you ever get into hospital ministry, say less.
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Say less, because oftentimes people come in wanting to tell everybody about what they've been through and all the things that they've struggled with.
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And then it ends up being the worst thing you can do.
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People just need you to be there.
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They don't need you to say a whole lot.
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Unless, of course, you're bringing in the word of God and prayer.
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But the point of today, again, is that we are supposed to be people who have joy, and yet we know that our lives are sometimes stricken with difficulties.
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So how do we balance this juxtaposition? How do we balance joy and grief? How do we balance difficulty and the good? Well, I want to begin with a thought, and I want you to put this into your mind today, and I hope that this is sort of the thesis, and we're going to get to the text.
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But this is sort of the thesis of the overall idea.
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Our joy in Christ is not the opposite of grief.
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And here's why I know that, because joy is the believer's sense of comfort and hope, which can exist even in the midst of grief.
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I say it again, joy is not the opposite of grief because joy can exist in the midst of grief.
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You say, I don't understand how that's possible.
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Well, let me explain to you how that's possible.
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Most people confuse joy with happiness, and those words are connected in a sense.
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They have a similar semantic domain, but they are not the same.
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Joy and happiness are not the same.
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In fact, I want to give you a little quote from Mark Twain.
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I don't know why I'm in such literary mode today, but Mark Twain said this.
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He said the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.
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It's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
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And so when you hear me say joy, if you think I'm talking about happiness, you'll be confused.
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Understand they are not the same thing.
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You say, well, give me the definition then.
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Well, happiness, even in its etymology, is based upon happenings.
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Happiness is based upon happenings.
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For instance, I'll give you an example.
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Several years ago on Christmas morning, I woke up to a house whose plumbing did not work at all.
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Nothing coming in, nothing going out.
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And it was bad.
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My kids wanted to open presents and all I wanted to do was get the water flowing.
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And so I was elbow deep in the recesses of my home for several hours while my children were inside.
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Ashley's laughing because she remembers that day.
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And the thing is, I had a church member friend came and did it with me on Christmas morning.
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That's a brother who's thicker, a friend closer than a brother right there.
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We were both in it.
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And I want to tell you, I wasn't happy.
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I mean, I wasn't laughing.
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I had tears in my eyes.
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It was a really, really difficult Christmas morning.
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And yet there was a moment during the midst of that storm of mess where I realized this, too, shall pass, where I realized it's it really is going to be OK.
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Jesus is still on his throne.
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Everything's going to be fine.
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And that's the piece that passes understanding.
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You know, the Bible talks about it.
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And I know that's a very small thing.
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Some of you guys have gone through so much.
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You say, oh, plumbing problem.
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That's no big deal at all.
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I'm just giving you a small example.
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What I'm saying is happiness can change because happiness is an emotion.
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But joy is a state of being.
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That really is the difference.
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I think happiness is emotional.
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Joy is ontological.
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Now, that word ontological simply means your state of being.
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Joy is the presence of Christ that you have been ushered into because of your new birth.
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You have been seated in heavenly places with Christ, no matter what is happening from your day to day life, your position in Christ is never imperiled.
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Your position in Christ is always secure because it's not secure by you.
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It's secure by him.
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That's the point.
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And that's the joy.
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That's an ontological position, not an emotional one.
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Your emotions change.
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I've been married 20 years.
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I know my emotions change.
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I know my wife's does.
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She's not here today to contradict.
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But we, you know, we have emotional days.
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We have days that we have to repent of.
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We have moments that we have to go back and say, you know what? That was wrong.
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I'm thankful that God offers forgiveness for the daily struggles.
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But that joy, that place of joy that you've been seated in doesn't change even when you have a bad day or a bad week or a bad year, because that is where you've been placed.
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You've been seated in heavenly places with Christ.
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That doesn't change.
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And that's the point.
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I have three things I want to show you in the text today.
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Three things I want us to look at in Romans 8.
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And these are what I call joy motivators.
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And I know that maybe sound a little little corny, but there really are.
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There are three joy motivators in this text.
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Motivations for joy.
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Number one is found in the first verse, verse 35.
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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Just stop right there.
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Motivation one.
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No one can separate you from Christ.
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No one can separate you from Christ.
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That's your immediate joy motivator for today.
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And I've read this a thousand times.
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You know what I noticed this week? You know how they say you read the Bible and you read it and you read it.
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And then something will just jump out at you.
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The thing that jumped out at me this week, I've read this verse, I've taught on this verse and I've never noticed it says, who shall separate you? I always said it is what? Because the next list of things, tribulation and persecution and sword and famine, all of those to me sort of sound like what's.
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But notice it doesn't say what shall separate you.
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It says who shall separate you from the love of Christ and you and you say, well, why does that matter? Well, I think the reason why it matters is because this is pointing out the fact that this is a personal relationship with Christ and a personal issue that might that you might think can grab you and take you out.
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Remember what Jesus said in John 10, my sheep hear my voice.
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I know them and they follow me.
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I give them eternal life and they will never perish.
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No one will snatch them out of my hand.
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No one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand and I and the father are one.
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Notice again, they're the personal.
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No one.
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He doesn't say no thing.
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He says no one.
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There are people who want to see you leave the faith.
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There are people who want to see you abandon Christ.
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There are people, if they could, they would destroy the Christian faith.
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They would wipe it from the map.
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They think that it's ridiculous, that it's repugnant.
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They hate it.
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They hate Christ and they hate us.
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And they want nothing more than to see us walk away from Jesus Christ.
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But none of those people have the power to separate us from Christ.
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None of those people can take us out of his hand.
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He is holding on to us.
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The father.
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This is the way the John 10 says.
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He says he's got a hold of us.
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The father's got a hold of him and nothing can snatch you out of their hand.
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Dr.
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Jerry Powers, dear friend and professor of mine, he used to say he used to say, you know, we often think when we're in danger and we're in trials, we're in tribulations.
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That's when God's holding on to us least because it's so hard.
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He said, but that's often when God's holding on the tightest.
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He said, imagine you're taking your child across a busy street.
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Now, you may have been walking with that child just holding his hand very lightly.
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But when you get to that busy street, you're going to reach down and you're going to hold his hand even more tightly because of the danger.
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And he said, that's the way God is with us when we are facing the tribulation, when we're facing the trial, when we're facing the problem.
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It's not as if God says, there you go.
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He reaches down and he holds us ever more tightly.
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No one can separate us from the love of Christ.
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And then he gives us this great list.
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He says neither distress, nor tribulation, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness or danger or sort.
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None of that.
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Now, I want to mention, why is Paul asking this question? Why is Paul asking what or who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Well, I think the reason why he's asking this question and it's at the end of Romans 8.
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And by the way, Romans 8, Romans 8 is the chapter.
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You got the whole Bible is like a ring.
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Romans is like the gemstone.
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Romans 8 is like the sparkly tip of that gemstone.
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It starts with no condemnation, ends with no separation.
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It is a wonderful chapter.
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And at the end of it, he asked this question, who shall separate us? Why would he ask that? Because there's people who are concerned about it.
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People are concerned about being separated.
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I know this because people come to me.
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I don't know if I'm saved or they'll say, I don't know if I've lost my salvation.
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That one's even more common.
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I know I believed in Christ, but I feel like I've fallen away.
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That's a difficult thing to deal with.
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And I don't want to I don't want to downplay it here or give a simple explanation because everybody's different and every situation is different.
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But the reality is oftentimes the times when we feel like we have lost our salvation is because we're struggling or going through something in our life.
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And at some point we feel like God has just abandoned us.
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And this verse is telling us that Christ doesn't abandon us.
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If you are truly in Christ, you never have to fear that he will stop loving you.
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Hear that again, if you are truly in Christ, you don't have to fear that he's going to stop loving you.
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I grew up with a good father and I know not everybody did.
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So what I'm about to say may not register well with you, but having grown up with a good father, I knew that I didn't have to worry about my dad not loving me.
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I didn't have to worry about that.
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I knew I could I could always go home.
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You think about the prodigal son.
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And he knew his father loved him and he knew that his father was good even to his servants.
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And he said, I can go home even if I'm a slave, better to be the slave of my father than to be in this pig slop.
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You see, understanding the joy of the Lord first begins with understanding the heart of God.
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That he loves you like a father.
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He loves you so much that he sent his son to die for you.
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And now he says nothing can separate you from that love.
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You say, I've made big mistakes.
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Yeah, you have come back home.
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The father still loves you.
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Joy begins when we understand that we can't make God stop loving us.
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He will love us.
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And he does love us.
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What can separate us? I keep saying it.
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See, I can't get it right.
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Who shall separate us from the love of God? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? The answer is nothing.
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No one.
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So that's our first motivation for joy.
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No one can separate us from the love of Christ.
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That's number one.
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Number two is a little harder to take.
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Because the second motivation for joy is this.
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Trials and tribulations are headed your way.
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You're in one state of three.
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You're either coming out of a hard time, living in a hard time, or you're going toward a hard time.
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That's life.
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But for the believer, that's a promise.
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Our life is going to be a struggle, if nothing else.
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This is why the prosperity gospel is garbage, by the way.
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And go that direction.
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But just so you know, the prosperity gospel is absolute garbage because it says when you come to Christ, you're not going to be sick.
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You're not going to be economically distressed and you're not going to have any of these problems.
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And it's all a lie.
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Do you hear about what happened at Bethel Church this week? And by the way, Bethel Church is a cult and a dangerous one at that.
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And this week, little girl died, two years old.
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They spent all week trying to raise her from the dead.
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They decided at midnight on Friday they were going to stop because that's when the news cameras stopped carrying.
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I'm not lying.
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They hired a spin person to come in and provide for them a spin doctor.
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You know, those guys, the news people, same guy who did, I think Lindsay Lohan or one of those big name actresses, spun all the stuff that they had done.
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They brought him in to spin the situation.
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Let me tell you something, believers, beloved, if you are in Christ, you are going to face trials and you're going to face tribulations.
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You're liable to face sickness.
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You're liable to face economic distress.
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You are liable to face a court hearing for Jesus Christ.
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The longer I live, the more I am convinced at some point something I say is going to have me before a judge.
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And I know if I said what I say across the pond, I'd already be before a judge.
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And you say, what passage? Look at verse 36.
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As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long.
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We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
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By the way, if you want to know where that's quoted, that's Psalm 44, 22.
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And that is a psalm of Israel.
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Israel saying to God, God, do you still love us? We're going through all of this.
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And the point of the psalm is simply to say that going through the trial doesn't mean God loves you less.
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Because Israel went through these trials and yet God still loved them.
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When do most people believe God has abandoned them? When things are good or things are bad.
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Things are bad.
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Nobody ever sitting in, you know, sitting where they call eating high on the hog.
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Nobody's ever eating high on the hog, having everything they need, all their needs met.
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Kids are healthy, you know, family's doing well, good and good grades, making good money.
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Nobody ever sits in and says, oh, boy, God has abandoned me.
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It's at the graveside that we say God has abandoned me.
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It's in the doctor's office that we say God has abandoned me.
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It's sitting beaten, bruised and bloody beside a car that's been torn to pieces on the highway.
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When we say where was God's hand? That's the moment, right? And that's what this verse is about.
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The verse is saying that this is life and this is what we're going to face.
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And know that in the midst of this, God has not abandoned you.
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Know that in the midst of this trial, God has not lifted his hand from you and taken his hand off of you.
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You know, a lot of people read verse 36 and 35 and go right to verse 37.
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They leave out verse 36, but verse 36 is imperative to understand because the reality is we are like sheep being led to the slaughter sometimes.
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And yet God still stands.
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Even in the midst of the trials, he's still God, even in the midst of the pain.
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Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, you know those names? Daniel chapter three and Daniel chapter three, Nebuchadnezzar builds a statue and he says everyone must bow down to the statue.
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Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego said we will not bow down to the statue.
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And they are brought before the king.
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And the king says, don't you understand that if you don't bow down to this statue, you are going to be thrown into a fiery furnace? I want you to hear what they say.
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This is chapter three, verses 16 to 18.
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Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered the king, Oh, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.
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I just like to stop right there and say, wow.
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The king just said, if you don't do what I tell you to do, you're going to get burned at the stake.
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We don't have to answer you.
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You're not God.
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If this be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your king, oh God.
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But if he doesn't, be it known to you, oh king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.
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God can save us.
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We believe he will save us.
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But even if he doesn't, we're not going to bow down and serve the false gods or serve you.
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And remember, God did not keep them from the fire, but rather he stood in the fire with them.
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God didn't keep them from the flames, but when they came out, they didn't even smell like smoke.
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Trials and tribulations are a certainty.
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Don't let it rob your joy.
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Don't let don't let it make you forget your joy.
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Your joy is a place.
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It's in Christ.
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It's not an emotion and it's not based on the day to day troubles.
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Lastly and thirdly, God has guaranteed victory.
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This is the third motivation.
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No matter what you're facing, no matter where you are in life, if you are in Christ, truly by faith in Christ, God has guaranteed your victory.
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Look at verses 37 to 39.
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He says, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
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For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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We will face tribulations.
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That is a promise.
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But we also have a better and more abiding promise.
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None of those tribulations will make God abandon us.
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And we have a greater promise past this life that can never be taken from us.
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Oh, victory in Jesus, my savior forever.
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He sought me and he bought me with his redeeming blood.
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He loved me even though I didn't know him.
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It actually goes, he loved me ere I knew him.
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And all my love is due him.
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He plunged me to victory beneath his cleansing blood.
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That's the reality.
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Victory is guaranteed.
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The war is won.
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And though we fight the daily battles with the flesh and though we fight the daily battles with the evil one and though we fight the daily battles with the prince of the power of the air and all of his dominion, the victory is assured.
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And therefore, our joy cannot be based on our circumstances.
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It must be based on Christ.
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If you are in Christ today, you are the object of God's love, no matter what you're going through, what you've been through or what you will go through Christmas.
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It's certainly a time wherein it is easy to be overcome with loneliness, depression, anxiety and grief.
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But it's also a time for rejuvenation of the spirit.
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And if we look and see the Savior lying in the manger and know that God loved us so much that he sent his son to save us.
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Then we will have an impetus for our grief to be turned to joy.
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In my introduction this morning, I referenced the poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
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But I want to now give you another poem, just a portion.
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This is by a man named Virgil Brock.
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Now, Brock is certainly not as famous as Poe, but Brock was a Christian poet.
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And one day he went out at twilight and he saw the sun setting in the West.
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Night was creeping over him and he thought about death and about eternity.
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And he thought about those of his loved ones who had already gone on before him.
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And he wrote these words, just these short words.
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Beyond the sunset, oh, glad reunion.
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With our dear loved, excuse me, with our dear loved ones who've gone before.
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In that fair homeland, we'll know no parting.
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Beyond the sunset, forevermore.
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Edgar Allan Poe, in his distress, cried out nevermore.
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Because he had no hope.
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The Christian who has hope, peace, love and joy from Christ doesn't cry out nevermore.
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We cry out forevermore, forevermore, beyond the sunset, forevermore.
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Let us pray.
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Father, may we truly find our joy in Christ.
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May we know that beyond the sunset, beyond this world, there is a world to come.
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And may we find our joy in what cannot be taken from us.
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Your word tells us that your love for us cannot be taken from us.
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That our faith in Christ has created a relationship which cannot be broken by any man in this world.
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So, Lord, I pray by your mercy and grace.
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That we would be able to truly understand what it means to have the joy of the Lord.
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Father, if there are those here today who don't have that joy.
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Because they don't have Christ.
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I pray that you would open their hearts to understand that they are sinners, that they need salvation and that there is salvation in no one else.
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For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.