The Domestication Of Man - [Matthew 5;5]

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Just a couple quick announcements. I want to have a prayer this morning. Pastor John Piper has prostate cancer. He's going to have a huge surgery in a couple months, radical prostatectomy.
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Don Whitney, who has come here and preached, even from this pulpit, he has colon cancer and his colon is not healing properly.
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They put the colon back together, reanastomosis they call it, and it's not working. I just want to have a special prayer for those two pastors, as well as Pastor Ron Porch in Sacramento.
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I preached there several weeks ago on the last legs of chemotherapy. It sounds like he'll make it and he'll be living.
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We just want to pray for these men that preach the word of God and their families too. So would you bow with me please?
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Lord, we just have been singing about, to you alone be the glory. Father, that's what we would ask for Pastor Piper, Pastor Whitney, Pastor Porch.
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Our heart's desire and their family's desire is that they would be healed from this cancer, that you give them many more faithful years of service.
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But you have taught us in your word and your spirit has bore witness, as he has illumined our mind of the scriptures, that it's not about our desires, it's about your glory.
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And we would ask that you'd be glorified in this situation. We would have thought even years ago with James Boyce dying, that you could receive glory from that.
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Yet you are sovereign and you have taught us to willingly bow our knee, and to say with Job, the
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Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. We pray for the
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Pipers and the Whitney's and the Porch's, wisdom for the doctors, love from their local churches that would be poured out to the family, and Lord that you would increase the family's trust in you, that they would in fact do what
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Solomon said many years ago, that they would trust in you, Yahweh, with all their heart.
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Lord, that you would protect them from leaning on their own understanding. Lord, that you'd help them acknowledge you in all their ways, including medical.
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And Lord, that we would praise you because you would make their paths straight. We commit you to them, their ministries.
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And Lord, we would pray in times like this, that you would give us a hearty and healthy reminder that one day we too will die.
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As a matter of fact, we are dying now. And I would pray, Lord, for me as I preach, that you would help me to be like Richard Baxter, having a dying man preach to dying men and women.
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We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Makes things kind of sober, doesn't it?
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One day we'll face God, and then for us
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Christians, the verdict will be given, not guilty, because of Jesus Christ. While I'm kind of making announcements, let me just give you one more that will help us even as we want to learn from God's word.
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My friend on the West Coast, I was there in the summer preaching and just visiting him a few weeks ago.
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He's been faithfully preaching through Titus at his church as an interim pastor, and they decided Friday not to make him their senior pastor.
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A committee of nine people got together and said, we do not want you to be our pastor. And these were the three reasons, in no particular order.
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Number one, he doesn't have enough experience. I think he's been in gospel ministry for 13 years now.
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Number two, he doesn't know how to build a church. I thought that was
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Jesus' job. He will build his church. And number three, his preaching offends unbelievers.
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I said, those are three good things to get fired for. As a matter of fact, he's having to preach today. One person on the search committee, she said, your preaching isn't relational enough for me.
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I don't relate to it. In the 1700s, here in New England, here's how you gauged a sermon.
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Was it theologically correct? Was it faithful to the scriptures? Was it precise?
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And was it accurate? And today, the whole culture, according to Ann Douglas, even an unbeliever at Harvard, wrote about the feminization of America, and instead of having the pulpit be a place where the truth is proclaimed on the behalf of God, that we've turned it into this thing where I didn't relate to it.
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The pastor didn't seem warm today. I didn't smile enough. He didn't kind of identify with us, the people.
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And so I told my friend, I think that was the condemnation, really, of that church. Jonathan Edwards used to say, if you've got a
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Bible -teaching pastor and he leaves, you can count that as God's judgment against that church because people heap up teachers after their own desires.
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And so this morning, I praise God that I get to preach to a group of people who know there's no way
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I could build this church, who know that the gospel, by definition, in 1
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Corinthians 1, offends the unbeliever, and who wants to hear it anyway? I have a little fourth thing they could have probably added for my friend, that his preaching sometimes offends believers.
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Have you ever been offended when somebody preaches? I hope so. I can tell a lot about a congregation, according to Doug Wilson's theology, that people that want soft words from the pulpit all the time have hard hearts that don't want to be rocked.
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But on the flip side, people that have soft hearts want hard words, Jeremiah kind of words that are hard like a hammer because we realize, throughout the week, our heart kind of grows recalcitrant and hardened again, and we want the
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Word of God to kind of break us up and to need us, as it were, so we'd be soft and pliable to obey
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God. Knowing what the risen Christ has done in our life, we want to more live to be like Him, and as God calls us to be holy, so too we want to be holy by the grace of God that is in us because of the power of the resurrected
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Christ. Hard -hearted people want soft words.
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People that have soft hearts want hard words. You probably know where I'm going because if you turn your
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Bible to Matthew 5, here come some hard words. Matthew 5, please. We're going verse by verse through the
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Sermon on the Mount, just enjoying every bit of it, every little detail, right down to the words and the phrases and the sentences because the
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Bible deserves study, in -depth study, and certainly there's a place in our lives for reading through the
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Bible. I'm trying to read through the Old Testament in a Hebrew -English translation, and I'm just going pretty quick, but on Sunday morning
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I want to teach us that the Word of God deserves close, detailed, studied. The Sermon on the
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Mount, preached by the greatest preacher who has ever lived, Jesus Christ. His longest sermon.
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P .S., the elders just gave me a raise, and so I always preach the percentage raise that was given to me that translates into increased minutes of the sermon.
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So, here we go. I don't think I can quite do this one because it was such a large raise, but we'll just preach for a good long time.
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Where else do we go? We want to hear the words of life. God has given us new hearts, and those new hearts now have a love for what we used to hate.
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Did you realize that? Before I was saved, if someone said, why don't you go hear a sermon, I would say, Mom and Dad, why are you making me, number one, and number two, as long as it's short, number three, as long as right after the service
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I quick get out of there because I don't want to fellowship with anybody or do anything because they might ask me a question I don't know about.
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I just need to get out of there as fast as I can. All of a sudden, God saved me, and I liked preaching.
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I love preaching. I love to be preached to, and I like long preaching.
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Paul preached so long, by the way, people fell asleep and fell down out of the window and were dead. I don't want to go that far.
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And I love fellowship, and you love fellowship, and you love preaching, and that is a gift from God.
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Our favorite people in the Bible, from Moses to John the Baptist to Paul to Peter, et cetera, and our beloved risen
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Savior, Jesus Christ, were preachers. God had one Son, and He made Him a preacher. And here
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Jesus is preaching, really, an expansion of one word. If you look back to chapter 4, in Matthew 4, verse 17, the whole of the
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Sermon on the Mount is an expanded sermon of this word, this one word.
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Matthew 4, verse 17. From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say,
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Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. If you've ever asked the question, What is repentance?
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You can find out the detailed answer to that question in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
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And repentance means to change your mind. You used to think about life this way. God saves you and gives you a new heart and the
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Spirit of God dwells in you. And then you think about things the opposite way. And here Jesus comes preaching repentance.
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The kingdom of God is at hand. And chapter 5, 6, and 7 enlarges on that very theme.
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And it's really for Christians and for non -Christians. For those of us who are Christians, there is a way that we need to have our lives typified by repentance.
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And for those who aren't Christians need to come to the cross through only one way and that is through repentance.
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This was a great sermon for lots of reasons. One of the reasons I like it is because it was contrary to what was going on at the time.
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This was something that was different. The people were not used to hearing this. They were ready for this prince to come, this
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Messiah, who would deal harshly with the Roman oppressors and get rid of them all since they had taken them over about 63
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B .C. when Pompey annexed Palestine. This was different because the
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Pharisees said, you know, it's all about externals. It's the way you look. It's the way you dress. It's the way you act. It's the way you seed, tithe, cumen, and other things.
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And Jesus comes along and says, let me give you an announcement. Not only repentance, but then he says, I'm going to give you blessings, conditional blessings.
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If you take a look at the Sermon on the Mount, you see, opening up verse 3 of chapter 5, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, it starts with one word in the
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New American Standard and that word is what? Blessed. And sometimes we think it kind of means happy, but really it's more than that.
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This is the word that is described when God approves you, when
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God finds approval in you, you are blessed. It's always an act of condescension where here we have a great thrice holy
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God and he approves us. It's certainly a condescending act that he would do something like that, that he would reach down and bless us.
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We get the word blessing from the Latin beatus for beatitude, same thing.
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So these are blessings of God. Similar to Psalm 1, how blessed is the man. How can
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God singularly favor a person? And what kind of person gets the favor of God?
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And then we're describing, we're seeing here described all these different kinds of favor of God. Jesus is coming again a second time to judge, yes?
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But this first time he came to save. And he's telling people about his great saving nature.
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But there's a kingdom that he's calling them to live in because he's the king and it's going to take a different kind of living than living in the kingdom of Titus, Nero or any other kind of king.
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By the way, did you notice this word has nothing to do with feelings. I don't feel blessed. This is a declaration, almost a judicial declaration not of how they might feel but what
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God thinks of them. Today's message will mainly be to unbelievers because here's the kingdom.
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How do you get in? We'll talk about that and to believers next week. But before you just kind of zone out, be patient with me and also you can think about even how do you evangelize and I think you'll be encouraged.
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So let's go through the Beatitudes. We're up to number three. Let's quickly review one and two. Beatitude number one found in verse three of Matthew 5.
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Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs, literally in the Greek, theirs alone is the kingdom of heaven.
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The objective statement of blessing of God to these people, to the poor in spirit. That basically means people who are beggars.
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They know spiritually, I'm a beggar. The word came from a word where you would kind of crouch and you would cringe and you would not want to look up into the eyes of the person that you were asking for alms from.
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This is one who says I have no spiritual worth. I realize that I am emaciated spiritually and God you're going to have to help me.
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Why did this happen? Because Adam fell and we in Adam fell and he was our federal representative.
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But God says to you, these kind of people that recognize the spirits work in their life and that they're poverty, they have nothing, they're bankrupt, that was prayed earlier today, that they get the kingdom.
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Those kind of people get the kingdom of God, the privileges of Messiah's reign. Let me switch it to a positive summary statement.
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Oh, the approval by God for people who have realized their own spiritual helplessness and have put their entire trust in God.
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Those people are blessed. Beatitude number 2 found in verse 4.
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Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. It's one thing the first beatitude to think about something intellectually.
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It's another to experience it emotionally and that's what's happening here. I know that I have nothing before God and that's how
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God saved us. He made us realize we had nothing to bring to God and then there was something that was emotional to that because if it was real knowledge it translated into our entire being and here these people are mourning over what?
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They're mourning over their own sin. D .A. Carson said, a personal grief over personal sin.
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Out of all the words for sorrow and sadness and grief, this is the most extreme. Wailing, weeping, just the harshest grief and sorrow.
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This is the kind of sorrow that we would use when we would wail over those who have died in our family. But this is a spiritual weeping and wailing because it realizes how holy
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God is and how sinful we are and we need God's help and God says, when you realize that and you don't try to put up false pretenses anymore and you don't try to make excuses and you don't know how to be a victim, those kind of people that say,
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I own my sin. God help me. God says what? Get away from me. Go on, go on, go on.
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God said you're blessed. You're blessed. It's amazing to me that God would bless anyone.
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The question is not should God damn anyone? The question is why would God bless anyone?
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The third beatitude from unpredictable Jesus, I call Jesus sometimes when
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He's preaching through these, He's certainly not safe or tame or anything else. It's upside down.
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It's astounding. It's surprising. Blessed are the what? I think my
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Bible reads, blessed are the proud. Blessed are the intimidating. Blessed are the aggressive.
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Blessed are the bold. Blessed are the domineering. Blessed are the strong natural leaders.
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Blessed are the ambitious. Maybe that's the wrong
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Bible. Maybe that's Anton LaVey's Bible and not the Bible. Blessed are the meek who
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Tolstoy called the terrible meek. How can there be blessings for the meek? The people that get run over.
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The Casper Milquetoast of the world. One man said some people are just normally nice and easygoing, but then again, so are some dogs.
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When we think of meek, we think of weakness. They don't have any backbone.
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They don't have any intestinal fortitude. They don't have a spine. They're just kind of limp -wristed and wishy -washy.
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They get railroaded all the time. Lloyd -Jones says the world thinks in terms of strength and power, of ability, self -assurance, and aggressiveness.
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That is the world's idea of conquest and possession. The more you assert yourself and express yourself, the more you organize and manifest your powers and ability, the more likely you are to succeed and get on.
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Isn't that true? Go after them. The world's a pitcher of Kool -Aid and drink it up.
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How'd that get in the sermon? Just guzzle it. Just go for it. You've got to be aggressive. And here, contra to our normal thinking, by the way, that's a good test for Bible teaching, does it strike me odd from what
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I normally would think or what I would think before I was saved? He says, Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
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Everybody else is climbing to get their share of inheritance, and God says, they're going to inherit it. What do we mean by meek or gentle?
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What we don't want to do when we study the Bible is ask this question. What does this verse mean to me? You know, you all sit around in kind of a
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Socratic, what does this verse mean to you? What does it mean to you? Well, I feel this.
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We're looking for one thing, and what's that? What does the verse mean to God when He wrote it? What did the verse mean to Jesus?
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Meek can mean all kinds of things. Gentleness can mean all kinds of things. But in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, what did
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Jesus mean when He said the word meek? It's like Gracie said to me yesterday.
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We got all the dress -up clothes out. We were cleaning the attic and putting the Christmas things away, and we got the dress -up clothes out, and she had a little tutu on.
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And she thought, she was just a little tutu running around ballerinas. Casey, you'll like this. She said, it's kind of a funny word, the word tutu.
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It's a funny word, tutu. Where do we get that? You can even think of the word to and all our different definitions for that, and even a word that has the same spelling.
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Is this meek? Is this humble? Is this gentle? What is this? Because lexically, dictionary -wise, the word could mean not overly impressed with one's self -importance.
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Gentle, humble, considerate, mild. What does it mean in context?
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Let me ask you this question. Is the sequence important? If there are eight Beatitudes, is the sequence of going from poor in spirit to mourning over sin, is there some connection coming with this next one here, meekness?
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And the answer is, there's got to be, because there's some context to this. There's almost this facet of the diamond of repentance.
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You say, well, I'm just going to look at it from a different angle. As God is granting someone repentance, what do they go through?
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Poor in spirit, mourning over sin, and now meekness. So how can that be tied in with this area of salvation as God is saying, if you want to follow me, the king, this is what
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I expect you to be. Sequence is surely important. He just didn't make these up, whatever came to his mind.
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We realize we have nothing. This is the first Beatitude. We're sorrowful over it. And then we have,
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I think, the best synonym for the word meek here in the context is submissive. We're submissive.
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We don't try to justify ourselves before God anymore, and we're willing to let God do whatever he wants with us.
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We have a true estimate of ourselves, as Lloyd -Jones says. You see yourself as you really are.
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Do you remember that when you got saved? I do. All of a sudden, you have this weight upon you where you thought you were pretty good.
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Oh, my neighbor, I compare myself to my neighbor, and I'm not too bad, and compared myself to other people,
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I'm really good. And all of a sudden here, you get a true estimate of yourself before God, and then you realize, well, whatever he does, it must be right.
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I will submit to that. I could say lordship. D .A.
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Carson said, a controlled desire to see the other's interest advance ahead of one's own. God, you are the king.
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Whatever you decide, I'll submit to. I like what
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MacArthur said. The essential difference between being poor in spirit and being meek or gentle may be that poverty in spirit focuses on our sinfulness, whereas meekness focuses on God's holiness.
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We're relying as meek people coming to the Lord in salvation to say, God, you give us what we have coming.
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You are the one who decides. We have a true view of ourselves. You decide. We'll take a lowly place.
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Meek people in the Bible took a lowly place so that others might exalt them. They didn't sit in the front. Sorry, Carl. They didn't sit in the front so that they could have that spot.
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They sat in the back so the king could say, no, you sit up here. I realize I don't deserve anything. I'm going to sit in the very back row of salvation and if God pulls me to the front in a gentle way, in a humble way,
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I'll accept what He does. I submit. I'm throwing myself on the mercy of the court.
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For you Greek scholars, the Old Testament was translated into Greek. Since the
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New Testament was Greek, the Old Testament translated into Greek can be insightful. And scholar Nolan said in the
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Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, eight out of nine times this word that's used in the
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Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 .5, quote, the common quality is rather than the state of, rather, the state of powerlessness, inability to forward one's own cause.
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And in every case, God either is, does, will, may be expected to, or should come to the rescue.
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Did you get that? We have a state of powerlessness. We can't forward ourselves. We can't get to the front row to be saved.
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We sit in the back and say, God, your will be done. Contra to, if you think you've saved yourself, how can you be a
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Christian? If you've saved yourself by your own strength, can you be a Christian? No. Submission to God's will.
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Pouring spirit, mourning, and then realizing, God, I won't justify myself anymore. I won't defend myself anymore.
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I'm sitting in the back. Have mercy. In the old days, this word was used of animals that were domesticated.
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Broken animals. You take a horse and it's all wild and then the trainer breaks it, then it is subservient.
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It is submissive. It will do what the master wants. This is a broken horse with a saddle in the bit.
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Lord, I'm not a Christian. I realize I'm sinful. I realize what I deserve. I'm even mourning over my sins now.
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You've caused me to recognize both of those and now I'm just broken and whatever way you guide me,
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I'm willing to go. What must the Pharisees have been thinking?
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The Pharisees were all saying, we're in and we're in the special part of heaven and we're going there because we're good on the outside and this is all internal.
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What kind of blessing did they get here? They're approved of God and then God gives us promised blessing. Look at verse 5, chapter 5.
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Blessed are the gentle for they shall inherit the earth.
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Every Christian, each Christian, every redeemed person, they inherit. If you're back in the old days, the firstborn son gets what?
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Double the inheritance. Everybody else can divvy the rest up. Here, each and every person who has, by the grace of God, realized their own condition and fallen on the mercy of the court gets this kind of prosperity.
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I don't mean health, wealth, prosperity. What do I mean? Does your Bible show in verse 3, theirs is the kingdom of heaven?
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Is that in bold letters? Capital letters? That is right out of the old what?
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Testament. Would you turn back there? This is a verse that came right out of Psalm 37. Psalm 37 is where we get this beatitude.
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I wonder if Jesus ever studied the Old Testament. You shouldn't have laughed.
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Do you ever study the Old Testament? 70 % of our Bible. Kim had an insightful thing the other day.
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She said, if a seeker -sensitive church would just read through a few of the minor prophets, they wouldn't be seeker -sensitive too long.
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If you ever get asked, what's the theme of a minor prophet, you can just say, judgment. The wrath of God and he does have a remnant.
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People don't understand that side of God, but this is not the wrath side. This is a side that shows this blessing here.
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Jesus is offering paradise restored and he takes it right from Psalm 37 verse 11.
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But the humble will inherit the land. The same word there for Hebrew. In the
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Greek translation of the Hebrew is our word in Matthew chapter 5 verse 5. And will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
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Those humble will delight themselves. Well, what's the theme of this whole psalm?
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Look up a little higher into verse 3. It's a psalm of trust. Did you know what? It's a psalm of submission.
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It's a psalm of the New Testament definition and the beatitudes on subservient, submissive people.
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Psalm 37 verse 3. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land.
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Cultivate faithfulness. Literally, feed on truth. Look at verse 5.
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Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him and He will do it. Literally, commit means roll off the burdens of your own life.
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Roll off the burdens of yourself onto the shoulders of the Lord. He's big enough to take care of it and you just look to Him.
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It's about submissiveness. It's about trust. Look at verse 9. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait, literally the best translation of wait is eagerly anticipate.
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Those who eagerly anticipate with eyes of trust and submission will inherit the land.
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Jesus is using this Old Testament quote to talk about kingdom entrance. Now certainly there's many blessings, but we don't need to relegate the earthly blessing of it really inheriting the land as something temporal.
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Expositor's Bible Commentary says there's no need to interpret the land metaphorically as having reference to geography or space.
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There's other blessings and there's that blessing. For the people who don't assert themselves, the people who don't express themselves, the people who aren't great leaders,
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God says, I just give you everything. It's yours. Romans 8. And if children heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, He gives it all.
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What else about this word? Blessing. On people who are meek and submissive.
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Let me show you by opposite illustration a kind of faith that people have that's not meek and that it's empty.
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Turn to James chapter 2 if you would. What I'm trying to do now, especially for the people who aren't Christians in our congregation this morning, and there certainly are some,
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I'm trying to show you what Jesus requires that you can't do on your own, but that Jesus requires you to see your spiritual bankruptcy, for you to mourn over your sin, and for you to be so submissive to God that you say,
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God, your will be done. Anything you do, I'm willing to follow. And let me show you a group of beings that had no meekness, gentleness, or submissiveness at all, and that group of beings are demons.
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When I think of demons, I think of everything but meekness, don't you? Do those words go together?
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A meek demon assaulted me. A very gentle demon attacked
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Paul and gave him a thorn in the flesh. You just don't think of that, because we don't think of these demons being submissive and willing to say to God, I'll sit in the back, and if you bring me to the front,
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I'm willing to accept that. We see the opposite, especially with Satan and being prideful. Satan is certainly coming to God saying, because I'm prideful, because I want the worship,
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I want the adoration, I am the new trinity, as it were, you should worship me, I should get worship with you at the least, and instead of being at the place of biblical meekness, where we're willing to go to the back, and if God saves us, great.
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Here's the group of beings, one third of all the satanic angels, satanic demons now, come to the front and say, we deserve it.
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But it's weird. Some demons are better off than people. Let me show you how, but at the whole time,
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I want you to remember how this is anti -meekness, anti -submission. James 2, verse 19.
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You believe that God is one, you do well, the demons also believe and shudder. Let me talk about non -meek demon faith for a little bit.
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Let me give you just several. If you're taking an outline, it's hard to outline one beatitude, but let me give you a few things about demon faith, for those of you that have to outline, here you go.
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Demon faith, number one, believes in the existence of God. Do demons believe that there's a
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God? They believe there's a God, even by implication in James 2, verse 19. You believe that God's one, you do well, the demons also believe.
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Demons believe in God. It's no great thing to say, well, I believe in God, because people can still believe in God, without having the meek, gentle, submissive heart that says,
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God, I'm willing to call you Lord and follow you. Number two, demons believe in the unity of the
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Godhead. I think they believe in the Trinity, but 2 .19 doesn't let us know that, but it does say that God is one.
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They believe in the unity of the Godhead. Certainly not James, he says you believe that.
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Here he says, these demons believe that God is one. That's amazing to me.
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They're better than the Aryans, they're better than the Mormons, they're better than Jehovah's Witnesses.
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They believe in this one God. Number three, and yet they're still not meek. Number three, they're monotheistic.
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You believe God is one. What's the great Shema by the Jews? Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the
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Lord our God is one. Can you imagine? They believe there's only one
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God. They don't believe in a bunch of gods. Four, demons have an orthodox creed.
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We have a statement of faith here. How many people have read our statement of faith? If you're not a member and you haven't read it, you probably should.
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Otherwise you're going to just have to trust us. We don't want you to do that. We want you to read the statement of faith. The demons,
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I believe, would affirm our statement of faith. Would they? Jesus died on the cross, substitutionary atonement, raised from the dead, and the same body that he died in and was glorified, is going to one day come back, et cetera, et cetera.
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They know the apostles' creed. They know the books of the
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Bible. Orthodox, they know. But just because you know something, it doesn't mean you're going to go to heaven.
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Demon faith is number five, intellectual. It's not this kind of Kierkegaardian kind of leap of faith.
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They use their mind. They realize with their brains that they have, as it were, the demons also believe.
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Intellectually, they know. Is that enough? What I'm trying to say is, you can know a lot about God, even with your mind, and still not come close to being meek and submissive to what
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God requires. By the way, this is all because people love their sin more than they love
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God. They realize that God is true. They realize that there's a heaven, that there's a hell, that Jesus was really real.
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But they love their sin so much, they can't let go of it. They don't want to let go of it. And lastly, number six, demon faith is emotional.
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Oh, I love this word. Do you see that in your text? James 2 .19. You can have a meek faith that has no emotion.
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No, what am I driving at? If you've got real faith, there's meekness. But here's something that's less than saving faith, that less than meekness, the demons also believe in what?
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I'm going to teach you a new Greek word. Ready? Phsouson. Phsouson. P -H -R -I -S -S -O -U -S -I -N.
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Phsouson. Kind of sounds good, doesn't it? I kind of like that word. Just throw it out.
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Sacerdotalism. Propitiation. They're just some words that just roll off your tongue. Phsouson.
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You know what that is? That's the word that if you see your dog run up to another dog and they don't like each other, something happens to the back of that dog's hair.
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The hair on the dog's back. And what happens? Stand straight up. That's the word. Demons know all about God intellectually and they so know
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Him emotionally they are afraid of God. Don't send me off until it's the time,
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Jesus. They're afraid of God. By the way, it's a present tense which means the demons believe and keep on shuddering.
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They're always shuddering. They're always afraid. It's the horror that has the hair on the back to stand on end.
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It's very similar to the Latin word, Horeo. Interestingly, in Jewish tradition, the demons were called in Hebrew, Sha -Yar -Yam.
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Used in Job 4, the hair of my flesh bristled up. Used in Daniel 7, and visions in my mind kept alarming me.
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In some Jewish writings, this word is used to show what happens to demons during exorcism.
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They would shudder. What's the point? The point is, would you ever consider demons to be having meek faith?
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Well, of course not, because they're not submissive. You can know a lot about God. You can intellectually know
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God. You can experience God emotionally and still not have meekness. And Jesus said, when it comes to blessings and approval of God and entrance into my kingdom, blessed are the meek and the meek only, those who are submissive.
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Not those who just take Jesus for hell insurance, but those who abandon their own merit, their proper view of themselves they have, and they take a lowly place in the back and say,
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God, you're going to have to promote me, and it's going to have to be of you. Let me put it in really modern terms.
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The people that are meek will accept Jesus as Savior and as Lord.
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It is an outlandish lie to think that you can have Jesus as Savior and later you make him
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Lord. Just between us, you don't make Jesus Lord, Jesus, Jesus is
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Lord. J .F.
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Packer said, 10 years ago you told me that I would live to see literate evangelicals, some with doctorates and a seminary teaching, arguing for the reality of an eternal salvation, divinely guaranteed, that may have in it no repentance, no discipleship, no behavioral change, no practical acknowledgement of Christ as Lord in one's life, no perseverance of the saints, and I might add, no meekness and submissiveness.
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I would have told you, Packer says, that you were out of your mind. Stark, staring, bonkers is the
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British phrase I would probably have used. The king is asking the people to be submissive.
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Just think about a regular king. The king comes into town and goes, you can be part of the kingdom, but you don't have to bow the knee.
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That's okay. You just do the opposite of what I say, it's no problem. I'll tell you where those people went. If they would have had guillotines, they would have went to the guillotine.
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It wasn't devised yet. True faith submits to the lordship of Christ.
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Yes? Absolutely. But here's what happens. In our minds we have a friend or a loved one who doesn't submit to the lordship of Christ, and we have to kind of articulate a faith in our mind to somehow let us sleep at night properly, because we realize if it's the lordship of Christ and being meek and submissive, that this person who
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I'm married to, this person who's my child, this person who's my grandfather, isn't going to get in because they're anything but meek and poor of spirit and everything else.
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So we construct this in our mind, somehow hoping to sleep better at night, when we should just entrust our family members to the goodness of God.
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Will not the judges of the universe do right? God, I can't somehow mess with your word to make myself feel better at night thinking that they're in.
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So we lower the standards of salvation. Out goes poverty of spirit. Out goes mourning over sin. Turn it into a disease or some syndrome or something else.
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It's if they're a victim. It's like the pastor in Tulsa that just this last week,
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Southern Baptist Church, went out and solicited a male prostitute. Now he's out of the ministry, and the
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Southern Baptist Church has a thing on their website saying it's time for him to heal. It's not time for him to heal.
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It's time for him for what? To repent. Healing and restoration comes after and only after repentance, and it's the same with salvation.
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We come for some kind of spiritual healing when God says it's repentance. So we cannot mess with the word of God to make ourselves feel good.
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It's not going to change the ultimate state of where the person is or isn't, is it? Will it? This non -lordship business, without meekness and submissiveness, says that lordship is good, but it's not necessary.
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If you don't believe me, let me just give you some of these wacky views of non -meek faith. Quote, Though genuine repentance may precede salvation, it need not do so.
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And because it is not essential to the saving transaction as such, it is in no sense a condition for that transaction.
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You don't have to be meek and submissive and repent before you come to Christ. Acknowledging that it's your duty, but it's
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God working that in your life, that doesn't have to happen. Can you have faith without having repentance?
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It's like a nickel. If I had a nickel here, heads is faith and tails is repentance. It's one transaction in God's eyes, but it includes both.
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Here's repentance. I'm walking this way. That's sure a stupid idea. I'd turn around and go this way. I used to believe in that, and I used to believe in that.
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Faith and repentance are two sides of one coin. Here's another quote.
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People, you would all know who this is, if I told you. Could being faithless include unbelief?
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Could a true believer disbelieve and still be saved? Answer by this guy, yes. You cannot believe anymore and still be a
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Christian because you walk the aisle, you sign the card, you said, now I lay me down to sleep one time, and you did all that stuff.
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But my question is, Jesus Christ comes and he says, it's going to take meekness and submissiveness and gentleness that only
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God could give you, but you need to do, and here's what it takes, and all of a sudden, why is the standard lowered and lowered and lowered?
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Well, it feels better, I know, but this is the kind of message where they tried to kill
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Jeremiah, they tried to kill Ezekiel, they tried to kill Isaiah, they did kill Paul, they did kill Peter, they did kill
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Jesus. How about some of these?
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I mean, how can I make this up? This is in a book called Handbook of Personal Evangelism.
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The message of lordship salvation is accursed of God. The message lordship salvation cannot save.
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Lordship salvation contradicts Scripture. The person who preaches such a message is also accursed of God.
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In effect, it makes God a liar and the Bible untrue. Jesus is saying, poor in spirit, mourning over your sin, and being meek, and not pushing yourself to the front and saying,
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I will submit to whatever you say. That's lordship. Reisinger said lordship implies entire submission at the outset.
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And it's so dangerous, beloved, because listen to John chapter 2. Many believed in his name, but Jesus did not commit himself to them.
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There is a faith that does not save. You can believe God and not go to heaven, because it's an intellectual faith, it's an emotional faith, yet it's not a faith that is volitional as well, saying everything that I am is worth nothing, and all that God is,
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I want that, and I want that so badly, and I can tell it's a work of God in my life because I'm willing to say no to the sin that I now love.
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And people that can't break with the sin that they now love, know that they haven't repented to turn to faith up here. Luke chapter 8,
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Jesus said, they have no root for a while they believe. People receive the word, they receive it with joy, and then they walk off.
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Are those people still saved? How could they be? Blessed are the meek. To make it a
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Christmas message, I could say Luke 2. For today in the city of David, there has been born for you a savior, who is
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Christ the Lord. He's Lord. Paul said in 2
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Corinthians 4, we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord. Or you can get mad at Spurgeon instead of getting mad at me on this one.
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon. If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the
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Lord's will, but does not mean to attend it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved.
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You're not manifesting any kind of meekness at all, any submission to God, the king of the universe, so you can't be in his kingdom.
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Ehad said, think of the sinner coming to Christ like this. I do not want to be holy. I do not want to be saved from sin.
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I would only like to be saved in my sins. Please sanctify me now. Come in good and faithful servant.
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No. This is not new. Two hundred years ago,
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Andrew Fuller debated with this guy named Archibald Maclean, who had learned this kind of view from Robert Sandeman.
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I call this the house of Sandemanism. Mr. Sandemanism, bring me a heresy.
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Boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? He taught bare belief of the bare truth.
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If you just believe it in your mind, just a little bit of intellectual belief, it's fine. You're in.
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Because after all, that's what his grandmother did, his great grandmother, his wife, his children, everybody else. And then they lived a profligate life.
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But I remember that time they got baptized here in the church. That is no sign of anything. The dying thief on the cross in Luke 23.
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Lord, remember me. Doubting Thomas, John chapter 20. My Lord and my
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God. Jesus himself in John 13. You call me Master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.
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When we have friends, and we have relatives, and we have grandmothers, and I rejoice even this week with Brian, able to share with his family members before, and while they're on eternity's death door, here's the gospel.
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Look and live. We need to be saved from ourselves when we're like in Judges where every man did what was right in his own eyes, and we need to be turned to the
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God of the universe to say we will submit to your ways. It's like Paul.
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Tell me if this is not lordship, meekness, submissiveness. Lord, what will thou have me to do?
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We submit to Jesus on his terms. Westminster Confession said,
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By faith a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the word, yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God.
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But the principal act of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.
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And do you know what? It is easy to be deceived. Let me repeat that.
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It is easy to be deceived. Last passage for the day.
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Would you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Edward Buller Lytton said,
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The easiest person to deceive is one's own self. It's easiest to deceive ourselves. In a secular realm, why do super smart people make super dumb decisions?
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Because they're smart enough to rationalize it all. I meet people all the time. They've got double my
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IQ. And they make stupid decisions. Why? Because they can try to figure out in the flow chart of their life how to make the decision and still make it copacetic.
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It's easy to be deceived. It reminds me of P .T. Barnum, the circus showman. And he had an animal museum in lower
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Manhattan. And he couldn't get people to get out of the tiger cages. The tiger area, they weren't actually in the tiger cages, but observing the cages.
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And so finally he had a good little scheme. Over the cage of the tigress and her cubs, he hung a large sign which read tigress.
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Then there's another door over here next to the cage. He hung another sign, to the egress. And thinking that they'd be curious to go in there to see the egress, they walked right out into the street.
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And that's just like sin. Advertises one thing and gives another. 1
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Corinthians 6. Do you not know that the unrighteous, those characterized by unrighteousness, those characterized by a lack of meekness, those characterized by those who won't be submissive to God and His will, don't you know they shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
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And by the way, why would these next four English words be there if we wouldn't be deceived or be tempted to do this? Do not be what?
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Deceived. It's easy to be deceived. There are kids, there are moms, there are dads, there are grandparents, there are kin, there are friends.
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Don't be deceived. Forget about all our kin. How about you? Neither fornicators, idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexual, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor the drunkards, nor the revilers, nor the swindlers.
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He could have listed a bunch more. These are just some vices that he listed for the Corinthian church. Shall inherit the kingdom of God.
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Christians, news bulletin, don't live like they used to. They're not like Jessica Hahn who was with the whole
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Baker scandal at PTL when Playboy wanted to interview her and have her pose topless. She said, quote,
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God gave me real peace about doing it. Grace changes people and you can tell one of the ways you know you're saved is you realize
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I used to love this sin and now I hate this sin and I don't want to do this sin anymore. As a matter of fact, I repent of this sin.
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That's a good fruit of salvation. The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Why? Old things have passed away.
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New things have come. And to the praise of the glory of God's grace, look at verse 11.
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And such were some of you. As a matter of fact, you want my resume? Didn't include all those but it was just in verse 9 and verse 10.
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I'm not that way anymore. But you were washed because when God has you look to Him as one who is bankrupt, as one who mourns over sin, as one who says,
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I am meek. I'm in the back row. God, may Your will be done. I submit to Your goodness. You either save me or damn me but You're the one.
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You're different. Jesus dies for all their sins. God confirms that by raising from the dead and you were washed.
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You were sanctified. You're different. Grace greater than all our sin.
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Absolutely. You don't go on trying to make excuses like these Corinthians did.
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Look at verse 12. All things are lawful for me but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me but I will not be mastered by anything.
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I like to sin. God likes to forgive. As a matter of fact, they had a little ditty in verse 13.
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Here's how they kind of rationalized sexual sin outside of marriage. All sex outside of marriage is sinful and you're deceived if you think you're going to keep doing it and go to heaven without repentance.
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Look at verse 13. I love Him. It's been a long time.
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How will it affect our children? All kinds of things. Those are just as bad as this one.
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Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food. Hey, I was born sexual and I've got to use what
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God's given me. Yet the body is not for immorality. It's true that the body and the stomach and the food, they're going to be gone one day but nothing else is going to be gone because your body is going to live forever.
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The stomach is for food but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality but it's for the
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Lord. Don't make excuses. It's like Ephesians chapter 5. For this you shall know a certainty that no immoral or impure person who is an idolater...
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Can you imagine that? Sexual sin is idolatry. I love this person and I love sex more than I love God. Who is an idolater shall enter the inheritance...
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has an inheritance in the kingdom of God and Christ. 1
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John 2 says, The one who says, I've come to know Him and does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in Him.
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So what do we do? If we're Christians now, we say, God, You saved me from that and You saved me unto
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You. Praise Your name. And if you have friends and relatives and children and parents and loved ones and other associated ones who say,
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I'm going to live in an unrighteous life and think I'm going to heaven, then what's the most loving thing you should do? Affirm?
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Celebrate? What's the most affirming thing? Have you come to your place where you're spiritually bankrupt?
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I don't see you mourning over that sin. You might not like the consequences of your behavior but you're not mourning over it.
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And if you really think you're a Christian, you've got to come in on God's terms and God's terms says, No sin, no self, no
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Satan. Falling down on the mercies of God from the back row with a submissive heart or there's no other way to come.
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You came in through the broad road and not the narrow road. And can you imagine the Pharisees when they heard this message?
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What do you think they did? Keep preaching. Give him a raise so he preaches longer.
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We're going to crucify that guy. We're going to make him slip up. We're going to figure it out. We've got a problem and the problem is
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Rome. But there's ways to massage Rome. And he's going to die because we like our sin and anybody that comes along and says that sin is damning and you've got to turn from that sin before you can turn to this great
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God. You can't have Yahweh. You can't have his promises. You can't believe in the triune God that gives the inheritance of the earth, that gives earthly goodness and pleasures, salvation, full and free, forgiveness of sins, past, present, and future, sins that are gone as far as the east is from the west, sins that he throws behind his shoulder blade, literally in the
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Hebrew, sins that he remembers no more, sins that he says, My dad forgives his son.
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I'm going to forgive you that much. The salvation that they drool about cannot be found until they say,
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God, you're going to have to convince me that that sin is horrible and I turn from it with a submissive heart. There's only one way to heaven and it's not a popular way, is it?
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Who would ever come to a church that preached that? We are just so...
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This is why the scriptures should renew our mind. Let's just use the sexual sin again. Making love.
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Outside of marriage, sorry, it's called making lust. There's nothing to that and in our minds we go, Yeah, yeah, that just all kinds of works out and I love the word of God because it comes in like a hammer to the hearts of those who are soft and say,
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God, even as a Christian, I don't want to look at that person like I used to. I want to be pure. I want to be for my spouse.
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I want this and I want that and God, all that increases my assurance of salvation, per last week's message, because I know you've done a work in my heart and I praise you for that.
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I could never repay you. You've done so much but I want to live a life that counts for you and I want to live a holy life and I want to be like a sword and a clean, sharp sword is an awful holy instrument in the hands of God.
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God, I want to be a clean tool and for us, as Christians, can we be meek as Christians?
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Yes. And we'll look at that next week. How can a Christian be meek? But for today, are you meek? Did you come in the narrow way?
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Are you holding on to your sin? Run. Flee. Run to Christ.
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Look to Christ. It's not true because it's happened to me.
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It's true because of the Scripture. But oh, that day when I knew, when I kneeled down and God forgave me of all my sins.
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Every sin that I've ever committed, past, present, and future, covered because Jesus paid for it.
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What a day. And it comes only through the narrow way. Let's pray.
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Lord, we would exalt your name today and Father, we ask in this evangelistic sermon today that you would give us hearts for the lost, that you would help us to rejoice that this is how you've saved many of us, granted us eternal life as we would recognize our sin and run to you.
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Father, I pray for those that are not saved and I pray that no pastor or priest or professor or anyone else would tell them anything different than the words of life.
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And Lord, I pray that you would make their lives hard. The way of the transgressor is hard and I pray,
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Lord, you'd make it hard and block every attempt of success and joy and happiness so that they might come running to you, that they might be like that lost son, tired of disobeying their father and come running.
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And Lord, it is true that there's great rejoicing when sinners repent. Lord, help us as a church not to look upon people who are not
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Christians with any kind of judgment. Help us to look at them like Christ did, with compassion, with a heart wanting to reach out to them and to do what
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Jesus did, to tell them the truth in love. Help us to do that,
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Lord, at our church. And God, would you grant us in the weeks to come some who are sitting here today, some who are associated with our church, that we could see the fruit of your work in their life as we watch them get baptized.
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Lord, you're a God who saves. You're a God who never changes. And the worst sinner can come to you because you are greater than sin.
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And you proved that at Calvary when you had your son die and then you raised him from the dead.
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We thank you for that. Give us hearts of meekness, even as Christians, as we anticipate next week. In your son's name, amen.