Colossians 3:1-4 - A Scene In Heaven, Pt. 2

Park Meadows Church

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What a glorious thing it is. Matt, I enjoyed your words this morning, too. Yeah, it's amazing to sing the words of God, from the word of God, I should say, and probably nothing more rich than that.

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All right, Colossians chapter three, let's read verses one and two. If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

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Set your affection on things above and not on things of the earth, or on the earth.

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And we already covered verses three and four, so now we're, we kind of went backwards on those little four verses, now we're on verses one and two, and we covered a good part of that last time.

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We first went, excuse me one second here. We first went into Matthew chapter six, verses 31 through 34, and then we ended up last time in the book of Revelation chapter five that Matt was referring to.

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And we covered some of that, and we're gonna pick up where we left off in that Revelation passage.

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So we'll be in Revelation chapter five. We covered verses one through 10 last time, and we'll pick it up there.

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Let's pray, Lord, thank you so much for another day to come together. We pray for those who couldn't be with us today.

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We think of the Carpiacs, be with them today, Lord. And Raymond and Sharon are not in their spot, and they are truly pillars of the church, and so that's a real vacancy there when they're not here.

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And we ask you to be with them. Thank you for the good day that they had yesterday, and just pray that they'll have good strength today and healing.

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Lord, be with us as we study the word together. Please speak to our hearts and minds, amen.

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Oops, can't see, let me get my glasses. So last time, in Revelation chapter five, starting with verse one down through verse 10, let me just give you the main points that we saw.

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And if you weren't here, Ben's already got it loaded. You can go listen to the first part of this. But where the scripture says that we are to seek those things which are above and set our affection on things above, you know, you read that, but you seldom go and try to figure out, well, what is it that we need to do?

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What is up there? What are we talking about? What are we to set our affections on?

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And so Revelation chapter five tells us what is there, and it tells us what those who are already there are setting their affection on.

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And so it's pretty interesting to think about. So the first main idea we saw is we just say, let's behold the scene, let's take a look at what's there.

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And the first thing we saw was the perfect book that symbolically it says the hand of God.

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God doesn't have a hand. God the Father is pure spirit being. So it's just speaking in human language.

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But this book did come from where he is into time and space, and that's what it's picturing.

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And it's amazing how it said no man was worthy to touch the book or even look at the book.

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And we'll talk about that point here in a second. But only Jesus Christ could take that book, which he did in this passage.

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So the first thing it speaks of is the perfect book with seven seals. Seven is the number of perfection in the

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Bible. It's talking about the word of God in general and the book of Revelation in particular. And then we notice down verses two and three that humanism doesn't work.

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No man in heaven or earth can look at the book. And therefore humanism doesn't work because you cannot bring knowledge and wisdom from an infinite being if you don't know that infinite being and you don't read his word.

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You can't have it, it doesn't come natural. You think you may know how it works, but it doesn't work the way you think it works.

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Same for Freud, the base of all human psychology comes from him, he doesn't even know how it works.

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And so you can go into any area where a pure humanist founded that discipline and it will be off, greatly off.

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Don't ever go to a secular psychologist. Go to a biblical counselor.

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If you go to a secular psychologist, it's coming from a human brain that was perverted, which was

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Freud. I studied him and when I was pre -med, I took heavy doses of psychology because I was interested in it, including abnormal psychology, but the founder of modern psychology was abnormal.

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If you really look into what he thinks causes the way we are, you couldn't read it, you would just put it aside as a

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Christian. It's gross and it's not true, but it's all based on it now.

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I know there have modern branches of it, but he is the root and so it's sad.

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Humanism doesn't work. We see that in verse three. And then as we move on down, we see that the

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Bible is not for lost people. It is for those who are saved. And it may have principles in it that we can use as we speak to our lost friends.

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Of course it does, but it was written for us. And then we see that preachers are at the throne of God, guarding the truth and that is our job now and then.

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Anyone who is called a preacher, your main job is to guard the truth of the scriptures and not let people pervert it and teach it incorrectly.

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You should name them, you should mark them. That means name who they are by name and point out what they're teaching wrong.

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That's not unkind, that's kind to the sheep. You're being kind to the sheep when you get rough with a bad teacher.

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And so that's our job, Ben, and where's Dave? And Dave, that's our job.

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And also at school, Brother Paul is, Brother Paul is always preaching, but that's our job is to preserve the truth.

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Then we saw that they were gathered around the throne of God, guarding the truth and holiness of God.

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And that's quite amazing. And then we saw Jesus leading the worship and receiving the worship.

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And then we saw the proper posture of worship is on your face, right?

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Remember that? And then the proper atmosphere of worship was music, loud, beautiful, amazing music.

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Like, well, it wasn't super loud today, but it was plenty loud and it was really amazing, powerful music today.

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And that is the atmosphere of worship. And then we ended up last time with what is, the other thing we're supposed to see as we look around heaven is we see what our vision is for our own lives, what our goals should be and what our mission is.

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And we find that in verse 10. So take a look at that. We'll pick it up right there at verse 10. And he has made us unto our

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God, kings and priests, and we shall reign on earth. So now this whole passage, if you remember what we're talking about, because it started out referring to the previous chapter in the previous verses, and it's talking about how to deal with the flesh.

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We are a triune being. We're a body, a soul, and a spirit.

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We're actually a spirit that lives in a body and the soul connects our spirit with the physical.

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So the soul is a connector. But that's what we are.

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So we're one person, but we're three parts. And then you can divide ourselves differently from that.

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You could say, well, we're one person, but we're two men or two women. We're an old man and a new man.

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The real us is the new man, according to scripture. The old man is now crucified positionally, but in reality, he's still very much with us.

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In fact, we live in him, which is frightening. It's like living inside your enemy. Imagine that.

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It's like being a true schizophrenic. The two parts of you are totally opposite.

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Their affections are totally different. Their desires and goals are totally different.

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The end of each is totally different. The end of one is death, and the end of other is eternal life.

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The new man, his end is never. There is no end to him. The old man is already gone.

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He's already crucified. So how do you live that way? I'm writing a book on that now. I finished the first chapter, and it's fascinating to me because I've still gotta learn about it before I can finish the book.

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I've been studying it my whole life, I mean, since I was saved, since I was 24, is this concept of how do you walk this walk when you are an old man and a new man?

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You're really the new man, but the old man cons you into thinking it's you again, right?

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Isn't it tiring? Isn't it? We were talking about that, Pam, after last Sunday.

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It's tiring. And like you wanna talk about living to be 900 years old like they did before the flood.

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Not me. I don't wanna fight that battle 900 years. You know, another 10 or 20 is good for me.

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Devin's trying to make me live another 30, but it'll only work if I can keep all my parts working long enough for us to keep working out.

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But, you know, it is a tiring thing because the real us only wants to please the

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Lord. We only want to serve him and walk with him and be a good man or woman or boy or girl.

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But the old man wants the opposite. It is selfish. It is dirty.

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It is mean. Ben was teaching it in Sunday school, a lot of it. It's hateful.

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Both hated and hate. It hates and it's hated. And it's hateful, which is an interesting word.

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We were talking about that word study. I think that word study may continue this week because I wanna look it up in Webster's and look at the

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English roots of it. It sort of means both, but that's what our old man is.

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He's hateful and he's hated. He's a hater and he's hated by other people because, listen, when we walk in the flesh, we're hateful.

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People don't wanna be around us when we're in the flesh. That's the old man. They don't wanna be around your old man.

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The Bible says if you wanna have friends, prove yourself friendly. That's your new man. And he will always, he or she will always act that way.

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And when we find ourselves being snippy or unkind, we're in the old man.

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So how do we deal with the old man? That's what these two verses we're looking at in Philippians are a great help with it.

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The first thing we can do is to seek those things which are above and set our affections there rather than on the things of the world.

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And some of those things are obvious. We studied them last time. We ended with one of the main things was if we just remember who we are and what we're supposed to be doing, which is working toward that end of being that person.

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If you wanted to be a doctor, what would you do? You'd be pre -med, right? You go to pre -med, take a bunch of useless stuff like English and history.

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Why do you need that if you're gonna be a doctor? But you gotta take all that stuff and then you take a whole bunch of sciences and math and everything you have to take.

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And then you finally go to medical school and then you're there another four years and then you gotta intern another two years and then you're old and hurting and barely can walk probably.

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It's a tough thing to become a doctor. And because of our friend, President Obama, nobody wants to be one anymore because you don't get paid enough to go through that.

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So the ones who are doctors are one of two things. They actually really are a person who has to be a healer and he knows it so he's there for you or he's not smart enough to be in business because he wouldn't have gone to be a doctor in the old days.

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He would have, but now it's just like that. It's really hard to find good doctors and there aren't many of them. But the ones that you do find that are good, like we found one in Ben, actually.

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Ben and Ashley found him in Temple. Dr. Fowler, he's a good doctor and probably doesn't get paid enough.

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But sad, isn't it? Well, anyway, such is the way of the world. But what would he do to be that good doctor?

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He would put in so much study in his young ages, certainly by college, but probably started in high school.

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I know I wanted to be a doctor. So when I was in the eighth grade is when I started that education.

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I looked at the syllabus for what they offered in high school and I picked every science they had and all the math they had.

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I was getting ready to do that. That's what I wanted to do. I started at a young age. Well, okay, what is our real job?

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Our real job for all eternity is to be a king and a priest and to reign with Christ.

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So you have some time here to prepare for that. Not much time, but some time to prepare for that.

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These glasses are making me dizzy. They're new. They actually have reading on the bottom part and I'm supposed to be able to see you on the top part.

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And what they do is they just make you dizzy. But I'll get used to them. But anyway, we should be preparing for that.

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Now, how do we prepare for that while we're here? Well, by setting our affection on that rather than on the stuff that the world has to offer.

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And you young people really listen to me because when you get my age, it gets easier. It's easier to set your affection on things above when your knees don't work good enough to play tennis much anymore.

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You get the idea. The stuff that's so fun when we're young are sissy tennis.

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I can't even imagine playing that game. I wouldn't play that game. But anyway, maybe if my knees worked,

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I would. But it gets a lot easier to set your affection on things above.

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But there are other temptations for older people. And it starts where everybody's temptation begins is in the mind, right?

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And so how do we prepare for our job up there? We start focusing on it while we're here.

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And hopefully at a young age. The younger the age, the better. And so what is that job?

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King, priest, and reigning. What do you need to be a king more than anything else?

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Wisdom, okay? So what do you need to be a priest more than anything else? Righteousness.

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What did you say? Anointing. Well, you have to have anointing, but we've got that. It already says we're kings.

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We got the anointing. So then what do you need? Now it's your job, you have to do some, then what do you need to be a king?

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I mean, to be a priest. Righteousness, holiness. Holiness too, right? Which is like sanctification, right?

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We need to be more like God and less like the world around us. So if we're preparing to be a priest, we can't just try to allure the world in here by being like them.

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And so many churches are doing that. The mega churches nearly all do it. Even the good ones, and there are some good ones, but I wouldn't think

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MacArthur's church didn't do very much of that alluring stuff, did they? That might be the last great large church that we know of.

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There are probably others that we don't know about. But you don't act like the world to accomplish the job of being a priest.

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We're already priests. You know what a priest does? What does a priest do? He sort of, well, in the

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Old Testament, he stood between the people and God. Moses was a perfect example of everything, king and priest and everything.

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But you stand before the people and God. Now you as a Christian, even now, you don't stand between them and God in the sense that you're not their mediator, you're not

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Jesus. Jesus does that job, doesn't he? He is the high priest. But what you do is like when they're new and they don't know anything about the

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Bible, but they're saved is you bring them closer to God by teaching, teaching and discipling and walking holy in the world, best you can.

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And that old man, see, we're talking about the old man here is how do you deal with him, is he will pull you away from that.

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He wants you not to be holy. He wants that new Christian to see you mess up, to see you say one word that's a little too colorful, too worldly, if you know what

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I mean, what do you call it, foolish jesting, to see where he might just think, oh, that's interesting, they still talk like that.

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Or you do something that they see you do and they say, oh, they still do that, hmm. They're not that different.

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See, that's what Satan and the world want us to do in front of those new believers.

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And we're supposed to be practicing not being that way. And so here is a great way to understand how to deal with the flesh is to keep your focus on who you really are already.

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And you're also preparing to be even better than that when you get in the millennial kingdom. You'll even be stronger at this.

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So what about reigning? What do you have to have to reign? We shall reign on the earth.

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Now, so what do you have to have if you're gonna reign on the earth? Power and a kingdom.

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And the power has to come from being earned, where people look at you and just see your character, see what you've done, and they respect you.

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And you get it by, you sort of lead by serving, right?

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You lead by serving, not by being a drill sergeant or forcing people to do stuff.

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You walk the walk in front of them and say, follow me. That's kind of how you do it. So all of these things are things we should be practicing, which are impossible to practice if our affections are on the world rather than things that are above in our future.

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So now let's pick it up with verse 11. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beast.

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Now the beast, remember, those are the cherubim angels. Beast in the old English just means a creature, okay?

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It's not like a beast in a cartoon or something. These are the cherubim angels.

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There's four of them and they are there to protect the holiness of God. And the elders, those are actual preachers who've already died and gone to heaven.

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And the number of them was, look at this, 10 ,000 times 10 ,000.

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Now see, I would ask someone to calculate that, but it would be useless because look at the next phrase, and thousands of thousands.

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So you don't know how many thousands of thousands, right? So you can't count this number, but this is the number of angels.

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And these are the ones that didn't fall. So this is only two thirds of the total angels God made because a third of them are gone.

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They're not in this number. They're demons on the earth and some of them under the earth already.

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So these are the good angels. And there's a countless numbers of them. And that's why you survived that car wreck.

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That's why you survived when you fell. That's why you survived when whatever happened, you could have been killed and you weren't.

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It's because there's enough of them that they're watching over you and your family as long as you're walking with the

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Lord. And so thousands of thousands. Now, what are they doing?

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Set our affections on what they're doing. Well, they're saying with a loud voice, not a timid

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Baptist type worship, right? We joke about it all the time. We worship as well as anybody else.

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It's all in here. Worshiping right now. Shout out to the Lord. I love you,

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Lord. It's actually physically loud when you're doing it right. Ron has it right.

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I like to hear Ron pray because when he goes into that prayer mode, he's like connected and he's almost preaching.

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But I mean, not really preaching, but you know what I'm talking about. And I love it. That's a gift.

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Not everybody can pray like that. We can all pray and the Lord loves all of our prayers, but not everybody can do public praying like that.

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My grandfather could do it, Luther. And Ron can do it. There's others in here, but you know, it's quite amazing.

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But I mean, it says with a loud voice, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb.

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Who is the lamb? That's Jesus, the lamb that was slain in order to receive some things.

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So now when we read this properly, now we are looking at attributes because he has already received these now.

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So these are his attributes that he gained because he lived his life right and he kept the law perfect and he died for us and he was buried and he rose again.

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He ascended into heaven and because he lived his life perfect, God sat him down at his right hand.

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He was set there by God because of the life that he lived and the perfection that he did it with.

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And because of that, he now has received these attributes. The first one is power.

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Now, if you want to praise the Lord, talk about his power. That is his omnipotence.

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His power is such that without him, you would not even be a thought.

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Without him, there would be no world to whirl around the sun for you to walk on.

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And by the way, when you're walking, think about the fact that without God, that goes away and you have nothing to walk on.

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You ever look at the world and you can see the curvature if you look closely, especially if you're on the ocean, you can see the curvature.

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It's not that big and it's all we have in the physical realm. Have you ever heard the astronauts talk about the thin blue line?

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If you look at it from orbit, it's little bitty thin blue line. That is the entire atmosphere that protects us from the death of space where there's no air, no nothing, no way to survive.

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It's that big. And I love to watch how some people will talk about it like, oh, we need to come back and protect the environment.

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Well, we should protect the environment, but I don't know if man can protect the environment really.

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God has to. And my whole point is without God, that thin blue line is not there. You just melt into nothingness.

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We don't think about that when we're just walking around the world. God keeps us going. His energy makes us be animated.

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Otherwise we fall into dirt. We just become dust instantly. We are worthless without Jesus.

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Without me, you can do nothing. And he meant that literally. And here we see the first thing that the angelic beings and the elders who are already there and the cherubim say is you are worthy to have that power that you have.

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The power is endless power. It is the life of all that has life. It is the reality of anything that has reality.

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It is the stuff of anything that's a place. It is the time of any universe that exists.

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You think it was a big bang. Well, kind of appears to be. It seems to be moving away in all directions, but we know the scripture says things that are not made by the things that are seen.

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So most likely God just spoke it into existence like he said he did. And yet without him, none of that can take place.

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The physics that makes it take place, you can measure it down to a certain level, but beyond that, you can't keep going to smaller and smaller particles.

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Now, as we get better equipment, we can see the next smaller one, but then what's it made of? You don't know.

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It's just God. He just holds, Jesus holds it all together. I remember in the 80s, they found the smallest particle and guess what they named it?

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It was very smart name, I thought, very creative. They called it a gluon, like it glues everything together.

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That was the smallest particle in the 80s, all right? But anyway, it's kind of funny how human science is.

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We strive to see how it works and yet we ignore God. So he is worthy to receive power.

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He's already received it, so now you can say he's worthy to have power. The next thing is riches. Riches.

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Now, how much riches does Jesus have? He owns everything that is because he created it all.

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By him and for him, it was created. It's his, it's all his, and who are you? You're his bride.

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You can look at it that way. You're his bride. So I can tell you from having a bride that everything

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I own is hers. Right? Everything from the day

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I met her was, you can have it, it's yours. Just stay with me. You know, everything he has is ours and he's rich.

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So we're rich. And now as far as cashflow, that's different, right? Cashflow, you know, even in business, you've got a balance sheet, that's your stuff, your assets.

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You got an income statement, which is your salary or whatever coming in. And you got your cashflow statement, which is totally different.

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Few people even know how to build a cashflow statement because it's a weird thing. But that really is your lifeblood in a business, isn't it?

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So we may be a little bit short on cashflow in this life from time to time, but you know what?

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In my experience, sometimes we're, you know, like Lazarus' sister and we think

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Jesus is late, right? We think he's late, but he will help you with the cashflow by the time you need it.

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I've seen that again and again and again. And who knows, if he gave us a whole bunch of extra, we might just stick it in our barns like the foolish man did and then whose would it be when we died, right?

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So we don't need a bunch of extra because the Bible says for us to pray every day, give us this day our daily bread.

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That means it comes from him, not from the paycheck we get, right? And so when we don't get the paycheck, it doesn't not come either because it comes from the

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Lord. And so we see that he has this power, but he also has all the riches and he's your husband.

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He is your brother. He is your father. He is all of these different ways the

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Bible pictures our relationship with God and all of it is a sharing relationship of everything that he has.

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So you own the universe. There's nothing you don't own. So don't hesitate to ask when you have a need.

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Ask the Lord in prayer for what you need. And he will bring it.

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He has all riches and then he has all wisdom. There's nothing he doesn't know. You know, he is wisdom.

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He is unto us wisdom, the scripture says. He is all strength. So power and strength are not the same thing.

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Power, you can have a man or even a woman. I mean, a code red lady, what's her name?

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Who cares about her name? But the thing is, she's got power, right? She was second.

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She was number two female boxer in the world. She wrote the book Code Red, which helped me lose about 55 pounds fairly quickly, smart lady.

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But you know what? She doesn't necessarily have strength because strength is strength of character. Strength is having the character to use the power to help people rather than hurt people.

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And not everybody has both, but Jesus does, doesn't he? And then honor and glory and blessing.

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The honor is the deserved honor that he has. And the glory and the blessing are things we can pour out upon him together.

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That's our job is to pour out glory and blessing to him. And that is our part in worship.

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And these are the things going on in heaven right now. And listen, they already are on the other side and they see what has true value.

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Those elders that are up there right now, Rocky's one of them, Otis is one. He wasn't really an elder, he's a deacon.

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And this is specifically elders, but MacArthur is up there now. They know the things that we should put our affections on fully right now.

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And their whole affection is on that right now. And when they were here, it wasn't that way, but more that way and more that way as we grow in the

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Lord, right? So this is how we think about the flesh is the flesh wants to pull us toward the world and the affections of things in the world.

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And the spirit and the new man wants to pull us towards where we're headed and have affection on that already so that we're the good pre -med students, so to speak, getting ready now with the time we have here starting to get a headstart on a whole lot of people that when they hit there, they will have just been watching

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Love Boat. Too bad Ben wasn't in here for that one. That's a Rocky Freeman joke.

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You've all heard it anyway. But imagine if he saw

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TV now, if he thought Love Boat was wicked. What would he think now?

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He couldn't even watch the commercials could he? Poor brother Rocky, he would not like it. All right, so the praise comes out there at the end of verse 13.

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And it talks about glory and power, honor, blessing. Be unto him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the

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Lamb. So now verse 13, if you notice, it repeats pretty much the same list that's in verse 12.

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And you see it says blessing and honor, glory, power. Many of the things listed in verse 12 are repeated.

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Why is that repeated? Because now we're talking about a different person. Because him that sits on the throne is not

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Jesus. That's the father. And he doesn't literally sit on a throne because he doesn't have a body. He's a spirit being.

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But his Shekinah glory hovers over that throne and you can see it. And I would think probably with our human eyes, our unglorified eyes, it would just burn right through our retinas.

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It is so bright and shows forth the glory of the father whom you cannot see, but you get to see a little bit of his glory.

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It is seated, hovering above that throne, which we also call the mercy seat because Jesus sprinkled his blood on that.

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Now to the right of that throne, the right hand of that throne is the lamb. And that's

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Jesus. And so verse 12 gave all of this praise and glory to the lamb.

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In verse 13 gives all of it to him that sits on the throne, which is the father and then mentions the lamb again.

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The lamb is mentioned twice. And unto the lamb. And how long do we give this worship?

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For how many ages upon ages, it says forever and ever and ever.

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How many times have you heard preachers say, God doesn't need us? Come on, you've heard it, right?

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Well, how many of you think that's true? Well, in a sense it's true, I suppose.

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In a sense it's true, but in reality, it's not true because he does need us because we're the only plan he ever had was to have us.

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And we are the ones who will give him this praise and honor and glory forever and ever.

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Imagine that. I mean, I think it's such a blessing to be at this stage of life and you never want to go back.

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I know most of you, probably everybody would agree with me that are my age. Oh, there is no one my age. I'm the oldest.

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Well, anyway. Oh, there's one, maybe. I don't know. You don't look, you look younger than me. So you have more hair than me.

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That's how I know you're younger. I think you do. But anyway,

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I can't think of a time I'd want to go back and have to live in it. Now, I'd want to go back and hold Katie when she's an infant.

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Maybe Jenny too. Maybe, nah, not Ben. Yeah, Ben too.

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He was pretty, wasn't he? Yeah, sure. I want to go spend, maybe the Lord will let us do that.

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Wouldn't that be cool? Where you can just relive a day when Charlotte and I were talking about holding Jenny for the first time, our first baby the first time.

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Yeah, but I don't want to have to learn all the stuff I learned back then. Oh man, you know?

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This stage is great. It is so amazing to have grandkids and it's a blessing beyond blessings.

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And I just think about family. And now you multiply that by eternity that we get to spend together with our earthly family, but with our spiritual family too.

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All of us together and even the ones that have gone on before us. And we'll be loving each other.

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We'll be loving the Lord, but collectively, I don't know how it works up there. I don't know if it's just all the time they're doing this, but I know forever they will be doing this.

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And I imagine God will give us some time we can go home and practice our harps, harp playing, so that we can be really good when we do the worshiping.

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But forever and ever, we will be together. We should be preparing for that.

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We should be thinking about the rewards that we receive for the stuff we do here, because it's all we'll have as far as earthly rewards.

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We'll be the ones we get and the ones that we lose because someone else did it and we should have, you'll never get it.

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So it's a finite amount of those kinds of rewards and crowns and things, however that works.

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But you get to carry that with you forever as a badge of really the

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Lord's work in your life, because we already recognize we don't do anything without Him doing it in us.

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We realize that pretty well in this church. Like, we don't do any good thing without Him urging us to do it and doing it with us.

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But when we get there, we will know that He did all of it in us and with us, and that's why we'll throw our crowns at His feet.

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But let's think about these things that we'll be doing forever and ever, and we need to start practicing them now and getting better at it now.

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Verse 14 says, and the four beasts, the four cherubim said, Amen. So they are agreeing with all the worship that the elders and the angels, thousands upon thousands of angels in a loud, can you imagine how loud that would be if each individual is loud?

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And you have thousands upon thousands of thousands praising God, and at the end of it, these cherubim who are right around God protecting

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His holiness say, Amen, you got it right. Amen, you got it right. And I think there's some church services we have on Sunday when they go like that for us.

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We could be a little more charismatic probably, and by that, I don't mean tongue speaking, but with the language we do speak, we could be louder, but this day of worship, they said

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Amen. And the four and 20 elders fell down and started worshiping again. Man, that's what preachers do when somebody says

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Amen. Did you know that? Like you have a few visitors that show up, especially if they're

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Myron's friends, and they show up and you're preaching up here the same stuff I always preach, and people starting to shout out

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Amen. You go, oh, I'm gonna go up another level. You go up a level, I'll go up a level. Or if you have visitors that don't know any of this stuff, it is so fun to teach them this stuff as if it's new.

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You should try being up here when there's a visitor that doesn't know any of this stuff. And you have to pull some of it in there for them, right?

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And then they never come back. But anyway. I don't think they like this stuff very much.

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Except for Judy, but anyway. Yeah, we got a couple back there that liked it. So there's a few.

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Rest of us are just family, right? We come because we have to. All right, the four and 20 elders fell down and worshiped him again after the beast said

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Amen. That's awesome. And him that liveth forever and ever. And I saw when the lamb opened one of the seals and I heard as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, come and see.

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So the points I see there, starting with verse 11 and going down just to add to those we already mentioned in the introduction.

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I see there in verse 11, the attributes of the king. And then

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I see in verse 12, the same attributes repeated for the father.

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And then what I see there in that last chapter six, verse one, where it says, come and see.

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And that is, our eyes have been open when we were born again. Our eyes have been open.

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We literally can look at that and we can see, we can see and understand what's going on. Lost people cannot.

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All they, they are mesmerized by the world. The stuff that the world offers, the pleasures of this life, riches, other things coming in that choke the word from their life, even if they hear it.

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They are mesmerized by that, but you have eyes that can see the things of God.

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So this whole message in these scriptures is telling us to look at that more, look at that more.

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Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. That is the great key.

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Now, we ended that little passage in Colossians 3, 1 -3 -4 with verse four.

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It says, when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

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We're preparing for that day and beyond. So look at verse five,

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Colossians 3 -5, mortified therefore your members, which are on the earth. Now, what does that word therefore mean?

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It means because of all the stuff we just talked about, the last six Sundays, all of that stuff, everything we saw going on in heaven.

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And the Bible doesn't really reveal everything that's in heaven. If it did, we would commit suicide. It just doesn't, it tells us the main points.

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It doesn't give us, it doesn't give us the detail. If it did, we would be, might be miserable.

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I'm not sure, we might be miserable here and I'm not miserable, I'm pretty happy. But I do know that there are things that aren't revealed that if we could see them, we would want those years to go faster.

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Well, the good news for you young people is when you get my age, they go really fast. I was preaching here just like a few minutes ago and it was last

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Sunday, literally. I would say the last three or four Saturdays, Charlotte and I looked at each other and said, tomorrow's

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Sunday again, isn't it? Like, we just did Sunday. Well, that's a good thing when you get my age for time to go faster.

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You're gonna get here sooner and see all these things. I hope I'm not prophesying. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.

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Wow, what's the therefore therefore? Because of all the stuff we should be focusing on, we should remember that that means we should kill.

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The word mortify means to slay or to make something dead. Count that old man as if he's dead.

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Now, that is a moment -by -moment thing that we have to think about and that's why it's tiring. And I have been thinking about this a lot.

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Ben, you and I have talked about it, and Dave, you know, at coffee some. We've talked about how do you go, like how can you be spirit -filled and go into the flesh because 1

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John says that the new man won't sin. Well, I think I figured it out.

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I think that because we're so fallen and we live in this body that really can be an enemy as glorious as these bodies are.

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I mean, I'm gonna get on a rabbit trail. Better stop right there so I can remember what I'm talking about. What am I talking about? Yeah, so think about this.

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Here's why it's tiring. Think about the laws of thermodynamics.

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What does the second one say? Everything tends towards greater entropy. Always sounded backwards to me when

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I first learned that. But when you realize entropy means disorder, it's like a double negative, okay?

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Everything goes towards greater disorder. Or why didn't they just do it this way?

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Everything goes towards less order would make way more sense, but they didn't. They do it back, double negative. So everything goes towards greater disorder because we're in a fallen world.

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Now, they don't add that in the textbook because they don't know that. But if they had a Bible, they would know that. The reason is because of the fall and sin.

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It reversed everything. Everything in the garden got better. Every day, it just got better. And then after the fall, every day, you're dying.

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You're going towards heaven every day, which is not a bad thing, but physically, we are.

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So when you think about that law that's in the universe, it applies to your walk.

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So therefore, let's apply it to our garage. How many of you think your garage will stay neat and clean by itself?

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I'll give you a tip. Build a carport because when everyone can see it, it'll stay clean.

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My carport's great. All the thing I need to move is the dog igloo. Other than that, it's perfect. All right, but once you put walls around that thing with doors, it's an animal, all right?

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Now, what about your closet? Is anybody, is that just me, the closet? Oh man, that closet, I found stuff in there

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I hadn't seen since before we were dating. Yesterday, yesterday, in my closet, and it had that much dust on it.

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It was cool, it was this little pin flashlight. I pushed the button, and to my surprise, and I was looking at it, naturally, and it worked and blinded me.

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I said, how does that work? That battery's 15 years, not before we were dating, but old, stuff in there.

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Okay, so everything goes that way. So what does it take to keep it clean and orderly?

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Tell me what it takes. Work and energy, right? All right, so here's the deal.

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It takes energy and effort to stay spirit -filled. It takes nothing to be in the flesh.

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Just do nothing, and you'll be in it. Just stop working, and you will be there.

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That's scary. I think I got it, don't you? You just like, if you just relax your spiritual muscles, you will be in the flesh.

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And wow, so how do we battle that? That's what this whole message in Colossians is about.

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Mortify your members. Well, that's hard to do when you live in them, but it means count them as if they're dead, because from the father's viewpoint, your old man's already dead.

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That's why the father doesn't see your sin at all, because everything about you that's sin is dead. It's already been crucified from his viewpoint.

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I wish it were more that way from our viewpoint, but we should count it to be dead.

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That is a big help in dealing with the old man. Your flesh, your old man, you know, we gotta count that to be dead.

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The next part in Colossians kind of moves on into what these members of the flesh are that we're supposed to count as dead, but it begins to list them in the second part of verse five, if you look at those.

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Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection. Now, I was wondering what that one meant, because I know what

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I thought it meant, but it didn't mean what I thought it meant. But it means, it's the Greek word pathos, which means lustful passion, mostly lustful passion for things that are not legal, not things we're supposed to do.

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Evil concupiscence is longing for what is forbidden, longing for what is forbidden.

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These little things come alive in our teenage years. So if you're a teenager listening, then let me warn you that they're part of your old man or woman, part of your flesh will sometimes have evil desires for things that God says are not legal for you to do, not right for us to do.

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You need to fight those. You need to tell your flesh when you feel that, you say, you're dead, I'm not gonna let you run me.

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You're not gonna let you rule me. My new man holding Jesus's hand are gonna rule this body, and that's how we fight this fight.

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So evil concupiscence, that's a great old English word. Longing for what is forbidden.

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And covetousness, what is that? And a lot of people get that wrong. Myron gave me the definition for that.

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I never knew till I heard him say it one day. It was magnificent, because most people think covetousness means that you like things, you love things, and you want more things.

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And so therefore riches and having nice things is evil, and that is not what it means. In the

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Hebrew mind, what it means when you first see it in the Old Testament is longing for things you don't deserve to have because the other person earned it, and you didn't.

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Like get rich quick, nobody gets rich quick. And if you do, you lose it quick, because the hardship of gaining it is what gives you the wisdom to keep it.

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So riches are not evil, but wanting riches you didn't earn or things you don't deserve because you haven't earned it yet through your character and your hard work and your knowledge and your wisdom, that is covetousness, and it is a sin listed in the

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Ten Commandments. In fact, this verse in the New Testament tells us that covetousness is not its own sin only.

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It's also the same as idolatry. And what does that mean? Worshiping things. So usually if you didn't earn it the hard way by hard work and wisdom and trusting

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God to get it, then you don't appreciate it, and you just want more of it, and you get your mind focused on that money or that stuff, and then you begin to worship it, and you don't even know it.

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So that is something our flesh will tend to do too. So here we have listed these sins of the flesh, and we're supposed to mortify that part of us that desires those things and doesn't allow us to set our affections on the things above.

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So we count them as dead, and we work at reminding ourself of that. All right, we'll pick it up there next time, right where we left off.

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And we'll start with Colossians 3, verse six. Kind of frightening. For which things?

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What things? Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, covetousness, and idolatry.

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For those things' sake, the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. We'll talk about who those people are next time, so you gotta come back.

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Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, we thank you for your word.

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Thank you for showing us a glimpse of heaven. Thank you for exhorting us to keep our eyes on those things and our affections on those things and not to stare down at the world as much and to learn to seek those things which are above and to set our affections there more and more as we grow in this life.

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Give us the strength to do it. We know that we must hold your hand to do that. Make us strong and make us to desire to put the work and the effort into being spirit -filled and more moments of every day.

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Help us to be salt and light in this world. Guard our testimonies, Lord, by helping us to be following you and walking with you.