Hating Compromise

Providence Baptist Church

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to Psalm 119. I'm going to put...

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I'm going to put Monty in charge of this. I preached past 12 this morning, so I will get us out of here before 12 tonight.

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I know that's a lame preacher joke, but I do appreciate the attention and the encouragement of the saints.

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There have been times in ministry when I've preached, and I'm sure part of it was my fault too, but there's been times in ministry

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I've preached too long and I really heard about it, but I only heard today encouraging words, and so I do appreciate that.

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But I do want you to know, as one of your pastors, I do recognize that was a little abnormal in terms of sermon length, and that should be more of a rarity, but I am grateful for what

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I believe is a church body that loves the Word of God and loves to hear the preaching of the

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Word of God, and that's very encouraging, and that leads us to tonight, for we are in our 15th stanza tonight of the 119th

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Psalm. Remember, it has 22 stanzas, so we're already over halfway through the stanzas, and we find ourselves in the 15th stanza, and we're reminded that the

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Word of God is not something to just be read or looked at or used to prop up a political stance.

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Every political party will use Bible verses sometimes, it seems. It's not to be twisted to fit an agenda.

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Actually, the Word of God is meant to be obeyed. It is to be recognized as authoritative.

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The God of absolute authority that we talked about this morning has given us His Word, and His Word bears

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His absolute authority. What if you treated the Bible, or put it this way, sorry,

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I said that wrong, what if you treated a police officer like some people treat the Bible? He pulls you over, says,

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I need you to show me your driver's license. You say, I agree with that. I think that's a nice suggestion.

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I even think that's wise, and that's really good for other people, but not for me.

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Well, if you treat a police officer like that, just gonna let you know, you might get tased, right?

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Because that's not the proper way to treat that authority. And this is not how we should, it's certainly not how we should treat the

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Scriptures. And so tonight, the sermon title is simply this, Hating Compromise.

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Let's start out by reading our text. It'll take us two weeks for this, so that's okay.

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We'll start in verse 113. Would you stand as we honor the reading of God's Word? We'll read the whole stanza.

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The psalmist, we're not sure who it is. Maybe David, maybe Daniel, maybe some unknown writer.

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In one sense, it could be any believer. I hate the double -minded, but I love your law.

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You're my hiding place and my shield, I hope in your Word. Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my

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God. Uphold me according to your promise that I may live. And let me not be put to shame in my hope.

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Hold me up that I may be safe and have regard for your statutes continually. You spurn all who go astray from your statutes, for their cunning is in vain.

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All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross. Therefore, I love your testimonies. My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.

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Father, would you help us to understand the text? Lord, you know I'm in desperate need of your grace. And please,

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Holy Spirit, be with the preaching of the Word. Lord, as Gunnar prayed earlier, this too is part of worship.

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So let us remember that we are worshiping even now as we listen to what your Bible has to say and seek to apply it to our lives.

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Give us the humble faith we need to say yes, Lord, and to obey your truth, and we pray it in Jesus' name.

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Amen. You may be seated. We remember that Psalm 119 is not like a linear argument.

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It's not like a Pauline epistle. It's not even like a narrative telling a story.

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It's poetry. It's Hebrew poetry. And so we've seen, of course, a lot of repeated themes.

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You would expect that. It's a long 19, all 176 verses. Think about that. I'm not sure how long that would take.

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I think it takes like, what, 25 minutes to read it? So to sing it, you put a little music to it or something.

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You're talking about one song maybe taking 30 minutes just to sing every part of this song.

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But this is how much God thinks about the Bible, and it really should be the

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Christian attitude to the Bible. So I understand a lot of repeated themes as we go through the Psalm, but it's designed that way.

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So in verse 113, the psalmist says, I love your law. Throughout Psalm 119, the psalmist has used several different synonyms to refer to scripture.

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It gives us maybe insight into the multifacetedness of the scriptures.

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But this particular synonym here is important. I love your law.

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As Americans, I wouldn't say, and as particularly conservative Americans, I wouldn't say that we love every law of the land, right?

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I mean, we're thankful for laws. We want a society, of course we want a society of law and order.

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But sometimes there are laws that we think, that's a dumb law. That shouldn't be a law, and so we're willing to say, okay,

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I'm gonna break that law. But that's not, okay, that's not how we are allowed to look at the scripture.

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We're not allowed to say, that's a dumb law. We're not allowed to say, that doesn't apply to me because, fill in the blank.

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I don't have to do what the Bible says here because, fill in the blank. We're not allowed to look at that. Look at the

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Bible that way. The psalmist says, I love your law. Not just when it's convenient, not just when

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I agree with it or whatever the case may be. I love your law. And yet, think about it from another perspective.

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The law crushes us, doesn't it? I mean, think about that for just a second. The law crushes us. It's an impossible standard.

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It's a holy standard, it's a righteous standard, but it's impossible. Who's descended from Adam or from natural generation?

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Because the law of God says, do this and you will live. And then it shows us that we're not capable of doing it.

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So at first glance, we might be tempted to say, we despise the law.

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Because the law shows us that we're falling short and it shows us the reward for keeping it, but while reminding us, we can't keep it.

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And then let's take a second glance and remember the context of our verse tonight. I hate the double -minded, but I love your law.

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Remember that the one writing this is a covenant child of God. It's one within the covenant of grace.

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A believer is writing this. He's trusting God's promises for salvation.

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He's looking to Christ as his only suitable and all -sufficient Savior. He doesn't believe tonight that he's able to keep the law to earn

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God's love. Rather, he's clinging to the promises of God. And you see it clearly in our text in verse 116.

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Uphold me according to your promise that I may live and let me not be put to shame in my hope.

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So this is the reality of the believer. We're leaning on Christ.

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For those of us in Christ, we are part of this covenant of grace. We are the holy standard of God's law has driven us to Christ.

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As our only refuge. Jesus is the one who perfectly loved

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God's law. Let me just make a quick side comment here. Jesus loved the law of God, yes.

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But Jesus loved the Bible. Jesus has a very high view of the

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Bible. Jesus read the Bible. Jesus meditated on the

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Bible. Jesus quoted the Bible. And I get it in a very real sense. And certainly

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Jesus wrote the Bible, right? Because all scriptures breathed out by God. You can't have a higher view of the

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Bible than Jesus has. It's fine. It makes me really, if it wasn't so serious,

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I would want to laugh with people who say, I love Jesus, but not the Bible. Or I love Jesus and not the church.

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These are things that are very dear to our Lord and Savior. How can you say you love Jesus, but not these things?

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So the church loves Jesus's Bible. And of course, Jesus kept the law for us. Jesus was righteous for us.

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And then of course, he died for our law breaking under God's wrath and rose again from the dead.

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We're reminded tonight, this is the gospel. But now as believers, because God has regenerated our hearts, because we've repented of our sins and believe the gospel, we love the law of God.

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We are like the psalmist. We can say there, I love your law. Why does the believer love the law of God?

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Because it shows us his holiness. And it shows us how God would have us to live in this fallen and wicked world.

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So remember tonight that it's inconsistent for anyone to claim Christianity, while at the same time, looking at the

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Bible as something like a good suggestion or optional for adhering to.

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The gospel invitation, of course, is not keep God's law and see what happens.

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No, it's repent and believe the gospel. To go to Christ in faith, the one who's kept the law for us.

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If you haven't done that even tonight, children, listen. Hey, children, let me speak to you for just a quick second.

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Osborne, Robinson, Nelson, Madewell, did I cover everybody? All the children that are here tonight.

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You're prayed for all the time, man. Maybe I shouldn't address children that way. You're prayed for all the time, little ones.

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You're prayed for all the time. Your pastors pray for you. Your parents pray for you.

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People in the church pray for you. We want you to hear this gospel message and we want you to come to Christ.

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And the gospel message is not obey your mom and dad and God will accept you into the kingdom. The gospel message is you need to look to the

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Lord Jesus. He alone is your only way to the Father. It's not by doing everything right and then

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God will accept you if you do it right. It's by, Joe, you listening? It's by listening.

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It's by listening to this gospel message, turning from your sins and putting your faith in the finished work of Christ.

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I wasn't picking on him. I would have called any of you out. I just wanna make sure that you listen and hear.

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This is the way of salvation, going to Christ. But the point I'm trying to make tonight is that those of us who are in Christ, we have the law of God written on our heart and we can say like the psalmist,

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I want, I love God's law. I want my whole life to be oriented around and under what

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God has instructed. Let me give you another illustration. This morning I quoted John Bunyan. We're a church that,

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I don't have to explain who that is. We know John Bunyan, no relation to Paul Bunyan and the blue ox or whatever.

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John Bunyan, the one who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress. We did VBS this year. His book,

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The Pilgrim's Progress, has never been out of print, never, right? In, what's that, almost 400 years.

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I mean, 350 years for sure. It has not been out of print. It's in over 200 languages.

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How's this possible for a man to write a book like this? Let me read a quote from Charles Spurgeon. He said, read anything of John Bunyan's and you will see that it almost, it is almost like reading the

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Bible itself. He had read it till his very soul was saturated with Scripture. And though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his

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Pilgrim's Progress, that sweetest of all prose poems, without continually making us feel and say, why this man is a living

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Bible. Prick him anywhere. His blood is bibling. The very essence of the

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Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the word of God.

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I commend his example to you, beloved. Charles Spurgeon was a couple hundred years after John Bunyan, and Spurgeon read through the

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Pilgrim's Progress every year. He read through it once. And that's a pretty amazing quote.

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Prick him anywhere. And what's his blood? Bibling. He bleeds Bible. Friend, tonight, is this true of us?

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Will we bleed bibling? Will we be wholly committed to this book? Okay, if the answer's yes, then there'll be two things this evening, two things from our passage,

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I should say, that this will result in, but we're only gonna cover one of them tonight, okay? So if we're gonna bleed bibling, if we're going to be committed to the scriptures and love the law of God, number one, and this is the only point for tonight, number one, we will hate compromise.

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If we love the Bible, if we love the law of God, if we're people of the truth, if we're on the narrow way, if we're following the ancient paths, we hate compromise.

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That's there in verse 113. I hate the double -minded, but I love your law.

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That's a hard word, right? We don't like to say that in our 21st century evangelicalism.

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We don't like to say I hate anything except people that are mean. I hate mean people.

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That's the only thing you can say. But the psalmist doesn't say that. He says, I hate the double -minded. By the way, this is a unique word.

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To my understanding, it's the only time this word is in the Old Testament at all.

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Now, there's a variation of the word in a passage I'll quote later. It's the only time that we see this

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Hebrew word in the scriptures. And the ESV, the LSB, I know, translate double -minded.

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Some of the older translations translate it like transgressions or something like that. The idea, there's a contrast here.

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We can't love the Bible and compromise simultaneously, right?

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Which will we choose? It's obvious, the truism doesn't even need to be said, but it's just, let's repeat it anyway.

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You can't go two directions at once. You can't go north and south at once, or you can't go east and west at once.

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You can't go left and right at once. You gotta choose one. You gotta go this way, or you gotta go that way.

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You can't love compromise and love the Bible. You have to choose one. The psalmist says,

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I hate the double -minded, and I love your law. Now, the other place a variation of this word is used is in 1

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Kings 18, oh no, sorry. Yeah, 1 Kings 18, 21. If I'd look at my notes, I'd have it right.

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1 Kings 18, 21. And that's where the people of Israel, they want to give a nod to Yahweh.

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Oh yeah, we believe in Yahweh. But daily, they served other gods. They served the

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Baals. They were on the fence. They couldn't make up their mind. They were double -minded, and so that's when Elijah says to them, how long will you halt between two, and then the word is opinions.

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If God is God, serve him. If Yahweh is God, serve

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Yahweh. If Baal is God, well, by all means, serve him. But you can't do both.

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You can't have in your mind, oh yeah, I acknowledge God, but you live for the gods of this world.

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In the New Testament's address, in fact, I'll just read that one. In the New Testament's address, in the book of James, the

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Apostle James, in James 4 -8, he tells us this. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

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Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. What, you double -minded.

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Now, I think this is near and dear to our hearts because I, personally, I think you probably do too, but I see this running rampant in the

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Bible Belt, right? Okay, and we want to be very careful.

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We want to be very, very careful about a Christless conservativism.

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Let me say that again. We want to be very, very careful about a Christless conservativism.

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What I mean by that is, it's easy for us to get up here and rail on the left. That's easy. I mean, it should be easy, right?

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It's like, okay, I'll just say this. Kamala Harris and, what's the guy's name,

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Tim Walz, it's one of the most wicked tickets that's ever been put forward as a presidential ticket.

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That should be easy for us to say. There should not be anybody be like, don't mention politics from the pulpit. That's just facts, right?

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That's just truth. But what you can't do is be okay with Republican compromise.

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You can't just be like, well, they're softening on abortion, they're softening on LGBTQ, but listen, it's just so they can get in power and win the election.

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No, we want to hold them accountable because we want to say it's not okay to be double -minded. We need to be here people of truth, right?

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And stand for the truth. And so we go to the Bible Belt and we talk to people all the time. Do you believe in God? Oh yeah,

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I believe in God. Do you love Jesus? Oh yeah, sure, Jesus. Are you saved? Oh yeah, I'm saved. Well, what does that look like in your life?

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Do you go to church anyway? No, I haven't been to church in decades. Do you read the Bible? I think I have a

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Bible somewhere around here somewhere. Well, I'm just saying, we must resolve in our hearts right now, just like in Elijah's day, is

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God God? Is the triune God God? Is he God? If he's God, then let there be no double -mindedness among us and let us push back.

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Let us hate compromise. We're way too comfortable with it, right? The Psalmist says,

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I hate the double -minded. We're more like, hey, I'm friends with the double -minded. It's okay, we just don't.

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You know what we're gonna do with the double -minded is we're going to be friends with them for maybe 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

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And if the time ever presents itself, we'll really share the real true gospel with them and compel them to come to Christ.

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Friends, if Christ is King, if our veins are pumping with the

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Bible, then we will not stand for double -mindedness. Not only because it will taint the church, that's true, but listen, friends, it will send the souls of those who adhere to it to an everlasting place called hell.

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Because the Psalmist loved the law, he hated the double -minded. We see another contrast in verse 115.

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Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God. Young people, you need to listen to this.

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Trey and my sons, and then, you know, Amelia, Ella, Piper, Nelson, I was thinking about some of you a little bit older.

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Because I'm saying as you get a little bit older, you begin to have friends. You begin to even have friends that your parents don't know that well sometimes as you get a little bit older.

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And I want you to think about what the Psalmist is saying here. He's saying, depart from me, you evildoers.

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That is, what is an evildoer? That's someone who doesn't follow Christ. And so listen to me very carefully, young people, but, you know, adults, listen to this as well as you think about your coworkers.

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Do your companions, do your friends, do they spur you on to faithfulness to Christ?

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I believe double -mindedness, it's clear that we can make this case from Scripture. Double -mindedness breeds double -mindedness, right?

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Those who are double -minded feel secure in the safety of others who are double -minded.

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And those who are double -minded, you say, well, yeah, they kind of seem okay when they're around me. Of course they do, because that's what it means to be double -minded.

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And what a double -minded person wants to do is to create a double -minded club, if you will.

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And I understand that they're not official clubs and no one would say it that way, but the idea is it's like a magnet of double -minded people to attract more double -minded people or to make single -minded people into double -minded people so nobody has to feel guilty about the way that they see the world about their own double -mindedness.

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And my encouragement to us tonight is that we must surround ourselves with people who will hold us accountable, with people who have a narrow view.

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I know, well, that's really bad. The media says today, you're gonna indoctrinate your children.

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You better believe it, I'm gonna indoctrinate my children. Absolutely, I'm not apologetic.

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I'm going to indoctrinate my children with the doctrine of the Scriptures and I'm not sorry about it.

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Because if I don't indoctrinate my children, then the world will. So I'm gonna choose to instill truth in my children by the grace of God and by His mercy.

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And we should do this as well, but we should remember that we need to surround ourselves with those who will have a singular focus and not be double -minded and help us press on towards Jesus.

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Now, of course, of course, am I saying that we don't make connections with lost people? No. Can we be friends with lost people?

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Of course, yes. But you need to understand your areas of influence, right? You need to be careful.

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If you find yourself drawn into a crowd of those who are double -minded, it may not be long before you too are double -minded.

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This is serious. Look at verse 118 and 119. Look at what he says.

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You spurn all who go astray from your statutes, for their cunning is in vain. All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross.

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Therefore, I love your testimonies. Think about that. Do you remember in Revelation?

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It's Revelation 3, where Jesus says that those who are lukewarm, he will spit out of his mouth.

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That's vivid imagery. I'll vomit you out of here. We wouldn't say that in polite company.

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If someone said that at supper, I'm gonna vomit you out. We'd be like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a little, that's not appropriate here.

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We're trying to eat. Of course, it's always appropriate what our Lord Jesus says. And he uses that analogy to really bring home the seriousness of those who are double -minded.

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And that is God does not play games with them. The text says their cunning is in vain, their deceitfulness.

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In other words, those who are double -minded, they may be able to fool some people, but ultimately their sin will find them out one day and you cannot fool

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God. Again, young people, what are those friends that you're around?

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Or maybe they're sending you text messages, or maybe you're hanging out with them fishing or swimming, or whatever the case may be.

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Do they ever compel you to love Christ more? You ever talking about the Bible with one another? You ever talking about church?

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Or is it always about the things of the world? Maybe it doesn't feel like bad things, but they never seem to get around talking about the glory and wonder of the sovereign

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God we heard preached about this morning. We need to be very careful because we cannot serve two masters.

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Adults, you need to hear this too in your workplaces and the groups that you're around and in and the things you find yourself involved in.

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I've seen so many people who were once really involved in the church, and then they got in with this crowd.

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And it could not even necessarily be a bad crowd. The crowd might be the 4 -H club, or the traveling soccer team, or whatever the case may be.

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And they began hanging around this crowd, and they began to have friends over here. And it's not that these friends were going to the club every night, and they weren't getting on the internet and doing wicked things.

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It was just simply they were double -minded. Their heart was divided. They in one sentence said they loved the

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Lord, but in their actions, they denied the Lord. They compromised. And so you have the friends in church, and you begin hanging out with these friends, and then all of a sudden you give a month, a year, a few years later, and the church friends haven't brought these friends into the church.

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These friends have brought the church people out of the church. I don't know if all that, that was just a lot of rambling there.

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I hope it made sense. Made sense in my brain. Hope it came out the way I wanted it.

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And that is we can't serve two masters. We can't go limping between two opinions.

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We can't be lukewarm and expect to go to heaven. This is one motivation for holiness,

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I'll say. You spurn all who go astray from your statutes. Verse 119, all the wicked of the earth you discard like dross.

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Why should we pursue holiness? Well, this isn't the only reason. It's not even the best reason, but I'm saying it is a reason to remember those who don't will be cast off into outer darkness forever.

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When you think to yourself, shall I indulge in this sin? Shall I compromise here? Shall I neglect the

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Bible today? You should think about these verses. All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross. That is like waste.

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After metal smelted like dross, it's gone. This isn't legalism.

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This is just the reality of the Christian life. The Holy Spirit produces within true believers, not double mindedness, but single devotedness, singular devotion to Christ and his word.

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And he does this through warnings and promises. So, for example,

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I'll just read Psalm 11. Seven, another example of a promise.

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The 11th Psalm. In verse seven. Says the for the

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Lord is righteous. He loves righteous deeds. The upright shall behold his face.

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So think about that for just a second. I don't want to be double minded because I don't want to be cast off.

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And I don't want to be double minded because I want to see God's face. The Holy Spirit uses these promises and these warnings to sanctify the people of God.

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We have. Said this a lot in the series, but I'll say it again, being born again is going to result in these things, right?

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We don't do these things to earn God's favor. We want to please

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God through these things because our life has been transformed by the power of the gospel.

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OK. And you say, but I don't know if my life's been changed. OK, then what do I need to do? Well, your life has not been changed.

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It's just that you must be born again. There's a healthy tension that we must have in the Christian life.

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And we see an example in verse 120. Look at that for just a second. My flesh trembles for fear of you.

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And I am afraid of your judgments. Now, that doesn't sound. That doesn't sound like you would read that in a popular

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Christian book today, right? How's your Christian walk going?

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Well, I'll tell you what. Psalm 119, 120. That's how it's going. Someone be like, oh, that sounds so sweet.

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Like, I wonder, like that's probably a verse so encouraging and full of joy. Let's see what that says.

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My flesh trembles for fear of you and I'm afraid of your judgments. But listen, fear and joy in the

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Christian life are not mutually exclusive. You remember in Isaiah 66, where God says this is the one to whom

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I will look. He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

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And Paul talks about it in Philippians 2 that we should work out our manner of salvation in fear and trembling.

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Matthew 5, 4 in the Beatitudes, Jesus says that we should mourn. Blessed are those he says that mourn.

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So this is a part of the Christian life. This is a bit of attention. We we're sorry for sin. We should be broken by sin.

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We should tremble. We should tremble more. Right before the awesome holiness of our great God. Most of us sin way too confidently.

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Right. Like we sin. It's no big deal. But the reality is we should have a healthy fear of God.

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And then we should resolve to do what the psalmist resolved to do. He says in verse 115,

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I didn't finish this. Depart from me, you evildoers. Why not just get it? Not just to make me not just because I feel icky around you, but what's the thing?

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Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of God. Again, I'll emphasize it's only possible through Christ, through his power.

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If we're going to commit ourselves to this book, if we're going to bleed the Bible, though, then we first must hate sin.

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Friends, we must be a church that hates compromise, even a little compromise.

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I've used this analogy before, but I'll use I'll say it again. If we're going to start in Perryville and let's say our destination,

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I don't know why this would ever be our destination. Let's say our destination is Los Angeles, California, the city of angels.

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And we're going to start. And that's our goal to be there. But so we we set a trajectory, but we're just one degree off.

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We've said we've made a miscalculation somewhere. We're one degree off. Well, you're not going to notice that for a while.

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But by the time you get longer and longer and longer and longer on your journey, you'll realize that that little bit of compromise that you started with, the further you get on your journey, you may actually miss

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Los Angeles altogether. You understand the analogy in the Christian life?

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You bring a little bit of compromise into your home, into the church, into your evangelism, whatever the case may be.

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It may seem OK at first, but you keep going and you may miss it altogether.

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Or for sure, what I definitely see this is a little bit of problem with this teacher and then his disciples.

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It's even worse. And then by the time you get down and down, it's it's it's maybe apostasy altogether.

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So I'm saying we must be haters of compromise and we must hold fast to Christ, which we'll explore that next week.

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But tonight I'll just end. I'll end with this call. Are you holding to Christ?

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Are you resting in our Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and imputed righteousness?

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You understand some people don't believe the Bible because they've never been washed in Jesus's blood.

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Is this you, children? You've heard the call tonight. Is this you adults? Is this you? You know, what do I do?

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I want to bleed by Biblene. I want to stand with you, pastor. And I don't want to compromise. I don't want to try to halt between two opinions.

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I don't want to try to go left and right at the same time. I don't want to try to go north and south at the same time. I want to be a man of faith.

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I want to be a woman of faith. I want to live for truth. I want to be resolved. What must I do? It starts with this.

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You must humble yourself. Turn from your sins. And flee to Christ, repenting and believing the gospel.

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And then, dear brother or sister, which we assume, obviously, that's most of us in here tonight as far as the adults go.

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Will you rest again in Christ and see our need to be people? Of his wonderful book, let us hear not neglect this precious book and let us hear.

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Just say what the psalmist says. Hate the double minded. May we not be a double minded church.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. We thank you for its sufficiency, its encouragement.

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May it strengthen us tonight to walk the narrow way. And we thank you for the grace we have in Christ, this glorious gospel.