Importance of Context

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Well, if you would open your Bibles and turn with me to 2nd Timothy, go to chapter 2 and look at verse 15.
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Over the last few weeks, I've mentioned this verse a few times, we haven't looked at it directly, but I want to look at it tonight as we continue the subject of interpreting the Bible.
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2nd Timothy 2.15.
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As most of you know, we have been in a longer series on how we got the Bible.
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And then, over the last three weeks, I've been saying we wanted to also look at the subject of not only how did we get the Bible, but how do we know what we're reading is the right understanding of what it says.
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And so, we have been looking at the process and method of interpretation.
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And we've looked at a few things already.
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Last week, we looked at principles of interpretation.
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And I just want to briefly mention a few of those again as we introduce tonight's lesson.
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We looked at the principle of contextual interpretation, which means that everything needs to be interpreted within its context.
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Had an interesting conversation this week with one of our members about certain Bible verses.
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Are there Bible verses that can stand on their own? That was the conversation we had.
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It was because of something I said on Sunday, and they weren't being argumentative.
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They were just asking a question.
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And certainly, there are Bible verses that can stand on their own in the sense that they bear a truth that's very weighty and is not necessarily dependent completely upon where it is in the Bible.
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Something like John 3.16 or even the passage we looked at on Sunday, 1 Corinthians 6.9-11.
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Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Neither the sexually immoral, nor adulterers, nor idolaters, nor those who practice homosexuality.
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That list of sins, certainly that can stand on its own.
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However, context is always necessary if we are seeking to ensure that we have a proper understanding of a passage.
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Because even a passage like John 3.16 or 1 Corinthians 6 or something like that could be misused or misinterpreted.
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And so if there were ever a question about how to interpret the passage, if there were ever a question about what does this truly mean and how can we know what it truly means, then context certainly is primary.
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So the principle of contextual interpretation stands, we always want to be sure that whatever interpretation we are making, it is in keeping with the context of the passage.
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In almost every case where someone calls me, and I do get these calls quite often, people will call me and say, Pastor, I heard somebody say this about the Bible, or I heard somebody say that.
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Last night I got a message from a friend who wanted me to listen to this atheist who was ranting.
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And so I listened to the rants and I gave some responses.
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So it happens quite often, I get questions, and oftentimes the question is on Bible interpretation.
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How do we know that this is the right interpretation? Or they'll say something, I heard a pastor say this.
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And I'll say, but that doesn't fit with the context.
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What he's saying may sound good, but it just doesn't fit with the context.
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I've been dealing with this this week, actually.
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This has kind of come home to roost for me, because I'm at a place in 1 Corinthians where I'm going to have to provide an interpretation, because that's what I'm doing, I'm preaching through the text.
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And unlike a lot of people who preach this verse this week and another verse next week and another verse next week and they never connect them, if you preach verse by verse through a book, you have to interpret the passages that are the hard ones.
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You can't skip them.
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Because if I jump from 1 Corinthians 6, 11, which is where we stopped last week, and next week we're at 1 Corinthians 7, 1, somebody would inevitably say, Pastor, what about verses 11 through 20? Or 12 through 20 of 1 Corinthians? You skipped them.
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And what am I going to say? Well, I just didn't like those or I was having trouble understanding them.
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But the reality is I am having a difficult time with this particular passage.
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And I don't think it's wrong for me to say that.
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I think that it's fair to say that there are some Bible verses that are clearer than others.
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Paul says in 1 Corinthians...
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I'll give you what I'm having difficulty with.
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Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 12, All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient or helpful.
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All things are lawful for me, but I will be mastered by none of them.
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That's the passage.
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And where I'm having difficulty is with the phrase, All things are lawful for me.
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Because he just finished, and this is where context matters, he just finished a long list of things that are not lawful.
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Homosexuality, idolatry, adultery, favory, greediness, drunkenness, all that's unlawful.
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We agree? Whether you're an Old Testament Christian, or rather an Old Testament believer or a New Testament believer, no matter what covenant, no matter where you are, idolatry is wrong.
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No matter where you are, adultery is wrong.
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And so it's not lawful.
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And yet Paul says, all things are lawful for me.
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So I'm having to deal with it.
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Now I've come to the conclusion of what I'm going to say, and if you want to know, come Sunday.
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Listen, listen.
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Because I'm still really working on how I want to make sure.
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And I'll be honest with you, I've been on the phone with a few friends to help.
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I've been in the commentaries.
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I'm interested to know what Calvin thought 500 years ago.
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So Jennifer and I read Calvin together on that passage, and I was interested to know that Calvin and I agreed, which I'm always glad when I agree with Calvin, not that he's the perfect commentator, but he certainly said a lot of good things.
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And so I tended to agree with what he was saying, and it was what I said even before we read it.
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I said, I wonder if he's going to say this, and he did.
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I said, most important is if he agrees with Jennifer, for sure.
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But I want to say, though, because I could see someone taking that passage, ripping it from its context, and using it as license for sin.
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I'm committing adultery.
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All things are lawful for me.
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I know it's not good for me, but I can still do it.
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You hear how somebody could take that passage, rip it out of its context, and use it in a way that would be ungodly? And so I plan to preach on it and help understand why I think that would be a wrong interpretation.
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I think that even if I'm not 100% sure what it means, I know what it don't mean.
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And it don't mean that.
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Because if it meant that, if Paul is saying that everything is free reign, then the list that he gave me before that would be useless.
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Right? And a lot of the rest of the book as well.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Like I said, we're going to do it Sunday.
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But yeah, honestly, because if I start now, I'll never finish.
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Honestly, though, that's one direction that I've thought about a lot.
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Does the word all here reference all kinds or all inclusive? So there's that.
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There's all kinds of ways to look at it.
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I do think, I'll tell you where I'm leaning.
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I think that the phrase all things are lawful is a phrase that Paul had used previously in one of his letters.
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And I think it was being misused by the Corinthians.
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If you notice in the ESV, it's in quotation marks.
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It's not in quotation marks in the New American Standard.
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It's not in quotation marks in the King James.
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But the ESV and the NIV specifically put it in quotation marks.
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And I think the reason why is because I think that they're thinking, because Paul says it twice in chapter 6 and once in chapter 8.
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He says all things are lawful.
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And he says it as if he's quoting something.
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And I believe that he's possibly quoting himself.
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That he is quoting something he has said that's being misunderstood.
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You've heard me say all things are lawful, but I wasn't saying that all things are good.
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Yes sir? Oh yeah, we're going all the way to verse 20.
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Because it's going to go into sexual sin.
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And that's the other part.
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Verses 12 to 20 is actually about the subject of sexual sin.
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So, he's about to address things that are certainly not lawful.
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But yeah, I'm going to look at verses 12 through 20.
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That's the goal.
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Now if I get through that many verses in one sitting, we'll see.
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But yeah, that's my...
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I've heard this saying...
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See, that is a saying.
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And that's why I think that it could both be a saying.
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Both of them are potentially quotes that are in the Corinthian community.
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But again, I think that all things are lawful.
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Because if you look at Romans 14, Romans is written from Corinth.
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Like I said, we've spent all night on this.
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I've been studying it for the last few days.
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But Paul wrote Romans from Corinth.
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So we know that the Corinthians have received instruction from the Apostle Paul.
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And one of the things he says in Romans 14 is that there are things that are lawful, but we should not necessarily do them because they can cause our brother to stumble.
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It might be lawful for me to do something, but if what I do is damaging to my brother, then I should not do it.
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I shouldn't use my liberty as license to hurt someone else.
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And so I think that's where the phrase all things are lawful might come from.
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Paul is saying...
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Yeah? All the things that are lawful for me to do...
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Yeah, exactly.
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And it's not lawful.
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Immorality wouldn't even be lawful.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So yes, like I said, I don't want to preach my sermon today, but that's where I'm going.
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But you see now why I say context is so valuable.
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Because if all we had was verse 12, and it was ripped out of its context, somebody printed that on a t-shirt or wrote that on a marker board somewhere, and that's all you had, then you wouldn't be able to necessarily rebuff a bad interpretation by saying, hey, if that's what you think Paul meant, it doesn't agree with what he said there and it doesn't agree with what he's going to say after it.
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What comes before, what comes after is certainly going to affect how we understand something.
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And so that, to me, is vital.
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So tonight we're going to go to Part 3, Process of Interpretation.
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And my hope is that we get also to Part 4, which is looking at improper methods.
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So let's look at the process of interpretation.
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When examining a text...
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Oh, I told everybody to turn to 2 Timothy, but we didn't read it.
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2 Timothy 2 and 15 says this.
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Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
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Now, as I said a few weeks ago, I prefer the King James rendering.
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Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
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That's just the way I've memorized it.
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It's the way I like it.
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They both mean the same thing.
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And for those of you who don't know, my daughter is in an AWANA program at a friend's church.
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We take her to the AWANA program once a week.
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And AWANA is...
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I would love to do a program here.
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We just don't have enough people.
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I mean, it takes a small army to put an AWANA program together.
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But it stands for a workman not ashamed.
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AWANA...
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Approved workmen are not ashamed.
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That's what A-W-A-N-A stands for.
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And it's based on this passage.
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Approved workmen are not ashamed.
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So anyway, this passage is referring to how we handle the word of truth.
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If we are to be students of the word, we have a responsibility to interpret the word correctly.
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So let's look at the process now of how to do that.
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Under your list of the process of interpretation, we have background of the passage, immediate context, and broad context.
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All of this essentially is how you understand context.
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People talk about context all the time.
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What does that mean? Well, context is the setting in which a statement is made.
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There are a lot of statements that I've made over the years that if that statement by itself was written in a book, Keith Foskey on this day said X, then you'd probably think I was a monster.
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Or at least a bad teacher.
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But in the context of what I was saying, it fit.
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And you know what I'm saying.
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There are certain things that you could say that if it were devoid of the context that you were saying it in, it would make you either to be someone who was speaking falsely or untrue.
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For instance, in regard to like the Trinity.
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Right? We often talk about the fact that Jesus is God.
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Right? Jesus is God.
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Is that true or not true? We would say it's true.
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But, if you were to say that Jesus is God and that's it, it can be both true and not true.
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You say, how can that not be true? Well, the Oneness Pentecostals also say that Jesus is God.
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But they say it in the same vein as saying Jesus is the Father.
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Because they believe that there is one God, not in three persons, but one God in three modes of being.
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He was the Father in the Old Covenant.
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He was the Son.
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And now He's the Spirit.
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One God revealing Himself in three different modes.
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It's called modalism or civilianism.
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So that phrase, Jesus is God, in that context could be wrong.
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Because they're saying it to the absence of the Father and the Holy Spirit.
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Now do you understand what I'm saying? So when we talk about context, context informs the entirety of what we're saying.
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So we look at the background of a passage.
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Let me ask you this real quickly.
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How many of you know the background of Mark? The Gospel of Mark? If you come to Dad's in Dudes, you probably got a little bit of it.
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Because I see Mike's wheels turning because you've been in Dad's in Dudes, right? Who is Mark? Is it John Mark who Barnabas took in? It is.
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Absolutely.
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It's Barnabas' relative.
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And he is also the man whose mother was very influential in the early church, where her home was a place where the church gathered.
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In fact, a lot of people believe it was the place where Jesus had the Last Supper.
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It was in the home of John Mark.
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And there's a passage in Mark that talks about a young man who came while Jesus was in the garden.
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And remember the person grabbed him by his outer garment and it ripped off and he ran home with no clothes on? Well, it doesn't say that was John Mark, but a lot of conjecture would lead us to believe that it probably was the young John Mark having followed Jesus and His disciples out to the garden at night.
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Why does that matter? Well, when you know who Mark is, you'll know that Mark is probably writing under the leadership at that point of the Apostle Peter.
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And thus, the Gospel of Mark is written by Mark, but it's written from the memory and probably, likely, from the oversight of the Apostle Peter.
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And thus, Mark then becomes not the Gospel of Peter, we wouldn't say that, but the Gospel from Peter's perspective.
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And so there are places in Mark that you will get more from Peter's perspective than you will from the other Gospels.
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And so that's where we say a background of the passage gives a broader context to maybe some of the more nuances within the passages themselves.
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Having an understanding of who Isaiah is and when he was speaking.
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Remember Isaiah 6? In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated upon His throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
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You remember? Well, who was King Uzziah? What do we know about him? That's the background of that passage.
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Understanding why that matters.
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King Uzziah was a blessed king of Israel that was loved by the people, and yet he himself had made a great mistake among the people, and he had sinned against God, and so the last years of his life were difficult, but...
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King Uzziah was considered a blessed king of Israel.
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Now he's died.
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Isaiah probably is looking at an Israel that's lost a great king and is wondering what's going to happen next, and that's when he sees the Lord.
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So there's context that gives light to meaning.
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And why is it that now he's seeing the Lord? Because he's being reminded that even though the great king has died, God still sits upon His throne.
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Every four years I preach the same sermon.
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Every four years we vote for the president, and every four years since I've been in the pastorate here, I've preached God will still be on the throne Wednesday.
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That's the title.
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Because every four years people are chewing their nails the Sunday before election day.
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And so far I've had two Obamas and a Trump.
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And I've preached before each one of them.
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And that passage is an important passage.
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As we look at Isaiah, who's sitting on the throne? It wasn't Uzziah.
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It was Yahweh is sitting on the throne.
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Even if Hillary Clinton would have made it into the White House, God still would have been on the throne.
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And we went through two terms of Barack Obama.
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Now we're in with Trump.
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And God is still on His throne.
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And no matter what happens two years from now, God will still be on His throne.
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I'm not telling you not to vote.
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And that's not in any way what I would say in those things.
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I think God uses means.
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And one of the means is our participation in the system that He has established and allowed to be set up.
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But that doesn't mean that we lose hope.
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You understand? If we lose hope, if something doesn't go away that we think it should.
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So you see now again how context fits.
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That's background passage.
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Then you have immediate context.
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We've kind of looked at that already.
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Immediate context is what's being said here? What's being said in this immediate place? And the broad context is how is that affecting everything else that's around it? So we have the background of the passage.
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That's the book itself.
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The immediate context and the broader context.
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And within broad context...
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Okay, we'll be done in 15 minutes.
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And I'll call.
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Along with broad context comes another important thing.
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And the broader context is the issue of are there other passages that speak to this? Because we talk about the background of the passage.
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Okay, who wrote the book? Why did he write it? Who's he writing to? That's background, right? Then you've got the immediate context.
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What's the subject matter that he's dealing with right here? Am I keeping with that subject matter when I'm interpreting this? Okay, now I'm reading a passage and I have to compare that passage with other passages that talk about the same thing.
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And that's part of the broader context.
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Because the Bible has a line of truth that goes from the beginning all the way to the end.
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I've said this before.
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I think that one of the reasons why we can believe in the divine origin of Scripture is that it was written over a period of 1,400 years.
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It was written by at least 40 different authors.
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It was written in two primary languages interspersed with a third language, Aramaic.
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And yet, though it was written 1,400 years, 40 different authors, three different languages, it says the same thing from beginning to end.
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Provided we maintain the context of Scripture.
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A lot of people try to make Scripture argue with itself.
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Well, Paul says that we're justified by faith, but James says that we're justified by works, and so they disagree.
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Some people have had issue with that.
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Do you know Martin Luther took issue with that? Martin Luther had a difficult time reconciling James with Paul to the point that he called James the epistle of straw.
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As if to say it wasn't strong on its own.
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It was weak.
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However, if you go to James 2 where he does talk about justification and the works being part of the justification, what is James' context? What is his point? The point of James 2 is that if you say that you have faith and you have not works, that faith is dead.
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Actually, that's a quote of the passage, but that's his theme.
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So everything that he says in regard to faith and works falls under the paradigm of that statement.
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If you say that you have faith and you do not have works, that faith is dead.
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In fact, he uses that.
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This is a time where the King James leaving out a word does hurt.
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Go to James 2.
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And if you don't have a King James Bible, we don't have our usual King James carrier here.
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Does anybody else carry King James? Richard's got New American Standard.
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I know that.
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I know what Richard's packing.
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He carries it in a holster.
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Go to James 2.
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Do you have a phone? Can you look up a King James translation? Is that difficult? Can you do that? I'll tell you what, we'll do Bible drills Internet style.
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Read the New King James to me, Nathan.
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Let's see.
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James 2, verse 14.
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Can you read that? Yes, please.
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Thank you.
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That's perfect because that's the way it says it in the King James.
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Notice it says in the New King James, what good is it, my brethren? If someone says he has faith, he doesn't have works.
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Can faith save him? Right? That's what it says in the New King James.
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But in the ESV, and I believe the New American Standard, and in other passages, it adds the word that.
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T-H-A-T.
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And the question then doesn't become can faith save him? The question is can that faith save him? And you say, now wait a minute, are they adding a word? No, it's in the Greek.
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The word that is there and it is not translated in the King James or the New King James.
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But the word to reference that is there.
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So that actually becomes that actually becomes the foundation to understand the rest of it.
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It sets the context.
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Because Paul is not the writer.
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James is making the point that there is a type of faith that doesn't save.
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Do you guys know that? Do you know that there is a faith that doesn't save? If that surprises you, let me remind you of Jesus' own words.
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Matthew chapter 7.
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Many will come unto me in that day and say, Lord, Lord, did we not do many mighty works in Your name and cast out demons in Your name? And yet Jesus will say, I never knew you.
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Right? So what does that say? They had a type of faith that wasn't saving faith.
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You say, wow, there's multiple kinds of faiths? Yeah.
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The reformers identified this in three ways.
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There was a census, gnosis, and fiducia.
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Fiducia or fiducia.
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Gnosis is knowledge.
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A census is acceptance.
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Fiducia or fiducia is trust.
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So we get the word faithfulness.
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Or fide.
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Here's how that works out in reality.
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Some of you have heard this illustration before.
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I know that if I'm at 20,000 feet, or rather maybe not 20,000, if I'm up in an airplane and I have a parachute on, I know that if I jump out, what it's supposed to do.
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That's gnosis.
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That's knowledge.
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I know that the parachute is supposed to catch the air, slow my descent, and deliver me safely to the ground.
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That's what a parachute is supposed to do.
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And I know that.
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That's gnosis.
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There's a lot of people out there that know that Jesus is the Savior.
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They've been taught it.
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They have heard it.
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And they know that's the claim.
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Right? That's gnosis.
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Does that save? Every year we have people celebrating at Christmas and Easter the birth of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus.
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They don't care about it, but they celebrate it twice a year because it's an opportunity to get chocolate and candy and toys.
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So we have gnosis.
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Knowledge.
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A census.
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Acceptance.
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I accept that if I'm on an airplane and somebody straps a parachute to me and I jump down, that it would save me.
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I accept it as truth.
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And there's a lot of people out there that say, I believe in Jesus.
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I accept Him.
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I accept that He is the Savior.
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I accept that that's the truth.
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You say, well, that's salvation.
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Oh, nay, nay.
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That's not what the Reformers said.
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And that's not what the Bible says either when we get there.
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Because the next step is most important.
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Because if I stand there with my parachute on next to that door and I look down and I say, I ain't stepping out of this plane, then I have not exercised faith.
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Not in the sense of fiducia.
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I have not truly trusted in that parachute.
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I know what it does and I believe it will do what it says it can do.
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But I ain't stepping out of no airplane.
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I ain't even getting in the airplane to go up there to have that conversation.
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And that's where a lot of people miss it.
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Because while they might accept that Jesus is who He said He is, they have no desire in being faithful to Him.
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They have no desire to trust Him with their whole life.
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Jesus said, unless a man forsakes father and mother, sister and brother, and even his own self, he has no place with Me.
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Right? Jesus said, before a man builds a tower, he should count the cost.
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He did say, my burden is easy and light.
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But, He also said to come to Him, we've got to be able to be willing to give up all to trust in Him.
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A man came to Him and said, can I go bury my father? Jesus said, leave the dead to bury their own dead.
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Come and follow Me.
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That's powerful.
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And so, here we have James saying, can that faith save him? He's asking the question.
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The word that identifies the fact that James is pointing to a type of faith that doesn't save.
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What type of faith doesn't save? A faith that has no works.
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Because a faith that has no works hasn't stepped out of the plane.
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Make sense? And now James doesn't disagree with Paul anymore.
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Because all Paul has said is you are saved by grace through faith and not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God.
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Paul's point is on the other side.
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Paul's point is to say, don't ever let your works be what you trust in for your salvation.
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But trust that your salvation is by grace through faith.
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And James comes along and says, yes.
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But don't ever let faith without works but make you believe that that's true faith because it's not.
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Because faith without works is dead.
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That faith doesn't save.
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And if you don't believe me, ask Jesus because He told us that in Matthew 7.
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So it all agrees.
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You see how the overarching context and what I said about broad context, this should agree with this and that.
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And when they all agree, you know you're on the right track.
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But when you've got this guy arguing with this guy, and sometimes people cause Paul to argue with himself.
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If you've got Paul arguing with Paul, you know you've done messed up.
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If you've got James arguing with Paul, you've got to remember the Holy Spirit has inspired both writings.
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So you've got a Holy Spirit who's schizophrenic.
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That don't work neither.
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If you've got a New Testament that you can't jive with your Old Testament, that's a problem too.
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And I want to say a little something about that because I do think...
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And by the way, I'm going to wait on the last part.
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Is that okay? Can we do one more week? Do you all mind? I promise I'm not just stretching it out.
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This is important stuff.
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This is the kind of stuff we should be talking about.
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And by the way, we're doing Bible studies because we're looking at verses.
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We're talking about their meanings.
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This is how you learn how to study the Bible.
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You actually study the Bible.
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And you look at the concepts and the steps in how you put them to work.
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But here's something I want to mention about Old Testament versus New Testament.
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How many of you have ever heard someone say the Old Testament disagrees with the New Testament? Nobody here has ever heard it? Thank you.
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I've heard it a long time.
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Here's how it usually goes.
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Someone will say this, I like the God of the New Testament because He's love and grace, but the God of the Old Testament is mean and spiteful and jealous.
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I told you guys about my friend who sent me that atheist...
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I said it was a rant.
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It wasn't a rant.
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It was a debate.
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An atheist was debating Dr.
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William Lane Craig who's a Christian apologist and they were debating.
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And the atheist was very well spoken, very intelligent man.
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I wouldn't take anything away from his intelligence.
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But much of what he said, I do think would probably be difficult for the average Christian to deal with because he was raising some difficult things.
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But some of it was just within his context.
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He called the God of the Old Testament a monster.
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And that God was psychopathic because He was willing to allow and cause the deaths of millions in the flood and then of course when He commanded the Israelites to go and destroy every man, woman, child of the Amalekites and of course the Canaanites.
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And some people have come out of that without an ability to reconcile that with for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
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So they have a hard time reconciling that.
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Some people to the point that they have written out entire sections of the Bible and just said they're not going to deal with them.
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Andy Stanley.
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How many of you are familiar with him? Andy Stanley is the famous son of more famous father Charles Stanley.
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In touch with Charles Stanley.
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Andy Stanley has really gone off the rails with this.
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And I'm saying this because it's relatively recently that he's done this.
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But he's come out and essentially said that we have to divorce ourselves from the Old Testament and just sort of get rid of it.
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Because we just can't reconcile it with the New Testament.
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And in fact, but he's gone even further than that.
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This is not...
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Huh? Yeah, he's said a lot of things.
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He said essentially the small churches need to close and they all need to go to the big churches and stuff.
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Yeah, he's really come out and said a lot of things.
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I don't know where his dad is on this.
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Doesn't matter.
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But I would be interested to see how if they agree or disagree on some of the kind of wild claims he's been making.
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But one of the...
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Huh? Yeah, but one of the claims again is the divorcing from the Old Testament.
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Isn't it? And that's interesting, Nathan.
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That's actually what I was going to say is when we talk about the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, we're automatically conceding the argument that they must be two.
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I know that's not what you're saying, but a lot of people do when they try to compare God from the Old Testament to the New Testament.
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But as Nathan very properly pointed out, if you want to compare styles of wrath, let's say styles of wrath between the way God managed His people in the Old Covenant and God's management in the New Covenant.
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What is God's wrath in the New Covenant described as? An eternal lake of fire.
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Which is only mentioned in passing references in the Old Testament.
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We do not see direct specific references.
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In fact, I think Daniel chapter 12 and I could be wrong about that, but in my mind, I think Daniel chapter 12 is the only place that specifically talks about the eternal place of the damned.
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The word Sheol comes up, but Sheol is referencing the concept of the place of the dead, but doesn't address it as being hot or fiery or a place of eternal torment.
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New Testament though, Jesus comes out, as it were, very clear.
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The worm does not die.
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And the fire is not quenched.
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And that's Jesus, right? Everybody wants to make the argument, well, Jesus is so much more soft and gracious and loving than the God of the Old Testament.
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Jesus was a hellfire preacher.
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Yeah.
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He called His enemies a whitewashed tomb full of dead men's bones, which means they look good on the outside, but they were dead on the inside.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And you can't define the God of the Old Testament with one Scripture either.
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Because the God of the Old Testament in the Old Testament is described as abounding in patience and kindness and steadfast love.
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He is considered to be Yehovah Yireh, the God who provides.
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Genesis chapter 22.
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So we see the consistent, full-orbed majesty of God throughout the Bible.
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Not just wrath, but not devoid of wrath.
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Not just love, but full of love.
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Not any one of His attributes eliminates the other attributes.
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In fact, R.C.
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Sproul, I believe it was, made the best argument on this.
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And I could be wrong.
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I believe it was R.C.
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said that if you take away God's ability to hate, you would take away His ability to love.
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Because when we love, then the hate of something that attacks that love is natural.
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For instance, I love my wife and I hate it when she is injured or hurt or sad or attacked or a victim.
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Right? My desire to see my wife vindicated is part of my love and part of the desire for vindication is a hatred of sin.
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And that's on my microcosmic level.
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God exists in a macrocosmic level where everything that He sees and knows is experienced in a way that we could never understand.
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And so when He loves us, why is it that when Adam and Eve ate that fruit, that God was so incensed? Because He knew at that moment the curse they had brought upon themselves.
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And in turn, their entire posterity.
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Because He is just.
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There is so much about God and about understanding God that comes only from seeking to understand the Bible's broader context.
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The Israelites just kind of struck me.
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The Israelites are for His faith.
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They were the true blessed sons.
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Now here's Israel.
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The context being of them.
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They're the children of Abraham.
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They're blessed because of His faith.
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And the whole world is looking.
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And the world is prohibited from becoming a part of Israel.
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And all of them, whenever you see what we've heard about.
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We've heard about what happened in native Egypt.
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We've heard about what happened in the desert when these people came against you.
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And God fought for you.
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Weren't all those people in His various nations watching? Were they not? Didn't they have the chance to go and say, Hey, what do you have? We need it too.
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Obviously, we need what they didn't.
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They didn't.
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You know, Rachel did it.
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Or Rahab the harlot did it.
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As an example, for whatever reason, the nations around them don't choose to.
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And they know about it.
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And we do see, we see.
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In the desert, I guess in context, I would like to answer people who say that kind of thing to me.
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You're such a God of wrath.
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Wait a minute, you know the whole story.
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Yeah, there was proselytite acceptance in the old covenant.
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A person could become a member.
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There was ways that a person could do that.
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The last word I'll leave with you tonight is the word metanarrative.
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You familiar with that word? Metanarrative.
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You know what a narrative is.
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Narrative is the line of story that takes you through something, a book or what have you.
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Metanarrative kind of goes along with what Nathan was just saying.
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There is this overarching thing that's happening from Genesis 1-1 to Revelation 22-21.
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There's this overarching story that's happening.
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God has His people.
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They sin against Him.
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And so out of that comes a race of completely vile people.
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God decides to destroy that people.
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But He saves for Himself a remnant of eight.
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Out of that eight is given birth to another generation of people.
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Out of that comes one man whom God chooses to be His man in His world.
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And out of him, He's going to bless the whole world in His seed.
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Out of that seed comes the nation.
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Out of that nation comes a people who rise to power in many places, but fall because of their unwillingness to be in allegiance to their God.
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And there's risings and there's fallings throughout the old covenant.
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But it's all driving towards the one purpose that God has promised a seed.
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And that seed is Jesus Christ.
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And that promise will not be abrogated.
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As much as Israel shall fail, she shall remain because the seed has yet to come.
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And when the seed comes in the fullness of time, God sends forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.
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To do that which man hadn't done up until that point and hasn't done since, that's keep the law perfectly and fulfill it and be righteous.
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And to take the sins of the people on Himself and become the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world.
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And now it continues on into the narrative that we look forward to in Revelation when that one day He will split the eastern sky and He will come again and He will take us to where He is and we will forever be with Him.
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The grand narrative of Scripture is that meta-narrative.
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Every interpretation that we do must agree first with that.
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Because that's the grand story.
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If somebody comes out, I don't believe in heaven because I found a verse that tells me that when you die you're just dead.
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Or was it? It was in Ecclesiastes.
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Okay.
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Yeah, there's a passage in Ecclesiastes that says the person who's dead doesn't know anything.
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And a lot of people use that to argue that when you die, you're just dead.
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Is there not another context where we could find a way to cause that to agree with the rest of the Bible? Sure there is.
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But is ripping it out of its context a way of totally mutilating that text and using it to produce a doctrine that doesn't exist in the Bible? Yes, it does.
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That's why context...
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and that's how context works.
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It begins with the broad, moves its way to the immediate.
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And if our interpretation doesn't agree with the context, then we know it's wrong.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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I thank You for what You've given us.
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We pray for Mr.
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Pat right now.
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Whatever the situation is, may You bless her and bless us, Lord, as we leave tonight.
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In Jesus' name, amen.