No Third Option: Heaven or Hell

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I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the twelfth chapter of the book of Daniel.
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And we are going to be looking at verse 2, but to pick up the context, I'd like for us to read verses 1 to 4.
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Daniel chapter 12, beginning at verse 1.
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The title of today's message is No Third Destination.
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At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince, who has charge of your people.
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And there shall be a time of trouble such as never has been since there was a nation till that time.
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But at that time your people shall be delivered.
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Everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.
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And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.
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Some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
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And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above.
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And those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.
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But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.
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Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall increase.
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Father in heaven, as we open your word today and focus on a simple yet profound truism, I pray, Lord, that you would by your mercy and grace keep me from error.
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For I am a fallible man capable of preaching that which is false.
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And I do not want to for the sake of your great name, for the sake of your great people, and for the sake of my own frail conscience.
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Lord, that you would keep me from error.
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I pray that you would fill me with the Holy Spirit of God.
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That he would speak through me.
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That the words would go into the ears, down into the mind, into the very heart and soul.
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And for the believer that they would be challenged today to be reminded that this life is not all there is.
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And, Lord, also for the unbeliever that they would be challenged and, Lord, convicted.
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And even, Lord, if it be your will, converted by the call of the gospel.
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And I pray all of this, Lord, in Jesus' precious name.
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Amen.
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Last week we ended our series in 1 Corinthians.
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And we're going to be starting a new series in Genesis.
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In September.
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But during this interim time, I wanted to do a small mini-series, subject-based, rather than a verse-by-verse exposition, as is my normal practice.
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I wanted to do a subject-based study.
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And so I've entitled this study, Our Eternal Destination.
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And this series is not without reason.
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People sometimes ask me, well, how do you come up with what you're going to preach? Well, when you're preaching verse-by-verse, you don't come up with it.
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You just preach it.
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But when you have to make decisions and choose, sometimes there are factors that weigh in to cause you to have to go one direction or the other.
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I'll tell you what has brought this to mind.
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Since the beginning of the year, we have had death visited on our congregation more frequently than any year previously in my time as the pastor.
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We have had more funerals this year than I ever remember in a single year since I began.
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We've seen the passing of Patsy, of Sybil, of Irvin, of Jimmy, and then Junior last year.
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And many of us also have suffered individual losses in our families.
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Just this past week, the young man we were praying for, Justin Reynolds, passed away, 34 years old.
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And his mother had just lost her husband and her mother earlier this year.
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So just a tremendous amount of loss has been happening.
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And I thought it might be good food for the soul of our church to be reminded about what the Bible promises regarding the life to come.
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Likewise, it is always good to be reminded of the danger of those who have not yet prepared themselves for their own step into eternity.
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In the latter part of 1 Corinthians, I spent several weeks preaching through chapter 15, and we examined what happens at death.
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We discussed the intermediate state.
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We discussed the resurrection of the body.
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So we've kind of been in this already.
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But this series is a little different than that, because this series is going to be about the final state.
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What will it be like once all is done? What will life be like once the final curtain falls? Why should the redeemed live with anticipation? And why should the lost live with dread? I really, in mentioning that, this sort of just came into my heart as I was preparing this week, and I've been thinking about this many weeks leading up to this, I really think we've lost the anticipation for heaven.
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And I don't mean that everybody, but I think as a general rule across the attitude of the church in general, there has sort of become a sense in which we're really comfortable in this life, and so we're not longing for heaven anymore.
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Now, if you go to the third world, or maybe where churches are being persecuted, it might be a little different story.
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I guess I'm limiting myself more to the experience that we have here in the American church, and what I seem to see is that people have become very comfortable in this life, and therefore there's no real longing for heaven.
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There's a longing for eternal life, but they want eternal life here.
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They can't imagine being without sin, because sin is such a big part of their lives, and they don't want to give it up.
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And so they look for every way they can to prolong this life without looking forward to the life to come, and they don't really long for holiness.
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They know that's what's going to happen when they die, and they are in before the Lord, and you're a believer, you lose all desire for sin.
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You say, I don't even know how I'd live without that desire.
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And so there's a lack of longing.
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They want to live forever, they just don't want to live with God.
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And I think that's brought a real problem into the church.
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We want to live forever, but we don't want what comes with that.
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And on the other hand, I think there's also been a loss of a fear of hell.
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People don't believe in hell anymore.
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I've never done a funeral, and then people say, well, you have to understand why people do that.
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I've never done a funeral where people said, you know what, well, it's a bad situation.
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Everybody's going to heaven.
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You know, we don't believe in justification by faith anymore.
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Now we believe in justification by death.
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Everybody who dies is going to heaven.
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It just ain't so, y'all.
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And so we no longer look forward to heaven.
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We no longer fear hell.
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We have given up any real sense of our eternal destinies.
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So over the next few weeks, that's going to be the subject.
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And I want to tell you, there's basically this series is very simply ordered.
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Today, we're going to look at the fact that there is no third destination.
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Then we're going to look next week at the destiny of the damned.
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And I want to tell you, I don't look forward to preaching about hell.
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But Jesus preached on hell more than anybody else in the Bible.
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That's right.
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In fact, Dr.
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John Gerstner said something very profound.
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He said he thinks the reason why Jesus preached on hell more than anyone else is because it would be hard to accept its reality if it came from anyone else.
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It'd be hard to really accept the realism of hell if it came from the mouth of anybody, but he who created all things.
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And so we're going to look at what Jesus said about hell next week.
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And then the third week, we're going to look at heaven, the destiny of the redeemed.
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So far, that is the outline.
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And there may be a fourth message.
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I'm still working in my heart on that.
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But that is the outline right now of what we're going to do over the next several Sundays.
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So let's look today at only two destinies or as I've titled, no third destiny.
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And I want us to begin with our opening text, but we're not going to stay here.
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This is simply one text out of many that we're going to look at.
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And this is in Daniel chapter 12.
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And we've already read the context.
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But again, my focus is verse two.
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It says, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
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Now, I want to make an interpretive statement before we go too far.
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And that is this.
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Daniel's book is what we would call a prophetic book, particularly the last half of the book.
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The first half is primarily narrative.
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But in the last half, there is mainly prophecy.
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And so we interpret it in the way that we would interpret apocalyptic or prophetic literature.
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And some question whether or not Daniel is referring here to the final resurrection of the dead, which we know is yet to come.
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Or if Daniel is here referring to a resurrection, which has already taken place.
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And if you want to be reminded, you can write this passage down and look at it later.
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Matthew chapter 27 verses 51 to 53.
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It says that when Jesus died, the veil of the temple was torn in two rocks were split open and the dead came out of their graves.
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And at that moment, there was a resurrection that did occur at the death of Jesus Christ.
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And some people believe that Daniel's prophecy is not referring to the end of all things, but rather is referring to that particular resurrection event.
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And it certainly is possible that that could be what Daniel is prophesying.
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But it could also be that he is prophesying of the end of the age.
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And I think the reference in my reading, again, having spent a lot of time with it this week, the one thing that would make me think that it's the end of the age is that in Daniel's prophecy, it refers both to those who are raised to life and those who are raised to contempt.
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And in Matthew's passage, it says the tombs were open and the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
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So there's only one reference there.
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Those who were saints were raised.
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So it would make me think that this is referring to the end of the age.
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But be it either way, here is my point.
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In Daniel's passage, there is only two destinies mentioned.
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That's my main point.
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You are either raised to life or you are raised to contempt.
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There is no third destiny.
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There is no third option.
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And you say, well, why start there? Isn't there several places in the New Testament that say this? Yes, there is.
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But I wanted to start in Daniel because some have suggested that there is no promise of eternal life in the Old Testament.
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In fact, some people have argued that there is no real belief in an afterlife until the New Testament.
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And it is certainly true that the New Testament gives us much more information about life after death and the afterlife.
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However, I would argue that Daniel confirms the belief in a resurrection and his language carries over into the New Testament.
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Notice what it says in Daniel 2.
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It says, many of those who are asleep in the dust of the earth.
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That is the same language Paul uses when he talks about people who are dead.
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He talks about them being asleep.
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And he goes on to say they are raised to life.
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That's the same language that's used in the New Testament.
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Notice the person who is raised to contempt is not said to be raised to life.
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That's an important distinction that the New Testament makes.
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The person who is raised to go to hell is not raised to life.
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They're raised to contempt.
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They're raised to a conscious death, as it were.
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You say, well, conscious is alive.
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Yes, it's alive, but it's not life.
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Only those who are raised to life are the ones who are raised to being with God and with Christ.
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That's life.
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If you're raised to go to hell, that's not living.
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That's eternal dying.
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I may make a little silly way of saying it, but that's the point I'm making is the euphemistic language that Daniel is using is carried over.
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Excuse me.
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It's carried over.
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It's used by John in John 3 when he talks about whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
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And it's used by Paul who talks about sleeping and awakening.
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In 1 Thessalonians 4, those who sleep will be raised and they'll wake up when the trumpet sounds.
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So this language of Daniel is brought over into the New Testament.
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But I want to add a few other thoughts from the Old Testament before we move into the New Testament.
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By the way, I don't have a strong outline today.
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I'm just going from verse to verse.
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So forgive me for not giving you three points in a poem.
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I know that makes me a bad Baptist, but that's how you're supposed to do it.
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But today we're just going to go from passage to passage because we start in Daniel 12 and he talks about these two destinies, these two destinations, life or contempt.
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Everlasting life, everlasting shame.
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Right? That's the two.
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There's no third option.
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Now, if you would, turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 26.
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Isaiah 26.
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He said, well, why are we going here? Because again, I'm trying to build the case that I do believe that the old covenant saints at least had an idea about the afterlife.
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I do believe they had a hope in life beyond this life.
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I don't think that the only hope of the Old Testament was an earthly hope.
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I think they had a heavenly hope.
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I don't think it was as well defined.
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I don't think it was as well articulated as it is in the New Testament.
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But I do think the hope was there.
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Isaiah 26 and verse 19.
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This is the prophet speaking.
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He says, your dead shall live.
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Their bodies shall rise.
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You who dwell in the dust awake and sing for joy, for your due is a due of light.
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And the earth will give birth to the dead.
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Very similar language to what we have in the New Testament when it talks about death and hell giving up their dead.
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And so here again is an Old Testament, at least an Old Testament reference to the hope of life after death.
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But we can move on to the end of Isaiah.
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Brother Dale read this for our call to worship this morning, but in Isaiah 66, which is the last chapter of Isaiah and the last verses of Isaiah, verses 22 to 24, it says this.
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For as the new heavens and the new earth, what language is that? That's the language used in Revelation, isn't it? Revelation 21, new heaven and a new earth, right? So we see this comparing of language here.
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He says, for as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain from new moon to new moon, from Sabbath to Sabbath.
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All flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord.
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Now, here's the part that's really striking.
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He says, and they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me, for their worms shall not die.
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Their fire shall not be quenched and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.
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What language is that? That's the very language of Jesus who talks about the worm that shall not die and the fire that shall not be quenched.
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This is Isaiah 700 years before Christ prophesying about this time that's going to come when there's going to be a looking upon those who have rebelled against God and they will be in a state of utter despair.
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That's the picture of the worm not dying and the fire not going out.
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And so this language, even of hell, I heard a Jewish man very recently, he said, Jews don't believe in hell.
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No, Jews don't believe in Jesus either.
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At least those who are Orthodox, I really, I'm not trying to get my theology from them because they're off on that.
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But even this would say there is some idea of the existence of a place of death and a place of torment for those who have rebelled against God.
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Another passage that you don't have to turn to, but I'll read it to you, is in the earliest book of the Old Testament.
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Well, there's some argument about that.
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But if you're familiar with the book of Job, there's a good chance that Job was written earlier than the earliest books of the New Testament because of the time frame that we believe that it was written.
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And Job in chapter 19, verse 25 to 27, he says this, he says, For I know that my Redeemer lives.
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Remember that song? My Redeemer, I like that.
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But listen, he says, I know that my Redeemer lives and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
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That's talking about the last day.
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On the last day, he will stand upon the earth.
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And after my skin has been thus destroyed, meaning I've been dead and everything, he says, yet in my flesh, I shall see God.
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Why? Because there's been a resurrection, right? My flesh has been destroyed, but in my flesh, I'll see God because there's going to be a resurrection whom I shall see for myself.
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And my eyes shall behold, not another, meaning I'm not going to see it with another person's eyes, I'm going to see it with my eyes.
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I'm going to see God with my eyes.
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And then he says, my heart faints within me.
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Just thinking about that reality, just my heart faints within me.
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So we have these references to the afterlife.
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Are they as many and plentiful as the New Testament? No.
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Are they as explicit as the New Testament? No.
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But I do think that it tells us that there at least was a hope of resurrection, a hope of life hereafter in the Old Testament.
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In fact, one of the other arguments that could be made, and I don't mean to sit here and just beat a dead horse, as it were, but another argument that can be made is that we have extra biblical literature.
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Extra biblical literature means writings that were written outside of the Bible were not included in the canon of the Bible, but yet were written by God's people.
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And one of those that we have is called the Apocrypha.
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Now, if you have a Roman Catholic background, you might have been brought up to believe that the Apocrypha is part of the Bible.
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Sometimes it's called the deuterocanonical books, meaning books that are second canon or the second part of the canon.
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We do not accept the Apocrypha as part of sacred scripture.
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However, it's useful history.
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It's not something we just dispense with.
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We actually can look at it and find some value in it.
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We just don't hold it on the same level as scripture.
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But one of the passages that we see is from the book of 2 Maccabees, and chapter 7, verse 14 clearly references a belief in a resurrection.
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So this is prior to Jesus, prior to the New Testament, written several hundred years before the promises of the new covenant.
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And yet there was a belief among the Maccabees, as it was written, that those being the group within the Jewish community, there was a belief in an afterlife.
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So again, we know that wasn't inspired by God, but yet it's still valuable to show you what people thought.
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It was valuable to show you what people believed.
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And so extra biblical literature can do that.
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Now, again, going back to the passage that we began with today, Daniel mentions only two destinies, not a third.
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Some people have suggested that there is a third destination, that mankind has a third option.
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I want to go over a few of those, and I want you to consider the falsehoods, because sometimes it's important to recognize that which is false so that we get a clearer view of what is true.
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Roman Catholicism puts forward the idea called purgatory.
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Now, purgatory comes from the word purge.
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And what it means is this.
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If you die and you do not have the sanctification to enter into the presence of God, then you can go to this third place or this place of purging where you can be purged of your sins.
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And depending on how much sin you have amassed and accumulated in your life, you may be there for several hundred years.
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You may be there for several thousand years.
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But hey, what's a millennium when you have eternity to get over it? So you can go into purgatory and receive your purging.
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And that is a very strongly held belief in Roman Catholicism, and it's unbiblical.
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It was one of the reasons for the selling of indulgences during the Reformation, if you remember, because what was the purchasing of an indulgence? It was the purchasing of years off of your time in purgatory.
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If you're going to go to purgatory for a thousand years or I remember the the statement of of Johann Tetzel, who was selling the the indulgences, he says, how many of you for the sake of a piece of silver would not see your mother come out of the fire of purgatory? How many of you wouldn't pay your mother's way out of purgatory? And so he used that as a way to encourage people to purchase the indulgences.
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So purgatory is one of the third options that's not biblical.
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And yet many people who call themselves Christians believe it.
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Another third option that people believe is the option called reincarnation.
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That would mean that at death you do not die and go to heaven or hell.
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At death, you die and you're born again as another person and you keep having that opportunity to be born, not born again in the Christian way, but literally physically born again as a new human until such time as you reach a point of of holiness where you're fit for an eternal heavenly position or depending on the religion.
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As I'm talking, I'm staying within the Christian realm.
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You may think I'm thinking about like like the Hindus believe in reincarnation.
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No, there are Christians who believe in reincarnation.
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In fact, according to data released by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life in 2009, not only do a quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation, 24 percent of American Christians surveyed said they believe in reincarnation.
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I'm sorry, 24 percent.
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One in four who identified as Christians said they believe in some form of reincarnation.
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Get out of here.
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But again, people are desperate for a third option.
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People are desperate for some other way.
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Maybe I just maybe the light that I see at the end of the tunnel when they say don't go into the light, you know, when you're dying, maybe that's the light of coming out of another of another womb.
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And now I'm going into another life.
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I've heard that you're going from one life to the next.
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So you have purgatory.
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That's a third option.
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It's unbiblical.
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You have reincarnation.
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That's a third option, not biblical.
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But there's another third option that I think is even more common.
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And it may even be one that is held by some of you and you may not even realize it.
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And the third option that I'm referring to is the option of universalism.
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You see, universalism says there's not two options.
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There's only one.
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Everybody goes to heaven.
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A few years ago, there was a book entitled Love Wins by Rob Bell.
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Pastor, I hate to even use that term.
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I'll use it pastor.
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How about that? Rob Bell wrote a book, Love Wins, sold millions of copies, launched him into massive success.
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He became one of Oprah Winfrey's spiritual advisors.
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Just to show you how popular it made him.
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And essentially, he claimed that the traditional concept of hell is incorrect and that we should understand that ultimately God's love will overcome our rebellion.
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And his, again, the title of the book is Love Wins.
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I want to give you a summary of what he said in the book.
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This was written by Kevin DeYoung, another pastor who was simply summarizing what Bell wrote in his book.
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This is what he says, quote, Hell is what we create for ourselves when we reject God's love.
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Hell is both a present reality for those who resist God and a future reality for those who die unready for God's love.
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Hell is what we make of heaven when we cannot accept the good news of God's forgiveness and mercy.
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But hell is not forever.
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God will have his way.
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How can his good purposes fail? Every sinner will turn to God and realize he has already been reconciled to God in this life or in the next.
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There will be no eternal conscious torment.
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God says no to injustice in the age to come, but he does not pour out wrath.
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We bring the temporary suffering upon ourselves, and he certainly does not punish for eternity.
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In the end, love wins, end quote.
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So what's that? There's no two options.
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There's only one.
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Ultimately, it's heaven for everybody.
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I got to tell you, that's so appealing.
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It's very appealing to simply say it's love wins and there is no hell and we don't have to really worry about anything.
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And what good is evangelism? No need for that because everybody's going to go to, yeah, they may spend a few more years in hell getting into heaven.
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But ultimately, God's just going to just going to eventually bring everyone in, as it were, like a just a giant sweep and bring everyone in.
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And again, to some, that sounds really great.
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And I really believe that's what a lot of people believe, even if they don't want to admit it, they want to believe in some form of universal destiny for all men.
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And that destiny being one of heaven.
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But there's no way to reconcile that with scripture.
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Bell does so many gymnastics in the book to try to jump over, under, around and through passages that just won't allow it.
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The Bible does not teach one destiny.
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It teaches one of two destinies.
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The Bible does not teach multiple destinies, only two reincarnation, purgatory, all the rest.
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They are not biblical.
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The Bible teaches one or the other.
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In fact, I want to show you now in the New Testament, if you'll turn with me, I want to just show you a few passages.
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And again, I could sit here all day and we just go from one to the next to the next.
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But there are some here.
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I just want to really demonstrate to you the importance of this.
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And I'm going to take you right to the teaching of Jesus Christ.
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Turn with me first to John chapter 5 and go to verse 25.
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John 5, 25 says this.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming.
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And by the way, this is Jesus speaking.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live for as the father has life in himself.
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So he has granted the son also to have life in himself.
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And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man.
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By the way, that's a reference to Daniel right there, because Daniel refers to the son of man, not simply as being a human man, but as being God's agent of judgment.
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That's the title, the son of man.
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Verse 28.
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Do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
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Notice the similar language as what was in Daniel, resurrection to life and then resurrection of judgment.
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Notice there are only two.
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I know I'm beating a dead horse.
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I'm going to say it again.
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There are only two destinies here.
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Notice what it says.
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There will be a resurrection and the resurrection will either be you will be raised to life or you will be raised to judgment.
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No third option.
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Turn with me to Matthew chapter 7.
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Matthew chapter 7.
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This is the end of Jesus's sermon on the mount.
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Sometimes you should just read the sermon on the mount just for no other reason, but just to hear the greatest sermon ever preached.
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This is it.
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In fact, I don't remember who it was.
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I think it was Lloyd Jones, but it was one of the great preachers, was at a church once and they said, oh, there's this tremendous preacher.
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Won't you get up and preach to us today? And he hadn't come prepared.
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And so he said, I'm not prepared.
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They said, oh, well, come, you're a great preacher.
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So he just stood up, opened up to Matthew chapter 5 and read to Matthew chapter 7.
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He just read Jesus's sermon on the mount.
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Greatest sermon ever preached.
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But notice how it draws to its conclusion.
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Matthew 7.13 is Jesus beginning to draw to a conclusion and he gives what we might call somewhat of a invitation.
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I think more it's a command, but it's still it's drawing this massive, important sermon to a conclusion.
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He says, enter by the narrow gate.
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For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many.
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For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few.
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This is the words of Jesus himself calling people.
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He's commanding people to enter by the narrow gate.
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And he says there's only two gates.
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There is the narrow gate that leads to life.
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And there is the broad gate or the wide gate that leads to death.
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I don't know how many of you have noticed the screen.
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I asked Miss Debbie, she does our screens for us.
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And I asked her to please include this for this series.
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This photo is actually a painting rather than a photograph.
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But this painting is in our narthex, this little room out here.
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Some people call it a foyer.
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This room right out there is where we have this painting and it's hung there for many years.
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And this painting actually came out of a mission downtown.
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The mission closed and they had this painting.
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And one of the men who was there, he called and said, I think I have something that you would like.
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And I said, oh, really? He said, yes, it's a painting.
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It was painted by one of our people.
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And he said, I think it'd be right up your alley.
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And so I said, thank you.
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And he brought it to me.
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And so it's been hanging in our narthex ever since for the last several years.
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But you'll notice the painting is somewhat of a graphic illustration of Jesus's call in Matthew 7.
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There is a narrow way.
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It is the way of the cross.
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And there is a broad way.
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You probably can't see it, but there's people falling off both sides.
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There's little figures on both sides of the cliff.
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Because the way to hell is big.
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The way to hell is broad.
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The way to hell is every other way but Jesus.
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The way to hell is every other way but the cross.
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The cross is this one narrow bridge in a sea of hell.
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And that's it.
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And so I asked for this.
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This is going to be up for the next several weeks.
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Just as a reminder, Jesus's words.
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Enter by the narrow gate.
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What is the narrow gate? Him.
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He says, I am the gate of the sheep.
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I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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I am the gate.
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I am the way.
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There's no other way.
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There's no other gate.
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All right.
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Now, I think I've made my point.
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But I can't finish here because I just want to show you more.
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I just want to show you Scripture.
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And by the look of my time, I got a few minutes.
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So I'm going to show you one more quick passage.
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If you'll turn with me to Matthew 13.
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And again, we could stay here in Matthew 7 because he goes on to talk about the one who built his house on the sand, the one who built his house on the rock.
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Only two places to build, right? Either on Christ or everything else.
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We could spend all our time in Matthew 7.
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But Matthew 13 shows how Jesus teaches this in parabolic form.
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That was Jesus's didactic teaching.
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Enter by the narrow gate.
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That's didactic, clear, command teaching.
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But now we have it in illustrative teaching.
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In Jesus's parables, which illustrate the kingdom, he gives us two wonderful illustrations.
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And this is where we're going to end for today, is in Matthew 13.
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Matthew 13.
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We're going to look at two short parables.
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The first one is verse 24.
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Matthew 13, verse 24.
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One of my favorite parables, actually, because I think it's a good tool for evangelism.
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This is a good way to share the gospel because it talks about the judgment.
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And listen to what it says.
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He says, He put to them another parable saying, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
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But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.
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Now, if you have the old King James, it says tares.
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That's just an older language for weeds.
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But you may be used to hearing this called the parable of the wheat and the tares.
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Or you can also call it the parable of the wheat and the weeds, depending on how you want to say it.
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Verse 26, he says, So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.
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And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds? He said to them, An enemy has done this.
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So the servant said to him, Then do you want us to go and gather them? But he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them.
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Let both grow together until the harvest.
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And at the harvest time, I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them into bundles to be burned.
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But gather the wheat into my barn.
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This is a picture of the great separation at the end of the age.
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There will be a separation of the wheat and the weeds.
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Notice there's no third option.
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There's no third category.
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He's not gathering another group for another place.
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There will be those who are gathered, bundled and burned.
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And those who are gathered, collected and placed into his barn.
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That's it.
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But move your eyes down just a few verses to verse 47.
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Verse 47.
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Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.
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When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad.
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So it will be at the close of the age.
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The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.
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In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Now, we'll deal with the weeping and gnashing of teeth later.
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But again, the point I'm making here is there's this great dragnet.
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And in the net has drawn all types of fish.
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But it's also drug a lot of other things, seaweed and garbage and all kinds of other things from the bottom of the sea.
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And as the net is brought up onto the shore, the fishermen's lay out the net and they say, OK, here's a fish that is good.
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Here's a fish that is rotted.
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Maybe it had been eaten by another carnivorous fish.
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Maybe it's only half a chunk of fish.
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Maybe it's a piece of seaweed.
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Maybe it's a piece of trash from the bottom of the sea.
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He says we're going to separate the good from the bad.
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That's a picture of the end of the age.
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There's a separation only two places, only two destinies, either the destiny of God's good or the destiny of the wicked.
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Now, R.C.
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Sproul once made an observation that I want to make again today and simply repeat.
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Many people prepare for what will happen a year from now, five years from now.
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Some people are even savvy enough to think about their lives 10 years from now and start making plans.
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But what about 125 years from now? In 125 years, you're going to be dead.
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The earth may still be spinning, but you won't be.
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You will either be in heaven or you will be in hell.
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There is no third option.
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Years ago, my wife was in an office and she was sharing her faith with a lady who worked alongside of her.
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It was a much younger lady in the office, and she was trying to encourage the woman to trust in Jesus because that was the only way to be saved.
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And it still is the only way to be saved.
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And my wife's encouraging her to trust in Christ.
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And this young woman said to my wife words I'll never forget because my wife came home immediately and told me.
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And I just couldn't believe it, but I knew it was true.
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She said, I plan to become a Christian one day.
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But right now I'm having fun.
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I plan to become a Christian one day.
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But right now I'm having fun.
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Maybe you have that same attitude.
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Maybe somewhere in your heart of hearts, you're putting it off.
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You know your death is inevitable.
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You know heaven and hell are the only places, but yet you're not yet ready to follow Christ because something in this world has enticed you away.
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You're not yet ready to follow Christ because you're not in the mood to plan.
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For 125 years from now.
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But I remind you, there's no third option.
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You will either die and be with Christ because you have received him by grace through faith alone, or you will die and you will be an object of God's justice forever because of your sin.
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There is no third option.
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So my call to you today, my reminder to you today is this.
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When Paul went into Athens and he preached, he reminded us God has commanded all people everywhere to repent.
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And that includes you.
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Do you trust the Lord? Have you repented and placed your faith in him? Or are you waiting for something? And what in the world could you be waiting for? You can't be waiting on a third option because it just doesn't exist.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this opportunity to preach.
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I pray that by the power of your spirit, this truth will just roll over in our minds and compress upon our heart, Lord, and just cause us to be introspective this week and even this day and even in this very minute.
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Lord, if there are those here who do not know you, if there are those here who are waiting on something, Lord, may it be that they would be given the gift of faith by you, because we know that trust is something that comes as a gift of the Holy Spirit.
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We know that regeneration is something that comes by virtue of your putting your hand on someone and you giving them the gift of life.
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So, Lord, we pray for the believer today, Lord, I pray that they would have utmost confidence in you, that they would trust in you, that they would know that their destiny is affirmed in the work of Jesus Christ.
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And Lord, that they would know that at the judgment, the judgment of the good and the bad is the judgment of those who are in Christ and who are not, because our goodness is his goodness and the only goodness we have is him.
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And Lord, for those who are outside of Christ, who are maybe clinging to some kind of personal virtue, Lord, may they abandon that.
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And cling to the cross.
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Nothing in our hands we bring only to the cross we cling.
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Oh, God, may it be in Christ's name.
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Amen.