Art 26&27 Perseverance

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Well, we are going to continue on.
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Brother Andy just did Article 25, so I will do tonight, 26 and 27.
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So if you open your books with me, we'll read Article 26.
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And the title that goes with it is The Power of the Gospel.
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The same power that converts to faith in Christ carryeth the soul through all duties, temptations, conflicts, sufferings, and whatsoever a believer is, he is by grace and is carried on in all obedience and temptations by the same.
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I found it quite interesting as I was preparing for tonight's lesson that I'm preaching this Sunday, Lord willing, on the perseverance of the saints.
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And if you are remembering, those of you who have been here, we have been going week by week through the five doctrines of grace, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace.
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And it leads up to the culmination of the perseverance of the saints.
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And one of the things I'm going to argue for in my sermon Sunday is that the perseverance of the saints is not only a biblical truth, but it is a necessary outcome of the doctrines of grace.
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If you believe in total depravity, then you believe that election must be unconditional because we could not meet any conditions.
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You must also believe that grace is irresistible because if we could resist it, we would.
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And you must also believe that Christ came not only to make salvation potential, but to make it actual.
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So we believe all of those things.
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But in all of that, and I wrote this, and I don't have my notes with me for Sunday.
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But just to give you a preview of what I'm going to say Sunday is that if God went through the process of choosing us before time eternal and sending his son to atone for us and sending his spirit to convert us and give us a new heart, at what point will he fail to finish what he started? And that is the doctrine of perseverance.
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It really is the doctrine of preservation.
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He who began the good work in us will complete it in the day of Jesus Christ.
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And if you want to prepare for Sunday, I would encourage you to read all of John chapter 10.
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I'm going to focus on verses 27 and 28 of that chapter on Sunday.
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But it's the whole chapter.
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My sheep hear my voice.
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I know them.
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And they follow me.
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And they will have eternal life.
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They will never perish.
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And neither will anyone snatch them out of my hand.
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What a wonderful promise that is.
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And it's the promise of God in the gospel that no one will snatch us from the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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He is not holding us with a limp wrist.
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But he is holding us with a firm hand.
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And that is the promise of perseverance.
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And so if you want to make a note on your confession, maybe you don't want to write in the book.
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But maybe if you are making notes next to the power of the gospel, I wrote the word perseverance.
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Because I think this article 26 speaks to the perseverance of the saints.
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Because listen to it again.
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The same power that converts to faith in Christ carrieth on the soul through all duties.
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That's the things we're supposed to do.
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Through all temptations, that's the things we ought not do.
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Through all conflicts, that's the things we don't want to have to deal with, but we do.
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And through all sufferings, that's the things that we all have to deal with that no one wants to.
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And you know, the brothers wrote those four things out.
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And if you think about our life, what is our life but duties, and temptations, and conflicts, and suffering? I mean, honestly.
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You might say, well, you could have added joy in there.
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You know, there are joys in life too.
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But duty can be a joy.
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And even the Bible says, let not our sufferings be counted.
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Or let our sufferings be counted as joy, knowing that our sufferings are meant to bring us closer to conformity to Christ.
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So there are all these things that we consider here.
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But if you look at the outline, duties, temptations, conflicts, and sufferings, what the brothers are reminding us is that it's the power of Christ that grits us through it all.
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It's the power of Christ that will get us through all of these things.
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Because he who began the good work in us will complete it in the day of the Lord.
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And they don't cite that passage.
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That's Philippians 1, 4, I believe.
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They don't cite that passage.
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But they do cite Philippians 2, 12.
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And so if you want to open your Bibles, or if you have it maybe on your phone, I do want to just remind you of this section.
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We won't have time to look at them all.
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But I think Philippians 2, 12 speaks to this issue very well.
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12 and 13.
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And it says, I'll give you a second.
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I hear pages turning.
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It says, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
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For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
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Now, if you guys remember, maybe you do, a few months ago we did a Bible conference on the perseverance of the saints.
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Brother Andy, Brother Mike, and I all preached.
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Brother Mike preached from the Old Testament, Brother Andy from the Psalms, and I preached from the New Testament.
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Kind of a common theme we run.
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Each of us sort of take a section of scripture and deal with that.
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Well, this was the passage I preached from on the subject of the perseverance of the saints.
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Because this passage shows us that there is a sense in which we do persevere.
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He says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
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He doesn't say work for it, but he does say work out our salvation.
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And I do think that that is an important distinction.
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We don't work for our salvation.
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Nothing we do contributes to our salvation except for the sin that makes it necessary, said Jonathan Edwards, and I think he was correct.
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But we work out our salvation in the daily faithfulness of trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and believing on him every day.
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It's interesting that if you do look at John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him.
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That word believeth, it's in the ongoing sense.
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It's not something that happens once.
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I know there have probably been times where I have asked a person, have you ever believed on Jesus? But really the question isn't that.
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The question should be, are you believing on Jesus? Are you believing in Jesus? Because it's not something you did once and then stopped, but it's something that is ongoing.
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It's something that perpetuates and perseveres.
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And so the writer of Philippians, Paul, he says work that out.
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Work out your fear.
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Work out your salvation.
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And I know this is cheesy, and I don't think it's exactly what he meant.
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So if you wanna get me later and tell me I stretched an analogy too far, you go tell Brother Andy.
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He's the chairman of the elders.
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He'll get onto me.
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But I think of the term working out a little bit like people who work out their muscles.
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You know, if you don't work out your body ever, your muscles begin to be very weak and begin to be very loose, and there's no strength and no density to them, and they fail when they're needed.
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But when we work out our muscles, whether it's through exercise or lifting weights or whatever, or doing some kind of aerobic exercise, we're strengthening our body for the day that we need it.
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You know, that we gotta open that pickle jar, you know? We wanna have at least enough strength to open up that jar of pickles.
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So, you know, we need to strengthen our bodies, and we do that by working out.
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And I think that in a sense, that can be applied here in Paul, where he says, work out your salvation, in the sense that we work it out by working, by growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, by actually having our faith tested, by having our faith put to the test.
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And so we work out our salvation, but we have to understand verse 13.
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Verse 12 could not exist without verse 13, because verse 13, he says, "'For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.'" We would not even want to do it if it were not for the work of the Spirit within us, and we would not do any of it if it were not for the work of the Spirit.
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So again, getting back to the article, the same power that converts is the power that carrieth.
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I like that King James line, you know, that carrieth the soul.
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You know, and so, you know, keep that in your mind tonight.
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The power that God used to convert me is the same power that He uses to carry me.
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The same power that He used to change my heart is the power that He uses to keep my heart moving.
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To keep my heart, you know, the Bible says He took out the heart of stone, and what did He replace it with? Heart of flesh.
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Why do you think that analogy is not a spiritual heart? Why does He say He took out the stone and put in flesh? Because a fleshly heart pumps, it works, right? It's pumping, it's doing what it was meant to do.
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A stony heart isn't what it was meant to do.
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And when we are dead in trespasses and sins, and we have a stony heart, we're not doing as we are supposed to do.
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But when we get saved, and God takes out the heart of stone, as Brother Andy talked about on Sunday, I got to listen to the message, I was thankful.
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I got to listen to it.
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And as I was listening, and he was talking about God making us willing.
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You know, I love that passage, where God makes us willing in the day of His power.
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He gives us that new heart, and now the heart's pumping.
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Now it's doing what it was supposed to do.
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And the same power that gave us the new heart keeps the heart pumping.
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The same power that put the heart in keeps it going.
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And so I think this article really speaks well, not only to the power of the gospel to save, but the power of the gospel to persevere.
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The power of the gospel to preserve the sinner.
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And the second part of it is equally as interesting.
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It says, and whatsoever a believer is, he is by grace.
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You ever feel like maybe you don't measure up? You ever feel like maybe you're not all that you should be? I think we all feel that way sometimes.
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I think we all feel like we should have done more or could have done more.
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And maybe we could have, maybe we should have.
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But what we are, we are by grace.
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And there's an old saying, and I know you know it, but you know, you see a person who's in a desperate situation, and what do you say? But by God's grace, I would be in the same, or but by the grace of God, there go I.
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And we can all say that, right? That even though we all could say, you know, I wish maybe I would have done more, or maybe this or that, but at the same time, where we are is by grace.
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You're here tonight by grace.
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Nobody's here by accident.
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Nobody's here because God just didn't know what he was doing and flipped a coin.
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We're joking about flipping coins earlier, Brother Andy and I was talking about flipping coins.
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You know, we flip coins because we don't always know what to do, but God always knows what he's doing.
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You know, earlier I asked about where's this person, where's that person? Well, they're not here by accident.
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They're here by design.
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God has a reason for them not being here, for whatever the reason is.
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And so whatever we are, we are by grace, and we're carried on, and I love this, in all obedience and temptation by the same.
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By the same what? By the same grace.
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Grace is carrying on us through obedience and through temptation.
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What does the Bible say about temptation? It's also not one of the ones referenced here, but it's an interesting passage.
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What does it say? It says the temptations that we receive are common to all men, but God makes a way of escape.
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Right, he gives us grace in our temptations.
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We don't always take it.
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We don't always take the way of escape.
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Sometimes we indulge longer than we should in the things that we shouldn't, but God made the way of escape.
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Sometimes it's just a matter of shutting off whatever it is you're looking at, or maybe it's going somewhere else, but God makes that way of escape, and he's there.
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He is there with us, and he's carrying on us in our obedience and in our temptations by his grace.
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Why? Why? Because we're his.
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That is the thing I'm gonna really stress on Sunday.
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And again, my preparation for this was in tandem with my preparation for Sunday, because my whole goal on Sunday is to help you understand one thing.
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If you are his sheep, then you are secure, because my sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me, I give them eternal life, and none shall be snatched from my hand.
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That's the promise of the shepherd.
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That's the promise of the shepherd.
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He's the one that through his grace is carrying us in our obedience and even in our temptations.
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He is the one who carries us.
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So the same power that saved you is the power that's sanctifying you.
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The same power that converted you is the power that's carrying you.
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Is that understandable? Does that make it helpful? Okay, well, that's 26.
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Now, 27 elaborates on this by looking at not only the power of the gospel, but the effect of the gospel.
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And the effect of the gospel is what I have dubbed, I make my own little titles to go with their titles.
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My title for this, not only effect of the gospel, is Union with Christ.
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If you wanna know why you are saved, it is because you have been united with the Son.
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You've been united with the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And in the same way that Noah and his family was in the ark and were saved through the ark, we have been united, we have been placed into Christ, and we are saved through Him.
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So with that in mind, listen to Article 27.
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All believers are by Christ united to God, by which union God is one with them, and they are one with Him.
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And that all believers are the sons of God and joint heirs with Christ, to whom belong all the promises of this life and that which is to come.
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Lord willing, this Sunday, I will be doing a baptism.
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Now, this was a baptism that was supposed to happen almost a month ago.
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And the reason why we had to put it off was because the family got sick and had to take time off, and then I was away for two weeks.
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And so, Lord willing, if everything goes right, we will have a baptism on Sunday.
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And have you ever thought about what baptism is intended to signify? Some people think baptism is salvation, that you go in the water a sinner, you come out a saint.
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I've heard that.
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I've heard people say you go in there and the water washes away your sins.
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I've heard that.
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And there are many people who have what I would say are sub-biblical views of baptism.
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But what the Bible really shows us in baptism is this is a picture of the union that we have with Christ.
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And where do we get that from? We get it from Romans chapter six, which tells us we are buried with him in baptism and raised to new life.
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Now, the work that's happened in the heart has already occurred.
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If the person is a believer who's being baptized, it's already happened.
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But the picture is the picture of union.
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It's a picture of being united with Christ.
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And the union that we have with Christ is one of the blessings that I think we miss regarding our salvation.
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Because we often think about Christ dying for our sins.
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And that certainly is a wonderful blessing.
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We think about Christ being the propitiation, he who bore the wrath of God on our behalf, he who took God's wrath for us.
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We think about all of that.
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And that is all true.
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The great transaction, God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we could become the righteous of God in him.
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That's the blessing.
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But there's also a blessing that we are united with him by the power of the Holy Spirit and we become a joint heir with him.
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What does that mean? Well, it means we're placed into his family.
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Now, whose family is Jesus? He is the only begotten son of the father, right? Jesus is the son of God.
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In fact, what does the word only begotten mean? Now this is maybe a theological road we might not wanna go down too far, but because it could take us into a lot of conversation about the doctrine of the Trinity and things like that.
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But in regard to the phrase monogynist, that's what the word begotten means, monogynist.
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Mono means one and gynist means, it's where we get the word kind or genus.
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It's where we get the word for something that is a type of something, right? You have genes that came from your family, right? That's the word genus comes from that, right? Well, monogynist means Christ is one of a kind.
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He is literally the only one born of God.
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He's the only one like him.
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He's the only one who the father, by the power of the spirit overshadowed the virgin and gave birth to this God man, and he's the only one like him.
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He's the only one that can say, my father and I are one.
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We're gonna talk about that a little bit on Sunday too, because that's how he ends.
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Jesus in that passage in John 10, he says, they will never be snatched out of my hand.
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My father who is greater than all, they will never snatch him out of his hand and I and my father are one.
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You can't get away.
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You know, people talk about, well, what if I just leave? Nobody can snatch me away, but I can run away.
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No, not if Christ is holding you.
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Not if the father is holding you and they are united in that grip.
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Like I said, I'm preaching my sermon for Sunday, but it really is.
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It's that, and you are united with him because you've been made part of his family.
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And he who is the true heir has made you the joint heir.
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He's brought you in by way of adoption to where now you get to stand next to the son as a son and daughter.
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And you get to be called children of God.
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How blessed it is, and Brother Andy says it all the time, you know, to be a child of God.
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What a blessing, what a wonderful thing to be a child of God.
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You weren't born a child of God, you were born again and made a child of God.
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Where's John 1, I think it's verse 11, it says, Jesus came unto his own and his own received him not, but to as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become what? Children of God.
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Sons of God, children of God, depending on the translation, but it's right.
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It's the, that's how it happened.
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We became children of God through union with the son.
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He is the true son, the only one like him, he's the unique one, the monogamous, and we are made part of that family by union with him.
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It's an amazing thing.
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And I just, like you said, I can't get over it.
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J.I.
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Packer said this, I don't know if you know who that is, J.I.
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Packer was a wonderful theologian.
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He said, adoption is the highest privilege of the gospel.
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The trader is forgiven, brought in for supper, and given the family name.
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The trader is forgiven, brought in for supper, and given the family name.
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What a blessing.
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That is just to consider the reality that we have been made the children of God through Christ.
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And so all believers, going back to the article, are by Christ united to God, by which union God is one with them, they are one with him.
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Now this doesn't mean that you are gods, but this does mean that God through the Holy Spirit lives within you, and he does, and that all believers are the sons of God, the joint heirs with Christ, to whom belong all the promises of this life, and that which is to come.
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All the promises of this life.
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What are some of the promises of this life? What are some of the promises? This is the, I'm legitimately asking, I'm not just, he'll never leave you or forsake you, right? We have the promise of Romans 8.
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Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor heights, nor depths, nor anything else in all creation will separate us from the love of God.
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Another wonderful passage about perseverance, right? I always love it when I hear Arminians try to use that passage and say, well, it doesn't mean you can't lose your salvation.
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Well, what else could it mean? If there's nothing that can separate me from the love of God, what else could it mean? You know, everybody tries to find a way to lose their salvation.
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I tell you what, I get upset, because I talk to people and I love them to death, but they just, they're so desperate to try to, and they'll go to Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10, they'll find a few passages that are warning passages, and they're legitimate warnings about leaving the faith and things like that, because there is such a thing as apostasy, people who were never saved and demonstrated by apostatizing, leaving the faith.
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But that's another conversation.
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If we get to the conversation of security, is there any security for the believer? Is there any security for the believer? There must be.
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You know, in Roman Catholicism, it's considered sinful to believe that you are saved.
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To believe that you have eternal life is considered the sin of presumption.
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You can't presume on the grace of God.
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You can only hope for it.
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But you can't presume upon it.
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And that's a sinful thought, to think, I know I'm saved, that's why they see us.
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Because we'll say, I know that I'm saved because Christ has died for me.
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Everything I have is based on his work, not my work, and all my salvation is in him and not in me.
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Therefore, I can be confident, and my hope is an assured hope.
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You see, we don't have a hope that works like, you know, somebody who's got a blindfold on and they step out on a diving board and they hope the pool's full of water.
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You know, that's the way that I think a lot of people think of the hope.
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You know, we don't have hope like that.
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We have a hope with eyes that see.
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We see the scriptures which tell us if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we will be saved.
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We have eyes that see the works that God is doing in our life, not only to draw us to him, but to keep us in him.
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And these are the things that are encouraging.
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So, you know, I think that's very true.
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Romans 8, what's another thought? What's another, looking at the article, you know, it says promises of this life.
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What's another promise we have in this life? I didn't mean to throw you off with a quiz.
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Well, let me back that up.
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What are some things we're not promised? We're not always promised health, right? Some people believe that.
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Some people believe if you're a Christian, you're always gonna be healthy, you're always gonna be wealthy, you know, health and wealth.
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We're not always promised those things, right? If we are blessed with health, you know, we praise the Lord.
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And if we're stricken with disease, we still praise the Lord.
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The Bible says that we praise the Lord even in the midst of difficulty.
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You know, what did Job say? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
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Blessed be the name of the Lord.
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That's, you know, that's easy to say when you're not sick.
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That's easy to say when you're not suffering.
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But Job said it while he was suffering, while he was hurting.
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And so, but we do have promises.
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We have a promise that we don't go through anything alone.
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He will be with us.
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You know, when the three Hebrew children, not children, but the three Hebrew young men were in the furnace, they were not alone.
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They were in the presence of the Lord.
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Even Nebuchadnezzar was able to see the presence of the Lord among them.
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So we have the promise that we're never alone.
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We have the promise of the hope of eternity.
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There are a lot of promises.
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And then the hope, of course, of that which is to come.
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That this life is not all that there is.
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That this life is just a prelude.
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And a relatively short one.
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You know, before I left on vacation, I did five funerals in one week, I think.
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I think it was the most I'd ever done.
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And the reality is, a few of those people were very young.
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One was a 24-year-old girl.
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And, you know, we look at a life like that and we say, oh, she was so young.
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But I tell you what, 80 is kind of young, too.
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In the sense of eternity.
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You know, 86 years, Jack, is that where you're at? 80, 86? It's nothing compared to eternity.
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And the older I get, the more it feels like it's been so short.
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You know, I just celebrated 22 years of marriage with Jennifer on the first, which was, I don't know which day it was, but whatever.
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Sunday, it was the first.
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And on Sunday, we celebrated our 22nd anniversary.
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And I feel like, you know, in a sense, like we just got married.
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It's gone by so fast, you know? This life is so short.
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But we have the promise of the life to come.
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And what gives us hope in that promise? Our union with Christ.
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It's the only thing that we can hope.
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And it's the best thing to hope in, because it's the truth.
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And that is what he tells us.
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Let not your hearts be troubled.
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You believe in God, believe also in me.
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And know that in my Father's house are many rooms, and if it were not so, I would have told you.
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That's the great promise that we have.
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From our Savior's mouth to our ears, if it were not so, I would have told you.
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So we have the gospel that Brother Andy told us about, which is free.
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And we have the gospel that not only converts, but it carries.
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And we have the union with Christ that comforts.
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Even in our distress, even in our pain, even in our foolishness, the Lord is still there.
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We are still his.
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And we can still cry, Abba, Father, because he is our Father who is in heaven.
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And with that, I wanna pray.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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Lord, this is such a wonderful truth, to be reminded that this life isn't all there is.
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And there is a hope of glory that accompanies everyone who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I thank you for everybody who's here tonight, Father.
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And our heart does go out to those who are suffering tonight, Lord.
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Many, even within our own body, even within our own congregation, Lord, there have been losses of life.
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We pray for Paul's family, the loss of his daughter-in-law, and then, of course, her father, and as their family struggles to love one another and encourage one another in a difficult time, we pray, Lord, that our church would reach out to them in love and minister to them well.
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We pray, Father, for also New Berlin Church who lost their pastor.
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Brother Matthew Meadows, who died, Lord, such a terrible thing, such a sad thing, and we pray for their church.
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Pray that you would be with them as they seek to move forward, not knowing surely what they're going to do.
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We pray for the family of Don Lee.
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Pray for Donna Carroll and the pain that they are suffering, certainly, at his loss.
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And Father, for our church, I pray that you would protect us as a church, as a body, as we seek to be faithful to you in gathering, that you would keep us from sickness.
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Lord, that you would keep us whole.
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But, Lord, whatever it is that we must face, help us, Lord, to know that you are the sovereign one.
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You are the one who raises up and you are the one who brings down.
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You are the one who can be trusted even when life is hard.
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Lord, help us to hold ever more tightly to our union with Christ, knowing that it is truly he who holds us and will not let us go.
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And it's in his name we pray, amen.