Falling from Grace?

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Next time we do what? Yeah, Blues Riff and B, you can watch me for the changes.
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Yeah, Wanton and Arrow.
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Yeah, okay.
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Alright guys, take out your Bibles and we'll go back to Galatians this morning.
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Now, our last time in Galatians we were not together but I came to you via satellite, via television, whatever you, whatever.
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And I looked at verse 1 of Galatians 5 and hopefully you'll remember some of that because I'm going to be piggybacking off of that lesson a little bit today.
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Yes, and we're going to read, we're going to read verse 1 again.
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We're going to read down to verse 6, but our focus today is going to be verses 2 through 4.
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So, I just want us to see the context.
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We're going to read to verse 6, but we won't get to 5 and 6 until next week.
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Alright, For freedom Christ has set us free.
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Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
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Look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no value to you.
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Excuse me, no advantage to you.
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I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
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You are severed from Christ.
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You who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace.
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For through the Spirit by faith we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
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For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word.
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May it be this morning that your Word would go out with power.
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And Lord, may you keep me from error.
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May you open the hearts of your people to the truth, and the eyes and ears to the truth.
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And Lord God, for those who are not yet in a relationship with Jesus Christ, who have not yet bowed the knee to His Lordship, Lord, today would be the day that you might convict their hearts and draw them in with the word of warning, Lord, from your Word, which is what we will look at right now.
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We thank you for all that you give us, especially warnings, Lord, for they are what often cause great times of self-examination.
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So we thank you for them in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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In Galatians 5 verse 1, Paul begins by saying that we are free in Christ, and because of that freedom, we should not and we must not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
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The yoke of slavery in Galatians 5 verse 1 is the law.
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Now that's not my interpretation.
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That is what Paul is literally saying, and it's what he has been saying ever since the beginning of the book.
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The law is good when it is used lawfully, but when it is sought as a savior, it is a yoke.
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Now you know what a yoke is, right? A yoke is what was put over the animal that held him in place.
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It was a giant burden that held the animal, and so the law in that sense is a giant burden that rests upon our shoulders.
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It is not a savior.
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It is a curse.
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And we know that the word yoke has been used in other places to describe the law, most particularly in Acts 15.
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Always keep in mind, and for those of you who haven't been here very long, always keep in mind that Galatians and Acts 15 dovetail one another because Acts 15 is Paul and Barnabas going to Jerusalem to defend the Gentiles against the people who the very book of Galatians is written to, the people who are saying that Gentiles must become Jews before they can truly be one with Christ.
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And so Acts 15 is what we call the Jerusalem Council.
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It is the first time that we see a mass gathering of all of the leaders of the church.
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James, the pastor of the church of Jerusalem.
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Peter, the great apostle.
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Paul and Barnabas.
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They all gather in Jerusalem to discuss this question, the Gentile question.
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What do we do with the Gentiles? Jews are easy enough, but what do we do with these people who have always been outside of the commonwealth of Israel? Outside of the nation of Israel.
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What do we do with them? And Peter and Paul come and they relay the fact that every time they preach to the Gentiles, they've received the Holy Spirit the same way the Jews have.
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And if the Gentiles have the same Holy Spirit as the Jews, then there must be no distinction.
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And so this is what Peter says in Acts 15.10.
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Now therefore, why are you...
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And he's speaking to the Judaizers.
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Why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? Notice what he's talking about there with the yoke.
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He's saying you're taking the law that our fathers couldn't keep.
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You're taking the law that we can't keep.
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And you're demanding that they keep it.
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We couldn't hold the yoke.
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Our fathers couldn't hold the yoke.
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But you're going to strap it to these guys and expect that they're going to be able to hold the yoke? So even Peter understood the law in that sense was a yoke.
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And going back to Galatians 5.1, he says, Do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
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You have been set free in Christ, and because you have been set free in Christ, do not go backwards.
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Do not go back and chain yourselves up again to the law.
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You're like the person who is swimming in the ocean carrying a large boulder, and the boulder has been released, and then you swim back down and grab it.
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You're just killing yourself.
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Now I want to say something.
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In my lesson on freedom a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that our freedom in Christ does not give us the right to indulge the sins of the flesh.
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Even though we are free in Christ, we are free from the power of sin, but we are not free to indulge our flesh.
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And if you look at verse 13, I know we're not there, but in chapter 5, go down to verse 13.
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You'll see what he says.
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He says, for you were called to freedom, brothers.
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See, that's still the subject in verse 13.
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Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
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So what he's going to do, beginning in verse 13, is he's going to begin to talk about how even though we are free in Christ, we're not free to indulge the flesh.
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And he's going to talk about the difference between the spirit and the flesh, and how if we are in Christ, we should live by the spirit and not by the flesh, and how there's always this battle that's going to rage in the believer, the battle of the spirit and the flesh.
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And so that's what's going to become his focus beginning at verse 13.
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But between verse 1 and verse 13, Paul includes in these 12 or 11 verses a series of warnings.
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And the warnings are for those who have listened to the Judaizers and for the Judaizers themselves.
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So this week and next week and possibly into a third week, we're going to look at verses 2 through 11, and we're going to see this series of warnings and how Paul essentially uses this in a sense as a slap in the face to remind the people of Galatia of the seriousness of the problem that they have allowed to come into their midst.
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This is no small thing.
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This isn't as if they're debating whether or not you should dip or pour in baptism.
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This isn't debating whether or not you should use leavened or unleavened bread in the Lord's Supper.
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This is not a secondary issue.
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This is an issue of gospel or no gospel.
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This is an issue of life and death.
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This is an issue of Christ or not Christ.
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This is a major portion in the book, and it comes through the warning.
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And that's why I've entitled today's lesson The Value of a Harsh Warning.
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And this warning is in keeping with the intention of the whole book.
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Since the beginning, Paul has been challenging the Judaizers.
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They say you must keep the law to be saved.
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Paul says that's a false gospel.
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Galatians 1.6-9.
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He says that is not the true gospel.
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And the warning that he gives in chapter 5 beginning at verse 2 is very simple.
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If you go to the law for salvation, you must keep the whole law.
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And because you cannot keep the whole law, if you go to the law for salvation, you will be damned.
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If you go to the law for salvation, you will be damned.
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So that's the warning.
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Let's begin.
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Go ahead, BJ.
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Even if it was possible for you to just per se keep the whole law, that still wouldn't mean salvation because it's only through Christ.
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That's true.
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But even if you could start right now, to add a thought to that, even if you could start right now and keep the whole law until your death, you haven't kept the law up until now.
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And that's the other point that is often made in Scripture is even if you could buck up and fly right from this point on, you've got how many? How old are you? Thirty-one.
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Thirty-one years of sins that you've got to account for.
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And not one good thing that you ever do is going to pay for one of your sins.
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And the idea that there's this sort of cosmic balance where your good is going to outweigh your bad, even if you had more good than bad, which you don't, neither do I, but even if you did have more good than bad, no good deed outweighs a bad deed in the sense of justice.
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Justice doesn't care how good you are.
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It provides judgment against what you have done wrong.
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You've all heard me say it.
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You stand before a judge and the judge says, well, you're guilty of stealing that or hurting that or whatever.
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You're guilty.
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And you say, yeah, but I didn't do that the day before.
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The day before I was helping at the soup kitchen.
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I don't care.
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The judge isn't going to care what you did right.
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He's going to condemn you for what you did wrong.
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And that's what the law does.
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The law does not give glory to the righteous.
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It gives condemnation to the wicked.
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So, when we go to Galatians 5, beginning at verse 2, we see these warnings begin.
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Paul says, the very first thing, he says, Look! By the way, in the Greek, it basically is just that.
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Look! He's trying to get their attention.
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And he says, I, Paul! And in that, he's taking a moment to remind them who he is.
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I am the man who planted this church.
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I am the man who brought you the Gospel.
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I am the man who introduced you to Jesus Christ.
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If there's anyone that you should be listening to right now, it should not be the Judaizers.
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It should be me.
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Look! I, Paul, say to you, that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.
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Paul uses the construction of what we call the if-then.
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The if-then construction.
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Even though he doesn't use the words if and then, the if-then construction is something that I help people understand.
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It's a consequential statement.
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So if I say, If you walk in front of a car, then you're going to get hurt.
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If you drink to excess, then you're going to get drunk.
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If you continually drink to excess, you're going to become a drunk.
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Those are if-then consequential statements.
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Understand? Nothing hard.
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The reason why I'm saying this is because he's going to use this a few times.
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We're going to see this construction a couple times.
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Because this is a warning.
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If-then is normally when you tell your child, If you don't clean your room, then you won't get to go to the event.
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Or if you do go beyond the barrier that I told you to go, then you're going to be punished.
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The if-then construction is the construction of the consequence.
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And we see this when he says, If you accept circumcision, now he doesn't use the word then, but it's implied.
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If you accept circumcision, then Christ will be of no advantage to you.
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Now notice Paul is not saying that circumcision is in and of itself wrong.
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Because Paul is circumcised at this point.
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He had to have been.
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He was a Jew.
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He was a Pharisee.
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If he was an uncircumcised Jew, he wouldn't be a Jew.
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So Paul is circumcised.
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Most of the people Paul is talking to who are Jewish descendants are circumcised.
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So people say, Well, how can Paul say, If you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you? Because there's a lot of people who are circumcised.
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And a lot of people were circumcised before they could ever say they didn't want to be.
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I mean, many of you are probably circumcised and it happened before you were able to really cognitively disagree.
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I'm trying to say cognizantly.
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But the point is this, when Paul says, If you accept circumcision, that word accept is important because what he's saying is if you accept circumcision as part of your salvation.
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If you accept circumcision as part of how you are made right with God.
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If you accept circumcision as a work that must be accomplished to be made right with God, then Christ is of no value to you.
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And you say, wait a minute, how can Christ be of no value? Christ is of no value because you've turned from Him and turned to circumcision.
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You only have one Savior.
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That's a very important point, by the way, in Scripture, that you only get one Savior.
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You don't get to compound your Savior.
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You don't get to believe in Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha and all of the rest.
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You get to have one Savior.
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And basically what he's saying is this, if you're holding to circumcision as contributing to your salvation, then you're holding to circumcision as somehow a partial Savior.
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And if Jesus is only a partial Savior, He's no Savior at all.
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He's either everything to you or He's nothing to you.
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He's either your all or He's nothing.
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You understand now when he says if you accept circumcision, meaning that if you accept circumcision as a method of salvation, then you have basically said, I don't need Christ.
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I have this other thing.
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Because you can't have Christ and anything.
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It must be Christ plus nothing.
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Christ alone.
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Right.
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Solus Christus.
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And he moves on in verse 3 to continue the same argument.
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I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
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Now again, that's just continuing the argument.
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This is why Christ is of no advantage.
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Because as soon as a person accepts the law as the Savior, he has left Christ as the Savior.
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And when he accepts the law as the Savior, what he doesn't realize is he's accepting the whole law as the Savior.
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It's not as if circumcision by itself is enough.
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No, circumcision leads you down a path of law that never, ever, ever becomes enough.
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You've been circumcised.
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Okay, now what? Well, now you have to keep the dietary laws.
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Okay, well, now I'm keeping the dietary laws.
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Now what? Now you've got to keep the Sabbath.
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Okay, well, now I'm keeping the Sabbath.
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Now what? Well, now you've got to look at the restriction on your clothing.
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Okay, well, now that you're doing that, are you going to start practicing the sacrifices again? Are you going to start going to the temple? Are you going to start doing this? Are you going to start doing that? Are you going to follow all of the 600 and some plus restrictions and laws that are given to the nation of Israel? The precepts that are given to Israel? When you start down the road of law, you cannot exhaust it.
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And as soon as a person accepts the law as his Savior, he's obligated to it all.
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Imagine this.
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Imagine someone looked you in the eyes and said Christ is no value to you.
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Christ is no advantage to you.
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That's what Paul is saying to them.
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Christ is no advantage to you.
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Why? Because you have looked and seen a different Savior.
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Because you're looking at a different Savior.
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And the Savior that you have chosen is a killer.
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The law kills.
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The law destroys.
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It's overwhelming.
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I keep going back to that movie and I've mentioned it to you guys several times.
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If you haven't seen it, I hope Brother Mark shows it again.
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But the movie The Pilgrim's Progress where he goes to the mountain of the law and he tries to climb the mountain and every time he goes to take a step up the mountain, a new law pops up and knocks him back down.
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And the law becomes so overwhelming that it's towering over him like a giant tree that's just overwhelming him with law after law.
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And he's saying, I'm trying to get up! I'm trying to make it up! I can't do it! And that's the point.
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James 2.10 says, whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point is guilty of the whole law.
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You might say, well, boy, I'm pretty good at keeping the law.
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First of all, no, you're not.
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You're not good at keeping the law.
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Go ahead, brother.
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You mentioned the 600 and something laws.
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Is that like including the laws that they've kind of made up on their own? No, that's what's in the Torah, the law of Moses.
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I don't know the exact number, but there's obviously ten commandments and then the ten commandments are explained throughout Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy as well because Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law.
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There's about 660 something examples of how the ten commandments work themselves out.
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So you could take each one as a precept and say, well, if your ox tramples this man's grain, then you owe him this much in return.
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And that's an example of what we call civil law.
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That's a civil requirement in Israel.
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So that's what I'm referring to.
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You're talking about the Talmud and the laws that were added later.
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Yeah, there's many, many of those.
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I'm just specifically referring to what's in the Scriptures.
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About 600-ish.
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Depends on how you count them as well.
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And the point is this, the law is given to Israel and it's a schoolmaster.
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We've already learned this.
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It's a tutor.
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It's showing them where they err and causing them to have to look to God to be their Savior and causing them to have to look to the promises and not to their own good deeds.
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And when Jesus comes along, He's the only person ever to fulfill the whole law.
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If Jesus had broken the law at one point, He would have been a lawbreaker.
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You understand that? If Jesus would have lusted one time, He would have been a lawbreaker.
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If Jesus would have hated one time, He would have been a lawbreaker.
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I mean, hated, ungodly.
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If Jesus would have lied one time, He would have been a lawbreaker.
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This is why I am so confident that the Word of God is true because I believe Jesus is the Word of God incarnate and He could not lie.
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So, verses 2 and 3, Paul says, If you accept circumcision, Christ is no advantage to you.
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And I testify to you that everyone who does accept circumcision is now obligated to keep the whole law.
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So, if you accept circumcision, you're denying Christ.
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And if you accept circumcision, you're going down a road of absolute torture because you're going down a road of law which can never ever be finally and ultimately overtaken.
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So, you are making a horrible decision.
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This is a bad direction.
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And so Paul is warning them.
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And again, I can't stress to you how much English does not do this justice.
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The idea of Christ being no advantage to you.
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You may not think that that's a very serious thing to say, but that is a world of horror.
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You essentially, if you accept good works, and let me bring it down to the brass tacks.
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If you accept good works for salvation, then Christ is not your Savior anymore.
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You are looking to yourself and what you have done as your Savior.
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And all that Christ has done will be of no advantage to you.
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That should scare you to death to think that Christ would be nothing to you.
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That Christ would be of no advantage to you.
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Some of you may not care.
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Some of you right now may not care because you don't care about Christ and all you are doing is sitting here just hoping to pass the time.
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But I will tell you, there will come a day when if Christ is of no advantage to you, that you will cry out in terror on your knees wishing for the moment that you could go back and forsake your sin and trust in the Savior.
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If Christ is of no advantage to you now, He is of no advantage to you then.
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And He will be of no advantage to you then.
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Now verse 4 is where we are going to spend most of the rest of our time because verse 4, Paul really brings this to a head.
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And that's why I'm trying to stress the weight of what he's saying because the weight of his argument comes in verse 4 in the harshest language possible.
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You are severed.
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Some of your Bibles say cut off.
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You are severed.
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What did you say? Alienated.
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Alienated.
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Good word.
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Verse 4.
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You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law.
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You have fallen from grace.
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We're about to go there.
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So before you even begin to ask, I know what you're going to ask.
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And I know what everybody's thinking.
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And that's why I said, as I was writing my lesson, I always sit down and write out my notes.
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And I got all my notes, even when I first started, I got them all here in this notebook.
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Real quick, before you tell us.
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Okay, go ahead.
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I've got to say, falling away from grace isn't that grace left you, but you turn from grace.
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Yes, but there's a lot more.
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Before we even go down what it means, what I was going to say about my notes, I was wanting to get to verse 6, but when I got to verse 4, I said I can't go any further because I knew everybody was going to ask and wonder what this means.
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And I think it's important that we discuss the difficult passages.
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And this is a difficult passage.
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But it's only difficult because of the question which often comes up.
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And I want to say right now, you may have questions and that's fine, but I'm not going to argue with you.
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Because what I'm about to say may cause some contention among you.
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I'll tell you what I believe it means.
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If you think differently, you can think differently.
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But I will tell you this, you really need to spend some time thinking through what I'm going to say.
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So don't just start spitting arguments at me.
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I'm just saying that.
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Everybody understand? I don't mind somebody asking a question, but don't start spitting arguments at me.
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Because what I'm about to talk about is one of the most hotly debated subjects in the church.
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And if everybody in here wanted to start arguing, then this room would become a massive mass of mess.
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We're not going to do that.
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Got it? Because what we're going to talk about is something I call OSAS.
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Now Bobby knows what OSAS is.
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But the only reason, because he and I have obviously known each other for a long time.
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It's like looking in a mirror.
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Yeah, like looking in a mirror.
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Funhouse mirror maybe.
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Yeah, I'm a lot bigger.
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Alright.
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Give him a couple weeks.
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I tell you what man, this quarantine thing, you can't go anywhere, you just sit home and eat snacks.
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Man, I feel like I'm 500 pounds heavier than I were when this all started.
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OSAS is an acronym that I started using years ago.
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And the OSAS stands for Once Saved, Always Saved.
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Alright.
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Now, I'm going to put a question mark on the end of that because that is the debate.
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This issue is not universally agreed upon within the church.
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There are those who believe in what we call conditional security.
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Conditional security is you can be born again, but if you, for whatever reason, exercise some kind of sin that goes beyond the bounds of God's grace, then you can be lost again.
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Therefore, you're secure in Christ, but only conditionally.
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And you're conditioned upon your ability to maintain a certain degree of practical righteousness.
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The Roman Catholic Church probably has the most clear explanation of this, even though, obviously, I would disagree with it.
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They do have a clear explanation.
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They believe in what is called mortal sin and venial sin.
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Mortal sin is sin that will kill the grace of justification, and venial sin will not kill the grace of justification.
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So therefore, my brother, if you tell a lie, that's a venial sin.
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You're not going to lose your salvation for that.
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But if you go and kill someone, that's a mortal sin and you'll lose your salvation.
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You understand? So mortal sin is that which would kill the grace of justification.
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Venial sin is that which would not kill the grace of justification.
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And that's the way that the Roman Catholic Church would teach it.
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Yes, sir? So I'm correct.
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Coming from somebody who's got a good background in it.
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Thank you.
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And being a former Catholic, when you went to confession, you would have to confess.
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And if you had confessed a venial sin, they would give you Hail Marys.
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But what would happen if you committed a mortal sin? They would have to know that you're committing a mortal sin.
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Huh? That's what the mom said.
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Well, yeah.
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The mom gets it.
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And if you couldn't, if you didn't confess, you went to the bar.
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I don't know if the recording picked that up, but that was great.
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Okay, so the point I'm making is at least in the Roman Catholic Church, there is an attempt to try to create a scale.
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The problem with that scale is the Bible does not ever give any type of a scale like that.
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The Bible never describes sins in the categories of venial and mortal.
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All sin is worthy of hell.
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James tells us if you've broken one law, you've broken the whole law, and therefore, you cannot say that one sin is worthy of hell and one sin is not.
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All sin is worthy of hell.
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So, having said that, I disagree with the Roman Catholic position, but at least they take a consistent position that yes, you can be saved and then get lost.
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And they call that conditional security.
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Now, in Protestant churches...
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Yes? I'm just speaking from a third person point of view.
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I've heard a lot of people in the past and so forth saying like, well, if you're saved and you continue to do that, where are you saved? Okay, you're getting ahead of me and I appreciate it.
31:36
You're getting to a third question and we're not past the second point.
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Okay, alright.
31:41
Let me continue.
31:43
Because the Roman Catholic view I believe is wrong for several reasons.
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But within Protestant churches, the Methodists, the Pentecostal church, the Assemblies of God, all of them believe also in conditional security, but they don't make the distinction between mortal and venial sin.
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They make the distinction between sin that is exercised in leaving Christ or sin that is not.
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And so they would say you can be forgiven for any sin except if you leave the faith.
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If you abandon Christ, then you have lost your salvation.
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And so, I remember one time speaking to a person who was a minister in a Pentecostal church and he and I were talking and I said, so theoretically, you can be saved today, lost tomorrow, saved the day after and then lost the day after.
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And he said, yes, theoretically, I could be saved, I could do something and be lost and then I could get saved and then I could be lost.
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And I said, well, how do you know that you're saved today? And he says, well, I'm doing pretty good today.
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That's literally what he said.
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That was his exact words.
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I'm doing pretty good today.
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And I thought, well, I hope you're doing good tomorrow because it's going to be a rough day if having a bad day means you lose your salvation.
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So again, there's all kinds of variants into how people understand this.
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And then you have what is known as eternal security.
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So we talked about conditional security, Roman Catholic conditional security.
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Then you've got Protestant conditional security which is sort of all over the map, but primarily the main thing is if you reject Christ then you're cut off.
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Eternal security, also known as OSAS, one saved, always saved.
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Also perseverance.
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Well, no.
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Yes and no.
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But perseverance of the saints, I'm going to explain, understands it a little differently.
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But let's...
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Eternal security is typically found in Baptist churches.
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So how many of you have a Baptist background? You grew up...
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Southern Baptist, yeah.
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You grew up and they would tell you come forward and receive Jesus or stay in your seat and raise your hand and receive Jesus.
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And when you receive Jesus, you will get saved.
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And after that point, you can never, ever be lost.
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You can never, ever be separated from Christ.
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You can never be separated from His grace.
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So you need to accept Jesus today, right? So that you can never, ever be lost.
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And I have seen it to where I've been to funerals.
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The person being prayed over, the dead man, they would say he lived his life as an absolute scoundrel.
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But when he was 12 years old, he went forward and received Jesus.
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And since when he was 12, he went forward and received Jesus, and we believe in eternal security.
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We believe he's in heaven regardless of the fact that after he went forward and received Jesus, there was no life change.
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There was no seeking after God or holiness or righteousness.
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There was nothing that changed in his life.
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He is saved.
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That's typically how once saved, always saved is defined.
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You all know guys like this, right? Living in absolute sin.
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But if you say something to them about Jesus, hey man, I got saved when I was 12.
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I wrote in my Bible my spiritual birth certificate.
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And anytime I doubt where I'm going, I go and I open up my Bible and I see on October 12, 1975, I received Jesus, and therefore, I am saved.
36:01
So you see the problems, right? I'm trying to point out the fact that all over the map, there's problems.
36:08
You've got the Roman Catholics who start putting the categories of sin.
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You've got the Protestants who believe in conditional security who start saying, well, now you're saved and now you're not.
36:17
It's sort of a yo-yo.
36:19
You can be saved, be lost, be saved, be lost.
36:20
I know people who believe you get saved on Sunday, get lost on Monday, go back, get saved again next Sunday.
36:25
I mean, it's really just a rotational thing.
36:29
And then, you've got your OSAS and they would say, you get saved, your ticket's punched, you've got your hell insurance, fire insurance is covered.
36:41
Huh? What's that? Not all Baptist churches teach that.
36:47
Brother, I understand.
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I'm giving the categories of the extreme.
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So please understand.
36:55
And I'm not saying I'm up here and they're all down here.
37:00
I'm not putting myself on a...
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I'm saying I think that all of them have a tendency to reach negative and wrong extremes.
37:08
So, what's the answer? Well, I think first and foremost, we need to understand that there is another way of looking at the subject of security.
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And that's the word Bobby actually jumped ahead of me a little bit when you mentioned what's known as the perseverance of the saints.
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Okay, so that's what I want to give right now.
37:31
This is the fifth of the five points.
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I'm not going to go through the other four.
37:37
What? Alright.
37:51
The perseverance of the saints is a theological principle that says this, that when a person receives the grace of God that regenerates their heart and they become a believer, we call that being born again.
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When a person is born again, God begins to work in their life so as to give them the ability to persevere in the faith.
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You've all heard the verse, work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.
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So the first part of that verse says work out your salvation.
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You say, oh man, I can't do anything for my salvation.
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I know, because it says it's God who works in you both to will, that means to want to do, and to do what He commands.
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God is the One who comes to make His abode in you, the Holy Spirit, and He begins to work out His plan in your life and He causes you to persevere in your faith.
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Yes, David? What verse is that? I think it's Philippians 2, but I'll have to look it up.
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They may know right off the top of their head.
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It escapes me, the verse.
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But it says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works within you both to will and to do His good pleasure.
39:38
Is it Philippians 2? Thank you.
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There it is.
39:42
Thank you, brother.
39:44
So, perseverance of the saints would say to someone, if you began a Christian life and then you abandoned Christ, you didn't lose your salvation.
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You never had it.
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Let's say, and I tell you, brother, I've been a pastor for a long time.
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I've had many people come to the church, walk down the aisle, hands are raising.
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No, I really don't do that.
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We're Calvinists.
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But they walk down the aisle, and they would receive, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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But they come down the aisle, they receive Jesus, so to say, and they get real excited for a hot minute.
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And they want to serve Jesus for about three months.
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And then something better comes along.
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And not only are they willing to abandon the church, but they have no desire for Christ anymore.
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And you know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of the parable of the soils.
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That's right.
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Well, the seeds that fell among the thorns, they grew up for a little while, but they got choked out.
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That's right.
40:59
So we have a picture in Jesus' parable of different types of the way people receive the Word.
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Some people don't receive it at all.
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That's the ones falling on the pathway and the birds eat it up.
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Some people receive it and they spring up for a day or an hour or a minute, but they have no root.
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Who are the ones who persevere? The ones that take the seed and multiply.
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And here's the thing that is often overlooked.
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The ones who fall in the soil that was prepared by the sower.
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God had prepared the soil to receive the seed.
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God prepares the heart.
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And when the heart truly receives the seed of the Word, it bears fruit.
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It bears a harvest.
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That's right, and that shows that it's different for everybody, but it's always the bearing of the fruit.
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And so, if somebody said to me, Pastor, I know a guy who received Jesus, but now he is an atheist and he hates Jesus.
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Did that guy lose his salvation? I would say there's a good chance he was never saved.
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There is a possibility that he was saved and right now he is going through a time of having fallen away.
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I don't like to use the term backsliding, but maybe that's the best way to describe it.
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I do believe genuine believers, and the Reformed Confessions have all expressed that genuine believers can have times of great failure.
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Peter had a time of great failure when he denied the Lord.
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A true believer can have times of failure, but how do we know? They will return.
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They will persevere.
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They will be brought back into the fold.
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God will not allow His sheep to stray forever.
42:50
And so that's the picture, right? So again, it's about perseverance, right? I'll give you the best...
42:58
There's a guy named Dan Barker.
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Dan Barker is the head of one of the largest atheist groups in America.
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He goes around doing debates.
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He hates God.
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He hates the idea of God.
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And he does debates about...
43:13
He had his hand up first.
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Let me finish.
43:15
I saw him on YouTube.
43:16
Oh, you saw him.
43:17
I'm a black hair guy with a beard.
43:19
No, that's not Dan Barker.
43:20
Dan Barker is a little short, balding guy with a round face.
43:27
Well, there's a lot of atheist groups.
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There's American atheists.
43:30
There's all kinds of different groups.
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But Dan Barker, the reason why I bring him up is he used to be a preacher.
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Dan Barker...
43:39
How many of you have ever heard of Katherine Kuhlman? Katherine Kuhlman was the Benny Hinn of the 60's.
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She was a faith healer, big name person.
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He was the second in command to her.
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He was her protege.
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He was going to be the next Benny Hinn.
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And then he fell.
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It doesn't surprise me that he fell because he was under a false teacher.
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He was hearing a false gospel night after night.
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He was watching people be ripped of money and everything else.
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It doesn't surprise me that he would fall away.
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But when he fell away, he fell away so hard that he didn't go and become an agnostic.
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He became a God-hating atheist.
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And somebody asked me, well, was he saved and now lost? I would say no.
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I don't believe he was ever saved.
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And I base that on 1 John 2.19.
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1 John 2.19 says this, They went out from us, but they were not of us.
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For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.
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But they went out from us to show that they were not truly of us.
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How can you hate God when you don't even believe Him? Well, God-hater in the sense of someone who says, I hate the idea of God.
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Or I hate the Bible's version of God.
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That's like an oxymoron.
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But brother, you had your hand up.
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No, you're good.
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I don't know.
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They say God will never let you go once He has you.
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Sure.
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So tell him not to fall away.
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You can run away from Him, but He'll chase you down.
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Again, if you're truly His.
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Is that in Scripture anyway? Specifically? There is a passage in John where Jesus says, You are in My hand, and I am in My Father's hand, and no one is able to snatch you out of My Father's hand.
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That's the verse.
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I think it's in John 6.
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But I'll have to look.
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I forget exactly.
45:36
He also says He's able to save, He's able to keep.
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Yeah, save to the uttermost.
45:41
Yeah, absolutely.
45:43
Yes, sir? Sorry.
45:44
No, it's okay.
45:45
Also too, you remember the Billy Graham crusade? One of the preachers who was with them became an atheist.
45:52
Oh yeah.
45:53
I kept you guys in.
45:54
I'm a very behind.
45:55
But yeah, he became...
45:56
he walked away from Christ.
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He became a major man from that time.
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He turned away.
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It's unfortunate, but yeah, it does happen.
46:03
So I want to introduce you to another word, and I know I'm running out of time, and this is a pretty big lesson, but I want to introduce you to a word that I think is very important.
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We talked about the perseverance of the saints.
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Apostasy.
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Apostasy is the theological term which refers to falling away from the faith.
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Osas, once saved, always saved, does not allow for apostasy because you can't fall away.
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Right? You understand? That's why I don't teach Osas because I believe that apostasy is possible.
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But I believe that apostasy is a person who was never genuinely saved, but they made a profession of faith.
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You can profess with your mouth and not possess in your heart.
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How do we know that? Matthew 7, verses 22 and 23.
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On that day, many will come to me and say, Lord, Lord, did we not do mighty miracles in Your name and cast out demons in Your name and do great works in Your name? And I will say to them, I knew you for a little while, but you couldn't handle it.
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That's not what he said.
47:20
He says, I never knew you.
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He didn't say I knew you when you got saved and then three months later you fell away.
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I knew you when you got saved and five years later you fell away.
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No, he says I never knew you.
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We were never in a relationship.
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You called me Lord and you are a liar.
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So what is apostasy? Apostasy is abandoning the faith you once professed.
47:57
Apostasy is abandoning the faith you once professed.
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I'll write that.
48:11
Yes.
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You once professed, but never possessed.
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Apostasy, abandoning the faith you once professed, but never possessed.
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You said you believed in Jesus, but it was not genuine.
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You say, well, it felt genuine to me.
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If there's no life change, I can tell you it's not genuine.
48:47
Well, the life change is a persevering life change.
48:52
That's what we've been saying this whole time, right? Yeah, it must continue on.
48:57
Go ahead.
48:57
That seems so feasible to me because it's in human nature, man.
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Time and time again, we'll say that we're about something or we stand for something or we won't do something and then we'll turn right around and do it.
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Like you'll tell your friends, you know, I'll never steal from anybody.
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And then, you know, never do until one day you do.
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Or I would never do this.
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I would never cheat on my wife.
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You never do until you do.
49:23
You know, it's just one of those things that doesn't amaze me.
49:26
It sounds pretty feasible and correct that we would, by nature, we'll say we'll do something or that we are about something and then, you know...
49:35
And walk away from it.
49:36
Yeah, absolutely.
49:38
Well, now that we've looked at...
49:39
Okay, a lot of questions.
49:41
Go ahead, brother.
49:41
I just got one question, man.
49:44
Is it possible to truly be saved and then, like, fall into temptation and then, like, it snowballs and, like, you start practicing sin, you know what I'm saying, and then still be saved? What I had said earlier, I'll say it again.
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I do believe that genuine believers can fall into times of serious sin.
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And that's what the church is for.
50:14
That's why we're going to see in Galatians 6, it says in Galatians 6, if any one of you is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore that person.
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Why should we restore them? Because they're still a brother.
50:26
Even though they've been caught in a transgression, they're still a brother, so they need restoration, right? So yes, but that's the role of the church.
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See, the role of the church is if a person is sinning, the church goes to him and calls him to repentance.
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If he refuses to repent, more people from the church come and say, please repent.
50:45
And if he continues to refuse to repent, then the church must come together as a body and say, you have demonstrated yourself to be an unbeliever because of the way you're living.
50:56
Now, that guy may go and he may live in sin for a little while and realize the church has abandoned me because I abandoned Christ and realize I need to return and repent.
51:08
And at that point, it would be an example of God doing a great work in the life of a person.
51:13
So yes, I think it can happen.
51:16
But at the same time, like I said, I think the most important thing for everybody to consider is not where you were, but where you are.
51:26
Let me explain what I mean by that.
51:28
A lot of people say, well, I used to be saved, but now I'm living for whatever.
51:33
Well, where you are now is the problem.
51:37
If you're not living for Christ today, then that's a problem because you can't hold on to what was yesterday.
51:44
The Bible doesn't say if you believed, it says you are believing.
51:48
And so the question is, are you believing today? Because if you're living outside of Christ today, I don't care what you did yesterday.
51:56
I mean, that's important.
51:58
Where are we at today? If I met a man today who was cheating on his wife, doing drugs, and living for sin, and he told me, well, I got saved last week and went to the altar, I would say, I don't think it took.
52:08
I mean, I would just say, I don't know him.
52:10
I don't know if it took.
52:11
I don't know if God changed his life.
52:13
But there's nothing showing the fruit of the Spirit in his life.
52:19
And I would say, brother, you need to repent.
52:22
And I would pray for his restoration because I wouldn't have anything else upon which to say, yes, this man loves Jesus because he seems to hate Jesus.
52:30
Everything in his life seems to be pointing toward hatred of Jesus.
52:35
Does that make sense? Yes, sir.
52:37
I want to get through.
52:39
I'm sorry.
52:40
You said somebody can practice sin after falling into one of those moments of backsliding, when they really are saved.
52:49
But what if...
52:50
I mean, I guess it's possible, man, that sin can kill you and you don't get the chance to repent, but you would have, I guess, if you lived a place where it's kind of...
52:58
You know what I'm saying? First John talks about the sin unto death.
53:04
I can honestly tell you I don't quite know exactly what John's referring to there.
53:09
But some people think that that's referring to a believer who allows himself to fall into sin and God simply allows him to die so that he won't continue sinning.
53:17
I think that's a possible interpretation, but I'm not sure I necessarily agree with it.
53:22
I just haven't spent enough time with that particular text to really come down on a hard and fast interpretation of it.
53:27
But what you're saying is the way some people have interpreted 1 John 5.
53:33
So it's certainly understood that way by some folks.
53:36
I don't know.
53:37
I don't know.
53:41
I'll say this.
53:44
Your salvation, and the whole point of Galatians, is that your salvation is not dependent upon what you are doing and what you have done, but on what God has done for you.
53:57
Your salvation is not dependent upon your ability to keep the law because you can't keep the law.
54:05
And what I've said about God changing your life, I do believe that it is true.
54:09
Every time we see in Scripture someone get saved, they have a life change.
54:15
And if you can tell me Jesus came into my life and my life didn't change, I would ask you why you think Jesus came into your life.
54:27
If there has been no change, why would you think...
54:31
Now again, I'm not saying you're going to be perfect because ain't none of us perfect.
54:34
But I tell you what, and I know this is cheesy and it's silly, but one of my professors used to talk about it all the time.
54:40
He said, you know, before Jesus, I had a wanna, and after Jesus, I had a wanna.
54:46
A wanna.
54:47
W-A-N-N-A.
54:48
Because before Jesus, everything I want to do is for me.
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But after Jesus, everything I want to do is for Him.
54:56
That's how my life changed.
54:57
Now that doesn't mean I don't sin.
54:59
It doesn't mean I don't fight battles or sin.
55:00
It doesn't mean I don't have the flesh.
55:02
But now my desires are for Him and what He wants.
55:07
That's the change.
55:09
Yes sir.
55:10
My little footnote.
55:13
You talked about the Father from grace referring to His saying, forfeiting the perspective of salvation by grace through faith.
55:24
What study Bible is that? Huh? That's a decent, I think that's a decent understanding.
55:29
I haven't gotten around to the verse yet.
55:31
I feel bad because I could go another hour.
55:35
Y'all don't want that.
55:37
I ain't got the energy.
55:39
But let me at least go back to verse 4 and explain what I think Paul is saying.
55:43
Because all of this, I haven't looked at the verse.
55:45
I feel bad because I've been...
55:48
That's why I said I didn't want to argue.
55:50
I just wanted to say what I had to say.
55:51
Now let's look at the verse.
55:52
Because what he says in the verse, you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace.
55:59
And you say, well what does it mean to fall from grace? I think it means apostasy.
56:06
It means to be severed from Christ.
56:09
Everybody in the Galatian church had professed Jesus, right? Everybody in the Galatian church had said I believe.
56:15
You wouldn't be part of the church if you didn't say I believe.
56:17
It ain't like today.
56:20
Today, a lot of churches will accept members that don't necessarily believe.
56:24
I know one church in Atlanta, Georgia, that will accept atheists as members.
56:30
You can become a member of the church and not accept Jesus Christ.
56:37
Well, that's a true statement, but it's a statement for another time.
56:41
The point of the matter is, churches are to be made up of people who profess faith in Jesus.
56:50
Churches are made up of people who confess.
56:53
What does it say? You confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart, God raised Him from the dead.
56:59
But that's a two-fold requirement.
57:03
If you confess with your mouth and don't believe in your heart.
57:09
Yeah, and Jesus said we've got to confess, right? So there's a mouth confession and there's a heart belief.
57:14
And there are a lot of people who confess with their mouth but don't believe in their heart.
57:19
Yes, sir? So if they didn't make that life change, that would mean they didn't receive the Holy Spirit, correct? Well, I would say the life change is a result of the Holy Spirit, but so is the faith.
57:29
We can't even believe in the Lord Jesus Christ without the gift of the Holy Spirit to give us the ability.
57:34
So we reject Christ as well, correct? If we don't have the Holy Spirit, we don't have Christ because Romans 8, verse 9, it says that if you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you do not belong to Him.
57:54
So if we don't have the Holy Spirit, we don't belong to Christ.
57:57
Alright, so in Galatians 5, verse 4, Paul is intending to tell us not whether or not the person is regenerated.
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That's the key to this.
58:13
Paul is not saying you were saved and now you're lost.
58:17
What he is saying is you are in the state of grace.
58:22
What does that mean? You are in the body of Christ.
58:28
That's the state of grace.
58:30
If a person comes to the church and says I believe in Jesus and I want to be a part of this church, come, we welcome you, brother.
58:39
We love you.
58:40
And now you are part of this community of grace.
58:43
You are here.
58:44
You are part of this community of God's living and active and amazing grace.
58:50
And then you say, but I also want to hold on to my good works.
58:56
You say, wait a minute, you can't have both.
58:59
Oh, but I must have both.
59:02
I want to believe in Jesus and grace, but I also want to believe in myself and the law.
59:07
I want to believe in what Jesus has done, but I also want to believe in what I've done.
59:11
You say, brother, if you do that, you have severed yourself from Christ because you can't have both.
59:20
It's like you're climbing up Grace Mountain and you look over and you see Law Mountain and you say, but I want that too! And you reach for Law Mountain and what happens? You lose your grip on Grace Mountain.
59:35
So the point is not that you were saved and that you lost your salvation.
59:42
The point is that you have in your mouth confessed grace, but in your heart, you don't believe in the finished work of Christ.
59:52
You believe you have to add to that work with your works.
59:57
And let me say this, if you believe you add anything to the work of Christ, you are still lost.
01:00:04
I'll say it again.
01:00:05
If you believe that you add anything to the work of Christ, you are still lost.
01:00:14
It ain't like Lysa that gets 99.9% and you get that .1%.
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No.
01:00:25
Jesus does it all or He is of no advantage to you.
01:00:34
He's either your everything or He is nothing.
01:00:39
He is either your all in all or He is nothing at all.
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And if you look to anything but Him, you have fallen from grace.
01:00:54
Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
01:00:56
I pray that this has been helpful.
01:00:58
I know it's a difficult subject, Father, so I pray that You would use this as a time to inspire even more conversation.
01:01:04
Help us to understand, Lord, that You promised that You who began a good work with us will continue it until the day of Jesus Christ.
01:01:11
That's a great promise of the persevering power of the Spirit, of He who comes and lives within us, who changes our lives, and who gives us a new life.
01:01:19
And Lord, though I know many of these men have struggled and maybe continue to struggle, Lord, I pray that You would struggle with them.
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I pray that You would wrestle with their heart.
01:01:28
I pray that You would come and make Yourself real in their life.
01:01:30
And I pray that they would know that there is no other thing that they can hold to for their salvation except for the Lord Jesus Christ.
01:01:38
And it's in His name we pray.
01:01:40
Amen.