Romans 15:16 - Promises to the Believer-Priest, Pt. 2 (10/16/2022) | NOTE: Poor audio quality

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That was a beautiful offertory this morning. I wish you'd have played it twice, but once was good.

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Beautiful. How's everybody today? Good. You're a lot spunkier today than last time.

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Last time it almost knocked me off balance a little. You were so like that.

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Just like, I don't know how you do it, but you all do the same thing every week.

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Either Saturday night you all stay up late, like last week, or you get lots of good sleep and drink a bunch of coffee before you get here.

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Today's that one, I guess. You're not going to make that hotter, are you? Brother Raymond, escort the lady out.

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She took control of the service. Not warmer than 74, please, because I will...

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Well, if you need to, I'll take this off. Why don't you come get it? Seriously. I'll take this with my wife.

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Thank you. All right. I feel better now anyway. Gentlemen, feel free to take your jackets off now.

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Is that what that means? Well, look who's putting it on. You are one of the smartest ladies in the church,

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I'm telling you. She is that. Oh man, now what am

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I going to do? This is great. Oh, guess what? My glasses are in the jacket.

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Now you need to bring me my glasses. They're in the side pocket. Oh man.

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By the way, Davo, that was a marvelous Sunday school lesson this morning. We learned something.

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I learned something in 40 years of studying the Bible I've never seen before. That was great. I'm not going to repeat it from here, because you should have been in Sunday school.

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But it was really good. Very nice. Nicely done. Did you get any sleep last night?

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Not much. Yeah. So it was kind of Otis -esque, like he would come up with some of these things at breakfast that you never saw.

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And sometimes we would see like things we had said, phrases and words we'd said, because we heard other preachers say it that were not even in the

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Bible and eliminate those. It takes weeks sometimes to get rid of stuff you've said your whole life, maybe months, years sometimes.

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And so you may have found one this morning, and I think you did make sure there's no other verses, but you kind of already did that.

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That's why you were up so late. So now you're wondering what it is. Come to Sunday school next week.

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He will review, right? Oh, you're not here. I'll review. Are you teaching next week?

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Ben, you can review that one point. Oh, yeah.

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Everything's taped. You can go out to the website and hear it by Wednesday or so. Oh, really?

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That quickly? You're on top of it, Ben. Dave went and got a box this big out of storage and brought it to Ben.

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And Ben's all excited. I said, what's in the box? He said, more tapes. So how many hundreds have you digitalized just this year and put on the site?

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380 this year from cassette tapes, digitalized and put on our website. People from Dr.

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Freeman, from Brother Otis, myself, and a few others, Brother Bill, my brother

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Myron. It's just awesome. You've got a treasure on the website out there if you ever want.

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Charlotte listens to it every morning. So that's cool. I'll leave that up to the

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Holy Spirit to let them know. That was a hint, by the way. Let's convict them if Dave was wrong.

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Okay. Big hit, right? All right. So let's get started here.

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Thank you so much for the services already and for bringing us together today in a still free nation,

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Lord, where we have a time away from the world system and from the enemy. We ask you to rebuke him and bind him and send him away from this room.

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If he dare enter, this is your place, we're your people. He's no ownership of us whatsoever.

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And so give us freedom and may your Holy Spirit have complete freedom to move among us and teach us what he will.

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And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So we're in Romans chapter 15, verse 15 and 16, where it says

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God is pleased with the offering of the Gentiles. And we've been talking about that for a long time. And part of what that includes is this idea of the believer priest, because what does a priest do?

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He offers up offerings, right? So it's part of the priestly duty. We already talked about what those offerings are on the spiritual side.

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The physical offerings in the Old Testament are pictures of the spiritual offerings that we can offer.

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We already covered all that. And then we started covering what some of the duties, sort of the first things we have to learn to be an effective believer priest, what the duties are.

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And there were like 24 of those preliminary duties. And then last time we started talking about what are the promises to the believer priest.

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And a lot of these are found in 1 Peter and 2 Peter, those particular books. Today, turn with me, if you would, to 1

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Peter chapter 2, verse 5. And we talked a little bit about some of the promises to the believer priest.

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What are some of the things that we know we have because God has made us to be believer priest?

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Or what are some of the things we are because God's made us to be believer priest, to work together with him and his family business?

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You know who the first person in God's family business was? Jesus. Because Jesus said,

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I don't do anything or say anything that I haven't heard the Father do. And then who was next in the family business?

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The rest of us. The rest of us. Some of you said the Holy Spirit, but he is working in it.

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It just doesn't talk about that in the same way. But it's us because Jesus said, as God sent me, so send

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I you. And so he sits to do the work when he ascended into heaven.

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And that's where he sent the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit continues that by working in all of us and causing us to do the things that Jesus wants us doing while we're here.

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So it's all pretty cool. And so what we are is we're a believer priest.

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So some of the promises we talked about last time in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 5. You also as lively stones are built up as a house, a priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

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That's the reason even a Gentile can offer up offerings because we do it by and in Christ.

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And the first thing it talks about, it says right there, we're lively stone. We talked about what that meant last time.

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We are living. And the word stone is a small stone, little Jesuses. And I was up kind of late last night working on some things for Brother Marion and asked me for some information to help him about some of the points of Catholicism that are not biblical.

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And I was looking at some of the stuff. Fortunately, every time

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I've ever owned a computer from the first time I had a, I guess, an IBM XT, PC XT, I have always saved all my

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Bible studies and sermons onto a floppy disk is what those used to be called. You don't have a clue what those things are. I'll bring you one sometime.

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You can examine it. It's like a little square thing. You put it in a computer and it'll load it into the next new computer.

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So then when I get another one, by then it would be a little hard stick, smaller. They weren't floppy anymore.

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I don't even know what you call those disks. A little bit solid. Plug that whatever they call.

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Yeah, but they shouldn't have been. They weren't floppy. Yeah. Rigid. Yeah. So the sermons and Bible studies went into the next one and the next one.

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Of course, now you can just set the two beside each other. It magically just goes through the air from one to the other.

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I don't know how. Dave just says watch and it does it. And I'm going, what did you just do?

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Nothing. Just does it. And so I've got this so I can just type a word in.

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So I typed the word Catholic in. So I was up all night. I didn't know I'd written so much stuff on that. I mean, going back to when

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I was 20 something, 26 all the way till now, it all pops up. Some of it's in documents that Word will not load because it was an older previous, you know, type of software.

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But still, I'm able to figure out how to pull it in and translate it and stick it on a Word document. Sent all of that to Marian.

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So Marian's got like three months worth of stuff to read now. And but it was it was kind of interesting talking about one of the things that they believe is that Peter is right.

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The first poem. Oh, there's the flies back. Devil don't want me talking about the Pope. Will you go away if I don't talk about the

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Pope? He said no. So I'm going to talk about the Pope. He's staying anyway. See that? I got him.

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Did you see that? There you go. In the Lord. Strength in the Lord. Dave talked about that some in Sunday school too.

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And my name happens to be David. But you were talking about sin, weren't you? Well, anyway.

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So Marian and I stayed up late last night. But either that or he got deluged this morning in his email.

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But things they think is that was the first. And interesting, if you just look at history, he never went to Rome.

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There's no evidence ever went to Rome. It was Paul that ended up in Rome. But they don't. And he was also the apostle to the

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Gentiles, which is predominantly Gentile church. So if their fable had been true, it would have been Paul that was the first Pope.

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But they got the whole thing wrong. So I found this one of many studies that talked about that. But if you look at the words,

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Jesus is called the rock. And in the Greek, it's like a megastone. It has the prefix that in English you would use mega.

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It means whatever you're talking about, it makes it bigger. He's the megastone. And Peter's name is little rock or little stone.

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Jesus is the megastone. Peter was a little rock or a pebble. And that's kind of what this is saying we are.

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Lively stones. We're little Christ's. So none of us get to be the Pope just because we're called living stones.

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And they're wrong about that. So the other thing was it says you're a spiritual house.

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And that means I think that's put in the negative. It's a non -carnal house.

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But the word there is not sure in the Greek as it is like a home or like a family. So we are a non -carnal family.

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Interesting, isn't it? Now, let's go into some. Well, I think last time we talked about we're a holy priesthood too.

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Do you remember that? So holy, what does it mean? It means you're perfect. What does it mean when

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God calls us a holy priesthood? Does it mean we're perfect? We're different. Holy means when it's applied to man, different.

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When it's applied to God, the Father, it means different and perfect. But to man, it means we're separated from the world unto

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God. And we need to always put forth that. And so priesthood, we know what that means.

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We reach up, take the hand of God. We reach down, take the man's hand and try to bring them together. We're a witness to the world.

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And we give the gospel out to the world. That's the water of the word. And the

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Holy Spirit does the rest. And so that's God working together with us in the family business.

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If we don't take the word of God, no one will be saved. I don't mean if we don't, there can be other

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Christians. But if we as the church of all living Christians in the world, don't take the word of God, either by a

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Bible like this one, or a little New Testament in your pocket, or a preacher on the radio, or a podcast on the internet, if they don't hear that, and that comes from man's side, as the

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Holy Spirit works in us to give that gospel and from the written word, and then the Holy Spirit come in and call them, they're not going to be saved.

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It takes both. Jesus said, it takes the water and the spirit. It takes both. It takes both for salvation.

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It takes both for growth. And what's interesting in 1 John, where it talks about the

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Trinity is one of the only verses in the Bible. And by the way, I mean specific.

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And by the way, none of the, well, I won't say none, most of the newer versions of the English Bible don't have that verse in it.

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And everybody says, Oh, you're just too, you're too pushy on the King James. Well, it's not because I like the old language.

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It's because I like the Greek that underlies it, that still has all the verses. It doesn't have over 200 mistakes that most of these do in the

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New Testament, only thousands. If you look at the Old Testament and you on these modern versions, it's not that I'm against that per se, other than the fact that you really want to read a

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Bible. It has a whole bunch of mistakes because it's not the right underlying manuscript. People are duped.

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In fact, every seminary has been duped into believing the Westcott Creed, which is nothing more than a theory.

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And it's a theory that's already been shot down. It was shot down during the lifetime of Westcott and Hort. And I know

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I'm on a rabbit trail, but it was shot down by the leading scholars at Oxford and all around the world in Europe, shot them down, blew them away.

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And yet Satan was able to bring that into the American seminaries. I don't want to go there, but it's just sad.

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I spent a couple of years of my life studying just that manuscript evidence and man, will it open your eyes?

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Satan has done a great work, just like the prophesied

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Testament will go to and fro seeking the word of God and cannot find it. I used to think they'd burn them.

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They could burn the internet. Well, they could. A couple of nukes, well, about 10 nukes could probably do it worldwide.

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But I don't think it's talking about burning Bibles. They don't know which Bible to read. They don't know which one has the real gospel in it and which one's got stuff changed in it, like the

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Jehovah's Witness Bible or the Book of Mormons. And now we, the Protestants, are using the new

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American standard and the Revised Version and all these things that have pulled out verses, like in 1

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John, where it talks about the Trinity, the verse is gone. Rabbit trail, but a verse that they did leave in there is interesting, right?

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It's right in the same, like, their adjacent verses. They left the one and removed the other, but the one that they did leave talks about three things that it takes for someone to be saved.

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You've heard me say there's two, like the water and the spirit, but there's really three, obviously, and I don't usually mention it because it's obvious, but what's interesting is the verse does mention it.

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It talks about the water and the spirit and what else? The blood.

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The water, the spirit, and the blood, because you're saved by the Jesus. But guess what?

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That blood has to be a plower. That's pictured by the Hittite weed in the Old Testament.

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Doorposts are tied to the believer, and so the Holy Spirit and the Word of God are used to apply the blood to God's chosen people.

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Isn't that something? It's all right there, as long as people don't try to remove it from the Scripture, and they do try to do it, but it's still there.

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So, I want to talk about the Holy Stood. It's our job as the priest on the human side, the predominant thing we can do.

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Jesus has already finished His work. He gave His blood. 2 ,000 years ago, He said it is finished.

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Everything's been done that it takes to save His church from their sin. It's all been done.

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Nothing's called the finished work of Christ. You can't add anything. You can't take anything away from it.

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It is finished, ladies and gentlemen. That's why I liked your Sunday School lesson so much. I want to teach it again right now, but I'm trying to stay on this.

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Let me just keep this right here. Look at this. This is your lesson. So, anyway, our job has to do specifically with this book.

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Reading it, studying it, get really good at knowing it, and then share it with human beings.

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That's called sharing the gospel. That's our job. That's the water of the Word. We can't do what the

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Holy Spirit does, though we try, and it's foolish to try because it's not our job.

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When you try to tell somebody how they should dress, unless they're your children, you're supposed to, or in school, you should do that.

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In church, you try to tell them stuff like that. You're not the Holy Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit work in people.

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You've got to be patient. He works in all of us slower than we wish He did, it seems like sometimes, but it's

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His job. But our job is to give the Word of God to human beings. That's the water. Jesus did

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His job. He gave His blood once for all. It doesn't ever do that again. So, you can't get saved, lose it, and then get re -saved because Hebrews chapter 6 says to do that, you'd have to re -crucify

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Christ and put Him to open shame. Unfortunately, their denominations, I won't name them. I'll give you their initials,

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Church of Christ, Catholic, Pentecostal, that teach you can lose your salvation and then get it back.

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I wouldn't be against them if they would teach you could lose it so much as I am when they say, and get it back, because that puts

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Christ to open shame when you say that. Now, when you say you can lose it, it shows you're ignorant.

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You're ignorant of Scripture. You don't even know how salvation works because you think it has to do with work.

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I mean, obviously, it's all God's work, and it's called the operation of God where He's the surgeon who gives you a heart transplant.

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Obviously, you can't mess that up, and He's not going to mess it up. But if you think you've got to do some stuff, now you can lose it.

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So, at least they're consistent because all these churches think you've got a whole list of stuff you've got to do. Church of Christ has five things you've got to do to get saved.

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The Southern Baptists, to me, only have two, but they've got two things you've got to do to get saved. It's just as bad, and every denomination names their effects and turns them into a cause, and now they can't get along.

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Isn't that funny? Because there's only one cause. The Lord said, while you were yet in your sins,

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He awakened those. Right there. That's the whole work to call you and turn your eyes on and your ears on and your heart on and bring you to life so that then you can do all the effects.

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You can believe. You can repent. I bet He gives you the belief that you can have your own belief after that because it goes parallel like a tuning fork in the same vibrations.

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All of that stuff is awakened, and you do all that. None of that saves you. I'd already be saved to even have that stuff.

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Anyway, I talk about that a lot because it's the big problem in the American church is they've changed the gospel.

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All right. So, holy priesthood, it's our job to continually bring the world of Christians back to the pillar of the truth, which is this book right here, because even good denominations eventually go full circle and they become humanistic, and they interject stuff man believes as if it's as authoritative as this book, and it never is.

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All right. So, it's our job to do that. Now, when it says you're a chosen generation, it's the last thing we talked about last time, 1

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Peter chapter 2 verse 9. Chosen, people ask me all the time, you believe in election predestination?

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Well, actually, I believe the Bible, and it's in there. So, yeah, I believe it. Yeah. I mean,

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I believe it. You believe in January 16? Yeah, well, at least not the way you context to get it right, but I know this stuff about elections in it.

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I joke with them like that and smile when I say it, but at least it gets people thinking, doesn't it,

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Rob? And doesn't it, Pam? So, I could go around the room pretty well.

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Oh, goodness. It's a great life getting to be a preacher, and preacher, by the way, is not just the guy behind the pulpit.

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We're all holy priesthood means everybody in here is a preacher, a proclaimer of the good news of the gospel, but I remember

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Glenda coming up right up here to this pulpit. I'm confused,

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Brother Dave. I'm not trying to be contrary, but I'm just, I'm confused, and all

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I did was read the scripture today. I didn't even preach. Of course, that's not quite accurate, but I just kind of read through the passage.

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What confused you about the passage? She said, nothing. It's clear as day. I said, so what's the problem? I don't know, and I said, could

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I interject a possibility? She said, yes, and I said, I know this is not exactly, but I like to tell stories where it's better, but it's kind of like this.

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It's kind of like this. I said, could it be, Glenda, that you have heard so much bad preaching that's false, that when you hear the truth in the

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Bible, it contradicts it, and it gets confusing? She said, that's it, and she walked away, and it's been a glorious happy person since that moment.

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Isn't that kind of how it happened? A few moments since that.

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I remember it. Someday, we'll give her the microphone, but not today. Anyway, chosen, wow, eclectos.

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That's the word in English we call elected, and people like to say, well, what God did was he looked out in time.

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He saw all the people that would do good, and he picked them. That would be like, well, I looked at President Obama before he was president, and so later,

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I saw some good stuff he might do while he was president, so after he was president, then later I elected him. Does that make any sense at all?

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It doesn't work that way, and God doesn't work that way either. It means elect or to choose, by implication, a favorite.

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Wow, you mean there's some people that are favorites of God and others that aren't? Yep, the favorites are called sheep, and the ones that aren't are called goats.

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It's all in the Bible. Favorites are called, the ones that are not are called tares, all through the

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Bible, especially through Jesus' teaching, so we are a chosen. It's the Greek word, eclectos.

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We are a chosen generation, and the word generation in the Greek is amazing.

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It means offspring, to be gened, so when you got saved, you got born again,

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God took away. The real you is not the one that got the genes from your physical mom and dad.

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The real you now is God's genes. Isn't that great? The new man, the new woman, we talked about that last time.

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Now, the next thing it speaks of in this little passage in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9 and following in there is, it calls us a royal priesthood.

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Now, what is that? Well, the word royal is bacillus, and we have

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English words similar to that. Usually, when we use it in English, it has to do with the castle, with the moat around it, where the king lived, so in the

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Greek, it literally means keenly, so we are a keenly priesthood, so now we're not just priests.

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We're also kings. We're like little kings. We're princes, you might want to, and princesses, you might want to put it that way, but we are going to be kings during the millennial kingdom, the 1 ,000 -year period.

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We will be ruling as kings over this entire world for 1 ,000 years, this world right here. I don't want course

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Canada, do you, brother Paul? No, I don't know who gets it. Anybody want it? Come on, tell me if you want it.

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Sam wants it. All right, you can have it. You got it, but we're not just priests that are bringing people to the knowledge of God through the water of the word, but we're also kings, but we don't get to do that part yet.

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It's kind of like David when he was king, but Saul was still on the throne. David didn't get to rule, did he?

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Saul did it, but Saul usurped the authority. It wasn't really his, but he usurped it. That's a picture of Satan, and so now the world system is doing that to us.

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It is usurping the authority to rule over us, to tax us and take 20, 30, 50 percent of everything we make where the

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Bible, the word of God, this book right here says, I'm supposed to give that to my children and grandchildren, and yet for me and take 50 percent of what

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I make, give it to who knows who the most productive people in the country get. That's not biblical. God does it the other way around.

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Check out the text if you don't think I'm right about that. So anyway, usurping authority that's not even theirs, because one day we will rule over them, right?

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It's really important to share the scripture truth of what Jesus has done with them and pray that the

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Holy Spirit will call them. We can't make him do that. They can't make him do that.

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They don't want him to do it. They're still lost. Their mama can't make him do it. Their grandma can't make him do it, and that's hard for humans to believe because we're humanists and we are a holy nation.

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Now, holy again, the same thing. It does not mean perfect. It means different, but the word nation in the

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Greek is ethnos, which means race. Now think about that, because once you become a brother or a sister, like when you get saved, there's 33 things that the

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Holy Spirit does to you in a second. I don't know. It's not even in time. It's in the eras. It's without regard to time.

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It's just boom, because God already had this for you before he made anything. So it's just boom, and you gain at least 33 things.

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We can find more if we spend more time studying, I'm sure, but it's either Louis Barry Shaper or Ryrie or one of the guys from DTS that came up with this little book that talked about 33 things the

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Holy Spirit does the minute you get saved, and I read it when I was 20 -something, and I've always loved it, and there's more than that, but it's just that's what he does.

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It's his work when he calls us and he quickens us. There's a lot of stuff he does to us, including giving us the faith of Christ, including putting himself inside of us and sealing him in us for until the

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Lord comes back and all those things, and so obviously that has to make you different than your neighbor if the neighbor hasn't had that done yet, right?

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You have God living in you, and they don't. You're going to be different. In fact, you're different than your own self from the way you were two seconds before that happened.

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You're different, and so that word holy is there because of the things the

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Holy Spirit did to you the moment he saved you, not because of stuff you're going to do. Now, you're going to do stuff, but a lot of stuff we do, we mess up, don't we, and it detracts and makes it more difficult for the world to see

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Christ in us, but we do the best we can, and we keep getting up and going again.

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A lot of what Dave taught in Sunday School had to do with sin and how the Holy Spirit deals with us and shows us righteousness of God that we have because we are saved and tells us to get up and go again.

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First John 1 .9, right? So, we are different because of who we are, and the Holy Spirit did all of that to us.

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It's his work. He did it when he called us, and he's still working in our lives continually every day, and it takes the

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Word of God. It's the same thing for growth as it was for salvation. Water of the Word plus the Holy Spirit. The water in the

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Spirit makes us grow. One without the other does not make us grow. People sit around on a couch and pray, oh,

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Holy Spirit, make me a better person. Don't let me sin, but they're not in the Word. Not going to happen. Help me.

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There's a particular sin in my life, Lord. Take it away, please. Not going to happen unless you're being bathed by the water of this

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Word while the Holy Spirit works to answer that prayer. Isn't that interesting? It takes both.

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So, we're holy, but now it says we're a nation. So, guess what? Once we're born again, not only does the

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Holy Spirit enter our body and connect us to Jesus and to the Father, but to each other. So, now we're a different race.

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We are the race of God people, God's people, and it makes us holy.

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We're different than any other race, human race, and the color of the skin has nothing to do with it anymore.

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It's the heart. It's looking into the eyes and saying, oh, that's a brother or sister. I can tell.

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Can't you do that a lot of times? You look in their eyes. You can see a dead person when they're dead, can't you? People say, well, you don't know the color of the stripe on their back.

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Well, I don't know if it's a virgin that put that in a sermon. Somebody put it in a sermon years ago. It's one of those things you should remove because it's just a cool old preacher said it.

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It's not the truth. Check out the eyes. Yeah, usually when

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I say that, lost people get up and kind of go to the restroom because they think I can see that far, but not without these.

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I mean, you can see it. So, we're a different race. If we could write a whole book or two on racial relations and Christianity solves it, but it's the only thing that solves it, and the world tries to solve it by changing things and laws and requiring everyone to not be racial and all this, but they never solve it because the problem's in the heart, and the world can't solve that problem.

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People still hate each other from different races unless they're born again, and then that solves it.

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Isn't that great to know? Next thing it says, we're a peculiar people, and that is true enough in English.

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Don't you agree? But in the Greek, it literally, in this particular place in particular, it literally has the idea of an acquisition or the word preservation.

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So, it's a purchased possession that is preserved. Wow. We are a peculiar people.

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We are a people who have been purchased by the blood of Christ and preserved by him and for him forever.

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You like that? So, our earthly problems, though they don't go away until we die because no one enters the kingdom of heaven except by tribulation and suffering,

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Jesus said, and he was the greatest example of suffering, wasn't he? So, that's okay.

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We can deal with that because our soul and our spirit is in the father's hand and Jesus' hand on top, and no man can pluck them from my father's hand, and no man can pluck them from my hand,

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Jesus said, and so we have this consolation of being a peculiar people in the sense that we are safe and sound, and the world is not.

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The world is standing on quicksand right now. The United States of America is in the biggest batch of quicksand.

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I won't use the word Dave did in Sunday school, but the biggest, I mean, glad Charlotte wasn't here, biggest batch of sand.

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I know you'll deal with him later. You already did in Sunday school. I appreciate that, but America is standing on quicksand today, ladies and gentlemen, but not us.

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We're standing on a rock, a big rock, a mega rock, not some little invented

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Roman Catholic pebble called the Pope. Amen, Charlotte said.

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Shout it out, sister. Come on, get with it. So, we're a peculiar people, a people that had been bought with a price, purchased, and preserved forever.

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That's what all carried in that one Greek word, and there it is. Now, what's the next thing?

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We're still in Romans chapter one, starting with verse two and following. We are called.

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Now, that's an interesting word. What verse am I in? Nine. Yeah, so all these are in one verse.

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Wow, I noticed I quit putting verse. Okay, yeah, they are, and eventually we get to verse 10 here on next point, but in a minute, but the next one is we're called.

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Now, what does that mean? It means we wouldn't be talking about us as believer -priests if this hadn't happened because this is where we were quickened.

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It's called the effectual calling. The Bible teaches two callings, universal, which means the gospel goes out to everybody because that's our job, but then there's the effectual call, which is the moment the

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Holy Spirit calls a person, and they're saved like Paul was on the road to Damascus in the

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Bible in the book of Acts. That's one of the greatest examples to see what calling actually is. You can just see the whole picture of it.

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All of it there is given to us. That's what happened in all of our lives in one way or another when we were saved, and we had to be called.

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We had to be quickened. We had to have our eyes and ears open where we could see and hear, and our heart made soft instead of stony and hard, and all these things happen in a moment and 33 things all together as I said.

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So that's the calling, and then the next thing it says we are called from something.

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What is it we're called from? Darkness. The world system, right?

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Satan's lives. They've talked about that in Sunday School too. Satan's lives.

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We're called away from that, and then we're called unto something. What is that called? Light.

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We're called from darkness unto light. The word holiness carries that connotation.

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We are brought from something to something. We're brought away from the world system and made more like Jesus.

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That's what holy means. Into his marvelous light. What kind of light is marvelous?

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Well, it's not just bright. It's good. It's the best. It's amazing.

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We need to contemplate these. You know, thank God he gives us church where we can come together and do this for a while, and then during the week we get all depressed and down, right?

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We get down, and do you know that there are times we should be depressed? Like when a loved one passed away.

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When my mom passed away, I was depressed, okay? But there's times we're depressed when we shouldn't be.

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You can look around. There is no reason you should be depressed. That's always spiritual warfare, and all you have to do is just get my notes here and just read through them on this sermon right here.

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It'll fix it. You just think about any one of these things, any one of these, and we're on.

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I would probably pick out that I'm peculiar, be the one I would pick, and I'd still be depressed, but you could. That's a joke.

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I'm just saying if you're still awake, and you're not, so I'm getting close to ending this thing, because when you go away, I have to quit.

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All right, so called from darkness unto his marvelous light. What have you thought about that one?

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Would that get you out of depression? We would, wouldn't it? All right, so that's the

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Holy Spirit's job, right, Dave? That's causing us to think about the righteousness side of it, the good side of what

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God's done for us. Satan wants us to think about the sins we've done that week.

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Isn't that interesting? Now, this next phrase, now you have to go to verse 10.

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Okay, this next phrase is amazing. There was a time when we were not a people, and particularly speaking to Gentiles, the

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Jews said they're not even a people. They're dogs. Now, we can do that racially sometimes, don't we?

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Well, that person is a blank person. They're just dogs, right? That's just how they act all the time, and then they say the same stuff about us, right?

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We don't like that part, but that's how people are in the flesh, but in the spirit, we're a different race, and we're the same race, right?

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So, it fixes all that trouble, but here with the Jew, Paul spent half his ministry trying to convince these

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Jewish brothers of his that God would save a Gentile because they're not a people.

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They're a dog. God won't save them, and Paul says they're not dogs. They're humans. Jesus died for all men.

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It didn't mean every individual because he didn't. He only died for the elect. How can I prove that?

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Because you're saved by the blood plus nothing. If he shed his blood for everybody, then everybody's going to heaven, and Jesus said they're not.

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He said only a few out of the human race are going, so that's hogwash. He died for his own people is how

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I like to say it. You don't have to tell new people that, by the way. They won't believe it anyway.

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They'll hate you if you tell them that, but what you can do is you can say, well, Jesus died for his own, and they won't catch it. It'll sound good to them because they'll assume they're his own, and they might be.

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Hope they are, right? But he died for his own, but Paul was telling the

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Jews that. They said he won't die. He won't save a Gentile, and Paul said, oh, no, no, no.

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He died for all men. It means all kinds of men, not all individual men. The word pos in Greek normally means that.

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Man, that's a big lesson to learn for the American church. All the denominations have lost that concept.

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Charles Spurgeon knew it. Prince of preachers. They all say he's the prince of preachers. None of them read his sermons anymore, but read his sermons if you're going to call him that.

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But anyway, so what is it saying? We were, past tense, not a people.

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Now, this is from God's viewpoint too, not just the Jews. From God's viewpoint, when you were lost, it's like you're not a people, and I know what you're thinking.

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Well, if he were chosen before the foundation of the world, then I've always been his people. Not in this sense.

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Not from the human viewpoint, you haven't been. You were lost as a goose, and you hung out with goats because you acted just, you're a lost sheep, right?

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A lost sheep acts just like a goat. Or you could use the pig as an example. The prodigal son pig got right down in that mud and ate the husks of the corn with the pigs.

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But was he a goat? Was he a pig? No, he was a lost sheep maybe, and he came back home though, didn't he?

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It's interesting how when God talks about salvation in the Greek, it talks about, and even I found one in the

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Old Testament, so even in the Hebrew, it talks about coming back to God. Isn't it interesting?

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Regenerated. So it's like you were with him, but now you came back to him. That's what sheep do. But from the human viewpoint, you were lost as a goose.

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Lost as a goat. Lost as a goat. Let's leave it at that. A pig maybe, whatever, right?

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So you were lost. You were not even a people. You're not the people of God. You ran with the goats. You were lost, and now look what it says you are.

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It says you were not a people, but now you are. Look at the word the. See a is a good word, but the is a really powerful word because the implies only.

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Now you are the only people of God because you're saved and you're God's people.

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I love it. You were not a people, but now you are the people of God. And look at the next one.

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It says, you know, tie this in with the previous phrase.

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You were not a people, and during the time you were not a people, you had no mercy. The Bible says when we were lost, even as lost sheep, listen to this, from a human viewpoint, as lost sheep, from the human viewpoint, you were without God and without hope in the world.

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Now listen, if you don't have any hope of finding God, you see why it teaches it?

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You have no hope of finding God as a natural person, which is what you are as a lost sheep. You're just a natural man or woman.

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You're not, your spirit is a little dead kernel. It's not even alive yet. You're walking around soulless, just like everybody else, a body and a soul, doing whatever you want to do because you're the king of your life.

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You're the queen of your life. You like it that way. If that weren't true, you got saved yesterday and you didn't.

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You see what I'm saying? So you're walking around like that and you're not even a people because you're not, because God doesn't, you know, own you yet from the human viewpoint.

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And then you don't have any mercy yet. Now at that point, you're under conviction because you're lost.

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I mean, a lost sheep is as lost as a lost goat, ladies and gentlemen, from the human viewpoint. And I would say in reality, since the

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Bible's teaching this, he's just lost. The only difference is he can't stay lost if he's a sheep because Jesus said of them,

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I will lose nothing. He's the shepherd. He'll come out and he will find you. He will find every single one, no matter where they are, no matter what kind of trouble they got into on their own, which is what sheep do.

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He'll find them and bring them back to the flock. But when the time was we were not a people, there was also that time we had no mercy and we didn't even know we should have been scared to death.

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But you know why we weren't? Because we didn't know God yet. Oh, he knew us.

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We did not know him yet. And then look what it says about that same group though. But when you get saved, you had no mercy, but look at now, now you have obtained mercy.

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And that word, the verb obtained is in the passive, which means someone bigger and stronger than you did it to you.

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It doesn't mean you did it yourself. God did it to you. God is the one who gave you that mercy.

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You could not have ever done it yourself. You could know no way you could ever have obtained it. And beautiful verses.

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This is an anti -depressed passage of scripture, anti -depression. It's better than anything you can get in a bottle.

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Look at verse 13. You were sheep going astray, right?

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Now that's from the human viewpoint and from God's viewpoint, isn't it? You were sheep going astray is what you were.

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And then when you got born again, look what it says. But now, and this is an amazing phrase, you are returned.

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Now in English, what does that mean? Well, think about it.

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If you're returned to something, doesn't mean you had to have been there prior to this. You were already there once, then you left, now you came back.

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Isn't that what returned means? If I say I returned home, didn't I have to be at home first and leave on a trip to return home?

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You need to put some thought into that. How is it that you as a lost person got saved and the

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Bible says, actually what you did was you returned to your savior.

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What does it mean? It means the same thing it has to mean in everyday language. In the

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Greek, it's two little Greek words put together, epi, which means upon, and strepho, which means to turn quite around.

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So it means to turn quite around upon something. So it's like you're headed one way away from something where you were, and you turn around, you come back to it.

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Same thing it means in English. So you don't really need to know the Greek on that one. Returned is a perfect word.

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So you were sheep going astray, but now you are returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls.

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And that is amazing. It means, at least in God's mind, he already knew you before the foundation of the world, long before you strayed away into lostness.

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He already knew you as his own. His own sheep that he died for.

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Because the father's not in time, is he? So you're with God.

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You decided in this life to stray away after you were born into this world. You followed the world, flesh, and devil for a while, and now you are returned to the same

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God that always had you. Is that cool or what? A lot of stuff in these little verses.

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That one, by the way, is in verse 25, in case you were wondering. I skipped down to verse 25. And the reason

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I skipped a little is because what I've done is I've taken this passage and I've taken all the information in the passage and put it into three topical categories.

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And so right now I'm talking about things that you receive because you're a believer priest. And some of the verses in between verse 10 and 25 talk about one of the other subtopics.

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So we'll get to that in a minute. But that's why I skipped. So that gives you 13 things that the

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Bible says about you. Now here's another one. It says you're returned unto the bishop of your souls and never to be confounded.

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Now look at 1 Peter 2, verse 6. I'm going to go back. I was in 25, but I'm going to go back up to verse 6 where we were.

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Verse 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 in there. But look at verse 6, 1

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Peter 2, 6. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, behold,

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I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect precious, and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

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So that's the last thing about these things that you are. What is that? Oh, sorry,

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Dave. These things that you are is you are not confounded. Well, what does that mean?

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Well, that is the Greek word about this long, katahisko, or actually katahiskuno.

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That's the whole word. And it takes several English words to mean that one

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Greek word. And what it actually means is to be shamed down, to be shamed down.

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You're talking about fights in Sunday school. You had a lot. It's like you talked for two hours in one hour. That was amazing.

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But anyway, so he was talking about fighting and how when David, his soul gave up, that's when you would generally lose any fight you're in at that point.

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And he was fighting against his own flesh, wasn't he, in his sin. So he gave up and gave himself to the

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Lord, and then he wins the victory. Well, if you picture a fight you got in to, and the other person beat you so badly and were so superior to you that they just beat you and stomped you and put you on the ground and said, don't get up, and they pointed at you, that's being shamed down.

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You see what I'm talking about? Can you picture that? You might want to get fit, lift some weights, learn a few skills, because you don't want that to happen, right?

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But that's what it means, to be shamed down. And the Bible says one of the things about a believer priest is he will not be confounded.

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That means he won't be shamed down. In the Greek, that's what it means. Now, this is the last point, and I'll be done here, but I want to give you a picture of that in the

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Old Testament. And I'm just reading a little bit. You don't need to turn to it. Psalm chapter 25, verse 1, unto the

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Lord, David says, do I lift up my soul? Oh my

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God, I trust in thee. Let me not be ashamed.

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Let me not be shamed down by the enemy, is what he's saying. Well, the Bible, that one's, we got a new one up here now.

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The Bible says when you're a believer priest, you won't be shamed down ultimately. You might lose a few battles, but you won't lose the war, right?

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Let me not be ashamed. Let not my enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on you be ashamed.

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So, David gets a little, instead of so selfish, where he's talking about himself and saying, Lord, don't let me be shamed down.

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Don't let any of my brothers or sisters, any of them, anywhere in the world, for all generations, ever be shamed down.

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Is that cool? Same thing we're talking about in first Peter 2 .6.

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Not be confounded. That's what it means. Don't let me be shamed down. Let not my enemies triumph over me.

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Yea, let none that wait on thee ever be shamed down. Psalm 31 .1 says, in thee,

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O Lord, do I put my trust. Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in your righteousness.

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Kind of cool. Kind of cool stuff. So, that's what that means. Now, what happens at this point in this passage of scripture, let me just read the next verse, and I'll be done, because it's going to kind of introduce what we're going to talk about next week.

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All right. So, first Peter 2 .6, wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, that's

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Jesus. Chief means mega, like a mega stone, huge rock.

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A chief cornerstone, elect. Did you know Jesus was elected? Well, do you believe in election, brother

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David? Well, Jesus was elected. All right. Elect. He was also precious, and he that believes on him will never be shamed down.

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And the next verse says, unto you therefore which believe he is precious. See, it refers back to the previous verse.

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Called him precious, but now it qualifies that. Says, well, actually, he's only precious to believers.

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The rest of the world hate him. The goats hate him, right? Well, unto you therefore which believe he's precious.

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But now listen to this, because this is what we're going to talk about next time. But unto them which be disobedient, and that means to the gospel, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner.

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The Jews are the builders, and the stone they were supposed to use to be the cornerstone of the entire church, they disallowed it and threw it away when they crucified

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Christ, in their thinking, right? But he's actually made by God to be the chief cornerstone of the entire building.

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So, next time what we're going to talk about is, what is the purpose of those who reject the

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Messiah? So, we just got talking about, we just got through done talking about, that's bad grammar, we just got done talking about the promises to the believer priests, the things we have because of who we are, because God made us to be this believer priest.

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Now, we're going to talk about the opposite side. What about the goats? Why do they exist? Why are they here?

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What's their purpose? It gets kind of interesting. So, be here same time, same station, the

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Lord willing. You won't have Dave as a Sunday school teacher next Sunday. He'll be traveling. You will have Ben, who after Dave got praised so much,

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I can't wait to see what Ben comes that way, because he got a whole week to come up with stuff. All right, let's stand and have prayer together.

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Oh, listen, I have a business matter before we pray. In the baptistry,

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I don't know if you noticed, but the thing in there is all crinkled. It's supposed to make that look real like that.

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It's all crinkled and it looks bad, is because it's full of slats. And so, we've been thinking about how to make it quieter in the fellowship hall.

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When we're in there fellowshiping, you can't hear each other. And we could control that sound. If we wanted to put those on the wall, it would absorb the sound.

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And we already have them and they're worth a lot of money. And Brother Music did some research for us with a builder who happens to be his brother, who has done huge building projects.

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And he said, it's probably beyond the amount of money you have to do it any other way than put these slats up.

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He said, so let the ladies get together and figure out how to make them pretty. You can paint on them. You can have the children paint rainbows on them.

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I don't know what you want to do, ladies. You can paint them any color you want. We can just put hangers on the back and hang them on the wall like a picture.

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And you can tell us where to put them, like this way or this way or in a circle.

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You get to decide and us guys will put them up, right? So ladies, Charlotte, I'll put you in charge of getting all the ladies.

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No, I'm going to put Katie in charge. How about that? Katie, you don't have much to do. So I'm going to, they always say, pick the busiest person in the room and make them do it and they'll get it done, right?

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But anyway, Katie, would you get the ladies together? The first one you should get is mom and get the rest of ladies together and decide how to make that where you can live with it.

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It's not going to be what you want, perfect, but where at least you can live with it and it will kill the sound and make it where we can hear each other.

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Would that be good? So we'll do that. And any of you guys, you guys out there that care how it looks, we can take the camera and let you see it because it matters because you may visit us.

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All right, let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the amazing things that we learned in Sunday school and the things you taught us during the second hour.

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We thank you for that. Now your Holy Spirit can take that water of the word and expand it and enlighten it, make it mean even more and more to our hearts as we contemplate these things.

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Lord, thank you for giving us so many things today that would solve every thought of depression we might have in most of the days of our lives and help us to think on these things when we need to.

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And Lord, we ask you to go with us in our time of fellowship. Bless the food we're about to have in Jesus name. Amen.