Good Works and the Christian

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I declare you are grateful for who

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God is in your life and for what he's done. You will not take for granted the people, the opportunities, and the favor he has blessed you with.

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You will look at what's right and not what's wrong. You will thank him for what you have and not complain about what you don't have.

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You will see each day as a gift from God. Your heart will overflow with praise and gratitude for all of his goodness.

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I want to know what a daily inspiration is compared to a daily affirmation. We've got affirmation and inspiration.

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, I'm Miss Greek. My name is Michael Lee Ebendroth. You can write me,

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Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com. We were just put on the founders list.

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If you want a church finder, you don't know how to find a church, you can go to a couple different places that I know of that we're on.

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Nine Marks Church Finder, we're on Nine Marks. And we're on Theocasts Church Recommendation.

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I think we still are. Sometimes people take us off their list. And we are on the founders now, founders ministry.

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So you type in Massachusetts, and we're on there.

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The book, Law Gospel A Primer, is doing well. Kind of a funny story,

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Amazon has ratings for books, and you can see what ranking you are based on what topic or sub -genre you're in.

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So if you're in systematic theology, as of today, Law Gospel book is number one in new releases on systematic theology.

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That won't last long, but it's fun while it lasts. And I think for a while we were number one in Protestant theology, and I think the other options were

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Geneva Bible or something like that. That was kind of fun. Anyway, if you want to have bulk order, because you want to hand them out, small little hundred page booklets, little books, you can email me and we'll get you 40 % off.

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If you want to order 10 or more, you can combine that with the Cancer Book or whatever else is on Amazon.

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And I think we've got some Kindle stuff coming up here soon. We'll have to see. Today, I'd like to talk about a follow -up to last time,

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Good Works, Christian's law -keeping, doing good things to honor the

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Lord, to help other people, and to make it go easy for you.

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Contrary to what people might believe about No Compromise Radio and myself, we are not antinomians.

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I'm not an antinomian. I am not anti -law. Just by the root word, the definition of the word anti -law,

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I'm not against God's law. Why would I be? God's law shows us something about Him, how

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He's holy and righteous and good, because God's law is holy, righteous, and good. See Romans 7, see 1

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Timothy 1. It's not like God's law is abstractly floating around and it's not connected to God somehow.

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There's these laws that are out there. No, they're God's laws. When you think about law, you should say to yourself, oh, this is

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God's law. This is what the Creator wants. And then once you're saved, this is what my

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Father wants, and He's given me the law in and through the hand of Christ, my brother, my

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Redeemer, my Savior, my friend. First use of the law, of course, is to show us our sin.

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Third use of the law is to guide us, but God's law doesn't change. God doesn't change. Only our relationship to God changes, and we are to do good works.

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We are created for good works, and really what happens is we ebb and flow in our desire to do good works.

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I've been a Christian now for 30 years, 35 years I believe total, and sometimes

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I feel like doing good works more than I do other times. And on this show, as you know, and in ministry, when

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I say think, I mean think. When I say feel, I mean feel. And sometimes I just don't feel like it.

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I usually think I should feel like it, but I don't always feel like I think it. You belong in the circus,

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Spock. I know, I know. So when we're working through good works, what do we do when we're not feeling like it, when we're not motivated to do good works, when we don't desire to do that as much as we should?

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And you know, we feel bad about it. We repent. We want to do the right thing. But I guess the question of the day, the question of the show is, how can

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I be motivated to do good works? Or if I'm in a season of doing a lot of good works, how can

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I keep at it? Or if you're in a season of spiritual blues and blaws and you, for some reason, aren't doing good works, don't really seem like you want to do good works, how can you be motivated?

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And frankly, some of you that listen are having a hard time doing ministry because you have little children, right?

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What does a mom do with four children at home? My daughter has two little children, she and her husband.

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And she said something to me the other day that I thought was quite insightful and I know it to be true.

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But just the way she said it, she said, you know, I say to myself, some days I don't get a lot done.

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I just am thankful that the children are still alive. So I kept them alive today.

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That's what I did. So that's good. Sometimes I think young moms sense or feel or think and get pressured by the church that they have to have all kinds of ministries at the church.

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There's different seasons. I think that's why in second chapter of Titus, you've got older teaching younger, the older ones are around and they've got a lot of time to teach.

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And when we think of widows, 1 Timothy 5 type of widows on the list, they've got extra time.

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And so there's a time and a season in our lives. But some of those exceptions aside,

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I'm talking today about good works and the motivations behind doing good works, because I want you to do good works.

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I want you to keep doing them. I want you to start getting back at it.

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If you've had a little layoff, Luther said, faith is a busy thing in the category of sanctification in the category of holy living.

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Faith is a busy thing. Faith is active. Faith does stuff. And that's what we do when we're responding to God's sanctifying grace.

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Luther also said that God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does. That's true.

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And you might ask yourself the question, why do I exist? What am I on earth for? What's my purpose in life?

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Why didn't they just hold me under the water when they baptized me, so I just go straight to heaven? And of course, even my paedo -baptist friends that are listening, you believe in believers baptism, don't you?

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I think maybe, I haven't met any paedo -baptist who do something besides sprinkle.

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I haven't done that, but I'm sure you exist out there. That's fine. Today's not about baptism.

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I know you think I'm a crypto -Presbyterian, almost, but I'm sure

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I'll die a Baptist, right? And then you'll think I'll see the light. But we're talking about other things today besides OPC, PCA, URC, NA, and the list goes on.

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Today we're talking about good works. And the whole thing was happening because I was teaching through Ephesians chapter two, and I got to that passage that sometimes is overlooked.

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I think when I was memorizing Ephesians two, I only memorized verses eight and nine, because ten was just left off the list.

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I memorized, for by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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I think I stopped there. Paul, making sure to prove that you're saved by grace alone, he says it's through faith, not because of faith.

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He says it's not your own doing, right? It's the doing of God. It's God's doing. You can go to 1

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Corinthians 1 .30 for that as well. It's a gift. You receive it. You don't earn it. You don't merit it.

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And to say it over again, especially in the realm of religious works and duties, that it's not the result of works.

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It's not religious works. For that matter, it's not civil works, moral works. It's none of that, because you should be boasting in the

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Lord, not in your own doing. Spurgeon said, at every point of the process of salvation, this word is appropriate, not of yourselves.

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He should say these words, not of yourselves. So your salvation, your sanctification, your glorification, not of yourselves.

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Sometimes I think we read Bible verses and we forget to keep reading. If you were going to ask me, how do

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I interpret the Bible? I would say, well, there's all kinds of ways in no particular order. Context is good.

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The immediate context, before and after. Within the book context, within the book of Ephesians, we need to know what that's all about so we can know what 2 .10

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is about. Within the canon, it's a Christian book, we interpret the obscure in light of the clear.

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That's a good hermeneutical principle. We interpret in light of the rest of Scripture, the analogy of Scripture, like what does the divine author say throughout

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Scripture, and we don't want to contradict the divine author. We interpret in light of the

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Messiah and his arrival and the scope of Christ. We interpret the

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Old Testament in light of the New, and we can list many others. But how do you interpret the Bible? There's an easy one, and that's to keep reading.

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I know you know that. Context and keep reading go together, but just to make the implicit explicit, we keep reading.

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For instance, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.

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Most people stop there, and you just need to keep reading because then you'll understand more of what

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Moses was writing. Here's Deuteronomy 29 .29 in the year 2929, if man's still alive.

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The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

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There's some things we don't know, some things we're not meant to know, some things we'll never know, but we do know certain things.

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We do have God's commands, and we have that summary of his commands, love God and love neighbor, and so we ought to be busy doing those things as Christians and not peering into the mind of God into—I don't want to say an abyss because that would be negative—but into infinity, into God, so then we'd never do anything.

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I'm trying to theologically autocorrect right now and want to make sure I don't get in trouble.

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It is good to contemplate God, but there are certain things that we just can't understand, so make sure we're not trying to figure out the secret things of God, but the things that are revealed, we want to understand those, even though some of the revealed things are very wonderful and mysterious and above us, that we may do all the words of the law, literally in Deuteronomy 29 .29.

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Back at it now, Ephesians 2 .8 -9 is followed by verse 10.

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That's the whole point of this. For we are his workmanship, even the first word for in English, for we are his workmanship,

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Ephesians 2 .10, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

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Instead of boasting, we are to be doing good works. We were dead in trespasses and sins,

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Ephesians 2 .1. We were dominated by the world, by Satan, by our own lust,

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Ephesians 2 .2 -3. God to the rescue, who was rich in mercy, great in love.

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He graced us and was kind to us and was demonstrating this in the ages to come to believer, to angels, to the universe, and so what do we do?

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We say it's got to be by grace because it's not our own doing. It's through faith. It's a gift of God. It's not a result of works.

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We're not to be boasting. What are we to do? We are to be doing good works and we can't even be boasting in our good works because we, number one, are his workmanship.

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We're his workmanship, not our own workmanship, and so since we're his workmanship, we want to give him glory.

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That's our aim. We want to make God look good. We are his workmanship.

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This is the same language of Romans 1 where he has made things, things made in physical creation, and now we are his making.

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We're his new creation. We're his handiwork, and what sometimes gets overlooked in this language, it was

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Israel that was God's handiwork in the Old Testament. Is he not your father,

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Israel, who created you? Deuteronomy 32, 6. Isaiah 43, 21, the people whom

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I formed for myself, and then Isaiah 44, verse 21, remember these things,

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O Jacob and Israel, for you are my servant. I formed you. You are my servant. O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me, and now wonderfully he adds

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Gentiles to this. It's not just Jews who are his workmanship, but Jews and Gentiles, and Paul will go on to talk about how these two are one, and the wall has been broken down later in chapter 2.

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We are a new creation. Galatians 6, 14 and 15, but far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

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So God has made you to shine, to work, to praise him, to honor him, to do good things.

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That's why you exist. And these things are all because of the

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Lord Jesus, created in Christ Jesus for good works. These testify to the fact that we, like in Colossians 1, should be bearing fruit in every good work.

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God creates these things. He makes you, and he makes everything else.

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We are united with Christ, and we, of course, are created. We're not created by doing good.

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We're not created by being good. We're not created in any of those things. We're created to do good, and he has called us out of spiritual death into spiritual life, and behold, the new has come, and we, because of the

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Lord Jesus, God's activity in Christ Jesus, have a purpose, and that purpose is good works, holy living.

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That's not the ground of our salvation. We have fruit. We have evidence.

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Luther said, it's not against works that we contend. It's against trust in works that we contend.

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And, of course, you know that famous slogan, faith alone justifies, but not the faith which is alone.

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It's categories matter, and so we have sola fide, and then we have faith even involved in the response to sanctification, and then we say notice in and yes to righteousness.

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God creates us, and we respond with doing good, and God had planned these things.

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Beforehand, of course, God is not chaotic. He's not random. He has order, and there's an order to the universe, and our good works are even planned.

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Even your good works were predestined. He predestined you. Chapter one, now he predestines your good works.

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NIV translation says, which God prepared in advance for us to do. New Living Translation, the good things he planned for us long ago, and I'm not saying you should read

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NIV and New Living as your main Bibles, but if you use them on Bible Hub and compare them, those translations to other translations looking at the same verses, it will help you, a la

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S .O .S. Johnson, where he would say, if you have four or five different Bible translations in English, that's probably the main thing you can use because you'll see lots of insight using different Bible translations.

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Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio, your good works were prepared beforehand, determined beforehand, appointed, prepared, all this language of sovereignty, that you may walk in them.

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So now you have sovereignty and responsibility right there in the same verse, and we would understand that the 1689 2nd

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London would say things like this, their ability to do good works does not arise at all from themselves, but entirely from the

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Spirit of Christ. To enable them to do good works, they need, in addition to the graces they've already received, an actual influence of the same

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Holy Spirit to work in them to will and to do his good pleasure. Yet this is no reason for them to grow negligent as if they were not required to perform any duty without a special motion of the

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Spirit. Instead, they should be diligent to stir up the grace of God that is in them.

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So of course there are exhortations in the New Testament. There are commands in the New Testament. There are laws in the

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New Testament for the Christian to do, and we respond to God's sanctifying grace with holy living.

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But of course, nowhere in the Bible should you read something about how these things are just self -propelled, coming up with them on your own, doing good on your own, giving the impression that these things can be done by yourself.

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Of course, should you walk in them? Yes. And Fuhrman said, it doesn't say that you should work in them like for salvation, but you should walk in them.

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God is glorified that you bear much fruit. That's right from John 15.

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We walked according to the course of this world, Ephesians 2, and now we want to walk in good works.

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What are good works? Loving neighbor, loving enemy, godly living.

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You can even see some of the good works in Ephesians later in chapter 4, telling the truth, working, forgiving, not being bitter, imitating

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God. In chapter 5, verse 2, sexually pure. There's all kinds of good works.

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We are not people that should respond to God's grace by just laying back and letting

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God, coasting and relaxing. We relax when it comes to trying to earn our salvation, and now we keep looking to the

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Lord by faith, and we respond, and there's fruit, there's gratitude, there's obedience, there's holy living.

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God created you to obey. He wants you to live in light of his commands.

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The desire even to obey God's law is from him. The ability to obey God's law is from him.

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Gerhardus Vos says good works are also in response to the holy disposition that is implanted in man by God, and we don't obey perfectly.

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We want to obey better. We have a desire to obey. We want to repent when we don't obey, but we're never going to perfectly work.

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That's not to get you off the hook. I'm just saying, if you don't have the greatest motives in the world to work, still just keep working for the

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Lord. Maybe he'll change your motives, but he accepts you, so he'll accept those works. One scholar said, we are justified by grace through a faith that simply rests in Christ, and we are sanctified by grace through a faith that resting in Christ is working through love.

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I like that. I like that a lot. Well, my name is Mike Gabenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

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We somehow lost our YouTube channel, so we're trying to get that thing up and running again. I am hoping to do a series on teaching for American Gospel.

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We'll see how that works. We've got the Cancer series that they are regularly playing, the

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Law Gospel series, the Sanctification series called Sanctify, and the Assurance series.

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So, I'm glad for that. I'm glad for Brandon and the ministry there.

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What else is happening? Excited to see the lineup for the Pactam Conference in Omaha this

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October. You might want to register for that. I'm sure it's going to sell out. Harrison Perkins.

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I don't know how he can go to a conference because he writes so many books. Does he have time for anything else?

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Michael Beck. I hope Harrison's half as fun as Michael Beck because Michael's a really neat guy to be around.

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Sometimes when I'm around really smart people, they're not that fun, but he is very fun.

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Anyway, Pactam Conference, Omaha, October. Pat will be speaking, of course.

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I'll be there, Lord willing. And then I think Chris Larson from Ligonier. You might know

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Ligonier via R .C. Sproul's ministry. So, just a little plug there. Also, listen to the

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Pactam, thepactam .org. What else? Who else could

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I say that I support? Redemption Church, North County, Pastor Luke Ebenroth.

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That's it. It's a family affair. All right.

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Let's turn it into preaching for a little bit regarding good works. If you're a Christian, do you have a desire to do good works?

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The answer is, of course. Live for yourself for your whole life, and then

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God saved you, and now you want to live for Him. If you're a Christian, you might actually begin to think that your final justification is dependent on your good works.

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Don't listen to people that would tell you that. Stop that. You might listen to people that say, you don't need to do any good works because Jesus did all of them.

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So, from neonomism, final justification stuff, to antinomianism, you need to avoid both of those errors.

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And with categories that the Reformed helped us with, fruit and evidence, out of gratitude, you do good works.

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And so, you think, you know what? Jesus paid it all. All to Him I know. Sin has left a crimson stain.

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He washed it white as snow. Love's excelling, love divine, demands my soul, my mind, my all, something.

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I know that's wrong, but something like that. It's just, that's the way it works. Guilt, grace, gratitude. So, do you have a ministry?

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Do you minister? Do you do good works? Do you get sad when you don't do good works?

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Are you convicted even now because you don't do good works? And again, if you've got four children at home and they're all in diapers, there's lots of stuff that maybe you can get done in life, but it's probably just not right now.

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My point is, your desire to do good works is from the

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Spirit of God. You're a new creation in Christ Jesus. You're His workmanship. Your works have been prepared beforehand, and you can just walk in them.

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Lots of times I say to myself, if there's been a really neat encounter evangelistically, sometimes people call it a

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God thing. I hate that language. That was a real God thing. You know what?

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I guess you're right. If you want to talk like it's the message Bible, that's a God thing. I think there's different language that would be more reverent.

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And again, I don't want to be some crabby old man who's almost 65 now and on Medicare. I'm almost 65, and I'll probably have to sign up for Medicare just here real soon.

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I can't believe this year I'll turn 65. That is so wrong. Where did all these years go?

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I mean, I've been in New England now 27 years. Where did they go? Some years seem like they were decades.

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Other years just flew by. Amazing. 27 years.

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I wonder what 27 times 365 is. Probably quite a bit. Still don't have much of an accent.

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Once in a while I'll say, I dear. And these days I'll talk about a shopping carriage, not a cart.

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And I'll talk about 495, not the 495 freeway. No definite articles.

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What else will I talk about? I don't know. Donkeys. I'm rambling now.

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Are I not? Good works. We want to do good works because we want to honor the

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Lord. And when you look at Jesus on earth, that's what he did.

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He went around doing good, healing, preaching, and everything in between, doing good.

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And so we aren't going to do good to get saved. We aren't going to do good to get saved. We're not going to do good to make it through the final justification.

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We're going to do good out of a response to a God who has been merciful to us, loving to us, gracious to us, and kind to us.

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And we want to respond with good works. And we want to boast in the Lord. And we want to help other people because faith is a busy thing and our neighbor needs our good works.

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Does that sound right? I think that sounds right. My name is Mike Ebenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Don't forget

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Law Gospel, a primer, 100 -page little booklet, super easy to read, designed to be handed out promiscuously.