Book of Romans, 13:11-14 - God's Governance of Man | The Second Coming of Christ (03/13/2022)

Park Meadows Church

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Lord, thank you so much for this time, and we ask you to bless it. Lord, keep our hearts and minds in your word.

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May you speak to us. May your Holy Spirit, the author of this amazing book, teach us today, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

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And you can, we're in Romans chapter 13, verse eight, if you'd like to be turning there.

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And Michael Bedard is with us today. I wanna welcome you. He's a pastor here in town. His kids are in our school.

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Great friend of ours and Paul's and the church and the school and a supporter of all that.

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And great to have you drop by and visit today. I appreciate you being with us. And if you can, stay for lunch.

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We have lunch here every time after church. We'd love to have you. We have plenty for everybody.

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And so, all right, guys. Romans chapter 13, verse eight.

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Oh, no man anything but to love one another, for he that loveth another has fulfilled the law.

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We've been talking about that verse for several Sundays, talking about how the law of Christ, the law of love is vastly different than the law of Moses.

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And we've given you 25 different answers to legalists who will come in and tell you, oh, you gotta worship on Saturday.

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Oh, you gotta call Jesus Yeshua. Oh, you gotta do this. You gotta do that. And it's okay to call

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Jesus Yeshua if you want to. And it's okay to worship on Saturday if you want to, but don't let legalism creep in.

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We're supposed to be worshiping on the Lord's day. And if you remember, we gave you five or six quotes from early church fathers prior to the year 200

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AD saying we're already worshiping on Sunday. So the idea that the Catholics invented that, and it's supposed to really be on Saturday is ludicrous.

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It's a lie. It's not true. It doesn't follow what we know about church history, nor does it follow scripture because in the book of Acts, they're already worshiping on the

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Lord's day. So don't let people put you under legalism. And like the apostle

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Paul said, if someone comes in the church like that, we won't endure them for an hour and then they'll be out of here. That's how that goes.

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And that's how it should be. It's how he did it. Because the law killeth and the spirit giveth life.

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And so we've been talking about the difference between law and grace just off of that one little verse for a while, but we're gonna go on to the next verse here, believe it or not, today.

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And so let's look at Romans 13 and verse 11. Before I do that though, let me say this, because we have a few folks that may not know exactly kind of where we are in this study.

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In all of Romans chapter 13, to me, the whole idea of the chapter is how

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God governs the actions of men. And it's got four basic major points in it.

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We've covered three of them. So we're gonna start the fourth one today. But the first one was the Christian's relationship to human government, right?

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The scripture says we're supposed to obey the government. And the second major point was why are we supposed to obey the government?

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What happens if we don't? We talked about that out of Romans chapter 13. And then the third one that we just finished is the law of Christ, the law of love, and how

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Jesus was the fulfillment of the law and how the law is called beggarly compared to grace.

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The Bible says it's been set aside and a new testament or covenant has come into play in 25 different reasons.

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You don't have to listen to someone who tries to bring you back under the law and says, well, we believe in Jesus, but you gotta.

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You just, there is no but, you gotta. Like it's the blood of Jesus plus nothing. And we're gonna keep it that way in this local church.

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And hopefully there are many, many local churches around the world that understand these things. I know 150 years ago, almost every church understood it, not so much now.

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But the fourth one that we're gonna start today is it's interesting because of your Sunday school lesson, you hit right in it.

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And then Maddie, she stepped out for a second, her song, her song hit right on what the topic is.

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And we just started it today. So it's the second, how does the second coming of Christ and the doctrine of the second coming of Christ, what effect does that have on the

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Christians? And what effect has it always had for the last 2000 years when preachers preach about it? And how does that affect, how does

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God use that to affect the church, which then in turn affects the whole world? So that's the topic we're talking about starting right now.

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And so now we can go to Romans 13, 11, where it starts to introduce this idea. So read along with me there,

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Romans 13, 11. And that knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.

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For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. That's true, isn't it?

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The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light.

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Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put ye on the

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Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof.

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That is the basic message of the second coming that's been preached for 2000 years. And almost every great preacher that you'll ever read sermons of old time sermons, they will from time to time, probably more than once a year, preach on the topic of the second coming.

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And it's always been the great hope of the church. The rapture has been the great hope of the church. And it also has always stirred the church to come back to holiness.

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Because as you pointed out so well in your Sunday school lesson, when you start thinking about the end times, you start thinking about cutting the sin out of your life.

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We all think that way, cutting the sin out of our lives, because the Lord is coming back and we want to be ready.

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The church needs to be pure and white and ready when he comes back. And that is the effect that this doctrine has had on the church for 2000 years.

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And it's interesting because it's not preached about as much now as it used to be. A lot of people avoid it because there's controversy as far as where does the rapture hit in all of this.

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And to me, there's no controversy there because the apostle Paul made it so plain. I don't know why it took me so long to say this.

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Because I grew up believing the pre -trib rapture theory and all that, because all my mentors taught it to me and I didn't want to take time to study it.

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I didn't, but finally the Lord led me to. But even after that, it was only maybe a year ago or a couple of years ago when it hit me, it's so obvious.

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Paul said, look, we cannot precede them who have gone on before us.

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They're in the grave. They must arise and ascend first. And then we will go up together with them and we will be changed in the air.

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So the rapture cannot happen until the great resurrection which is at the end of the tribulation period.

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It's at the end of the seven years. And that's not news people like to hear. So, and people disagree with me quite often and I would have 20 years ago,

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I would have disagreed with me if someone had walked up and suggested that to me. And I would hope that I would have had an open enough mind to sit down and let them share with me why they now believe that.

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But a lot of people don't and that's okay. So it's a bit divisive. So pastors are kind of staying away from it.

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And yet it's the very thing we need to be preaching because as history shows, every time preachers preached it throughout the last 2000 years, it has brought the church back towards revival and holiness, isn't that something?

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And that's an amazing thing about this doctrine. Well, in this little passage from verse 11 through 14,

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I see seven points, all right? So I'm not saying we'll get to all of them today, but we might, we'll see.

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So let's just start at the top, verse 11. And that knowing the time that now is high time to wake out of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believe.

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Now you're thinking, well, I thought I got saved when I believed. Anybody thinking that?

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If you're paying attention, you're thinking that. Well, that doesn't make much sense. How can my salvation be nearer than when

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I believe? Because I thought when I believed I got saved. Well, that's a little bit, you have to kind of look into this idea and this use of the word salvation.

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There are very few times when it's used this way, but in this case, it's talking about the salvation of your physical body.

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It's not talking about the salvation of your soul. And you have to remember that the word salvation is probably the biggest term we have for what we might call regeneration.

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We might call it justification. We might call it sanctification. We might call it glory, being glorified.

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We might call it propitiation. I mean, the word salvation has all that in it. It's a huge set.

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And one of the things in that huge set when the Bible talks about salvation is what happens to us at the moment of the rapture when this body is changed.

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Or if you pass away, we may, if we get time, we'll talk about this a little bit. But if you pass away before the rapture, you get a temporary body.

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I don't know if you, most people in this church probably know that, but you might not have thought about that a long time.

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You get a temporary body. And then when the rapture happens, your real body that you live this life in will be put back together and come out of that grave.

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If you passed away before the rapture, you'll come out of the grave and you will meet it and you will go into that body and the temporary body will be gone.

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And so then you live the rest of all eternity, age into age into age in your glorified body that you actually lived in here, but now it's glorified.

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Now that's sort of the steps that happen. But what's interesting about it is that that moment, whether it, and it will happen at the rapture.

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It just depends on whether you're still alive. If you're still alive, you get raptured and you change in the air. Or if you passed away before that, you come out of the grave before those of us, you see where I think

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I'll be, still be on the earth. Those of us who are still alive and remain, we cannot proceed you.

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You have to come out of the grave first. And then we go up with you at the same time, which puts the rapture squarely at the end of the seven year tribulation period.

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I've never had anybody be able to answer that one. They like to, they'll try to cheat on it and say, well, there's more than two resurrections, but there aren't.

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You can study the Bible all the way from Genesis to Revelation. There are two. One happens at the end of the church age.

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The other one happens at the end of the thousand year millennial kingdom. And they say, well, what about the one guys that came up out of the grave when

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Jesus was on the cross? That was not a resurrection. You know how you know the difference? Because the definition of a resurrection is that when you get resurrected, you are now in a glorified body and you never die again.

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Those people died again. They weren't resurrected. They just came out of the grave. It was a miracle that God chose to make happen and it's recorded, but then they later died and went back in the grave.

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And then someday they'll get, they'll be brought up out of the grave at the end of the tribulation period, right?

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And then you can, you know, so there are several places in there that say, well, they'll say, you know, the resurrection is a series of steps and there are many, maybe as many as five different steps part to it.

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And they use that to try to get around the clear truth of the scripture that no, there's actually only two resurrections spoken of in the

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Bible. And the rapture happens after the first resurrection. I don't see any way around it.

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I don't like that news because it means that we will be here through the tribulation period. I think if I were

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Satan and I wanted to slaughter a lot of innocent Christian men, women, and children, the greatest lie that I could tell was, don't worry about it.

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You won't be here. So no one prepares. And that's what I think happened. I think one of the greatest lies of all church history is this pre -tribulation rapture concept.

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I even know where it was invented now. I found a great book that a man who is an investigative reporter, whose dad was a preacher and his grandpa was a preacher, set out to find the place where that theory originated because it's a new theory.

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It's not an old theory. You don't see that early church fathers talking about it at all. And so it happened in a house in England.

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And the book tells about where the house was, the address of the house, what the lady's name, it was a female faith healer who came up with the concept.

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She spoke in tongues. She was a faith healer. She was a prophetess, which the Bible says, you know, that has ceased.

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But anyway, she was basically what we would call a charismatic or a Pentecostal of today that believes that those sign gifts are still operative.

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And she's the person who invented this theory of the rapture. You go read it. It's part of history now.

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So a lot of people don't wanna think about it, but it's a fact. So if you can't get the chronology right, you won't be ready.

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I had a friend challenged me one time back when I believed the pre -Trib theory. He said,

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David, would you at least do this for me? Would you go back and reread Matthew 24 and let

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Jesus's chronology be more important to you than the books you've read? And I said, yeah, that's fair. And that was the beginning of me reexamining or actually examining it on my own for the first time.

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And I was probably 50 years old and I had just gone with what my mentors told me because I wasn't that interested in the topic, frankly.

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I like things to do with God. I like the character of God. I like to preach about Jesus. I like to preach about the great doctrines of salvation and all the great doctrines of the

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Bible. The second coming was not my interest. So I had never looked at it on my own until I was 50 something.

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And when that man challenged me with that, I knew what he was getting at because there were certain passages that never made sense to me under that other theory that didn't fit.

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So I started studying it for about a year there and then I've studied it ever since. But I think it's a sad thing that Satan has been able to manipulate the chronology of the end times.

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And now at a time when people need to know it more than ever before, everyone's confused about it.

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So that's pretty sad. But one thing that's not confusing is this little passage. So the first thing that it says is, now it's high time to wake out of sleep, our salvation.

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In other words, the renewing of our physical body, the change in the air, so to speak.

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Like when we go from this body that is mortal to an immortal glorified body, that's the salvation this is talking about.

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That moment is nearer now than it was when we got saved. Now that's kind of obvious because we're moving towards the second coming, but Paul gives it as a warning to start to get ready.

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Even in his day, he felt like it might have happened in his day. Every generation of Christians that have ever lived have thought that the rapture and the second coming could happen in their lifetime.

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And God wrote it this way on purpose because that was the great hope. He gave everyone hope throughout every generation.

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But also Jesus gave signs and many of the signs that needed to happen had not happened even when my grandmother was alive who swore she would live until the rapture.

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She did not, but she's in heaven now. But some of the things that needed to happen hadn't happened in her lifetime just that long ago, my grandmother's lifetime.

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And they have now happened some of those things. And then there are other things that still have not happened such as there has to be a new temple built in Jerusalem.

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And there are two Islamic mosques in the place where the temple has to be. So those have to go away.

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So imagine how that could happen. I often thought while Trump was president, he might be the dude who pushes that button.

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But somebody somewhere will do something that will eliminate at least one of those two mosques and the

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Jews will begin to build the temple. And when they do, you've got probably less than three and a half years to get wherever you're going when the greater part of the great tribulation happens three and a half years later.

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The Antichrist will offer a pig on the altar in that building. So that building has to be built, hadn't been built yet.

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So there's still signs that haven't come to pass, but there are many signs that have. Jesus said, look, there's gonna be rumors of wars and there are gonna be earthquakes in diverse places.

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And then he said, there will be pestilences. Isn't that interesting? Because that's what COVID was and is.

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And he put a plural on that, so COVID won't be the last one. And he said, but don't despair, the end is not yet.

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He said, these things must needs come to pass first and then the gospel will be preached in every nation and the end will come, right?

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So, it is interesting that one of the things in that little passage

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Jesus talked about was he said that mother will rise up against daughter and daughter against mother and you will be arrested and many will be killed.

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And do you know that after January 6th of last year, that over,

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I think it was 200 ,000 Tibbs went to the FBI from adult children, turning their parents in, who they saw on TV at the

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Capitol building. They turned them in to the FBI to be arrested. To me, that's somewhat fulfilled prophecy.

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Now, they didn't kill them. So, we're still gotta move on down the history line to get to the place where the persecution gets to be that bad.

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But we're moving at a rapid pace. We're accelerating towards that time. And so, what the

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Lord is telling us here in verse 11 is, it's time for us to wake out of sleep. We can't just go on as the

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American church has been going in our lifetime. And we're all part of it. We know what that means. We know that all of us have probably been in a dead church before and wanted to escape that.

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All of us have been in churches where false doctrine maybe was taught and we wanted to get away from that. You know, we've all wished we could have, you know, 5 ,000 people here at Park Meadows to fellowship with and all that.

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And, you know, you don't have, listen, I personally don't see as many people come to the

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Lord as we did in the 80s when this church started. I just don't see as many. But I lately have seen several.

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It's really interesting, but it's been through business. Marion, you got saved here recently.

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And, you know, there are a couple of other people right now that the Lord put in our path.

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And it's really interesting to see God working in their lives. And so, you know, you're still seeing people say, but it's not like it was.

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So I don't know. I don't know if that's just my own small circle here or if worldwide, it's just more like apostasy is starting to hit.

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Like Jesus said, we had to have a great falling away from the truth before the antichrist would arise and the

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Lord would come back and all that. So I just think we're moving towards it. And I think this is a great warning for our church here today is to awaken.

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Don't, we can't just be the little church we've always been and just, you know, come together and love on each other and have a meal and go home.

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And we have to be taking it a little bit farther than that now. We've got to be a little bit more in prayer than we have been.

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I mean, individually, when we get home, we gotta be in the word more than we have been at home. Individual quiet times with the

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Lord. We've got to be praying for each other more. We've got to do everything we can to get the true gospel out because the gospel has been falsified so much in the last 10 years in America.

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I mean, this little gospel where, dear Jesus, come to my heart and say me amen and come down to the altar and pray that prayer and you're just fine.

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I mean, that never has been the gospel. It's never been the way it works. And so we've got to continue to be salt light, tell the truth, and we've got to guard our own lives.

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We've got to awaken from the sleep and not get lazy and just say, well, okay,

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I slipped into a sin there and I'm sorry, Lord. And then slip into another one. We've got to wake up.

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We've got to be stronger than that now. We've got to say no to some things that we're not supposed to be doing.

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We've got to say yes to some things that we're supposed to be doing because now the salvation of this body, the rapture, the change of this body is closer than it was when we got saved.

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That's verse 11. Look at verse 12. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.

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Wow, he continues the theme, doesn't he? Like this church age is far spent.

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The Lord said, I will make a quick work on the earth. The history of the world is not going to last long.

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It's not going to be millions of years. It's about 8 ,000 years or six to eight.

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We don't know exactly, somewhere in that ballpark. And that's about what it's going to be. It's not going to be much longer.

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This age is not going to last much longer. It is far spent. The day is at hand.

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What day is that? Well, whatever day that is, I think it's talking about the return of Jesus Christ like the lightning from the

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East to the West. And that day is soon coming. And the Bible says, forsake not the assembly of ourselves together.

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And so much the more as we see what? The day approaching, same day.

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So what does that tell me? At a time when COVID has got us kind of avoiding church and the churches have all dwindled.

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Every church that I know of has dwindled. We should be more together than ever before because we need the strength of one another to go through what we're about to go through.

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And you can sit here and say, well, it's theory. It's not really going to affect me for a while.

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And yet I'll tell you any moment, if he were to push a button in 15 minutes, any city in this country could be gone.

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And it doesn't matter to think, well, yeah, but we could probably destroy all their cities in the next 15 minutes.

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But what would it look like to you today if Chicago was totally gone? Well, maybe I should pick a different city.

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LA, well, maybe I should pick a different city. How about Dallas? Right?

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What is just gone? 15 minutes from now. And you're on your TV watching total silence there.

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No sirens this time, no first responders because they're all dead. Nothing, just dust in the air that keeps the crops from growing and makes the animals that you kill.

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And if you ate them, they would kill you because of the nuclear fallout that's in their bodies.

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It's interesting to watch Chernobyl. Have you watched that little TV series about that? If you have not, look it up and watch it.

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On, I can't say it right. Chernobyl, am I saying it right? You know, in Russia where they had the nuclear disaster.

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You know what's interesting? Is it was like a ghost town, but you had little foxes running around and you had squirrels and you had rabbits.

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It didn't kill the animals. God's made it where they can survive that. Humans would be dead from the radioactive material.

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But if you were to eat the meat of those, it would kill the human. See, so like, it's just gonna be, everything will change when that button gets pushed.

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My son -in -law, Dave, he's quite the scholar nowadays, Bible scholar nowadays,

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I guess you've noticed. I noticed he's coming out with stuff and teaching me stuff I have not seen yet. And it started out,

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I was supposed to be teaching him. Now he's teaching me stuff that I haven't seen yet. And he was showing me one in the

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Old Testament where it literally, I don't remember where it was. I'll have to look it up when he gets back.

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But it pictured this, it pictured Gog and Magog, which every scholar I'm aware of knows that that's

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Russia or believes that it's Russia, Moscow. And this is like written 2 ,800, 900 years ago,

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Gog and Magog. And then it said, those who dwell in the isles carelessly.

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Who do you think that is? Well, from the Bible viewpoint, when it was written,

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Europe and Asia is about all they knew the world was. And you had England, which was an isle.

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England was an island nation. And the offspring of England, which is the United States, is if it is mentioned in the

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Bible anywhere, it is mentioned as the isles. And so picture this, in this passage of scripture that Dave read to me, just while we were reading that,

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I don't know, we're starting to do a positive stock market meeting with positive stuff going on. He's reading me that stuff.

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And it says that fire will engulf

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Gog and Magog and those who carelessly dwell in the isles. And I pictured nukes passing each other in the air and hitting those two nations and just boom, city's gone, nuclear winter hitting, your crops won't grow in 15 minutes of time.

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So you can't tell me this passage of scripture isn't right on for us sitting here today.

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The time is far spent, the day is at hand.

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Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light.

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The works of darkness, call it the sins of your youth, call it satanic things that may have affected families, whatever these things are, we need to lay those aside and put on the armor.

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Let's talk about that armor just a little bit this morning. In Ephesians chapter six, if you'd like to turn there, verse 10, for Michael, it's a familiar passage.

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Any pastor has preached through the spiritual warfare passages. And this is the greatest of all of them in the whole

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Bible. Finally, my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

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Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

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For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places and against the rulers of the darkness of this world.

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Wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.

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Now, what day is that? Now, I've used it my whole life to just mean a day of great sorrow that could hit our family, right?

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We all go through that, don't we? We have risk, do we not? But I think the specific interpretation of this evil day, the, with the word the in front of it, the evil day is this last period of time on the earth, the great tribulation period of three and a half years and everything that happens, the battle of Armageddon.

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This is the evil day. And it tells us that we need to have on the whole armor of God that we might be able to stand in that evil day.

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All right, now, verse 14 says, stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth. Now, what's really interesting,

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I'm gonna jump over to a passage in 1 Thessalonians for a second. I'm gonna come back to this. Look at 1

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Thessalonians chapter five, be looking that up for a second. I'm gonna read a little bit more of this and then

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I'm gonna talk to you about something that gives us a little bit of light on some parts of Ephesians six.

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So we're supposed to have our loins girt about with truth. And the truth, of course, we know is the word of God. We need the breastplate of righteousness, which is the positional righteousness that we have because we're in Christ, but it's beyond that.

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It's also the experiential righteousness that we will have as the tribulation gets greater and the normal things of life go away and the things that tempt us are not even as much around us anymore.

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And even if they were, it wouldn't affect us as much because we're so fearful for the lives of our wives and kids and families because of the tribulation that we are really close to the

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Lord. And a lot of the sin habits are just gone all of a sudden without us even thinking about it.

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We're not even tempted by it anymore. And all of a sudden the church is made white. She makes herself white is how the word of God phrases it.

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So it's not positional, it's you doing stuff. It's experiential. It's us making a decision to live right, to be strong, to not give in to sin, to walk with the

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Lord, to pray more, to serve him more. And all of these things are gonna come to pass as these days come to pass.

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And so what it's talking about here is that we stand with our loins and we're gonna look at that in Thessalonians.

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It'll show you exactly what this is. A picture of your loins are down here where you would have armor down around your waist if you were fighting in a sword fight, hand -to -hand combat in the old days when this was written.

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So have your loins girded about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness that can't be just positional.

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It also is experiential because this is something it tells you to put on. Well, the positional got put on you by the

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Holy Spirit. Like one of the things the Holy Spirit did for you the moment he saved you when you were regenerated is he gave you the righteousness of Christ.

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So that's past tense. It doesn't happen every day. It's just one time only, and you got it. God the Father sees you as perfect all the time forever because of that.

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But this is telling you to do something and me to do something, put on this. So this has to be experiential righteousness.

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This is talking about holy living. This is talking about ongoing sanctification. And I know we can't do any of it without the

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Holy Spirit and the Bible. You gotta have the water and the spirit, right? Same thing that saved us. The same two things have to be there to cause us to be holy and to walk right.

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So we have to have the Bible. We have to have the Holy Spirit, but we have to try. We have to have us trying also and working at it.

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And that's what this is talking about when it says put on a breastplate of righteousness. Then you need to have your feet shot with preparation of gospel peace.

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What does that mean? We need to be witnessing more, not less. We don't need to say, well, there was a time when we knocked on every door in my hand, every door in Corsicana, pretty much almost every door.

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But when's the last time we did that, right? It's been a long, long time ago. And we, but I don't even consider that the best method anymore.

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I was in my youth when I, when we did that. And we did do that. We knocked on just about every door in Mahea four times and just about every door here once.

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It's not the best method. You know what the best method is? Live a godly life in front of people and every new friend that you meet, it's a stranger, but it's a new friend.

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Throw out a little spiritual something and see what they do with it. If they change the subject, just forget about it and talk about baseball with them.

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But if they say, yeah, you know, I've been thinking about that too, then go a little deeper. And you share the gospel.

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How did Jesus do it with the woman at the well? Was it a long involved process that you'd have to learn in an evangelistic class here at church?

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Like, here's the five steps I need you to do. Or did he just say, look, look, if you had the water that I can give you, you'll live forever.

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And that's all he said. That's basically it. She said, Lord, I want that water. And he said, well, go get your husband.

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She said, I don't have one. He said, that's right. You got five men you're living with. And she said, whoa, how do you know that?

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And somewhere in the next few moments, she was born again. She might've been born again when she said, give me that water. And probably even before she said, give me that water, when in her heart, she wanted that water.

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Are we getting there? We're getting closer to the true gospel because Romans 10, 13 is not real great in English.

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It's really great in Greek because in Greek it's whosoever desires to call upon the name of the

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Lord shall be saved. Once that desire hits your heart, you're already regenerated because there is no unregenerate that has that desire.

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That's easy to prove with scripture and with my own life and probably with yours. Five seconds before you got saved, you did not want to get saved most likely.

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Unless you're thinking that when you prayed up here, because five seconds before that, you were back there.

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And when that desire hits where you got saved. So five seconds before that happened, you didn't want it. I didn't want it.

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God was my enemy. So it's why we were yet in our sins. He quickened us, brought us to life.

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Regeneration is fully a work of God. Man has no part in it other than to receive it as a free gift.

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And that gospel is gone now. Even the Baptist churches I grew up in have now added some effects of salvation and they're pretending they're part of the cause.

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Oh, well, you gotta. Yeah, I mean, you gotta believe, but you gotta repent. You gotta come down to the altar and confess with your mouth.

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And I know there's scriptures that make people think that, but those are effects of the salvation. They're not the cause of it.

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The cause is the Holy Spirit regenerating us. And so when that happens to a person, boom, they're born again.

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And then God, the Holy Spirit gives us about 33 different gifts all at once, as you've heard me say so many times.

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But one of those gifts is positional righteousness. Once we have it, we got it forever.

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So how can this tell us to put on righteousness? So that's a different kind of righteousness. That means experiential.

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And that's where you have to make a decision to be a better person today, to walk with the

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Lord and hold his hand, because the only way I can be Christ -like is if I'm in Christ, if I'm like spirit -filled is what

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I should say. If I'm filled with the spirit, I can actually walk with Christ and walk as Christ and present righteousness to the world as they would look at us.

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And that's what this is talking about. So cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

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Let us walk honestly, live the Christian life. Don't be a hypocrite.

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Don't be saved on the inside and living like the world on the outside, right? Walk honestly as in the day.

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Now, this is so interesting because what I find in the modern church, and it grieves me.

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I wish, I honestly wish God had written a Bible where it says, don't ever touch alcohol.

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Don't drink it, don't touch it. But he didn't say it quite like that. Although for a long time in my ministry,

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I tried to make it say that, but it doesn't say that. I wish it did. But I can tell you this.

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Alcohol is the destroyer of so many families from the point of view of morals, but also financially.

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And it would be best to never touch it. And when young kids ask me, does the

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Bible say I can't take a social drink? I can't answer that anymore because my answer would have to be no, it doesn't say you can't.

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So I just don't answer it. I just ask them a question. I say, well, I think maybe you're asking the wrong question. Maybe you should be asking, would that make me a stronger witness to the world if I drink?

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Because the answer to that is no. And, you know, I have observed some people who claim to be

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Christians in the last three days, drinking, you know, drinking beer, drinking whatever.

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And I'm thinking, okay, you can do that. And it's almost as if they're showing me they can do that because they know me, these people

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I'm referring to. They know me and they know how, you know, they know that when

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God saved me, he took that out of my life because I had a problem with it and he just removed it. And that's great. I'm glad he did.

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And it doesn't mean that when I look at Christians who do take a drink that I think they're not saved, it doesn't mean that.

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It doesn't mean that I look at them and think they're a sorry Christian. It doesn't even mean that. What it does mean is I think, well, they got a crutch that I don't need and they probably don't need it, but they hadn't thought of it that way.

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That's kind of how I look at it. Is that fair or am I being legalistic? What do you think?

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I don't wanna be legalistic. I don't want to be judgmental, but I do know that this says not writing and drunkenness.

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And yet I see the young churches, the mega churches and the young people going to church. I am aware of classes of Bible students where the teacher takes them out for social drinks after church is over Sunday morning.

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I'm like, I'm not for that. And can I say the

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Bible says it's wrong and evil? I don't know, but that's not the best question.

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The question is, is it best? Does it present a strong witness to the world that needs us? Like, what about when they need us and they say, oh, well, they're just like me.

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They're not gonna come to us for help, right? So we need to lay these things aside, especially in this day, not in chambering and wantonness.

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That's talking about sexual immorality. I mean, man, there are people that I know and love that think that you should live together for a while before you get married, try each other out.

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Where does that come from in the Bible is my question. Where does it come from? God says to lay that aside.

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Chambering, I mean, that's an old English word for playing house, right? Playing that we're married when we're not.

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He says, lay that aside. And wantonness, that's just overextended sexual desire that's caused by all the temptation that's in our world today, where it's overstimulated.

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Lay that aside. Strife and envying, well, that's in the church for sure. Not so much a little church like this one, but the big churches, man, you got people arguing over the color of the carpet and everything else.

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And put the way to correct all this, look at this. Verse 14, put ye on the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Now we're already saved, right? So what does that mean? That's just talking about being, it's another way of saying be spirit filled.

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Be like, reach up, take his hand, say I'm gonna walk with you today. I'm not gonna do my own thing, I'm just walking with you today.

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When we do that, we will not sin during those moments. First John says, the new man cannot sin.

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So when we're walking in the spirit like that, we present all these things properly to the world in these end times, and you actually will see people come to you for help.

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I've had that happen lately, and it's really, it's the most awesome feeling there is in the world, is where you try to walk with the

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Lord well enough where people can at least tell you're a Christian, and then all of a sudden, when they get in trouble, they come to you for help, and then you're able to verbally witness with your mouth and show them.

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Usually what I'm using lately is just Romans 10, 13 in the Greek. Whosoever has the desire to call upon the

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Lord shall be saved. So when you get that desire, let me know, because you're saved.

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It's that simple. We've made it so complex. It doesn't require the church altar.

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It doesn't require the pastor. It doesn't require the church and holy water and all that. It's just like God and you meeting for the first time and you noticing a desire you never had before, that was put there by the

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Holy Spirit. And then, of course, you respond by believing, by repenting, by getting baptized in the water, by trying to do good works, and all these effects come about because you are saved.

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That's true biblical Christianity. The book of James is not contradicting Romans. It's just about effects, whereas Romans is mostly about the causes.

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But where James does speak about the cause, it agrees perfectly with Paul. So here we have it.

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Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh. So those are two things, not one.

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I want you to think about it because I'm done here. I'm done. That's the last verse, okay, for today.

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Two things. Put two things we have to do if we're gonna walk the way he's telling us to walk in the last times.

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One is put on the Lord Jesus. And that means when we are tempted to be in the flesh, we just need to get back out of the flesh and get in the spirit.

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Because you know how it is. Our first thought when someone, especially if you're driving in Dallas or something, someone cuts you off, what's your first thought?

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That old man, that old man, you realize he is like, he's supposed to be dead, but he's hanging around, right?

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But what is your second thought? Lord, you know, give me, how would you deal with this?

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Your hand's about to hit that horn. How would you deal with this? And so you bring back in that, you take hold of his hand and you're spirit filled again.

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And now you have the ability to be salt and light. So do that more.

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That's what this is saying. Put on the Lord Jesus, do that more of the moments of every day.

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And the second thing is this, don't make provision for the flesh. Now that one's easy, but it's hard because it's easy to understand what it means.

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Like you got a problem with smoking, don't put a carton of cigarettes up in the high corner of your closet, just in case you need one.

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I'll use that because I don't have a problem with that one. Okay, now with me, it would be like, don't hide a donut in the corner of your closet back there because see with me, my big problem is donuts.

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So I'm not saying that's the only, but I mean, that's my big problem. So what's yours?

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Whatever it is, whatever your sin problem is, it doth so easily beset you, don't make provision for it.

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Like don't make it easy for you to do it. Get it out of the house at least. And Charlotte has done that with the donuts for sure.

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But you see the point. So we have two areas to work on. One is walking in the spirit more often because being spirit -filled is not a once this morning and it lasts all day.

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It's a moment by moment thinking about what you're thinking about and making sure you're walking in the spirit.

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And then the second thing is don't make provision for the flesh. So those are hugely important in these last days.

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Now, I told you I was gonna tell you one thought from Thessalonians. Let me do that and we'll be done. But in Ephesians, where it continues to talk about the armor, right here where it says, having your loin skirt about with the truth.

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In First Thessalonians chapter five, it's interesting that if you look at the context of this whole chapter, look what it says in verse one.

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But of the times and seasons, brethren, you have no need that I write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the

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Lord comes as a thief in the night. What's the context? It's talking about the second coming. Same topic that we're talking about.

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And in the context, it brings up spiritual warfare and how to put the armor on, which this other one did too.

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So it's interesting that those two kind of, like the end times and spiritual armor are things

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God put together because we need the armor even more as we see the day approaching. So you're not in darkness, brethren, that the day should overtake you as a thief.

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I've had so many people tell me, well, there are no signs for the rapture.

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And that's because books say that. The Bible does not say that though. There are many signs actually.

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But you know how they'll say, well, the reason there can't be any signs is because it says it happens as a thief in the night.

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And if there were signs, then you would know when he's coming. So that proves that there's no signs for the rapture. The problem with that theory is it's false.

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In the way we know it's false is because down here in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse four, or verse three, it says, for when they, they is the lost world, people who don't know the

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Lord, when they are saying peace and safety, everything's gonna be fine, then sudden destruction comes upon them as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape.

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And look at verse four, but you, brethren, are not in darkness that the day should overtake you as a thief.

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So like, yeah, to the world, he comes as a thief in the night. To us, we should be expecting him before he gets here.

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We should be watching for the signs and be expecting him before he gets here. And when he comes, it shouldn't be a big surprise.

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We should be, wow, I'm glad you did that right now because I was about to get blown up, or I was about to get persecuted or taken into Washington, D .C.

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and examined and whatever they're going to do, goodness gracious, alive. So anyway, it goes on down here, and it says, you are the children of light, okay?

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And then it says the same thing our passage in Romans just said. Don't, let us not sleep in the day as others.

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Look how that matches this one where it says the night is far spent, the day is at hand. And it says, let us awake out of sleep.

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I mean, it's just a perfect parallel passage. For they that sleep, sleep in the night, and they that are drunken are drunk at night, but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the, and that's talking about like self -control, the

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Greek word is. Putting on the breastplate of faith and love. Now look at this. And for a helmet, the hope of salvation.

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That is a little different than this passage over here where it talks about put on the helmet of salvation.

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Always bothered me a little bit because salvation is not something you take off and put on.

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You can't lose it and get it back and all that stuff. But in 1 Thessalonians here, it defines what it means.

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It's called the helmet of the hope of salvation. And you know what's cool about that? As I said at the beginning of this message, the great hope of the church for 2000 years has been the second coming.

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And when people preach that, they call it the great hope. The rapture is the great hope of the church. And so what the scripture is actually saying is when you're putting on that helmet, you're putting on the hope of salvation, not salvation.

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You're putting on thinking about what's coming, the good part of what's coming. The Lord is coming back to get us and save us.

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He's coming back to take us out of this place. He's coming back to take away the body of flesh that pulls against everything

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God wants to do and even everything we want to do because we're the new man and we wanna serve the Lord. And he's gonna remove that and change us in the air.

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And that's the great hope. And why does it Ephesians call it putting on a helmet of the hope of salvation?

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Because that is good mental health for a

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Christian. Think about it. Think of all the negative stuff we can think about today.

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If we're watching the news, we're in turmoil every moment the last few days, aren't we?

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So that's not good, healthy mental state of being.

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But so what we gotta do when we get all flustered and we get worried and fearful about all the things that's coming on the world is we put on that helmet of the hope of salvation.

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We start thinking about what it's gonna look like when you're still alive and your family is still alive and your kids and even your 92 -year -old mom is still alive, never had to face physical death and boom, we're taken up together to be with him.

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And we look around in some cloud, in some quadrant, which is the Park Meadows quadrant, visitors included.

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And we see each other and we go, wow, we're here and it happened. It happened. We can't die.

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And now we go and serve with the Lord and we go into the battle of Armageddon and we don't even need armor.

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Wouldn't that be fun? So that's what we need to think about. That's the helmet of the hope of salvation.

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So that's all I got for today. Let's stand and have prayer together and just a few moments, we'll be ready for our meal together as well.

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Lord, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for how it comforts our hearts, how you prepare us for everything that is about to come.

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And Lord, help us to take heed to the message today that we began to eliminate things that make it easy for our flesh, get rid of those things out of the house.

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And Lord, that we began to think more vividly each moment of each day about continuing to hold your hand and be spirit -filled through that day and not be carnal and in the flesh.

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And help us to get our lives into such a place that people who are in need will come to us for help, that we might be a good witness and see others saved even in these last days, in the last days of the church age, that the bride would be complete.

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And Lord, thank you that you work together with us and that you allow us to be part of your great work of salvation.

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And thank you for what you've done in our hearts and lives and how you've changed us. Help us to be able to talk about that to friends that need to hear it.

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Lord, we ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship now. Bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus' name, amen.

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are dismissed. Amen.