Episode Transcript
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Well, please remain standing. I'm
going to read just one verse. Second
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Corinthians, Chapter Eight, verse nine. This is the verse on which the
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Hymn we have just sung is based, or at least is connected very intimately
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with a second Corinthians eight, verse
nine. For you know the grace of
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our Lord Jesus Christ that though he
was rich, yet for your sake he
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became poor so that you, by
his poverty, might become rich. Praise
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be to God, you may be
seated. Is Him that we've just sung,
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thou who wast rich beyond all splendor, and the one will sing after
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the sermon as well, all praise
to the eternal Lord. Both focus on
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this amazing theme. It's such a
simple thing, but it is very deep
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and sometimes I come across, sometimes
often I come across these things in scripture
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that are so simple, I'm so
simply said and so simply stated I wish
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I could just read them and walk
away because they're so true and they're so
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plain on their on their surface.
But I of course I know the benefit
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a personally, of of meditating and
sitting on things a little while, of
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having them impressed on my heart,
and I hope to do the same for
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yours. Tonight. This great theme
that Jesus, as great as he was
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in his heavenly glory and his kingly
glory, a became man, as we
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read in Philippians, he humbled himself, he did something humiliating even, and
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while on this earth, he was
shamed, he was mocked, he was
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despised, he was broken, he
was crucified, he was buried, all
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of these things that I did not
belong to him. As the second person
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of the Trinity, God only deserves
our praise, our wonder our obedience.
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And yet we, as humanity,
entreated him most poorly. We did everything
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the opposite that we ought to have
done. This was no accident, we
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read in scripture. Was No accident
that Jesus did these things, that Jesus
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allowed this to happen and even did
it purposely, intentionally. No, though
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he was rich, as Paul writes, and second Corinthie and s eight,
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for your sake, he became poor. Jesus says something similar in Matthew,
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Chapter Twenty, verse Twenty Eight,
even as the son of man came to
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be served, or came not to
be served but to serve and to give
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his life as a ransom for many
to impress this, this point, so
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that we might feel it deeply within
our bones, so that we might even
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respond in our lives and bring forth
the fruit of what this means for those
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who trust in this Jesus. I
want you to reflect just for a little
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bit on this question. How rich
was Jesus? How rich was he when
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he became poor again? This is
a question that you sort of struggle to
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even desire to answer in a way, because you know how impossible it's going
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to be to state this. It's
like asking how much knowledge doesn't all knowing
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God have? Go ahead and describe
that. How much power does an omnipotent,
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all powerful God have? Go ahead
and give that a try. Well,
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let's try just a little bit.
If we take human metaphors, ways
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of thinking and and sort of by
extension, try to think, or at
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least scratch the surface a little bit, of the wealth of God and the
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glory of of Jesus. As the
sun, you might think about how wealthy
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he was in terms of his possessions. Right, this is a way that
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we often measure a wealth one's possessions. A rich person, if they are
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putting their wealth into possessions. Often
have more things, right, the simple
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thing. More bedrooms, more houses, more servants, more countries. They
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own little things, big things,
all kinds of things. And more than
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just owning a lot of things,
a person who has a lot of wealth
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and their possessions also controls those ands
right. They are able to do with
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them what they want. It's hardly
valuable to own something but then to not
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really have control over it. It's
not really ownership, or at least not
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very strong ownership. But in human
when we speak of human beings, even
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though wealthiest people that we could even
imagine up, we realize that there are
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limits to human wealth. There are
boundaries, boundaries that are impossible to trespass,
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impossible to control or are not worth
the cost to extend. You might
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imagine a King of a great empire. Right, as far as he can
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see, maybe he could travel for
days and days and days and not reach
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the end, but eventually somewhere is
the end. There's a border, there's
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a boundary. At some point he's
going to have to protect that boundary and
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say I heve and protect what is
his control, what is his and even
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if he decides that he could go
further, but chooses not to even there.
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There's a limitation. He's deciding that
there's something it's just not worth the
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cost to take that extra piece to
conquer that other country. You can cut
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it different ways, but the point
is this. No matter how far you
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extend out a person's wealth or a
country's wealth or any kind of wealth that
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belongs to humanity, they're always boundaries
on that. For God this is not
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so. Psalm fifty, for example, says in verses ten, Eleven and
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twelve. For every beast of the
forest is mine, the cattle on a
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thousand hills. I know all the
birds of the hills and all that moves
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in the field is mine. If
I were hungry, I would not tell
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you, for the world and its
fullness are mine. An amazing picture,
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each one of those phrases, opening
up our minds to another aspect of God's
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ownership, his his power over all
things, from the tiniest little things that
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move in the field, when you
hear a rustle in the grass and you
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wonder what was that, God knows
what it was and it belongs to him,
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to the cattle that you might see
walking about grazing around, every beast
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of the forest. It all belongs
to him. The world and it's fullness
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is mine, he says, and
Psalm Eleven, we read the heavens are
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yours. The Earth also is yours. The world and all that is in
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it, you have founded them.
You can also judge the wealth of a
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person by the splendor of his or
her possessions. Imagine someone with a collection
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of something. Maybe you have a
collection of something, I know you do.
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I've talked to some of you about
your collections. Well, what's valued
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in a collection of things? expansiveness, variety, rarity of the items,
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uniqueness, the value of various pieces
in the collection. What if I told
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you that I had a coin,
every coin that had ever been made?
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Be kind of an impressive thing.
Or if I said I had every moth
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or every flower that ever existed,
I had collected it into a collection.
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Of course, no one has everything, even of one tiny little sliver of
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creation, but God's creation he belongs. Everything, belongs to him. Everything
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that he wants he has, and
anything that he doesn't want doesn't exist.
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He has everything, and the value
of his collection, the splendor of it,
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is manifest in every way. It's
expansiveness, the variety of the world
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and the fullness of it, the
uniqueness the rarity of some things. You
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might think of the Grand Canyon or
rainbow or tiny rare mushroom that's only found
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in a certain corner of the world, or certain aspects of creation that we
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don't even know about that are so
rare and they belong to the Lord.
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Then, of course, wealth can
be measured not only in its splendor and
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its value, but also in one's
relationship to those possessions. A truly wealthy
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person is not controlled by their possessions. What does it benefit a man to
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gain the whole world but lose his
soul? What value is in that?
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If you have all of these wonderful
things but then you're controlled by them,
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well, they're not really all that
valuable anymore because you've lost the most important
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thing of all. The value of
possessions are cheapened when they gain power over
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us. Not So for God.
When we think about the wealth of God,
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the possessions of God, he is
never ruled by them. He is
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always ruling them and ruling over them. If God wants there to be a
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moth in this part of the field, there will be a moth. If
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God wants the trees to grow and
this part of the forest they will grow.
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He has never moved back and forth, he is never wondering what will
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happen. As it says somewhat snarkily
in the Psalm fifty. If if I
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were hungry, I wouldn't tell you
because I have everything that I want.
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Or hear God's Word and Exodus Nine
hundred and twenty nine, Moses saying,
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as soon as I go out from
the city, I will stretch my hands
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to the Lord, the thunder will
cease and there will be no more hail,
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so that you may know the earth
is the Lord's. If God wants
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Hail, there will be hail.
If God wants locusts, there will be
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locusts. If he wants frogs,
there will be frogs. Whatever God wants,
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he has. His possessions do not
control him. He can try.
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He controls them, he moves them
where he wants, he makes them act
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according to his will. How rich
it's, God Almighty. One last thing.
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As you consider these various aspects of
wealth, you might finally consider,
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and we could think of more,
the dwelling place of God, the Heaven
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Above the Heavens, the Heaven of
heavens, Deuteronomy Fourteen, the old to
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the Lord, your God, belong
the Heaven and the Heaven of heavens and
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the Earth with all that is in
it. If you go to passages like
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Ezekiel, and maybe I won't read
this now, but I'll let you go
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there on your own, Isekiel one
hundred and twenty five through twenty eight,
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there's similar descriptions and other of the
prophets, and also in exodus twenty four.
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But they're their vision. Is described
of Ezekiel being caught up into the
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Throne Room of God and that we
get this description of Sapphire paved courts that
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we sung in the in the hymn
here. Let me see if I can
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find it. Sat you're right in
the first verse, Sapphire Paved Courts for
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a stable floor. Right. This
heavenly places, the Throne Room of God
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with a rainbow over it and the
angels guarding and standing around the throne and
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and the glory of the Lord filling
the room and the ground paved with these
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precious jewels. Amazing and glorious.
This is God's Throne Room and he is
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the most glorious thing in it.
But of all the possessions of the Lord,
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of all the glory of the Lord, what do you think is the
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greatest of them all? The Mighty
Blue Wail? Maybe the Cedars of Lebanon?
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Perhaps those beautiful things that we see
deep out in space, or maybe
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just the flowers in the field after
a rain. What the Bible says is
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that the greatest, most treasured possession
of the Lord is you. Out of
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all the things in the world that
he came to die for, it was
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you, like Moses, who gave
up all the splendors of Egypt for something
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greater. Jesus gave up far more
than Moses ever did, the glories of
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Heaven so that he might come and
die for us. Thou who wast rich
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beyond all splendor, all for Love
Sake, becamest poor. Thrones for a
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manger didst surrender. He gave them
up, Sapphire paved courts for stable floor.
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Thou whoest rich beyond all splendor,
all for love's sake, becamest poor.
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Thou who art God beyond all praising, all for love's sake, becamest
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man, stooping so low, but
sinners raising heavenward by Thine Eternal Plan Thou
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who art God beyond all, praising
all for love's sake. becamest man,
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Thou who art love beyond all,
telling, savior and King. We Worship
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Thee Emanuel, God with US dwelling. Make us what Thou wouldst have us
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be. Thou who art love beyond
all, telling, savior and King.
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We worship Thee. The hymn ends
in this this prayer. Make Ust what,
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make us what you would have us
be. God has come and descended
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on to Earth to become a man
so that he might live and die for
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us, so that, as Paul
says in Second Corinthians eight nine, that
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we would become wealthy through his poverty. And, as we read in Philippians,
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how did God honor this? God
honored it by raising him from the
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dead, seating him in the heavenly
places and crowning him with that glorious crown
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that, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue
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confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Jesus gave up these things, but not
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forever. He humbled himself even to
the point of death, death on a
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cross, so that he could be
lifted up, not to his own glory,
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or not just to his own glory, he already had that, but
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to something more glorious in a way, because he is now accompanied by this
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great work he has done, this
treasured possession and people of his first Peter
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two nine says, but you are
a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
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a holy nation, a people for
his own possession, that you may proclaim
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the excellences of him who called you
out of darkness and into Marvelous Light.
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This grace that we have been given
to by God is meant, when we
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are given it, to flow outward, to change us from the inside.
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Titus to fourteen, who gave himself, speaking of Jesus for us, to
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redeem us from all lawlessness and to
purify for himself a people for his own
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possession who are zealous for good works. You see, Jesus became poor to
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make you rich. He became humble
to glorify you. In the end of
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the Bible we get the words Sapphire
again and it comes in revelation and chapter
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twenty one, in verse, Verse
Nine. We read then came one of
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the seven angels who had the seven
Bulls full of the seven last plagues and
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spoke to me and said, come, I will show you the bride,
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I will show you the bride,
I will show you the wife of the
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lamb. And here's what he sees, a sort of mixture of images.
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He says, I'm going to show
you the bride, I'm going to show
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you the wife of the lamb,
and he carried me away in the spirit
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to a great high mountain and he
showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming
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down out of heaven from God,
having the glory of God, it's radiance
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like a most rare jewel, like
a jasper, clear as crystal. It
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had great a great high wall with
twelve gates and at the gates twelve angels,
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and on the gates the names of
the twelve tribes, of the sons
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of Israel were inscribed. He then
goes on to describe these gates and these
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walls and their measurements, and we
read of them, of these beautiful precious
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stones, Emerald, Jasper, Topaz, peril and, of course, Sapphire
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as well. These pictures of the
Temple of God, this Heavenly Temple of
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God, are now brought together with
the picture of his bride. Of You.
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He became poor to make you rich
beyond all splendor. This is who
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you are. It's who God has
made you to be through the incarnation of
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his son and his work in the
world. For us, praise be to
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00:20:18.470 --> 00:20:26.539
God, worship him, lift up
your hearts and trust him for all things.
205
00:20:26.579 --> 00:20:33.819
He is good and it is fitting
to praise him. Let's pray
