Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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If you're able to remain standing,
please do as. We give our attention
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now to first John, Chapter Two, Verse Twenty Eight, sort of spilling
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over into the next chapter, Chapter
Three. So I'll begin begin reading in
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First John to twenty eight. Let's
give attention to God's word, and now
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little children abide in him so that
when he appears, we may have confidence
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and not shrink from him in shame
at his coming. If you know that
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he is righteous, you may be
sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been
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born of him. See what kind
of love the father has given to us
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that we should be called children of
God, and so we are. The
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reason why the world does not know
us is that it did not know him
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beloved. We are God's children now, and what we will be has not
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yet appeared. But we know that
when he appears, we shall be like
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him, because we shall see him
as he is, and everyone who thus
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hopes in him purifies himself, as
he is pure. Everyone who makes a
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practice of sinning also practices lawlessness.
Sin Is Lawlessness. You know that he
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appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
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No one who abides in him keeps
on sinning. No one who keeps
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on sinning has either seen him or
known him. Little children, let no
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one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness
is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever
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makes a practice of sinning is of
the devil, for the devil has been
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sinning from the beginning. The reason
the son of God appeared was to destroy
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the works of the devil. No
one born of God makes a practice of
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sinning, for God's seed abides in
him and he cannot keep on sinning because
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he has been born of God.
By this it is evident who are the
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children of God and who are the
children of the devil. Whoever does not
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practice righteousness is not of God,
nor is the one who does not love
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his brother. You may be seated
when the Lord Jesus Christ returns. We
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know that it will be a Great
Day of judgment, and we know that
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for several reasons. One is that
judgment has most clearly been delayed. Wickedness
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and many ways still continues on.
Suffering continues on, people struggle in this
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life in ways that are not consonant
with the ways of heaven that are described
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in the book of revelation. For
example, there's still something that we're waiting
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for, and that is something that
is ushered into partially by the judgment of
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God. We also know that the
judgment is yet ahead of us, because
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the Lord has not yet returned,
and when he returns he will come as
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judge. We also know that it
is coming. It will be very great,
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partly because of the judgment that's prefigured
in the Old Testament. The thunder
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and the rumblings, the flashings of
light that were on Mount Sinai, the
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blast of the trumpet, all of
that was a precursor to what was to
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come, not on one mountain but
on every mountain. The word of God
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says that when Jesus returns, the
world will be shaken, the mountains will
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melt like wax, the stars in
the sky, the sun and the Moon,
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the heavenly bodies, these things will
be shake and up like dust out
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of a rug on the floor.
You can imagine, then, what it
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would feel like to see the coming
of Christ and not be his friend.
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Terrifying, terrifying. Revelation describes that
people will wish that the rocks were falling
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upon them, they will hide away, they will try to escape, but
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no one will escape. When Christ
comes, he will come to judge and
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make war. Revelation says when Christ
returns, he comes to cast out all
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the wicked forever and to protect his
righteous people for all eternity. That's a
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day that you want to have confidence
about. It's a day that, looking
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into the future, you want to
be able to know beyond the shadow of
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any doubt that you will not be
one of the wicked cast out forever into
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darkness and wrath. But it'll be
a day when you stand before the Lord
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is one of his glorious saints,
Clothed in Light Righteousness, lifted up by
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his spirit, vindicated, raised by
is very angels, we are told,
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from all the corners of the earth. You want to have confidence about that
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day. John says this little children
abide in him so that when he appears,
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we may have confidence and not shrink
from him in shame at his coming.
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And so John Wants you and me
to understand something about that confidence,
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to understand what it means to have
it and how we can have it.
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He says that those who have it
are those who abide in him, those
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who live sit dwell in Jesus.
How can you have confidence? How can
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you know whether you abide in Jesus
or not. That's largely what the rest
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of this passage is about. What
John says is really simple. Says examine
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your works, examine your life.
Do you practice righteousness or do you not?
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It's not a very complicated thing,
I think. Sometimes I've read this
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and wished it was more complicated.
Honestly, I wish they that there was
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more to it than this, but
it is very simple. A Go to
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the last verses by this it is
evident. He says. It's evident.
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Who are the children of God and
who are not, or, to put
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it even more bluntly, who are
the children of the devil? He says.
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One loves his brother, one does
not. One Practices Righteousness, one
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does not. Is this a test
that you're passing? Before we get to
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that, let's ask this. Is
this a worthy test? Well, we
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should just say yes, it's in
God's word. He says. It's the
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test. It's the test. But
there are some reasons that we can give
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and and some some foundations that God's
own word gives that do assure us of
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its worthiness, even beyond its very
presence as his word. One is that
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because he is righteous himself, this
is what the Day of judgment is all
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about, after all, righteousness,
holiness, separating light from darkness, good
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from evil, godliness from ungodliness.
and Jesus is righteous. We are to
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abide in him and he is the
righteous one. We know that from his
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divinity, born of God. We
know that from his actions. As you
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comb through the gospels, or you
comb through the prophecies about him, or
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you comb through the expositions about his
life after he ascended into heaven, you
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will never find a single action,
a thought, a moment where Jesus slipped
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in sin. We fall all the
time, we're constantly dealing with our own
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sins, but Jesus is never that
way. Jesus is the light and walks
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in light every moment. He walks
perfectly according to the will, will of
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God. We know it from Jesus's
righteousness that he is Rightel or his divinity
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that he is righteous. We know
it from his actions. We also know
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it from his mission. We read
that he came into the world, we
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came at he came into the world
to put to death the deeds of the
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flesh, to stop the sinning that
goes on. He came to purify a
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people for himself or, as Paul
says, an Ephesians, to take his
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bride and present her before himself as
spotless and perfect. This was Jesus's mission,
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this is what he desired to do. The reason, we read the
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Son of God appeared was to destroy
the works of the devil. This is
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what Jesus was all about, righteousness, crushing the head of the serpent.
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And finally, we know that that
mission was accomplished. Jesus rose victorious over
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the wages of sin, death.
Jesus rose victorious over the evil one who
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sought to crush him. Jesus rose
victorious over death, over sin, over
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the devil. All of this proves
to us that he most certainly is the
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righteous one and, as God on
a mission. He we know, and
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we ought to believe, that that
mission is something that he accomplished and could
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do nothing other than accomplish. What
does that say about us? Well,
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we, as John says, and
as the whole word of God testifies to,
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our part of that mission. He
went to put to death, that
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the deeds of the devil, so
that he could save us. We are
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called children of God because God has
caused us to be born of him.
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This is what John Says in his
Gospel, that we are born not of
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the flesh or of the will of
man, but of God. We ought
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to be righteous because he is righteous. He is on a mission of righteousness.
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He has called us to be righteousness. He is purifying us, even
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as he himself is pure. So
is practicing righteousness a worthy test of determining
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who have been born of God and
who have not? Yeah, it definitely
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is. By your fruit you will
know them. John is not being ironic
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here. He's not saying, well, you have to be righteous and no
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one is righteous and so no one
has been born of God. No,
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he's trying to give us a helpful
way to discern who we are and who
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we are not. So that means
we have to think carefully about the standard
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that he sets out. What does
it mean to practice righteousness? Well,
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doesn't mean someone who lives perfectly righteousness
at every moment, in every time and
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in every way. If we did
that, we wouldn't need salvation, we
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wouldn't have any fear of or of
shame, where would be no shrinking at
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jdgment. We'd simply go before God
and say, you know, I'm perfect
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right, but of course we know
we can't do that. God says that
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no one is righteous, no one
does what is right before him. We
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all sin in the wages of those
sin are the wages of that sin is
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death. So he must mean something
else here, and indeed he does.
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What he means when he talks about
practicing righteousness is that this is our habit,
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this is our way of life,
this is our practice. It's those
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who practice righteousness are those that do
something that is true of them in a
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kind of natural way. In other
words, those who practice righteousness are those
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that are not just a few days
into a new New Year's resolution. It's
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not something you do one day a
week at Church or just part of your
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day while you're at work. Now, those who have been born of God
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and practice righteousness, it's a part
of who they are. No, they're
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not perfect. Yes, they struggle, yes, they have doubts, there's
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all kinds of difficulties, but they're
marked by the marks of their savior.
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It's who they are. Take animals
as an example. A giraffe as a
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giraffe because it's been born of a
giraffe. Now, maybe you weren't there
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on the day that the giraffe was
born at the zoo. And yet you
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can look at the GIRAFFE and say
with confidence, Yep, that's a giraffe.
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Why? Because it looks like a
Giraffe, it acts like a Giraffe,
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it has all the signs of being
a Giraffe, the same as true
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of any other animal, a dog
or or a cat, or pick something
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more complicated like a chimp. A
chimpanzee may put on clothes, may learn
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some words, or some kind of
words, it might have even human like
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expressions, but you would never mistake
a chimp for a human. Why?
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Because chimps make a practice of chimpness. They don't act like humans, they
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don't look like humans. They're different
creatures. It's who they are there.
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It's permeates everything that they do.
They might step away from them, from
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it a moment, they might seem
to pretend out of it, they might
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even act not according to their nature
or not according to what you would expect
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from time to time, but they
always return quickly to who they are.
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Versus eight and nine in this past. It's tell us that not just that
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this should happen, but that it
must happen. It's impossible any other way.
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You're either born of the devil or
you're born of God. You produce
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the fruit of one or you produce
the fruit of another. Is this true
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of your life? Is Righteousness what
you live for? Is it what you
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die for? Is it what you
think about? Is it what you strive
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for? Is it a regular part? Does it permeate what you do and
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when you walk away from it,
when you sin, does it feel wrong?
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Do you feel bad? Do you
want to return? Do you feel
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the need to repent? If that's
true of you, then righteousness is a
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part of who you are. A
second way you can tell that you've been
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born of God, John Says,
is that you feel somewhat out of place
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in the world. There is this
hope that is set before us, this
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thing that we're waiting for, a
coming that we're wanting confidence in. Do
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you feel a little out of place
in this world? And I don't just
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mean that, well, I never
felt like I fit in, but I
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mean, and that's a logical terms, terms of different registers, terms of
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this world and the next, this
age in the next. Let's go back
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to animals. Drop a bear in
the middle of the city and sure he'll
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walk around, he'll dig through trash
cans. He might even enjoy himself for
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a little bit, but it will
be obvious right that he's not at home.
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Christians are people who ought to get
along in the world, have peace
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with their neighbors, participate in a
variety of the world's activities, enjoy the
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foods and the blessings that God has
given them. But at the same time,
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Christians are those that are never fully
settled. They're like travelers at a
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hotel. You can kind of see
that they're itching to get somewhere net somewhere
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else where. I hear Heaven Home, the Psalmist, one of the psalms,
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speaks about this longing for the courts
of the Lord. It's a lot
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of temple imagery. My soul longs, yes, even faints, for the
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courts of the Lord, for the
House of God, blessed as the one
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and whose heart are the highways to
Zion. This desire to travel that way,
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to be there, to be close. Do we feel that way about
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the Lord's dwelling place? Hebrews nine
tells us that we don't need to feel
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this way anymore about the old earthly
temple, because Jesus has entered into the
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heavenly one is our faithful high priest
and we enjoy that temple now. Through
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faith in Him we find the true
worship of God, we find the forgiveness
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of sins, a sense of his
presence. But there's also a waiting,
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isn't there? A waiting for the
full revelation of that temple, of that
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people, of that city, for
all the things of this world to be
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stripped away and shaken out, the
veil to be torn down so that home
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finally and fully arrives? One of
the earliest letters after and outside of the
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New Testament is this what I love
called the epistle to diagnosis, and in
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this letter the writer rights that for
every Christian, every or for Christians,
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every country is his fatherland, but
every fatherland is foreign. It means that
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of Christian can live anywhere in the
world and say this place is home,
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this is my fatherland or motherland,
it's the place that I know, it's
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the place that I love. There's
not just one place in all the world
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that is the place of God.
Christians can live and dwell and worship anywhere
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and call at home, and yet
at the same time every fatherland is foreign
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for the Christian, though he or
she can live anywhere and be with God
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and worship God and dwell and God
abide in him. As John says,
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there's a sense in which we're waiting
for something else. Isn't there something more
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home? This is why, as
John says, the world does not recognize
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us. Another sign of who we
are is people born of God. We
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are if we are Christians like Jesus. Jesus has been born from above,
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and so have we. He has
a kingdom that's not of this world,
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and we're citizens of that kingdom.
Living here is resident aliens. This new
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life that we live as children of
God and not as children of the devil
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is remarkably different, significantly different,
but it is a process. We have
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been born, yes, yes,
we have, but we have not yet
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all become what we will finally be. First John Three to says, and
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what we will be has not yet
appeared. But we know that when he
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appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he
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is. This is the hope for
us who know that we have been born
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of God, whose fruit of that
birth is being born in our lives.
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We who practice righteousness, we who
long for heaven, we who feel a
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little bit unsettled and alienated in this
world. Of course, at the same
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time we know how much the flesh
still clings to us. We know how
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distracted we become, how quickly our
eyes divert away from Jesus to the shiny
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things of the world. But don't
lose heart about your imperfections. Don't lose
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heart over your sins. It's not
that they don't matter. They do.
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Jesus died for them, after all, he suffered for them. They matter
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a great deal and we ought to
put them to death. But I say
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don't worry about them, or rather, don't lose herd or don't despair over
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them, because of what John is
saying here. The story is not yet
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over. Your pains, your diseases, your struggles with sin, you're suffering.
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It's real, but it's not final. How can we be born of
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God? How can the hope of
Heaven and the practice of righteousness be ours?
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John One twelve says, but to
all who did receive him, who
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believed in his name, he gave
the righteousness to become children of God.
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As simple as the evidences are,
so is the simplicity of the good news
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that I just read. How can
you be born of God by believing in
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Jesus, by trusting in him?
It was his mission, after all.
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It was his mission that he came
to die for us, to cause us
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to be born, to purify us
and to set us on a road for
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heaven. It's a mission that he
accomplished, so trust in him. Jesus
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is coming. Let that give you
hope. Do you want confidence at his
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coming? Will then, beloved,
be confident in Him. Let's pray
