Episode Transcript
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I'm going to read to you tonight
and preach from God's word in the letter
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or from the letter of Ephesians,
Ephesians chapter one versus three through fourteen.
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Before I read this passage, though, I want to clear up something about
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this passage for a couple reasons.
It has an effect on the way we
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read it and some other things as
well, and since we're just starting out
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here, I think I thought it
would be good to say it even before
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we kind of get to it.
It's it's sort of a simple thing,
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but it matters at least a little
bit, and it's this. If you
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look at your bibles chapter one versus
three through fourteen, you have things divided
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it up into a few sentences.
Sometimes people have said that even this is
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one long sentence, and while there's
some truth to that, that's not exactly
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right. In a recent commentary on
the book of Ephesians, one of the
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men in our presbytery a new a
new testament professor. His name is Steve
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Baugh. He has written about this
in depth and he writes from a lot
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of experience. He's not just a
friend, but he's a senior scholar,
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a particularly on this book. He's
been studying the letter of effusions since he
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was, I don't known, his
twenties or something like that. On top
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of that, people are recognizing this
commentary is not just the commentary now on
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effusions, but really one of the
finest commentaries of just any commentary if you
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are looking for something to read along. It's scholarly, but it's very good
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anyway, just to give you to
mention him, just to give a little
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bit of credibility to this, and
it's this. What he says is that
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this passage is not one long sentence, and the reason I say this is
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this is repeated constantly. I'm over
and over and over again. That's not
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really true. The these this section
from verses three to fourteen, is divided
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up into something called periods. Now
you may have heard that in Greek and
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some ancient Greek documents you'll often see
just a bunch of capital letters all strung
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together without even any spaces. It
could be very difficult to read for us
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who are used to punctuation and spaces
and things like that. The question is,
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then, how would they know which
words were where? Well, you
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would probably be able to figure it
out in English if you didn't have any
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punctuation. It was just a bunch
of letters because you recognize the words.
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But the Greeks had various ways of
signaling in their sentences, or rather in
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these periods, where they started and
where they stopped, and they were kind
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of centered around how long a breath
was, from the various little aid is,
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from the various beginnings of one's education, the your elementary school years,
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you would be taught how to scan
for syllables and you would be taught how
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to speak. Rhetoric in the ancient
world was all about speaking, and so
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these periods, which are kind of
like our sentences, were largely built in
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rhetoric around these breaths, sort of
how much you could kind of get out
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at once. Well, that's significant
because at the end of these oftentimes authors
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who were writing according to these rules
of style would put some emphasis on the
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end of those for emphasis right.
They were sort of the things that where
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you would stop and pause and they
would rest in the mind of your hearers.
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And so this is helpful because Effesians
three through fourteen, as you will
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see as I read it, is
a little bit overwhelming. There's a lot
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of clauses built one on top of
another. On top of another and in
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Greek it doesn't feel quite so stream
of consciousness, if I might say that
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that way. There are these pauses
and I'm going to attempt to bring those
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out as I read them. I'm
going to not read it in Greek,
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but I'm going to read it in
English, but in accord with where about
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those periods would happen that you know, translation doesn't that happened perfectly, but
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I'll hope you'll give you a sense
of how it might have sounded, because
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when we look at it here it
looks like a big block and it's a
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little overwhelming, but there are all
kinds of parallel things going on in the
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text. It's very well crafted,
very highly crafted, so much so that
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people have even wondered if this passage
was one of the early hymns in the
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church, one of the first hymns. Now we don't have any evidence that
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shows that conclusively, but I like
to say it's him nick kind of get
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around that, because it is.
It's very it's full of praise, it's
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full of wonder and it does sort
of pile up in a way to sort
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of overwhelm us and help us to
know and to express the great glory of
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God. So I'd like to read
it now and as I read it,
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I want to continue to encourage you
over the next several weeks as we go
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through this passage, to work to
memorize it and to understand it and hear
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it, hide it more and more
in your heart, treasure up these things.
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There is much to be wondered at
and to give praise God for,
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praise to God for. So let's
hear it now. Blessed be the God
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and father of our Lord, Jesus
Christ, who is blessed us in Christ
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with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
place. Is Even as he chose us
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in him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holly and
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blameless before him. In love,
he predestined us for adoption to himself as
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sons through Jesus Christ, according to
the purpose of his will, to the
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praise of his glorious grace with which
he has blessed us in the beloved.
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In Him, we have redemption through
his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses
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according to the riches of His grace
which he lavished upon us in all wisdom
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and insight, making known to us
the mystery of his will, according to
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his purpose, which he set forth
in Christ as a plan for the fullness
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of time to unite all things in
him, things in heaven and things on
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earth. In Him, we have
obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according
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to the purpose of him who works
all things according to the counsel of his
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will, so that we, who
were the first to hope in Christ,
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might be to the praise of his
glory. In Him. You also,
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when you heard the word of truth, the Golospel of your salvation and believed
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in him, were sealed with the
promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee
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of our inheritance until we acquire possession
of it, to the praise of his
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glory. Man. Well, what
we have just heard is one of the
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most remarkable passages of scripture, as
I said, so finely crafted that people
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have wondered if it was perhaps a
hymn in the language is so exalted.
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What example of this is when Paul
says in verse three, which will be
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my focus for this evening, the
heavenly places, he doesn't use the normal
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word for heaven. He uses kind
of an extra exalted word. You might
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translate it high heavenlies or something like
that. It's it's sort of extra big,
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extra grant. Everything's extra wonderful,
and we read that over and over
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in many different ways. It's full
of lavish praise for God in response to
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the lavish gifts of His grace that
he's poured out on us. This passage
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is simultaneously simple and complex. It
expresses some of the most basic and important
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truths about Jesus, and yet it's
infinitely rich, holding mysteries that are confounding
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and marvelous, to paraphase, paraphrase
something Matthew Henry once wrote about the visions
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of Ezekiel. This passage contains both
the shallow waters in which a lamb can
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walk and both the depths that can
submerge in elephant. To compare it to
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something else, this passage reminds me
of a beautiful symphony that begins with the
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lovely and even in toxic, a
cating melody here of God's grace, the
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kind of melody that you can hear
a hundred times, a thousand times and
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never tire of it. Maybe you've
done this before. You've put a CD
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on and listen to it all day, maybe all week. Maybe you keep
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returning to it again and again and
again over the course of your life,
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the kind of thing that you put
on repeat. These beautiful notes of God's
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grace appear early. You might imagine
again, a symphony perhaps happening, perhaps
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being played by a flute or clarinet, and then moving from the section of
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the orchestra, one portion to another, each building on the other, layers
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upon layers upon layers. It's getting
deeper and deeper and deeper, and yet
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that melody just keeps soaring up above
it all, until the whole room is
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bathed in the glory of praise.
This is what this passage is like and
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honestly, it makes me a little
hesitant to preach it, not because I
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don't believe it's truths or not,
that because they're not here for us to
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understand they are, but because I'm
a little bit afraid that my sermon will
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end up sounding like the program notes
for a symphony rather than the symphony itself.
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And while that is likely going to
be true, and I'll ask that
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you bear with me in that,
we all know that God is gracious and
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perhaps even our Lord and King can
use program notes to help you know and
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experience and participate in the exalted praise
of this passage. And so, if
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you will, are a spiritual elephant, so to speak, let me ask
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that you take a moment enjoying us
lambs in the shallows and notice just a
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couple things, maybe two or three, as we have time for, so
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that we might learn to give God
our praise. The first thing I want
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you to notice is this expression,
this way of speaking. At the beginning
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of Verse Three, the Apostle Rights
blessed be the God and father of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the
God of Jesus Christ, blessed be the
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father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This blessing is based on the frequent blessings
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of God that we find in the
Old Testament. They sound like this.
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Blessed be Yah Way, the God
of Israel. That's what they sound like.
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I'll give you some examples. First, Samuel Thirty two, and David
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said to Abigail, blessed be Yah
Way, the God of Israel, who
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sent you this day to me.
Here's another one. Second, chronicles six
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four, and he said, blessed
be Yah Way, the God of Israel,
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who, with his hand, has
fulfilled what he promised with his mouth
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to David, my father saying you
have to read on to hear what he
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said. Psalm one, forty eight. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of
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Israel, from everlasting to everlasting,
and let all the people say Amen,
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praise Yahway, the last of these
Old Testament ways of saying it are actually
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found in the New Testament, on
the lips of Zachariah, one of the
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last Old Testament prophets, we might
say, along with John The baptist,
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least speaking in the old covenant language, he says, blessed be the Lord
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and God of Israel, for he
has visited and redeemed his people. After
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pentecost, however, though, after
the spirit comes, this blessing changes in
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the mouths of God's people. Here, in Ephesians and Second Corinthians, one,
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three, first Peter, three,
Romans, fifteen six, second Corinthians
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thirty one, and at least four
other places this blessing changes to this blessed
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be the God and father of Jesus. So instead of blessed be the God
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of Israel, blessed be the God
and father of Jesus. Why the change?
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The reason is is because there has
been a change in the covenant.
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God, of course, remains the
father and God of Israel, as we
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read in many places, including Romans
Eleven. But through Jesus, the mediator
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of a new and better covenant,
the Blessed Salvation of God has been extended
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out in a grand and new way
to the whole world, and Ephesians in
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particular emphasizes this point again and again. If you have your bibles open,
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you can look at Ephesians chapter two, Verse Twelve, where Paul Speaks to
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the gentiles of the EPHESIAN church and
says, remember that you were at that
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time separated from Christ, alienated from
the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the
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covenants of promise, having no hope
and without God in the world. But
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now, in Christ Jesus, you, who were once far off, have
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been brought near by the blood of
Christ, an amazing, amazing thing.
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skipped down to verse Nineteen, Chapter
Two. So then you are no longer
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strangers and aliens, but you are
fellow citizens with the saints and the members
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of the household of God. The
New Testament teaches us that Jesus is the
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new Israel. He is the second
adom that infolds people under his he is
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the new Mo this he is the
new Elijah, and in this book we
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learn about this Jesus, the absolute
sovereignty of the ascended Jesus and how,
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through his blood, we who were
once strangers, aliens, so the promises,
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people that were far off, as
Paul said, have now been brought
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near, have been made part of
the family, so that, through faith
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in Jesus, we can belong to
Israel, this King Jesus that was so
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well prefigured in chronicles. As we
went through those books, and now this
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King Jesus has reported in Ephesians,
we learn how we will learn what God
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has done through the sun, as
he has created one people in this inaugurated
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new creation. Jesus, you see, came into the world to fulfill what
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Adam failed to do, what Israel
failed to do and who Israel failed to
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be. The Sun that God wanted
is Jesus Christ. What Adam failed in,
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what Israel failed in, Christ succeeded. He was fruitful and he multiplied
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and he is filling the new heavens
and the new earth with a holy people,
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and this is why Paul speaks in
this way. Blessed be the God
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and father, yes, of Israel, but all the more so of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
new Israel and includes even people like me
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and perhaps you in this new family
theme that will come up again and again
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in this book. And so we
ought not to read this and think that
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because God is called his God and
father, that Jesus is not God.
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Right. Paul is not making a
distinction between God and Jesus. He is
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saying that they are one and the
same. How could we have so great
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a salvation unless God himself had come
to fulfill the promises of his covenants that
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he had made? To kind of
think about this way of speaking, one
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reformer from Vienna, Wolf Gang Mukes
Muscalus. He reminds us of a verse
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in Psm Eighteen Forty six, where
David says the Lord lives, and blessed
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be be the Rock, exalted,
be the God of my salvation. Wolf
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gang musical is he says. Does
this mean that there are two gods,
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the God of his salvation and then
this other God, the Rock? Just
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because there's an and in there doesn't
mean we're talking about two gods. Or
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look at a passage like Ephesians one
one to the saints who are in Ephesus
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and are faithful, and those who
are faithful in Christ Jesus. He's not
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talking about two groups, the saints
and those who are faithful, he's talking
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about the one and the same.
The same is true here in verse three.
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Blessed be the God and father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, yes,
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distinct father and son, but also
the one, same true God. And
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it has as God and as man
that he saved us. Paul writes in
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Philippians that this Jesus, the son
of God from all eternity, became man,
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he humbled himself, became obedient,
went to a cross for our salvation
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in order to bring us this glorious, Glorious Salvation that Paul writes about here.
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And he has done this, he
is ascended into the high heavenly places.
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What does all this mean? It
means that our ability to do anything
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for God is only and always because
of what he has already done for us,
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and that includes blessing him and praising
his name, as Paul blesses him,
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blesses God. Here, blessed be
the God and father of our Lord
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Jesus. He is only able to
give God that praise because what God has
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already given to him, and we
ought to remember this in this passage and
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in every service on which we worship
the Lord in all of our lives.
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Whenever we lift up our heads,
whenever we lift up our hands to praise
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the Lord and the king, it
ought to be because of what he has
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already done in our hearts. He
is our God. Blessed be his name.
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Let's now consider a second thing.
The implicit blessing we have received in
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the first part of this verse is
now unveiled for us to see and to
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give God glory for in the second
part. This often happens with these kinds
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of blessings. Blessed is he who
did these things right, the reason for
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which these HAP this happened, the
kind of warrant. And so in verse
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three, blessed be the God and
father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
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Why? Because he has blessed us
in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the
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heavenly places. Here we have a
very simple but profound point. Our Lord,
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our Savior, our king, Jesus
of Nazareth, son of God and
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son of Man, has ascended on
high. He's not here and bought in
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his body here on earth and we
miss him. We wait for him,
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we long to see him, we
watch for him, even as he told
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us to. But though he is
absent, he has not left us.
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He has given us, as we
are taught throughout the scriptures, a helper,
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an advocate, his holy spirit,
and through the spirit who dwells in
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us, even as he dwelled in
the Old Testament Temple, we are brought
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into union with God. We experience
his presence. These spiritual blessings, as
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it's translated here, are not non
physical blessings. They are the blessings of
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the spirit capital S. they're the
blessings that the Holy Spirit gives to us
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as he unites us to Christ and
gives us his life and all of the
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benefits of it. Theodora at,
a fourth century Bishop, said this about
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this passage. He has conferred on
us the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
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He has given us the hope of
Resurrection, the good news of immortality,
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the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven, the dignity of sonship. These he
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calls the spiritual blessings, and he
adds in heavenly places us, because these
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gifts are heavenly. This brings us
to my third and last thing. What
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are these blessings exactly? What are
the blessings that he gives us? Well,
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if you think that we can list
them out, you've failed to remember
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the greatness and goodness of God,
not to mention there is this little word.
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Here is little word every every spiritual
blessing, not just one over here
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and one over there, not a
handful or a basketful or even a boatload
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of blessings, but every spiritual blessing, every blessing of the Holy Spirit.
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We have way more than you could
ever list. This some little phrase that
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we have, and we sometimes say
count your blessings is really a good thing
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to do. It makes us a
thankful people to reflect and consider the ways
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that God preserves us and keeps us. Take, for example, something that
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both read. The redeemed and unredeemed
experience a blessing from the Lord, something
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we always forget. How many of
you awake up every morning? Well,
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stopped there right. We jump out
of bed, we start thinking about the
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things that we have to do.
Where are my clothes? Is My share
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clean? What am I on time? Who's going to do what? And
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on and on on. Have we
not yet realized that God has just preserved
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our lives when we were just laying
there, helpless, defenseless for five,
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six, seven, eight, twelve
hours, barely conscious? I don't know
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what goes on when we sleep.
Don't take that for Bible Truth. We're
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helpless. That's my point. And
we wake up, shouldn't we? The
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very first thing that we do say
to the Lord who has kept us and
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preserved us. Thank you. Take
just a moment, five seconds, to
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say thank you. Your mercies are
new every morning, is the psalm saying.
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Robert Rolick, one of the reformers. He talks about all these different
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kinds of blessings that we have,
and I think this is sort of a
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fun way to think about it.
He talks about there are three kinds of
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blessings that we receive, some that
belenefit us, particularly is people who have
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been born again in the spirit,
and other general blessings that we share.
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He says, the first kind of
blessings that we receive consists of those blessings
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that even the animals and belong to
every living soul. He talks about the
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things that can be found in plants, even like motion life in a sense.
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And then there's this blessing that consists
of things that the born again shares
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with the unregenerate technical and liberal arts, he says, moral and civic virtues,
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all the sciences in the world of
philosophy, all of these things God
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pours out generously on the whole world, kindness and love and knowledge and beauty.
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And then, on top of all
of that, despite the fact that
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we take all those blessings and we
take them for granted, we don't want
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and we don't give things for them, we sin in them and abuse them.
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God takes sinners and he pours out
them yet a whole another category of
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blessings. Through Christ. He gives
to us our justification. He takes us
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before his throne and he says you
are innocent of sin because I am Pew.
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All of your sin to Christ and
I impute all his righteousness to you.
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Fair are no, Gracious, yes, and it's my gift to you.
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Why? Because in love, because
I loved you. He gives us
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our sanctification. He gives us this
union with God, with him, that
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in which is Holy Spirit dwells in
US and is constantly putting to death those
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evil things in us, those things
that we hate, those things that make
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us dirty and defiled. Every day
he's working in us, changing US and
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helping us to see. He takes
even the trials and the difficulties of our
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lives and he turns them for good. Classic example is Joseph of the Old
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Testament, right sold into slavery,
unfairly put in prison. All kinds of
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terrible things happen to him, but
God continues to work through those trials to
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persevere him. Many and many,
many other examples, Daniel Paul, on
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and on and on the list goes. How about you? Are there things
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that God has taken in your life? Difficulties, trials, illnesses, sicknesses,
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broken relationships, trouble in your soul, trouble in your mind and your
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community, all kinds of things which
he is using to test you and to
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purify you and to bring out good
things in you. It's hard and it
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hurts, but his Christians, we
know that God is sanctifying us, he
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is setting us apart for him and
his service. He's making us holy.
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On top of all of that,
he promises that, as he does all
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of this, treating us as his
sons and daughters, he promises to us,
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and inheritance in the heavenly places that
cannot be shaken. It's eternal,
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a city of the Living God in
which we will dwell forever, that the
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trials of this present time can't even
be compared to the eternal weight of glory
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that lies ahead, the beautiful crown
and creation that God promises to give us
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in Christ, to wipe every tear
from our eye, to bring us into
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his presence where we will live in
this moment of praise and glory and love
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and joy forever. All have all
given to US freely because he loves us.
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That's why Paul says ble blessed,
be blessed be the God and father
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of our Lord, Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ with every
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spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
If your faith is in Christ, this
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is yours, your inheritance, your
life, your savior, your everything,
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and this is what can be yours
if you are not in Christ, but
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you turn to him like the blind
men we read on the low road in
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Matthew, calling out to him,
Lord, have mercy. The Lord always
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responds to those who call on him
in faith and he opens our eyes and
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helps us to walk forward and follow
him. If you do not trust him,
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why wait when this is what is
being offered to you? And when
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you despair and are sorrowful and your
trials, remember what he has given you.
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Remember the hope that is set before
you. Do not despair. You
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have Jesus. Let us pray
