Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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If you're able to remain standing,
please turn to first John Chapter Three,
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Verses Nineteen through twenty four, and
if you need to sit, that's fine.
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You can feel free to listen if
you like. Lots of options.
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First John, First John Chapter Three, Verses Nineteen through twenty four. If
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you have a Pew Bible, it's
on page one thousand and twenty two,
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first John Three. In this passage, John Talks to us about our hearts.
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Are Fickle, are slippery, confusing
hearts, and he tells us how
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we can persuade them. An interesting
thought. Let's give our attention to God's
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word now and first John Three,
verse nineteen. By this we know that
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we are of the truth and reassure
our heart before him, for whenever our
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heart condemns us, God is greater
than our heart. He knows everything,
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beloved, if our heart does not
condemn us, we have confidence before God,
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and whatever we ask we receive from
him, because we keep his commandments
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and do what pleases him. And
this is his commandment that we believe in
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the name of his son Jesus Christ
and love one another, just as he
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has commanded us. Whoever keeps his
commandments abides in God. And God in
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Him, and by this we know
that he abides in us, by the
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spirit whom he has given us a
man. I want to begin this morning
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with a story from you can find
it in your bibles in John Chapter Eight.
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There is some question as to whether
or not it belongs there in your
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Bible, whether it's original to the
text or was added in later. But
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even if it is apocryphal, it's
still a good story and it illustrates something
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important about the nature of our hearts. And so I want to begin with
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this story in John Aid. It's
a very famous story, I'm so famous
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that I think it has found its
way into just our general speech and culture.
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People will refer to one of the
lines of this story even without maybe
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necessarily knowing it comes from the Bible, and that's that he who casts the
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first stone right. This is the
story in which the scribes and take Jesus
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in order to test him. They're
always doing this, right, they're always
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wanting to test Jesus, they're wanting
to trap Jesus. Well, they put
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this test on him. They bring
before him this woman who had been caught
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in adultery and they say in Verse
Four, teacher, this woman has been
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caught in the act of adultery.
Now in the law of now, in
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the law Moses commanded us to stone
such women. So what do you say
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this? They said to test him, that they might have some charge to
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bring against him. Jesus bent down
and wrote with his finger on the ground.
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And as they continue to ask him, he stood up and he said
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to them, let him who is
without sin among you be the first to
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throw a stone at her. Once
more, he bent down and wrote on
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the ground, but when they heard
it they went away one by one.
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This condemnation that comes to them through
this word is the thing I want to
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bring to your attention this morning.
Jesus says, let him who is without
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sin cast the first stone. Go
ahead, this is a question, right
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at, a testing question. They
go to test him, to entrap him.
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But, as usual, Jesus turns
the tables and they find themselves being
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tested in a very personal way.
Their hearts are being tested. Go ahead,
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who of you is willing to publicly
admit that you are without sin?
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And there they are, testing themselves
in their heart and they just decide to
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walk away. The Heart's power to
condemn is very powerful. The Heart's ability
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to speak to us has a way
of changing our actions, sometimes, like
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we see with these people. They
they walked away one by one, no
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one being willing to cast the first
stone, each person being convicted in their
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hearts that they, like this woman, had sinned and, like the other
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faculties, that God has given you
your eyesight, your memory, other things.
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These things can be strengthened or weakened
through misuse or or or use.
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Our heart has an ability to grow
cold and hardened as we misuse it,
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as we don't listen to it,
or as we listen to voices that don't
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deserve to speak to it. It
can also be strengthened as we pay attention
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to the will of God, as
we seek to discern it. We sharpen
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it, we strengthen it. The
question for us today, though, is,
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given this reality that our hearts are
very powerful and they can condemn us,
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what do we do when they condemn
us? What do we do when
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there is this self condemnation inside?
Bring this up because this is what John
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says. He says this is again. I'm going to read Verse Nineteen,
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for by this we shall know that
we are of the truth and reassure our
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heart before him, reassure or persuade
cause to believe our hearts before him.
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This is an appropriate moment for John
to say this. Why? Well,
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because for several chapters now, John
has, like Jesus, been sort of
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testing us. He's been putting the
pressure on us and asking US some serious
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questions. If you are have your
bibles open, you can go back and
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look at verse fourteen, for example, same chapter. He says we know
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that we have passed out of death
into life because we love the brothers.
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The question end this then, is
do you love the brothers? Do you
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love these people that God is placed
around you right now, on your left,
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on your right, in front of
you, behind you, these people?
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Do you love them? Do you
love the body of Christ? If
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not, well then you're not one
who has passed out of death into life.
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That's a testing question, right.
How do we know who are those
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who belong to the church and those
who have left? How do we know
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those who belong to Jesus and those
who do not? And for some time
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now Jesus has been saying through his
apostle here, the one who doesn't practice
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sinning, that's the one who belongs
to me, the one who bears forth
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the fruit of righteous wistness, the
one who abides in me, the one
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who loves me, the one who
receives the word that has come from the
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beginning. These are the marks of
a Christian. As we impress and as
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the spirit impresses those marks on US
and call and calls for a kind of
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accounting, it can bring to some
of us a certain amount of condemnation.
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I don't love you as much as
I ought to. My brothers and my
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sisters, these people who have been
given. Do I really love them?
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Or do I get angry and frustrated
and impatient and lack kindness and generosity and
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well, yeah, I'm sorry,
even for me, specifically to you.
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I'm sorry I don't always love as
I ought to, and I know that's
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true of you as well. It's
true of all of us, or else
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John wouldn't say this. What do
we do when our hearts condemn us,
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when we put these tests on us
about the marks of a Christian and we
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find ourselves coming up short? You
know that I, many of you know
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anyway, that I teach some cello
lessons, if few cello lessons. I've
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been doing this for a long time. One of the great inventions that has
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happened in the music world is a
tuner. It's a little electronic tuner and
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I use this all the time with
myself and with my students. You play
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a note into the this little very
tiny like they're actually really small now,
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but anyway, you play a note
and then the meter tells you whether the
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pitch is correct or not. If
it's on the zero, in the middle
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and flashing green, you're doing great, it's exactly right. If it's wobbling
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down here or it over here,
it's either flat or sharp. What will
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happen sometimes is the tuner itself has
to be calibrated properly, and sometimes this
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will happen. You know, it'll
be in my cello case in the button
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will get pressed and the calibration will
get off from what we normally want and
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you'll have an all tune a child's
instrument and I'll say that doesn't sound right
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and then we'll check it and it's
right. And will check it and it's
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right. It keeps centering there in
the middle, right on Green. Everything
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looks perfect. I Ah, maybe
the batteries going dead or something, and
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then I'll check the calibration and I'll
go, oh, it said three hundred
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and thirty seven mega hurts instead of
four hundred ord and thirty seven, instead
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of forty. Something's small like that
can happen, and then I'll realize I'll
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bump it up, and then we'll
tune it all up and it'll be good
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to go. Our hearts are like
this. Right in order for us to
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properly assess where we're at as we're
being tested, multiple things have to happen.
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In the first place, the the
meter has to be properly calibrated.
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Maybe you have been in a situation, for example, where somebody has told
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you that something is God's will,
when it's not a commandment that you have
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to follow, when he simply hasn't
commanded it, and you look back on
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that situation ago, I remember that. I remember feeling guilty for not doing
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this thing, which I later learned
was totally fine to do, or the
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opposite. I didn't feel ever,
I never felt guilty, and then I
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later learned that that was a sin, and now I've learned to feel guilty
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for that. Either way, flat
or sharp. Our consciences are like this.
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Our hearts need to be properly calibrated
according to God's word. Within a
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little electronic tuner in a cello,
it's pretty easy. With our hearts it's
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a big mess. We don't don't
read God's word properly, we don't understand
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it. We misinformation, there are
bad teachings, there's misunderstandings, there's our
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own sin, which is constantly pushing
the decalibration button. There's all kinds of
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problems just at the starting point,
just there and then, even if you
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get the calibrational right, which none
of us ever do, even if we
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know and understand God's will perfectly,
then we're not always great at assessing and
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and reading it. We're not always
great at at dealing with the facts as
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we have them. This happens with
my students as well. They can see
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right there. I ask. I
say what is it? They say it's
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flat. I say, okay,
now what do you do? I don't
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know. We gotta tune it up. How do you tune it up?
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Do I use this thing? Yeah, that's what you use, right,
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but we like this is Christians too. We go okay, I know that
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this is wrong, but what do
I do? I feel bad. I
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see that I'm not doing it right. What do? What do I do?
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Well, scriptures have all kinds of
things to say about this. This
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is just one of them and I
won't try to say everything today. So
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if you feel like, well,
what about this or that? Well,
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probably there's other things to explore,
but this, what I'm trying to point
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out at the moment, at this
is this. This process of calibration,
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of calibrating, of judging, is
not easy. It's not easy our hearts,
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which deal with all of this.
It's difficult. With cello in an
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ideal situation, the battery is charged, the tuners working, it's calibrated,
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there's a quiet room and instrument that
works properly and you're good to go.
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It's that often happens with our hearts. It's a whole nother story. When
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things are right, we get what
is pictured in the following verses and verses
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twenty one through twenty four. Take
a look at those. When things are
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all working very smoothly and well,
we have verse Twenty One. Beloved,
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if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. That's
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a great feeling. Paul talks about
this every now and then. He says,
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I stand before the Lord in according
to my conscience, and I know
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I have done the right thing.
This is possible for us. It's possible
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to have confidence before God. The
continuing description of that continues in verse twenty
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two. And whatever we have we
ask from him because we keep his commandments
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and do what pleases him. This
is the confident, healthy Christian life that
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many of us us have experienced,
but it's certainly not always this way.
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There are times when it doesn't feel
like this. This image of confidence and
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Growth and success is pictured in Psalm
one. There's this tree that is rooted
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down by water and the PSALMA says
it's leaf does not wither, fruit does
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not fade and all that it does. It's prosperous. It's a happy,
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healthy tree. You know, near
the Santa Cruz you river there used to
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be a large, large grove of
mesquite trees, miles and miles big,
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big, strong trees. They're not
there anymore. Why aren't they there anymore?
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Well, because there's no water there. There's no water you typically that
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flows in the Santa Cruz River.
When there's no water, the trees die,
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and when the water of the word
is not feeding us and helping us,
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we tend to wither and shrivel.
And that's why the antidote for this
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heart problem that we have, John
gives to us, the antidote, is
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a doctrine, a truth, he
says. By this we will know that
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we are of the truth and we
shall reassure our hearts before him whenever our
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hearts condemn us. And here it
is. God is greater than our heart
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and he knows everything. This is
the little weapon that God places in our
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hands when we find ourselves dying,
when we find ourselves filled with self condemnation
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and discouragement and spiritual depression, when
we find ourselves withering away, he says,
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here is a little weapon for you
will, a little but powerful and
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the simple, simple words. God
is greater than our heart and he knows
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everything. The heart is a mysterious
thing, as we've pointed out, but
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it is persuadable. Why? Because
it's reasonable. The heart, as it
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is in the Bible, is it
is understood in the scriptures, is more
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than just your emotions. It's all
of you in a way. It's your
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mind as your conscience, that's your
will, it's your emotions as well.
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It's a reasonable thing. It's a
persuadable thing. You Hear David, for
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example, persuading his heart in the
psalms. Three times, in Psalm forty
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two, he says, why are
you cast down, my soul? Why
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are you a turmoil within me?
Hope in God and I shall again praise
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him, my salvation. You hear
that, why are you cast down on
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my soul? Hope in God,
Oh my soul, remember God, he
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is my salvation. Three times he
says that in that Psalm. Our hearts
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often get discouraged and we have to
remind them. We have to remind them,
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we have to reassure, we have
to persuade them. How do we
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do that? We do that with
the truth of God's word here, specifically
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that he's greater than our hearts and
he knows everything. There are many ways
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to persuade a heart and one of
them is this way, through doctrine,
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through the truth of God. The
revelation of the Holy Spirit, who is
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living and active, means that doctrine
is never just words mirror syllogisms. Doctrine
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is life, doctrine is experience,
truth, wisdom. Doctrine is action,
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doctrine is God is greater than our
hearts. That's a very powerful thing.
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What does that mean? That God
is greater than our hearts means a lot
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of things which I would love to
talk about for many hours. We don't
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have that much time, but we
can think just in the biggest terms right
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away. He's greater their hearts because
he's greater than everything, the one who
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made the sun and the moon,
the stars and the sky, big tall
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mountains, great deep canyons. He's
certainly greater than my little heart. He
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made me, as we read in
Psalm Twenty Five, he is our maker.
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Let me turn back to that.
Actually, Psalm Twenty five that I
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read earlier David says, turn to
me and be gracious to me, for
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I am lonely and afflicted. Then
in verse Seventeen, the troubles of my
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heart are enlarged. Bring me out
of my distress, consider my affliction,
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in my trouble, forgive all my
sins. Verse Twenty says, Oh,
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guard my soul and deliver me.
Let me not be put to shame,
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for I take refuge in you.
I take refuge you. May Integrity and
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uprightness preserve me, for I wait
for you. Redeem Israel, Oh God,
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out of all his troubles. The
reason we trust in God is because
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he is a fortress, because he
has a refuge, he is strong and
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mighty to save. We sang of
this just a moment of go in the
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marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
how great he is and all of his
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ways, how he can humble a
heart or king, how he can take
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a nation and turn it another direction
overnight, how he can move vast armies,
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change time itself, make the sun
stand still and plant a small rock
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and a giant's forehead can change empires, dry up rivers, turn water into
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blood, bring bread from the sky. God is great, it's powerful.
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He's greater than our hearts, and
they're twisting in their turning, in their
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confusion and their fickleness. He's rock
solid, strong and everything that he does
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he is great not only them.
Our hearts just sort of it as they
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exist, sort of his power versus
their power, but he's also greater in
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terms of the effect that he has
on them. It's not just sort of
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there's this thing over here and there's
that thing over there, but they come
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together when he forgives our sins,
when he gives us his Holy Spirit,
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as he says in a verse Twenty
Four. By this we know that he
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abides in us, by the spirit
whom he has given us. God has
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given us his own spirit who's dwelling
in us and changing our hearts. That's
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power. Just as he can move
mighty armies, he can move these things
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inside of us. The greatness in
the salvation of the Lord is seen in
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so many ways, in so many
places. Will come back to that a
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little bit later, but let's focus
now on this specific thing that John Mentions
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of his greatness, that he knows
all things. First of all, notice
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how this is underlined in this passage. There's a kind of a rounding that
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happens here. If you look at
verse nine, there is this word no.
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By this we shall know that we
are of the truth. Right,
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there's this question in us and our
knowledge. Then it ends. This full
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thought ends with a point about God's
knowledge, about he knows everything. You
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see that. How how do we
come to know something in our confusion?
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The answer is by the knowledge of
God knowing everything. Know at the beginning,
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know at the end. And in
the middle of that thought are these
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three hearts, three references to the
heart. First we shall reassure our hearts
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before him. Then heart is mentioned
again whenever our heart condemns us. And
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then again God is greater than our
heart. He knows everything. It's a
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little difficult to see here in this
Bible that I'm looking at. It's all
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compacted into this tiny little column,
but if you take these phrases and you
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break them out, you'll see this. There's this knowledge here than heart,
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heart, heart, knowledge. The
point about bringing up the structures to say
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we're intended to connect these things,
we're intended to think when in our confusion,
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and what do we think, and
how do we know, and how
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do we know what we know where
to come around this point at the end
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that God knows everything. That's what
brings confidence to the heart in the middle
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of all of that. This is
this great comforting comparison. In the midst
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of your confusion, in the midst
of your when you're asking yourself, do
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I belong to God? There's a
certain point in which you need to stop
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ants asking that question and start thinking
about God, whom Daniel Twenty Two,
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two hundred and twenty two describes this
way. He reveals deep and hidden things.
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He knows what is in the darkness
and the light dwells in him,
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with him. That's what Daniel says
right before he reveals dream. Job Twenty
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six six, again on the knowledge
of God. She'll is naked before God
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and abadden has no covering. God
sees right down into the depths of the
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earth, right past the covering that
exists before our eyes. Job Thirty one
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four. Does he not see and
number all my steps? Psalm one hundred
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and forty seven five? Great is
the Lord and abundant in power. His
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understanding is beyond measure. Go ahead, try it. That's what jobs all
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about, right. Go ahead,
just try to measure a few things about
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the greatness of God. Were you
there? Did you accomplish him? So
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on and so forth. Go read
job if you haven't read it in a
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while. Isaiah forty twenty eight says
something similar. His understanding is unsearchable.
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Or do you even start in trying
to understand the understanding of God, who
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knows all things? Now, for
the person WHO's trying to hide from God,
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this is terrifying. If this is
you and you are a thief,
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a murderer and adulterer who is hiding
in your sins, to hear that God
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sees right down into the pit of
Hell, sees right into your hearts,
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knows every thought and word and intention
and action. Well, it should shake
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you in your boots. The fact
that God knows everything and that there's no
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hiding from him, that everything will
be discovered and Unar and uncovered, and
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that every lie in which we pretend
otherwise brings only condemnation should terrify us.
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Hebrews Thirteen says no creature is hidden
from his sight, but we are all
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naked and exposed to the eyes of
him, to whom we must give account.
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Romans to one. Therefore, you
have no excuse, Oh man,
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every one of you who judges,
for in passing judgment on another, you
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condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things. He
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makes two points here. One hypocrisy. You're judging other people when you do
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them the same when you do it
yourself. But the second point is notice.
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You are very able to judge.
You know right from wrong. You're
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capable of doing this. Do you
think you, who is capable of discerning
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good from bad, right from wrong, will escape judgment from God, who
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is the judge overall things? I
say this as a true and sincere warning
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to any of you who are pretending
that you can escape the knowledge of God.
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He knows all things. If you're
afraid about the powers of the Internet
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recording your actions, how much more
should you be afraid of God, who
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will give an AH, to whom
you must give an account before the Christian
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who says, yeah, that's me, I ain't hiding, those are my
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sins and I'm going over here to
claim Christ's righteousness for me, given freely
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to me, not because of this
mess, but because of his goodness and
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grace. The knowledge of God becomes
a different story when we come to understand
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the great omniscions, the allknowing power
of God. As he comes to us
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in His grace, we say thank
you for revealing my sin, thank you
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for not keeping me in the darkness
of my own heart, but bringing me
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into the light of your grace and
now treating me as a son, as
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a daughter. Matthew six eight touches
on this was. It relates to the
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knowledge of God, for your father
knows what you need before you ask him.
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Isn't it wonderful to know that God
knows everything, to know that he
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knows what we need before we know
what we need? Before we know how
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to ask, he's almost always giving
it. He knows everything and he knows
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how to complete it. When our
hearts condemn us and we're looking for hope
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outside of ourselves, we ought to
go to God, who knows us better
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than we know ourselves, to trust
his knowledge of US more than we trust
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ourselves. He says we're more sinful
than we realize. Okay, I'll believe
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it because I know how unreliable this
is already. You say your forgiveness covers
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all my sins and washes me wider
than snow. Okay, that's great,
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because I know that God is greater
than my heart. He knows everything,
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where we know only in part,
and when we're all discombobulated and messed up
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and finding ourselves struggling to even understand
what's going on, God gives us this
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sure truth that he is greater than
our heart and he knows everything. You
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know, when you walk out,
let's say, to even today, and
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you look at, you know,
the ground around your home, you don't
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know what lies down underneath the your
affair with all this rain that we're having
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in the season that we're coming into, sure enough, there's going to be
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flowers there? Well, desert flowers
here and there, maybe a weed,
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maybe a new CACTUS, but you
don't know. You can't see any of
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that right now. But God sees
it. He knows exactly where every seed
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is, where every little thing is
germinating, everything that's happening. And if
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he places the seed of faith in
your heart and is causing it to grow
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and is watering it by his spirit, he better be sure that that's happening
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and he knows about it. He
doesn't forget us. He watches over a
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US when we can't see things properly, when we don't know what's going on,
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when we're waiting for the final results. What do we do? How
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do we persuade our hearts? We
believe that God is greater than our hearts
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and he knows everything. We can
trust in him. The little little sprouts
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of faith, he knows about them. He's put them there, he'll cause
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them to grow. If you want
about the know more, if you want
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to know and think about the greatness
and the knowledge of God and see it
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all come together in one place,
there's no better place than to see it
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on the Cross of Jesus Christ,
because he, or God accomplishes something that
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he had been he had known and
planned from the very beginning. When Judas
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planted that kiss on his master,
on the one who had offered him salvation
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and betrayed him, Jesus wasn't surprised. What did he say, im go
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ahead and do what you came to
do. When Jesus went to the cross,
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he went so willingly, willingly,
knowingly. When Jesus suffered under the
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wrath of God for all of our
sins, he did so knowing about each
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and envery individual sin of each and
every individual person he was saving. That's
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the knowledge of God, and the
greatness of his power can be seen when
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he rose again on the third day, putting to shame all dominions and powers
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and authorities and canceling, as Paul
says in Colossians, the record of debt
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that stood against us, with all
of its legal demands. Canceled, it
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done, forgiven, reconciled, redeemed, saved. Next, God took care
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of all of us completely and perfectly. He justified us in him, he
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adopted us as his children, and
now he is sanctifying us. Trust him
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for that. When your heart is
condemning you and you're wondering, how is
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this all going to come out in
the end? The answer is to begin,
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or is to continue as you began, to walk in the faith that
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you have received, to trust God, who is great, who is sent
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his son in all of his greatness
and his power to save you. He
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knows all things, even when you
do not. This verse, this doctrine,
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is not magical. You can't just
say it over and over bunch of
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times and all of a sudden you'll
feel better. Sometimes, I'll tell you,
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you won't feel better. Sometimes your
heart will continue to lash around like
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a fish out of water and you'll
say this is what it says and you'll
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still not feel better, at least
not right away. But it does help
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sometimes. Else John wouldn't say it. Persuade your hearts with this, he
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says. And you know what,
even when we're not able to fully persuade
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our hearts of its truth, it's
still true. It's still true. Let
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me end with this, from lamentations
three, twenty two through twenty four,
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the steadfast love of the Lord never
ceases. His mercies never come to an
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end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord
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is my portion says my soul.
Therefore, I will hope in him.
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Let's pray
