Episode Transcript
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So please remain standing, if you're
able to, and turn your attention to
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first John Chapter Five. First John
Five, we are coming to the end
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of this letter now. This passage
is sort of brings to the letter to
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a conclusion. And then the last
verse I'll read, verse thirteen, is
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sort of a transition point between the
body of the letter and its closing,
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which will get to next time.
But today the the the end of the
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body of John's letter here, from
beginning at verse four a through thirteen.
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So let's give our attention to it
now and and hear the word of God.
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First John Five, verse four.
For everyone who has been born of
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God overcomes the world, and this
is the victory that is overcome the world
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our faith. Who is it that
overcomes the world except the one who believes
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that Jesus Christ is the son of
God. This is he who came by
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water and blood, Jesus Christ,
not by the water only, but by
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the water and the blood, and
the spirit is the one who testifies,
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because the spirit is the truth,
for there are three that testify, the
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spirit and the water and the blood. In these three agree. If we
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receive the testimony of men, the
testimony of God is greater, for this
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is the testimony of God that he
has borne concerning his son. Whoever believes
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in the son of God has the
testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe
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God has made him a liar because
he is not believed in the testimony that
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God is born concerning his son.
And this is the testimony that God gave
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us eternal life, and this life
is in his son. Whoever has the
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son has life, whoever does not
have the son of God does not have
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life. I write these things to
you who believe in the name of the
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son of God, that you may
know that you have eternal life. Amen.
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You may be seated. You all
know that we live busy lives,
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and being busy can be a really
wonderful thing. It can keep our minds
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away from bad things, it can
keep us involved in good work. Of
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course. busyness, though, has
a downside to and and that's it.
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busyness in the sense of just activity
or spinning along, and it has a
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way of making us lose focus on
what's important. There was a little book
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written a few decades ago and fray
a bit, and it's titled. It's
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has a title that is often used, is called the tyranny of the urgent.
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Perhaps some of you have read that
or thought about that before. Right,
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the the urgent things of this life, the thing that sort of right
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in front of you and is calling
for your attention, sometimes tends to crowd
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out the things that are important.
Urgent things can be kind of a tyrant
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and those urgent things are not always
as important as they they say they are
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right. Maybe you've heard the phrase
stop and smell the roses. What does
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that mean? Well, it means
that we should slow down reflect on things
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that are important, things like beauty, even good smells life, the things
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that are around us. Today,
we talk about mindfulness or being attentive or
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attending to certain things, being present. It's easy to get caught up in
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life, right, it's easy to
just be busy with things, busy with
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ourselves, or even even busy with
our sins. To think about stopping and
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smelling the roses for a moment,
think to remember the important things. Want
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to point to another thing in nature
for just a second, and the clouds.
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There's a UK graphic designer, Gavin
pretor penny, who founded the cloud
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appreciation society. A little bit of
a joke, I think, but he's
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fairly serious. He gave a Ted
talk on it once and I want to
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quote a little bit from him about
clouds. He says it's just that their
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beauty is missed because they're so omnipresent. So I don't know commonplace that people
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don't notice them. They don't notice
the beauty. They don't even notice the
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clouds unless they get away in the
way of the Sun. They think of
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them as annoying, frustrating objects.
Then they rush off and do some blue
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sky thinking. He continues. But
most people, when you stop to ask
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them, will admit to harboring a
strange sort of fondness for clouds. It's
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like a nostalgic fondness, and they
make them think of their youth. who
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here can't remember thinking of looking and
finding shapes in the clouds when they were
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kids, you know, when you
were masters of daydreaming? It's just that
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these days, as adults, seem
reluctant to allow ourselves the indulgence of just
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allowing our imaginations to drift along in
the breeze. And Gavin says, I
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think that's a pity. I think
we should do it perhaps a little bit
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more. I think we should be
a bit more willing, perhaps to look
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at the beautiful sight of the sunlight
bursting out from behind the clouds and go
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wait a minute, that's two cats
dancing the salsa, or seeing the big,
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big white puffy one over there,
the one over the shopping center that
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looks like an abominable snow man going
to rob a bank. It's a good
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reminder, right, of this freedom
that happens when we relax a little bit
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and remember what's important, that there
are beautiful things in this world, as
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a way of thinking about something bigger, and that's his ultimate goal. Will
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you could ask this question. Do
you take time to stop and smell the
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roses? Do you take time to
look up to notice the clouds, or
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maybe call your mom, it's mother's
Day right, or thank someone for a
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job well done, or do something
that you really love? We're always rushing
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around to do some kind of blue
sky thinking, as he calls it.
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The clouds remind us to slow down, to take things in, too,
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imagine a little bit. We're not
always good at that. Now you're not
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going to like what I'm going to
say next, and that's because I'm going
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to press this point even further,
because many people are not only losing focus
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on the important thing us, the
important things of life, but they're totally
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neglecting the really, really important things, the biggest things, the things that
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don't, you know, just matter
in life ten, twenty or thirty years
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from now, like saving for retirement
or getting enough exercise, but things that
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matter for eternity. They don't look
up even beyond the clouds. Jesus says
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in Mark Eight thirty six. What
is it profit a man to gain the
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whole world and forfeit his soul?
That's why John writes in verse thirteen,
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his reason for writing, and he
says, I write these things to you
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who believe in the name of the
son of God, that you may know
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that you have eternal life. Eternal
Life. That's one of the really,
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really big things, isn't it?
Life or death? This sort of talk
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gets us to the heart of everything, the most important things, the things
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that matter more than everything else.
And here's where the tyranny of the urgent
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does the most harm, when we
allow distractions or even purposefully distract ourselves from
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the questions of eternal life and are
standing with God. Now, these Christians
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that John is writing to are facing
this, and John wants them to remember
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why it is they have eternal life, how it is they came to have
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it and how it is that they
will keep it. These are crucial questions,
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the most important questions, but too
many of us distract ourselves. We
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ignore our sins, we pretend God
is nothing more than a myth, a
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helper in our heads. We do
this because we're too busy with other things,
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because we're too busy with loving our
sin, and I think we also
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do it because we're afraid. We
know something about the consequences for bad behavior
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in this world, the way it
destroys our relationships, the way it gets
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us in trouble with the law.
You could list all kinds of things.
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Knowing about the consequences for bad behavior
in this world makes the consequences before the
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Almighty God on the Day of judgment
terrifying, things like eternal pain, constant
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agony, the tortures of Hell.
Maybe we'd rather just not think about that.
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Maybe you even feel that my mere
mentioning of it this morning is obnoxious.
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But notice this. I'm not beating
on the pulpit, I'm not yelling
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and screaming fire and brimstone, but
maybe it feels like I am simply by
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talking about these things, our souls
get stirred up and anxious, especially if
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we're not Christians, if we don't
know yet what it means to be forgiven,
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if we don't yet have certainty about
eternal life in Christ when, frankly,
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we're nothing, we're just a mess. Maybe I should be pounding the
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pulpit, maybe I should be pressing
this point and waking you up to the
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fact that God is offering to each
and every one of us here eternal life,
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the forgiveness of our sins, something
other than something other than the torments
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of Hell. Eternal Life. That's
a big thing. That's a really important
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thing. That's something that we can't
deny and we must pay attention to.
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What does denial get you? Or, let me be very practical, where
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has denial gotten you? What thing
can you point to in your life?
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What truth can you point to that
you can say, boy, it's really
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good. I denied that for about
six months, or six years, or
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sixty years even. It's a good
thing I sort of pressed off thinking about
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that. I don't think there's anything
like that that any of us can say
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when it comes to the truth.
The Bible does this thing for us and
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that every Sunday at least, when
we come together and we worship, it
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wakes us up a little bit,
tells us to get your head out of
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that, your belly button, get
your head out of the dirt, get
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your head out of this world and
look up. Remember, there are important
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things more important than this world and
this time. But John has been saying
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something more important, or not more
important. But in addition to he's saying
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something more than just look up.
He tells us something in particular, something
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really hopeful. If all we ever
did, if all the Bible did,
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if all I ever did was say
here's an important question and then sort of
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walked off and went home, we'd
all be left with just a conundrum,
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in a problem. But the Bible
also gives us answers. The Bible also
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gives us hope. So I've read
to you the last verse. Now let
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me read to you again the first
verse. Here's the very hopeful thing that
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John says. For everyone who has
been born of God overcomes the world,
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and this is the victory that has
overcome the world, our faith. Now
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what does John mean when he says, overcomes the world. Well, you
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might remember back to chapter two or
he talks about this. For example,
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in Verse Fifteen, he says do
not love the world or the things in
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the world. If anyone loves the
world, the love of the father is
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not in him, for all that
is in the world, the desires of
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the flesh, the desires of the
eyes, and pride and possessions, is
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not from the father but is from
the world. So you remember these things
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and you know them personally. The
desires of the eyes, that desires of
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the flesh, pride, of possessions, right, the grasping, the holding.
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Maybe that's of good things, right
things God has made and given us,
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like money or time, a good
relationship's food. There's nice things that
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God is put into the world that
are right to have, but not to
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grab and take hold of and build
our lives on, because these things don't
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last. Then, of course,
there are the sinful things that God has
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not given to us to have and
enjoy in their right time and play.
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Things like we read about in glacians, things like sexual impurity, things like
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idolatry, things like anger, murder, dissension, envy. And yet we
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grasp at these things too, we
find ourselves beholden or, to use a
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maybe even a stronger word, enslaved
to sin. That's what God sets us
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free from. That's the world,
the the encroaching and enslaving powers of the
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world. God sets US free from. He causes us to rise up above
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them through something called faith. Faith
overcomes these things, he says, everyone
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who has been born of God overcomes
the world and this victory, and this
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is the victory that we have,
or that has overcome the world our faith,
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faith goes up into the heavenly places
and takes hold of this eternal salvation
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in God. It's takes hold of
something that's not in this world. That's
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what faith is. It's something that
takes hold of something else. It trusts
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something else, it grasps it,
it receives it. Instead of grasping at
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the things of this world and piling
our store houses with money or pleasures,
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faith takes hold of eternal life,
of the innumerable riches of God's blessings,
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things which we can never store too
much of, up, too much up
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of. There we go things that
we can pile and pile on without any
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worry of ever gaining too much.
Things like love or hope, or peace,
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or joy, or kindness or goodness
or steadfastness, things, if I
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can use that word inappropriately for a
second, things like God. God doesn't
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just give to US love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
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gentleness and self control, not just
the things of the spirit, but
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he also gives us the spirit,
the Holy Spirit of God. He gives
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to us his son, who we
find salvation and we find all of these
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blessings not apart from Christ, but
in Christ himself. When we grasp hold
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of these things by faith, we're
not just saying I believe in love,
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I believe in joy, I believe
in hope, and so on. We're
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saying I believe in Jesus will,
I take hold of him, I grasp
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him. He is my eternal life. And that's exactly what John is saying.
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He asked the question in verse five. Who is it that overcomes the
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world except the one who believes that
Jesus is the son of God? He
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grasps Jesus, that's the one who
is able to lift up out of the
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unimportant things, out of the things
that seem urgent, are seem important or
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seem pleasurable, and grasps something that
is truly important, forever important and forever
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pleasurable. And then he explains to
us in a new way, as he
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hasn't yet quite done in this letter
yet, who this son of God is
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in verses six and seven. Who
is it that we're grasping hold of?
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And he says this is he who
came by water and blood, Jesus Christ,
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not by water only, but by
the water and the blood. Now
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what does he mean by this?
There are lots of different interpretations of this,
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some better than others. I think
the best interpretation, the best way
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to understand this, is that the
water and the blood are symbolically referring to
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these two moments in Jesus's life.
I'm at the beginning of his life.
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He was baptized in the waters of
Jordan and at that moment the spirit who
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is mentioned in this passage came down
upon Jesus and anointed him for the ministry
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in which he would go forth.
and Jesus taught things and did amazing things
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over the course of that ministry.
That Holy Spirit anointed ministry. As he
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received that anointing, as he went
out into the world, he did amazing
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things, good things, taught things, loved people. But the gospel of
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Jesus Christ, the testimony of the
good news of God, is more than
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that. It's not a, as
one person called it, a water only
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Gospel. It's a water and blood
and that means that Jesus didn't only come
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into the world to to do these
things, to live this amazing life and
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to teach about the Kingdom of God, but he also died for it.
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He also shed his blood. That's
where everything was leading to. It speaks
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both the water in the blood speaks
both about the beginning of his ministry and
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the end of it. Is Baptism
and his cross. These things, these
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things are how we understand who Jesus
is. Jesus didn't just come into the
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world and teach things, didn't come
and just do miracles and show love and
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all the rest, but he came
and that was all leading to a particular
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point where he would die, where
he would shed his own blood so that
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we could have eternal life. As
the Bible says, who of us has
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a right to eternal life? None
of us. None of us can inherit
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the Kingdom of God based on our
works, based on our works, our
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wages of sin is death, punishment, condemnation. But when Jesus died on
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the cross, the Bible says that
he justifies us through his blood. He
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redeems us by the value of his
blood. He pays for this ransom,
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is another way to think of it. He ransoms us out of this slavery
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to sin that we are under.
That's what this blood is about. These
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things have to go together, and
John is making this point, likely because
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people are denying this. He's saying
that there are there are those that are
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teaching that the blood isn't important,
and this is just as true today.
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There are people that will tell you, yes, God is a good thing,
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you've got to have your higher power. They'll tell you, maybe even
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that Jesus is a good person.
Certainly, he lived in this world.
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He did amazing things. You should
learn about him, you should find out
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some things that he did. You
should follow his path. But Christianity,
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being in Christ is more than that. It's more than recognizing God is your
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higher power. It's even more than
recognizing Jesus as a God anointed man.
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It's also believing that Jesus came as
this God anointed man to die as a
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man to save man apart from that, there's no salvation apart from Jesus dying
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on the Cross and US receiving the
power of his blood. We are required
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to shed our own blood for our
own sins, but God has come into
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this world to change that equation,
to make a different kind of transaction,
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to die in our place. That's
who Jesus is. And John goes on
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to say this is the work of
the spirit. The spirit is the one
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who testifies, because the spirit is
truth. These things, this water and
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this blood, are called the testimony
of God. Why? Because God wants
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you to know that your faith in
Jesus, the foundation of Your Eternal Life,
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is founded not upon man made ideas, the things that pastor chelpkas saying,
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the things that you might have heard
somewhere else. They are founded on
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the very word of God. They
are founded on the testimony of the spirit.
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What greater proof do you want?
What more evidence didn't you want?
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What more sure hope do you want? We take people at their word all
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the time, don't we? A
sportscaster says such and such team won by
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thirty five points and we go oh
great, we celebrate. Maybe even a
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construction crew tells you the asphalt is
still wet. And so what do you
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do? You take another street.
You trust their testimony, your wife's,
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as the kids need to pick it
picked up at thirty, so you go
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pick up the kids at thirty.
We trust the testimony of people constantly,
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every day, all time, maybe
even every moment. We're trusting it in
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some way or another. Will you
not believe the testimony of God? People
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lie, people make mistakes, people
are ignorant. God never lies, God
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never makes mistakes, and that's why
John says what he says in Verse Nine,
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just working way way down here verse
nine. If we receive the testimony
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of men, the testimony of God
is Greater, is it not? For
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this is the testimony of God that
he has borne concerning his son. Whoever
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believes in the son of God has
the testimony in himself. In other words,
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when God speaks this word into our
lives, it comes into us in
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some way, it becomes a part
of us, in some way it changes
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us, and I think that's true
even of the construction crew that tells you
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not to go down that street.
It changes you in a very minor way.
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It changes you in a way.
You say I'm going this way instead,
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I don't want junk all over my
car. Your actions, your will,
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are conformed to this testimony of a
construction crew. If that's true,
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will we not be conformed and be
moved by the very testimony of God when
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he has sent his son into the
world to be born of a virgin,
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to be born under the law,
to fulfill the law so that we can
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be saved? Are we going to
walk away from that and say, I
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got other things to do, I
got money to me, I got this
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show to watch. Will you not
believe God? And when we do believe
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him, what John is saying here
gives us such a solid rock on which
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to believe, this foundation that cannot
be shaken, the very word of God
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that has itself been born into the
world in the person of the son and
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made powerful by the person of the
spirit. That's why he says whoever believes
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in the son of God has this
testimony in himself, and then the consequences
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of this are very strong. Whoever
does not believe God has made him a
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liar, made him not meaning the
God is a liar, but calls him
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a liar. You're a liar,
we say to God, because he has
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not believed the testimony that God has
borne concerning his son. People today want
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to take Jesus Christ as optional.
I think it's optional that God has sent
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his son into the world, became
incarnate, died on a cross out of
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love to save me from my sins. That's not optional. When a King
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says this is the law, you
will obey, you don't say if I
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feel like it, you do,
you're going the dungeon. When God speaks
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his law, we don't get the
choice to say whether or not we take
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it. We have to take it. But it's also true of the Gospel.
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When God speaks this good news into
the world, it's we don't have
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an option really to say I choose
not to believe. Of course you do
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have the option, but when you
do that you make God a liar.
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You don't end up in some kind
of neutral territory like. Well, I'm
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still deciding, still thinking about it. I don't know if God is for
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me. That's maybe someone else's thing. When God has done these things,
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spoken in this way, it's not
really optional. You see what I mean?
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Of course you have this freedom to
choose, but in another way you
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don't. You don't have the freedom
you don't get to be neutral about this.
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You either say yes and on men
and I believe and you receive eternal
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life or you got or you call
God a liar, and you can guess
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what the consequences for that are.
Those are the options that we are before
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us. One extremely good one,
given to US freely, one that opens
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up the very heavens itself to us, and all we do is believe and
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say you are true and thank you
and follow him. The other option is
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to flip God the Middle Finger,
say I don't care and I don't believe
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in to walk on our way.
That's the choice that we have. Is
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that really a choice? Denial won't
make you happy, but God will.
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God will make you happy as you
receive his word by faith and all the
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benefits that come with that. God
tells us that Jesus is death and resurrection
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and ascension into the heavenly places were
just the beginning, the beginning of the
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end, and at this time that
we are waiting for his return is a
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time for us to receive him,
to turn away from our sins, to
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come and enjoy and and have this
eternal life that John is talking about.
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The reason why he's writing, the
reason why I'm speaking. But there is
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coming an end, that end that
so many people fear, a day which
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in some ways brings us back to
the beginning of the sir, and about
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clouds, because the Bible says that
at the end, Jesus is one who
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is coming on the clouds. Revelation
one, seven and every I will see
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him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the Earth will
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wail on account of him. Even
so, men or revelation fourteen, revelation
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is the last book of the Bible. Revelation Fourteen, verses fourteen and fifteen
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and sixteen, say this about the
end, about the last day. Speaking
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prophetically, with this vision towards the
future, John says, then I looked
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and behold a white cloud, and
seated on the cloud one like a son
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of man, with a golden crown
on his head and a sharp sickle in
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his hand. And another angel came
out of the Temple, calling with a
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loud voice to him who sat on
the cloud. Put in your sickle and
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reap, for the hour to reap
has come, for the harvest of the
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Earth is fully ripe. So He
who sat on the cloud swung his sickle
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across the earth and the Earth was
reaped. If you do not have the
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son of man, the one who
comes riding on the clouds at the end
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is your champion, as your king, as your glorious savior, then the
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image of him reaping the earth is
terrifying and no wonder you deny it and
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push it out of your minds and
try to ignore that. But if the
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image of the one to come to
reap the earth is your king, your
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beloved, the one who has already
given you his spirit, his testimony,
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his eternal life, is the one
who is reaping so that he can bring
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you up and gather you as part
of a harvest to the glory of his
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name, to be the fruit that
he is born in this world, then
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the the image of the Lord coming
on the clouds is no terror for you.
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It is the anticipation and the great
joy and the hope of the war
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of the world to come, of
the eternal life being consummated, of being
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blown open, of coming into full
flower. When someone lives without faith,
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you flip to the end of the
Bible and it's a scary thing. But
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John says that when we have faith
we overcome the world, because our faith
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is in Jesus Christ, who has
overcome the world, not by the water
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only, but also by the blood. Put Your faith in him and you
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will be saved from everything. I'm
in
