Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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If you're able to remain standing,
please do. And let's turn our attention
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to Luke Chapter One, verses fifty
seven through eighty. Luke Chapter One,
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let's here it Gotsworth. Luke one, verse fifty seven. Now the time
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came for Elizabeth to give birth and
she bore a son, and her neighbors
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and relatives heard that the Lord had
shown great mercy to her and they rejoiced
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with her. And on the eighth
day they came to circumcise the child and
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they would have called him Zachariah,
after his father, but his mother answered
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no, he shall be called John. And they said to her, none
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of your relatives is called by this
name. And they made signs to his
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father inquiring what he wanted him to
be called, and he asked for a
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riding tablet and wrote his name is
John, and they all wondered and immediately
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his mouth was opened and his tongue
loosed and he spoke blessing God, and
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fear came upon our fear came on
all their neighbors. And all these things
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were talked about through all the hill
country in Judea, and all who heard
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them laid up in their hearts saying
what, then, will this child be?
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For the hand of the Lord was
with him and his father's Ecker.
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I was filled with the Holy Spirit
and prophesied, saying blessed be the Lord,
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God of Israel, for he has
visited and redeemed his people and has
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raised up a Horn of salvation for
us in the House of his servant,
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David, as he spoke by the
mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
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that we should be saved from our
enemies and from the hand of all
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who hate us, to show the
mercy promised to our fathers and to remember
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his Holy Covenant, the oath that
he swore to our father Abraham, to
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grant us that we, being delivered
from the hand of our enemies, might
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serve him without fear, in holiness
and righteousness, before him all our days.
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And you, child, will be
called the Prophet of the most high,
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for you will go before the Lord
to prepare his ways, to give
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knowledge of salvation to his people in
the forgiveness of their sins, because of
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the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on
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high to give light to those who
sit in darkness and in the shadow of
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death to guide our feet into the
way of peace. And the child grew
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and became strong in spirit and he
was in the Wilderness until the day of
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his public appearance to Israel. Amen, you may be seated. Let's start
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with just a little bit of context
for this story. We jumped right in
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into the middle of it. You
have this man, Zachariah, who had
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been promised child would been promised a
miraculous birth, but he didn't believe it.
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He didn't believe God when he was
told and his wife, Elizabeth,
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were told that they would have this
son because they were a very old it
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was not possible for them to have
a baby. But just as it was
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not possible for Mary to have a
baby, Elizabeth's cousin, I'm God,
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I'm delights in doing the impossible and
making man to be fools and showing his
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his great wisdom. And so Zachariah, this this prittest of the Lord,
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this one who's called to say things
about God, to deliver God's word to
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the people, found his mouth shut. I'm not able to speak. The
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child is born. I'm but what
will he be named? What's the baby's
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name right? What will he be
called? And his mother says John and
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everyone says, I can't be right, nobody's name John, and our family
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don't listen to her. What does
the father want and he can't talk.
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They bring him a tablet, he
writes his name is John and then immediately
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Zacharias mouth is opened, and I
love this. Of Love this verse,
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in Verse Sixty Four. Immediately his
mouth was opened and his tongue was loose
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and he spoke blessing God. Right, he lost his speech because he was
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doubting God, and now, after
regaining his speech, he is blessing God.
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And this is just a perfect little
picture of what God does in our
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lives. All the time. He
blesses us and then we bless him and
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he blesses us not because we are, I'm so wonderful or great, or
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he's really impressed with us for doing
some piddling thing. He blesses us because
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he does, because he loves us, because, as it says in this
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passage a couple times, he's merciful, he's good, and when he blesses
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us in these ways, he also
changed us in such a way that our
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tongues and other members of our bodies, which have been used in the past
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for evil now are used for good, and so is tongue is loose and
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he speaks. Any blesses God.
This is such a big deal. But
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this man goes suddenly mute and then
suddenly gives is able to speak, and
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we have this amazing prophecy here being
filled with the spirit that it says that
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fear came upon all their neighbors and
throughout all the hill country and Gda,
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people could not stop tweeting about it, up, talking, talking about it.
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The word was spreading, as word
does when amazing things happen, and
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we see why. We see why
to really understand what was going on in
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this moment and understand what was going
on in Zacharia's heart and, even more
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importantly, to understand what God was
doing at this moment in human history.
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Want to turn our attention to Zacharia's
prophecy. What has been turned into a
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song, a song we will sing
at the conclusion of the sermon and our
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prayer. Are sachrized prophecy in verses
sixty eight through eighty is, as it
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begins and as it is summarized before
that, a blessing which is interesting to
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think about. I think a blessing
is essentially a good word and it's sort
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of most basic form. A blessing
is a good word, but depending on
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WHO's saying the blessing or who's giving
that blessing, it has a different effect,
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different possibilities. When God speaks a
good word, such as let there
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be light, goodness happens. There
is light and God says that it is
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good. Right. When God blesses
us, when God calls US blessed,
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he's not merely hoping or praying even
or wishing for a blessing. He is
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creating blessing. When God blesses,
when God speaks that blessing, we are
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blessed, and this is what he
does for us. When God speaks a
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good word and sends it forth,
it does good. Now, when we
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bless, when we speak a good
word, we are not God right.
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We do not have the power or
the capability to control the only one who
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governs all the creatures of the world
and all their actions, something will consider
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in our essential elements or essential questions
class after church, after worship this morning,
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God's Providence. Now, only God
is the one who has the power
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to rule all his creatures and all
their actions, which meet up, which
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means we don't have any sort of
way to control him. We can't bless
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someone or curse someone and cause that
to happen in the way that God can.
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Only God is in control of those
things. So when Zachara a bless
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is God, he is not creating
for God some kind of goodness or happier
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situation that God needs. God doesn't
need Zechariah. So what is Zechara doing
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when he blesses God? What do
we do when we bless God? Psalms
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say sixty eight twenty six commands us
bless God in the great congregation the Lord,
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Oh you who are of Israel's fountain. What are we doing when we
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bless God? What are we doing
when we speak this good word to him?
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We are praising him, we are
glorifying him, we are extolling him.
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We receive these good things, these
glorious things, and we return back
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praise. That's what we give to
God, that's what it means to bless
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him. This, by the way, as not only commanded in the Old
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Testament, but is something that Christians
do as well, and is we see
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Christians doing in the New Testament.
The very last words of this Gospel The
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gospel of Luke. We have this
about Jesus and his disciples, Luke writes,
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and he led them out as far
as Bethany and, lifting up his
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hands, he blessed them. While
he blessed them, he parted from them
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and was carried up into heaven,
and they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem
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with great joy. And we're continually
in the temple blessing God. That's it,
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right there, God, this is
the whole Christian life. Right,
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God blesses us and then we bless
him, but not in equal ways,
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right, not in equal ways.
He creates an US new life, he
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rescues us, he saves us.
We did we don't go rescue God and
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save him. It's not equal.
He's God, we are not. He's
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the father, we are not.
But that's not a bad thing. What
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it means is that as God blesses
us, as God blesses us, as
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God gives us these things, he
then creates in us a spirit that can
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bless him. I can give thanks
and praise, and that's what's happening here
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with Zechariah. So how does Zachariah
bless God? How does he praise God?
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How does he speak this good word
of the God of Israel. Well,
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he recounts various things that God has
done. Now, each of us
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have lots of different reasons that we
can bless God. Right the chair that
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you're sitting on, the clothes on
your back, the roof over your head,
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all of these things are things that
we can bless God for, things
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that he has given to us.
But God has also blessed us not only
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with these particulars in our life,
but in all of life. God has
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done things that have affected all of
our lives and even all of human history,
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and that's what Zecharia is blessing about. is here both of those things.
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Really he has in mind the great
salvation of the world that is coming
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in Christ, but also the role
of his particular son in that. A
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saving work he and and it's for
these things that he blesses God. So
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what has God done? Let's read
it in verse Sixty Eight. He has
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visited and redeemed his people. He
has raised up a Horn of salvation for
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us and the House of his servant
David, as he spoke from by the
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mouth of his holy prophets, from
his old from of old, that we
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should be saved from our enemies and
from the hand of all those who hate
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us, to show mercy, the
mercy promise to our fathers, and to
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remember his Holy Covenant, the oath
that he swore to our father Abraham,
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to grant that we, being delivered
from the hand of our enemies, might
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serve him without fear, in holiness
and righteousness, before him all of our
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days. Let's take this apart a
little bit. First, God visits his
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people, and when you receive a
visit from your home, maybe out of
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town guests, some family members or
friends that you love, you get excited
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right when somebody, when let's say
you are visited by somebody who is honorable
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or high in some way, let's
say the CEO for your whole company,
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comes and comes into your tiny little
department and thanks you for the good work
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that you're doing, you feel Honored
Right Your your appreciative of that. Well,
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if these things happen in this way, at this human level, imagine
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what it would be like, or
know what it is like, to know
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that God, the all glorious God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords,
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comes and visits us, is present
with us. Well, you would
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just love him or be honored.
You would sing and less his most glorious
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name. And that's what he does. And God doesn't just come and visit
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with us for a moment, he
comes and lives with us, even dwells
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in us. This is what Zucchara
is praising God for now. This visitation
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is not like an outoftown guests who's
coming to sleep on a couch for a
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few days. This is the visit
of power. This is a visitation of
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life changing power and authority and glory
and salvation. How do we know?
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Well, because Zakaria says he has
visited and redeemed his people. This means
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that God has taken our sins away
from us, he's paid for our sins
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and rescued us out of our slavery. If you want an image of this,
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you can think of God rescuing his
people, redeeming his people, out
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of Egypt. You Remember, God
had made these promises to Abraham that he
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would make him a father of many
nations. Abraham, little Abraham, this
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one person, would become the father
of many nations that God would create from
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him this family, this family of
God, but this family came under the
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authority of Evil Pharaohs in Egypt.
And eventually one who put them under slavery
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for hundreds of years. Hundreds of
years they they worked as slaves, surrounded
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everywhere by false idols, false hopes
and tragedy. And then God came and
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he spoke a good word. He
blessed them through the Prophet Moses. He
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said, let my people go,
and they were released with power and authority.
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God blew open the doors of Egypt, hard hearted doors, and allowed
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his people to be free. This
freedom that they were rescued to his will
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consider in a moment, was not
freedom to just wander around in the desert.
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It was freedom to go through the
desert to the promised land. That's
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why this redemption is described in verse
sixty nine as a Horn of salvation,
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this mighty Horn raised up for the
people. God is this powerful champion.
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He is rescuing us now. If
that weren't all enough, Zacharai goes on
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to say that this is all happening
exactly as God himself has promised, exactly
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as he has prophesied, which means
that there has been a hope that people
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have been hanging on to four years
and years and years, and now God
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is not only doing these things,
but he is faithful in doing them.
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He's proving and showing how good he
is, because he's doing it all exactly
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as he is promised, which is
just yet another thing to praise God for.
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Promised and predicted that he would save
us from our enemies, that he
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would that we would receive mercy,
that we would be close with God.
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So he says in Verse Seventy Zecharai
says, as he spoke by the mouth
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of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our
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enemies and from the hand of all
who hate us, to show mercy,
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promise to our father's to remember his
holy covenment. These it words are so
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important because we find ourselves often times
still waiting. In some ways, we've
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received the first advent of our Lord, his coming into the world, but
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we await his coming again. We
await that second coming, the second coming
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into the world, and while we
wait, it's easy to grow disheartened sometimes,
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isn't it? It's hard to press
on, it's hard to continue.
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But what Secara is telling us here
is that he's saying, look, God
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is fulfilling his promises, because that's
the kind of God he is. In
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other words, we have, in
Zechariah's blessing, a theology which is just
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piling up for us more and more
and more reasons to trust the Lord.
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I hope you are trusting the Lord. And why is all of this happening?
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This closeness, this intimacy, this
visitation, this power, this rescue,
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this redemption, it's all to fulfill
God's plan for us, which is
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that we might enjoy him and glorify
him forever, that we might be close
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to him and near to him.
Notice what verse seventy four says, that,
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being delivered from the hand of our
enemies, we might serve him without
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fear. This is not jumping in
from, you know, from the frying
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Pan, into the fire right.
This is not some evil king rescuing and
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scare quotes us, you know,
out of darkness into yet even more doom
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and more darkness. No, Colossians
tells us that when God rescues us out
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of this dominion of darkness, he
brings us into the Kingdom of light,
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the Kingdom of his beloved son,
a kingdom that is filled with love and
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warmth and peace and security and all
the things that we want. Tender mercy.
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This is what God is giving to
us. This tenderness is what he
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brings us into that we might serve
him without fear, but in holiness and
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righteousness before him all of our days. It's easy to imagine the Israelites being
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attempted to serve Pharaoh as a eyepleasers. Look busy right, don't get in
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trouble, do the minimal amount of
work right, that kind of thing.
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When we serve the Lord, as
those who have been rescued Zachari says,
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we don't serve him as I pleasers
will, trying to look busy, trying
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to look put on a good show
for God. No, we serve him
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with joy. We Serve Him With
Holiness and righteousness all of our days.
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This is our joy to know him
and deserve him. There is no higher
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no higher end. Well, that's
the first part. This is the one
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of the reasons that Zachariah Zachariah blesses
God because God is coming into the world
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to fulfill his promises, to visit
US and redeem us. Now, on
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top of all of that, Zachariah
gets to be the father of John.
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He gets to see and understand the
only the role that his own son is
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going to play in all of this. And what is that? It's that
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God has made his son. Is
promised that his son would be a prophet
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to go and announce this good news. Now he is not the light,
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but he comes to bear witness about
the light. Now this is important because
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you might think, well, of
course if God was coming into the world
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to do all these amazing things,
I'd be ready to receive it. Maybe
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not, maybe not. You might
picture this whole thing like being stuck in
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an underground cave. Outside of flagstaff
there are these lava tubes. Maybe some
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of you have been in them.
You sort of wander out into the forest
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a little bit and then there's kind
of a hole in the ground and then
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you sort of go down into this
hole and gets dark really fast and then
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you travel, if I remember right, it's about three quarters of a mile
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or something like that, back into
this tube and eventually it kind of stops.
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Anyway, it's a fun thing to
go out there and travel down.
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The thing is it's very, very, very important to bring a light because
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there's not electricity running down there and
there's no light getting into death except at
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the very opening. I had a
friend ones who went down into that tunnel
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and he didn't bring a flashlight and
he got left behind by his friends.
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He spent the next several hours,
maybe five or six. It was well
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after midnight when he finally got out
of this thing, crawling, feeling his
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way through this thing, hoping,
you know, trying to kind of keep
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his sense of direction and not to
sort of spin around his circles is because
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a little bit big, he's going
to moving carefully, slowing through this whole
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thing. Now, if you've ever
seen that, you know volcanic rock,
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you know the cinders. This is
not, you know, like California Beach
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Sand. This is hard stuff.
If you fall off, you trip,
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it hurts, and that's what this
thing is made of. And so you
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can imagine being in this tunnel,
trying to get out, crawling and getting
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hurt now here. This is a
picture I'm hoping, I wanted to be
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a picture of what it's like to
live in a world filled with sin and
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misery. It's to be in darkness, not where you knowing where you're going,
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getting hurt all the time, to
crawl around and move and a hope
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that maybe sometime things will get better, hoping that maybe you're moving in the
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right direction, but we don't.
Well, we're still in our sin.
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We just keep going in circles and
going in circles, keep getting hurt.
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Now you would think, as I
was going back to what I was saying
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earlier, that if somebody came into
the tunnel and said or yeah, if
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somebody came into the tunnel and said
hey, good news, there is a
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way out, that you would rejoice
and leave. But you know what,
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our sin is so bad that what
we usually do is we start camping out.
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We go, well, this is
just hopeless and yeah, maybe I
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kind of like you here. I
prefer it. And so even when good
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news comes to us, we don't
always hear it as we ought. We
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find that we would rather just stay
in our sin. We'd rather stay in
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our misery. We've kind of come
to like our situation. We are deceived.
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What God is doing here in bringing
light is he's providing for US light
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at the end of the tunnel.
Right, he's giving to us a way
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out and hope. But before that
he sends this messenger, John, down
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into the tunnel to tell us what
is about to happen. And you,
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child will be called the Prophet of
the most high, and you will go
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before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of the salvation to
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his people and in the and in
the forgiveness of their sins, because of
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the tender mercy of God, whereby
the Sunrise shall visit us from on high
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to give light to those who sit
in darkness and in the shadow of death,
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to guide our feet into the way
of peace. Can you imagine being
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in a tunnel like I've described and
having given up, given up for a
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long time, and you're sitting down
there and you're in your you're in your
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misery or in your sin, and
then somebody comes and you hear a voice,
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but it's not a voice like you've
heard before, those voices in your
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own head. Know this one is
different. This one is from God and
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he says light is coming. He
says light is come into the world.
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The one who comes after me ranks
before me because he was before me.
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This one who is coming, I'm
not even worthy to untie the strap of
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his sandals. This one who is
coming is the lamb of God who takes
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away the sin of the world.
Light is coming. You are in this
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darkness not by accident, but because
of your sins, and this one who
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is coming is coming to forgive you
your sins, to rescue you out of
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this and to bring you from darkness
into light. That's what John Does.
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That's this great message that John,
that God gives through this Prophet. He
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prepares the way, he wakes us
up, he wakes the world up,
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and there is John. That's what
John does as he goes out into the
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Wilderness and he calls to people,
he tells them of their need for repentance
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and he points to this one who's
coming to to Jesus. So it can
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you imagine then, with John Calling
this news, with John Pointing to the
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light? Can You understand then why, when Jesus did came, come and
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when John pointed to him? And
so there is the lamb of God who
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takes away the sins of the world, people started following him. If you
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were stuck deep down in a tube
and you realized your sin, you realize
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your misery, you realize that use
certain death for you if you didn't go,
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wouldn't you follow him too? You
would. If God spoke a word
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into your heart, it blew open
the doors that blew up in the hardness
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there was bringing rescue. That's what
God has done for us. That's why
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we have hope, light at the
end of the tunnel, a sunrise at
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the end of a long night,
to give light to those who sit in
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darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way
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of peace. And this is God's
ultimate plan for you. This is the
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thing that you need to think of
everything in your life in this context,
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that you are blessed. God has
blessed you with this news, God has
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blessed you with these announcements. God
has blessed you if you have put your
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faith in him, with his Holy
Spirit, who is even now guiding you
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into the way of peace. So
this is you stumble and fumble on your
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way through the Wilderness or out of
that tube, or we can mix all
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kinds of metaphors. Now, as
you move, as you move through this
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world and this age toward that promised
heavenly kingdom, you can know that you're
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doing so by God's own light,
by the sun that is shining in this
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world and in your life even now, and as you do so, even
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as you stumble and even as you
fall, because God is with you,
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because God has visit it. Did
you because God has made these announcements.
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Even as you're falling, even as
you're getting hurt, you too can bless
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God because your being saved, and
you have been saved, then you will
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be saved the way of peace,
the way of hope. These things belong
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to you. God says that in
Christ we are blessed with every spiritual blessing
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in the heavenly places, and he
promises us not only of these, not
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only ones that directly impact our souls, but our bodies too. God has
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blessed us in every way and with
them. Day this will all be fulfilled
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when we will also raise from Earth
to heaven to meet our Savior and to
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follow and serve him perfectly forever.
That's what the coming news of Jesus means,
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and now that he's come, that
is the news that we continue to
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announce in this world. Praise God. Let's pray now and ask that God
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would help us to receive this word, live in light of it and bless
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him. Let's pray
