Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Our scripture reading this morning comes from
the Fifth Chapter of the Gospel according to
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Matthew. Matthew Chapter Five will be
reading verses one to twelve. The sermon
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will be on Matthew Chapter Five,
verse six. This is the word of
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the Lord and, seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain and
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when he was seated, his disciples
came to him. Then he opened his
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mouth and taught them, saying blessed
are the poor and spirit, for theirs
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is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed
are those who mourn, for they shall
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be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
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Blessed are the Merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the
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pure and heart, for they shall
see God. Blessed are the Peacemakers,
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for they shall be called Sons of
God. Blessed are those who are persecuted
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for Righteousness Sake, for theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you,
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when they revile and persecute you and
say all manner of evil against you
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falsely. From my sake, rejoice
and be exceedingly glad, for great is
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your reward in heaven, for so
they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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Thus far, this reading of God's
holy word, the grass withers in
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the flower fades, but the word
of our Lord endures forever. Well,
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if you pay attention to the news
at all, I'm sure that you've noticed
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that over the last few years we
have seen an ever rising level of anger
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and agitation among many of our fellow
countrymen. Riots, murders, assassination,
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attempts, speech codes being imposed on
college campuses, protests, assaults, lawsuits
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and firings against Christians and against people
who are now what they call intellectual minorities,
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ever more extreme calls for what people
call social justice. All of these
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things are in the news seemingly all
the time, everywhere you look. We've
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seen a lot of it this past
week and, though I imagine that many
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of these things are as distressing to
you as they are to me, and
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we may be tempted not to want
to look, not to want to see,
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not to want to pay attention,
nevertheless it's important for us to take
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notice of these things. The theologi
and Carl Bart, with whom I have
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many disagreements but who has a good
quote, once said this. He said,
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Take Your Bible and take your newspaper
and read them bath, but interpret
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your newspapers from Your Bible. What
Bart meant when he said that was that
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if we're going to be faithful,
we have to pay attention to what's going
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on in the world around us,
but we must never forget that everything that
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is going on in this world is
already interpreted and it must be interpreted by
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us in light of scripture and,
in a sense, Jesus is fourth be
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attitude here before us this morning addresses
and interprets the essence of what we see
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going around us in the world today. All of the ankst and the tension
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of all these social justice warriors on
campuses and in the streets, and the
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the enraged people who are blowing up
your facebook page, your twitter account.
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They're all yearning for something. We
do have eternity written in our hearts,
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don't we, and we're yearning for
things. These people that are causing such
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disruption, it seems that they have
a deep seating longing for something that this
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world cannot give them. They are
starving for justice, but they're looking for
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it in all the wrong places and
through all the wrong means, running Christian
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bakers and floors out of business or
tearing down statues, or trying to get
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to the person you want or don't
want an office, at whatever level it.
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Maybe none of these things that are
so consuming us as a society are
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ever going to achieve the things that
the people trying for them think that they
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will. What will achieve what we
long for, what will achieve what God
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designed us to long for, quite
simply, is Jesus. Jesus and his
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glorious kingdom will bring us all the
justice that we yearn for. Jesus and
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his Gospel, his good news,
and his good news alone will bring us
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the righteousness that we all hunger and
thirst for. The longing that in the
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in the the hearts of so many
people who who that that's it that's driving
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them, the longing that's driving them
to tear apart, seemingly the very fabric
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of our society, is rooted in
a misplace. Search for what Jesus did
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when he disrupted the very fabric of
the cosmoss through his work on the Cross
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and through his ascension into Heaven,
Othor has now crowned him king of kings
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and Lord of Lords, forever and
ever, world without end, men and
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a men and and that is what
our beattitude is about this morning. In
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the last few sermons that we've had, in this introduction to Jesus's sermon on
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the Mount, which is what the
beattitudes are, we've seen that Jesus has
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told us so far that the citizens
of his kingdom, firstly, are those
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who are spiritually destitute. Secondly,
he told us that the citizens of his
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kingdom are the kind of people who
mourn in this fallen world, yearning for
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Eden. Thirdly, he told us
that they are those powerful, strong,
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even dangerous people who allow their strength
to be bent to the will of their
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father who is in heaven. And
now, this week, Jesus tells us
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that those who are blessed, that
is, those who are supremely happy in
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this life, are, he says, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,
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for they shall be filled. And
so I'd like us to look at
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this beatitude this morning in two parts. First, I would like us to
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see that Jesus is describing a yearning
after righteousness and second I would like is
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to see how, he says we
can go about getting filled. So as
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we consider the beatitude, it's always
good for us to place whatever we're reading
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in the cont text of its audience
and its author and all that's good stuff,
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and so I think it's good for
us to remember the context of this
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sermon, something about the character of
the people who came to hear Jesus preaching
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that day. And of all the
things that characterize the people that day,
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perhaps the single most unifying thing about
them is that they were all likely poor.
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Most of the people in Palestine and
Jesus's Day lived and grinding poverty.
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History tells us that King Herod and
his efforts to build wonderful cities and palaces
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and to build a temple greater than
the Temple of Solomon and in general,
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to glorify his own self, Herod
the great so heavily taxed and depressed the
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people of Judea that the whole region
was reduced to utter destitution. And the
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irony of their poverty was that Judaea
and Galilee ought to have been very wealthy
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areas. Galilee had an ideal climate
and excellent fishing. Judea itself was situated
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at the crossroads of Commerce and the
ancient world and had wonderful harbors and and
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all sorts of wonderful things that should
have made Galilee and Judea exceptionally rich areas.
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It should have been that way,
but it was not. It was
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a poor and an oppressed region.
Life was not at all what God's people
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hoped for. Life was certainly not
what the prophets had foretold would be the
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blessed condition of God's people in the
era in which the Messiah came. There
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was no justice in Judea, and
that made the people who came out to
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hear Jesus that day so very eager
to hear what this special holy man might
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tell them about the coming of the
Kingdom of the Messiah. And the reason
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that the people had no justice was
because Herod and Rome and the rest of
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their overlords, they all lived for
themselves. They weren't afraid to run roughshod
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over other people in order to get
what they wanted for their lives and their
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unrighteousness, their overlord's oppressed and abused
and brought poverty to God's people. And
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you know, when we see injustice, we condemn it, and rightly so
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because no one likes to see the
poor oppressed or the weak abused. It's
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not right and we want to say
something about it. We want to do
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something about it. But you know, though, we see oppression very clearly
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in others when they are oppressing us. Right when somebody's oppressing you, you
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see it with an eagle eye,
don't you? Nevertheless, virtually none of
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the oppressors see what they're doing.
Then, if they do, they excuse
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themselves for it somehow. Now that
said, I want to say something to
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us that's rather harsh. It's one
of those it's one of those Bible truths
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we don't like to think about,
and that's this. You and I are
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part of the problem. You and
I are all oppressors, we are,
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but we're not oppressors in the way
people think of oppression when they talk about
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oppression and justice. See, we're
oppressors of other people whenever we deny them
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God's righteousness. We oppress people,
whenever we don't act towards people as Jesus
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would have US act toward them.
The words, if this helps you to
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think about it, the words and
the Greek. The good reverend will know
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he just took another Greek class,
that the words for for righteousness and justice
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and Greek are the same word.
So if you want to understand justice,
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you have to understand justice comes through
righteousness, and if you want to understand
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righteousness, you have to understand that
righteousness is a full arm of justice,
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that it's one word in the Greek
language. And so what I'm driving at
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here, the idea, is that
whenever you are I sin against other people,
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we are at some level and in
some way denying justice and righteousness to
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others and therefore we are oppressing them. And I say that because in the
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Bible we find that oppression isn't just
doing something bad. It's not just harming
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someone. We tend to think that's
what oppression is. Right. It's when
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we actively do something harmful to someone, like Herod Robbing Everyone Blind to make
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himself look good. But in the
Old Testament, profits in particular, we
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see that oppression isn't just hurting others, it's not just sinning directly against people.
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Rather, oppression is when we,
on a practical, daily interpersonal level,
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it's when we deny other people get
this. Oppression is when we deny
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other people the experience of the love
of God in Christ. Let me unpack
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that. Jesus is king. Got
That, and as King Jesus is all
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so our good shepherd and as such
he desires that his people, his sheep,
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receive his kingdom blessings. And it's
kingdom blessings are that we should all
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live in perfect bliss forever in his
new heavens and yourth and until he comes
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again to restore Eden to Earth.
His desire is that all of his people
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should be having a foretaste of that
wonderful blessed life to come. He wants
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us, at some level to be
experiencing heaven's joys in the now, and
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one of the chief ways that he
intends for you and I to receive his
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kingdom blessings here and now is as
he loves us through his people. We
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receive his kingdom blessings as he loves
us through our brothers and sisters in Christ.
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See, God the Holy Spirit dwells
in you and me right and he
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ministers to you and me, and
one of the chief ways that God the
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Holy Spirit Ministers to you and me
is as he ministers through you and me
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and through his people. When Jesus
was preparing his decipe holes for the work
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that he would give them to do
once he had been crucified, resurrected and
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ascended into heaven. He said this
in John Chapter Five. I have a
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greater witness than John's for the works
which the father has given me to finish.
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The very works that I do bear
witness of me proving that the father
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has sent me. And in John
Chapter Fourteen, one of my favorite verses
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in the Bible, most assuredly I
say to you, he who believes in
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me, the works that I do, he will do also, and greater
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works than these will he do,
because I go to my father see now
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that Jesus has ascended to his father's
right hand. He hasn't left us alone,
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no matter how alone some of US
may feel, we are never ever
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alone. He is with us.
God, the Holy Spirit, lives in
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US just as surely as he dwelt
in his glory between the Cherub him over
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the temple, over the mercy seat
in the holy place in the temple,
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and the Holy Spirit is with us
to empower us to bring Jesus, his
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Justice and his righteousness into the lies
of those around us. And that's a
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wonderful promise, but what does this
have to do with us being oppressor's?
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Come on, Austin, you stirred
us up, you said something. Now
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tell us what this has to do
with us being oppressor's. Well, this
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the standard for how we are to
bring Jesus is righteousness into the world.
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Is The standard of Jesus's love for
us. Remember the second greatest commandment.
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We're to love the Lord, our
God, with all our heart, mind,
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soul and strengthen. The second commandment
is like unto it. You shall
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love your neighbor as yourself, and
Jesus, of course, has modeled that
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for us. He's shown us how
he wants us to love our neighbors,
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for he came and he demonstrated his
love to us. In John Chapter Thirteen,
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Jesus says this a new commandment.
I give to you that you love
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one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
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By this, all will know that
you are my disciples if you have love
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for one another. And in First
John Chapter three, he says this.
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By this we know love, because
he laid down his life for us,
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and we also ought to lay down
our lives for the brethren. But whoever
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has this world's goods and sees his
brother in need and shuts up his heart
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from him. How does the love
of God abide in him? My little
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children, let us not love in
word or in tongue, but indeed and
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in truth. You See, the
righteousness that Jesus wants us to bring into
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the lives of those around us is
a practical, tangible and selfless love that
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will bring a taste of the heavenly
kingdom into the lives of our neighbors.
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God is calling on us to love
as Christ has first loved us, selflessly,
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humbly, patiently and prayerfully. I
don't think it's a coincidence that,
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setting us up like this in the
beginning of the beattitudes, Jesus comes to
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the end and he tells us that
were supremely happy if we're persecuted or hounded
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or oppressed, because he wants us
to love people in the face of the
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hostility, in the face of the
rejection, in the face of the hatred,
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and so because that is the standard
of Christ's righteousness that were to bring
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into the lie lives of those around
us. By definition, then, when
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we deny them that righteousness, when
we deny them his justice, we are
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oppressing them, and we're oppressing them
because we do not lift their yoke from
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them by bringing Christ's love to them. Come unto me, all you who
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are weary and heavy laden, and
I will give you rest. Take my
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yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in
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heart, and you will find rest
for your souls, for my yoke is
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easy and my burden is light.
Now we all want other people to love
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me like that, don't we?
We all want to be loved selflessly and
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prayerfully and humbly and patiently. We
long for other people to think of me
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and my needs first and foremost.
We want other people to give us that
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kind of kindness, that kind of
Gospel Righteousness, and we mourn when we
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don't get it. We Mourn because
we read the Gospel promises about this,
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this new kingdom that's coming, this
community of faith all over the world where
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people love one another as Jesus has
first loved us. But so often we
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don't receive that kind of love.
And so when we don't receive that kind
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of love from others, what do
we do? We pull back behind our
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shelves, we withdraw from other people
because they've heard us and because they haven't
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loved us like Jesus says they should. Almost inevitably we start to blame game.
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Oh well, you know these people
over here, or those Christians over
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there, are that church over here, they they have failed us. We
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say, they haven't loved me like
Jesus says they should, and so we
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start to excuse ourselves from not loving
them that way either, don't we?
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We say, well, this guy
did this to me, or or she
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didn't do that for me, or
these people they never call me, so
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I'm not going to be nice to
them either. I'm just going to take
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my toys and go home. Thank
you. Other examples that we may come
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up with are when people hide from
their spouses or children by being busy at
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work or activities. Children hide from
their parents through video games and screens.
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Parents hide from their children by obsessively
watching TV shows on the stream it forever
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and ever network, whatever it may
be. We may find sometimes that we
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just avoid other people at Church even
maybe we say, oh well, I've
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got this casserole at home or that
the Croc Pot's going to bowl over.
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Good to see. I got to
go because we've got our noses out of
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joint or maybe we hold back our
hand from the needy because we say,
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Oh, I've been taken advantage of
too many times, I'm closing my purse.
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See, we long for others to
be righteous to us, and then
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we avoid being righteous to them.
We Want Gospel Justice, but we're afraid
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really to give it freely ourselves,
and we excuse ourselves for not bringing Christ's
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love and righteousness into their lives.
And in so doing we become passive oppressors
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of Christ sheep. And we don't
even see it, but deep down in
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our hearts we still long for that
promised kingdom community, don't we? We
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still hope for that kingdom fellowship,
but we haven't got any idea how to
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find it. We all know the
ideal, don't we? And then we
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say, but how? Well,
here, in this short little beatitude,
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Jesus tells us this. Those who
hunger and thirst after his righteousness shall be
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filled. But how well? When
Jesus says that when we hunger and thirst
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for righteousness will be filled, he
means something more than you had just kind
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of hanker after it. You know, it's not like a little cheese stick
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or something that you want on your
way to the doctor's office. This is
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something you're desperate for. When Jesus
says this here he's describing people who so
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long for righteousness that they become like
those who are literally starving to death,
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people who are so parched with thirst
that they are like men dying of dehydration
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in the desert. And as I
thought about this, it occurred to me,
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you know, right before the beatitudes, in chapter four, Jesus is
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in the Wilderness being tempted by Satan, and I thought maybe that's the kind
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of hunger he has in view here. Forty days and forty nights without a
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bite to eat, and the kind
of first that he is referring to hear,
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it strikes me that it's it's the
kind of thirst of someone who's spent
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days in the blistering heat of the
desert without a drop of water. You
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know how you read about that kind
of dehydration, where your mouth is dry,
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your tongue swells up, your head
aches, your eyes go bloodshot,
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your lips swell and crack and split
and bleed. What he's talking about here
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is a hunger and a thirst that's
becoming an overpowering all consuming passion. And
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as I thought about that, I
asked myself, what is it that's you're
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hungry for, Austin, and I
I thought, well, really, mostly
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I just want to be the man
Christ wants me to be, the husband,
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the father, the friend, the
neighbor, the coworker that Jesus wants
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me to be. I want to
be the sort of person who gives his
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love away freely and fearlessly, like
Jesus did. But you know, there
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are so many fears, there's so
many distraction and is, there's so many
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hurts in this life that they keep
me from it. I know you know
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what I'm talking about. Let's I
thought about that. I thought about the
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Prodigal son, of all people.
Jesus says that when the Prodigal Son ran
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away from his father, he went
and lived profligately, that is, he
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lived for his own wants and desires. In Life, Prodigal tried to make
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himself happy by pleasing himself and doing
what he thought was good for himself.
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But eventually, of course, what
happened? All of that selfish and self
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centered living landed him in the PIGSTI. His reaping of Sel, or his
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sewing of selfishness in it up in
reaping of misery. And it's been said
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of the Prodigal that when he was
hungry he was content to eat husks,
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that is, pig slop. When
he was hungry, he was content to
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eat husks, but when he was
starving, then he turned to his father.
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And you know, I think there's
a reason that spiritual rags to riches
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stories like the prodigal son resonate with
us so much. I think that it's
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not insignificant that the first be attitude
calls on us to have a recognition that
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we all are spiritual beggars. I
think the reason they resonate with us so
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much is because we know deep down
that each of us is like prodigal or
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like the prostitute we drive by on
the street or the addict in the wash
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who then comes back right. We
love the hear that powerful testimony. I
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once was lost, but now I'm
found. We know what we're called to
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be, we know what we long
to be and we know that we're not
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there yet. So why not?
Why aren't we there yet? And I
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think at least part of the answer
is that we haven't yet been faced with
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our true hunger and thirst, like
they have. In a lot of ways,
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I've long thought that the person who's
destroyed his life would sin to the
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point that he hates what he's become
and despises what he's made of his him
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of his life, is often far
better off than the person who succeeds in
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life, and the reason for that
is that, like the Prodigal, the
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utter failure, the spiritual beggar gets
so hungry that he's finally willing to stop
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eating slop and turn to his father. So what do we find when we
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turn to our father? We find
that he set before us a bright and
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a shining, Glorious Gospel promise.
He says that he'll make even foolish pig
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slop eating sinners like you and like
me into the kind of people, the
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kind of fellowship, the kind of
covenant community that will be used by God,
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the Holy Spirit to minister to other
people and to take the Gospel into
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every nook and cranny of this broken
town and this fallen world. And the
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way that he will do that it's
not by constantly reminding us that were failures
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or by heaping up commands on us
that both he and we know will never
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keep. The way he's going to
get us to do that is not by
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enjoining us to try harder or to
be good. Instead, he makes his
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people into that kind of community of
righteousness, that Community of Divine Justice that
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lifts people's burdens and freeze them from
the oppression of sin. He does that
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by setting his Gospel promise before us, and that promise is that we do
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not have to withdraw into our shelves, we do not have to let the
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fact that we don't see that ideal
covenant community being excused for not seeking to
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live according to kingdom precepts. Anyway, his promise is that he is with
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us and he will find a way
to forge that justice and that community in
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spite of whatever the world, the
flesh and the devil may throw against him.
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And all you and I have to
do is let him. We just
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have to let him. All that
we have to do to start to see
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this community around us filled with his
righteousness is to start to shrug off past
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hurts and past pains and let Jesus
love others through us. That's what we
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have to do. And when we
finally believe that that is possible, when
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we finally get it into our hearts
that that's not a vague, amorphous hope,
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but that is a sure promise of
King Jesus himself, then we will
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finally see that these husks that we're
eating aren't really satisfying and that indeed we're
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starving for that new life. We're
parched with thirst for that kind of righteousness.
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And when we see that, Jesus
tells us that he's right there.
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He was right there all the time
and he's right here right now to give
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you and I the ability to finally
come out of our shelves, get over
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our fears and start to love gee
other people. Is Jesus first loved US,
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and Christ gives us that ability to
do that very simply by constantly reminding
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us of those simple Gospel truths we
reformed folk are always going on about.
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He reminds us that he loves us. He reminds us that he's always loved
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us. He reminds us that,
because he loves us, he died for
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us. But what's more than that, he has now risen from the dead
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and he rules and reigns over the
whole universe as king. He reminds us
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that he is the sovereign Lord who
is himself meek. He turns all of
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his sovereign power, the power that
he used on the first day of creation
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to call all things into existence from
nothing, to light the stars of flame
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and to form the earth. He
uses that very power that he uses it
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and he bends that to serve his
church, to serve us to the end
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that we might be his hands and
his feet to a lost, confused,
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bewildered in dying world. Jesus has
ascended to serve us by sending his spirit
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to equip us to serve others in
his name, into the glory of his
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father. And he sent his spirit
to remind us of his promise that,
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no matter how we have been hurt, no matter how others have failed us
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or abused us or abandoned us,
nevertheless our father is always faithful, and
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00:34:07.569 --> 00:34:15.599
his faithfulness frees us to step out
from behind our fears and our excuses and
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our passive oppression. Through that faithfulness, he sets US free to live according
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to his kingdom. Calling. That
Simple Gospel gives us the strength to see
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00:34:30.429 --> 00:34:36.949
our hunger and thirst, and it
also fills us so full that we cannot
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help but overflow with his love into
the lives of those around us and that
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that is good news.
