Episode Transcript
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Please remain standing if you're able to, and let's give our attention now to
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first John, Chapter Three. First
John Three, I'm going to be preaching
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particularly on versus nineteen through twenty four, maybe even especially twenty one through twenty
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four, but I want to begin
back in a verse eleven and read to
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the end of the chapter. So
let's do that now. Let's give our
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attention to God's holy and inspired word, for this is the message that you
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have heard from the beginning, that
we should love one another. We should
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not be like Kane, who was
of the evil one and murdered his brother.
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Why did he murder him? Because
his own deeds were evil and his
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brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.
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We know that we have passed out
of death into life because we love
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the brothers. Whoever does not love
abides in death. Everyone who hates his
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brother is a murderer, and you
know that a murderer has eternal life,
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or no murderer has eternal life abiding
in him. By this, we know
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love, that he laid his life
foot down for us, and we ought
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to lay down our lives for the
brothers. But if anyone has the world's
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goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him.
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How does God's love abide in him? Little Children, let us not love
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in word or talk, but indeed
and in truth. By this we shall
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know that we are of the truth
and reassure our heart before him, for
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whenever our heart condemns us, God
is greater than our heart and he knows
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everything. Beloved, if our heart
does not condemn us, we have confidence
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before God, and whatever we ask
we receive from him, because we keep
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his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment that we
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believe in the name of his son
Jesus Christ and love one another, just
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as he commanded us. Whoever keeps
his commandments abides in God and God in
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Him, and by this we know
that he abides in us, by the
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spirit whom he has given us.
Praise be to God. Please be seated.
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So here, at the end of
our passage, we have this simple,
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simple expression of really Christianity. What
does it mean to be a Christian?
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Does it mean to follow after Jesus? Well, it means obeying his
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commandment. And what is his commandment? In Verse Twenty Three, we read
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that we believe in the name of
his son, Jesus Christ and love one
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another, just as he commanded us. When we sometimes think about what it
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means to live the Christian life or
what are those things that mark a Christian,
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what is it marks someone who's following
Jesus? Sometimes we human beings have
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been tempted to create all kinds of
elaborate schemes and plans. We write a
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complicated books and and sometimes create unnecessary
systems and disciplines and all kinds of things
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and tell people this is how you
follow Christ. Now, to be sure,
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in any aspect of our faith we
can go very deep and we can
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learn more and more and more and
grow more and more, and presumably we
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can write those things down as well. So nothing against books, but there
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is sometimes an unnecessary complicating that happens
when we think about our faith. Sometimes
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we complicate things, I think,
as an excuse. We make things sort
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of so difficult and so challenging that
we then excuse ourselves from really doing it.
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Well, who could really know wisdom
is so challenging? How could I
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possibly know what to do in a
situation with so many variables, again,
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not discounting wisdom, but I just
want to point the finger for a moment
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at some of the excuses that we
make when we think about how we are
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to follow Jesus. Calvin says,
God does by no means lead us through
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long labyrinths, but simply and shortly
sets before us what is right and what
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he approves. Believe in the saying
leave, believe in the name of the
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sun and love one another. It's
pretty simple, isn't it? Faith and
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love. This is not me simplifying
things and dumbing it down. I'm just
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reading the word of God and this
is the commandment that we believe in the
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name of his son Jesus Christ and
love one another. Calvin goes on.
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He says the beginning and the end
of a life rightly formed. This is
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what God expresses in these simple,
short words. The beginning and the end
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of a right light, of a
life rightly formed. Is What faith and
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love, faith in love. John
is bringing this up, you remember,
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because there's this question in the minds
of the people he's addressing as what is
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it that marks a Christian? How
do we know who belongs to the body
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of Christ who doesn't belong to the
body of Christ? Do I belong to
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Christ am. I following after him
and as you we read through this,
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this is what he's addressing, and
this is very important to know, because
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he's not telling us how it is
we become Christians. The cause of our
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salvation, he's saying. He's telling
us the marks of our salvation. Look
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at verse fourteen. We know that
we have passed out of death and into
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life because we love the brothers.
This is a sign that this other thing
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is true. Sometimes we use because
a causal word to describe the grounds or
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the means of something happening. Right, the light turned on because I flipped
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the switch, but sometimes we use
the language of because to talk about the
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conditions how we know certain things.
Well, the lights turned on because it's
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shining in here. Right, it's
not shining in here, that the shining
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didn't flip the switch. But it's
still necessary, isn't it, in order
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for us to know about what happened. Or imagine and you are at work
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and security comes in and says you
need to leave with us, you don't
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belong here. You say, of
course I belong here. Look, here's
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my security card, this is my
desk. That's my boss over there.
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Right. You use these signs to
say, look, these are the reasons
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why I belong here. But of
course your security card didn't get you the
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job. Your desk didn't get you
the job. The fact that your boss
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happens to be over there and knows
your name, that didn't get you the
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job. Something else happened. Right, you filled out an application and so
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on and so forth. So you
see how there are these different ways that
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we can talk about things, and
that's what's it's so important to note that
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here, because some people want to
mix up all of our salvation by saying
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that if we simply love other people, God will save us. But that's
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messed up from all kinds of angles. First of all, the Scriptures so
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plain and so clear that it's not
we who first loved, but God who
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first loved us. Or we can
just examine our own hearts. Who of
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us is willing to stand up and
say I can examine my life, every
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part, every thought, every action, and I can stand before you all
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here today and before God in Heaven
and say I have loved well enough to
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deserve heaven, which is perfect in
every way, in which no evil or
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impurity can be a part of in
any way in which the thrice holy God
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dwells, Father, son and Holy
Spirit. Can any of US stand before
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God and say, yes, I
have loved as I ought to have loved?
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And can any of us even say
I have believed as I have ought
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to believed? My faith has been
rock solid, perfect from beginning to end.
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There's not a single thing that you
have ever said that I have doubted
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or misunderstood or misapplied. Of course
none of us can say that. If
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that's the requirement for salvation, then
none of us are saved. and John's
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not addressing a bunch of people who
are unsaved. He's addressing us as Christians.
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By this, we know this,
we believed. This is what God
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has done for us. So,
before we think of these marks, let's
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just remind ourselves. How is it
that we become children of God? How
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do we come into the House of
Salvation? How is it that we come
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to have the spirit? As he
says, they're in in Verse Twenty Four.
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Well, what's start with verse twenty
four, and by this we know
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that he abides in us, by
the spirit whom he has given us.
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This is how it is that we
have come to be saved. How it
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is we come to know Jesus because
we have been given something from God.
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Indeed, we have give been given
God himself. Or if you want another
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verse, you can go instead of
at the end of the chapter, you
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can go to the beginning, verse
one. See what kind of love the
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father has given to us that we
should be called children of God, and
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so we are. See the love. This is, by the way,
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just a wonderful thing to reflect on. We just saying, Oh the deep,
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deep love of Jesus. The love
of Jesus is both the thing that
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saves us and then the thing that
we are saved. Unto we, Jesus
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is the one that we are saved
by, and Jesus is the one that
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we are saved to. He is
our salvation, both as the thing that
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we enter into and the thing that
causes it, or the one that causes
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it. Let me explain or illustrate
what I mean by reading to you the
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last verse of this Hymn. We
just sang, oh all the deep,
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deep love of Jesus, love of
every love, the best, Tis an
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ocean vast of blessing, Tis a
haven, sweet of rest. You See,
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this is what we are saved into. We're saved into the love of
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Jesus, a haven, sweet of
rest. It goes on. Oh,
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the deep, deep love of Jesus
Tis a Heaven of Heavens to me,
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and it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to thee.
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You see, how is it that
we enter into the love of Jesus?
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By the love of Jesus, which
is why those those words at the
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beginning of the song are so appropriate. Underneath me, all around me,
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is the current of THY love.
It's everywhere, it's holding us, it's
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en wrapping us. This is what
God gives to us when he gives to
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us the sun. Is it by
our works, are deeds, are powerful
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faith, by which we are approved
before God? Or is it his love
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that he freely gives to us in
the sun and in the spirit? I
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want to read to you another passage, this time from the book of Ephesians,
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Little Bit from Ephesians Chapter One.
In thinking about this question, how
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do we become the children of God? How is it that we come to
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have the spirit, to have this
saving love and love of salvation? Here
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verse three. Blessed be the God
and father of our Lord, Jesus Christ,
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who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
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even as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
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that we should be holy and blameless
before him. Pause so, John,
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and talking about you are children of
God and you do not walk in
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the ways of Cain and unrighteousness and
all these things. You Walk in the
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ways of the spirit and of love. Why is that? Because of what
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we have here, that before the
foundation of the world, before we done
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anything good or evil or anything at
all, that we should be holy and
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blameless before him. We were chosen
in him by the love of God.
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Read on in love, he predestined
us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ
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past according to what? According to
the purpose of his will, to the
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praise of his glorious, glorious grace
with which he has blessed us in the
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beloved love, Love, Love,
Love, love. In Him we have
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redemption, how through his blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to
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the riches of His grace which he
lavished upon us, and all wisdom and
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insight, making known to us the
mystery of his will, according to his
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purpose which he set forth in Christ
as a plan for the fullness of time
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to unite all things in him,
things in heaven and on, things in
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Annert and things on earth. We
have been adopted as children, not because
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we went out and did something nice
for our neighbor or we were a little
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extra honest at work, but because, in the fullness of time, he
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predestined us in love, he chose
us in him, he poured out and
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lavished upon us his grace. That
was all in the fullness of time and
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before time. And then in time
in the history, God sent his son
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into the world, who is born
of a woman and under the law and
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lived a life of perfect love so
that each of us could be saved and
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in that, in receiving that salvation
through faith in him, we as if
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we were to continue on in Ephesians, we would find out why it's so
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important, especially as we think in
these first century contexts, to be called
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Sons of God, because we get
an inheritance. Whether you're a son or
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daughter, you get to be a
first century son, you might put it
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that way. You get to have
the inheritance, whether you are a slaver
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or free whether you are from the
upper parts of society or the lower parts
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of society, no matter what languould
you speak, no matter what color you
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are, no matter where you've come
from in the world, what part of
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history you're in, if you are
in Christ, you have this inheritance in
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love, given to you the very
hand of God. In Romans, Paul
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says this all relates to our prayers
and that we have been given the spirit
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who cries out in our souls Ah, a father, even when we don't
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know when to pray and when our
prayers are weak. We have been given
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the spirit of God who is in
us and abiding us, biding us,
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abiding in US and working in us. Romans a twenty six and twenty seven.
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We become God's children not when we
do righteous things, but when he
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forgives our unrighteous things, when he
covers our trespasses in his blood and he
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brings us into his family and gives
us an inheritance earned for us by Christ.
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So this is how we become children
of God, and that thing is
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so real and so powerful and so
God propelled that it will and will necessarily
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and always result in fruit, and
that's what John is talking about here.
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We know that we have passed out
of death into life, because we love
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the brothers. If you are if
you're outside of a house and you're cold
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and you're shivering and you knocking on
the door and you come in and all
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of a sudden you're in right and
you say, how do I know that
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I'm in? Well, I'm warm
now, the lights are on, there's
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food on the table, I've been
welcomed. These are the conditions of our
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salvation, and we could talk a
long time about the kind of salvation that
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God gives us, even as we
have already the deep, deep love of
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Jesus. But it also manifests itself
in our life in loving others. We
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who used to hate others, who
were motivated purely and entirely by our self
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will, by our anger, by
our desire to control other people, by
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our desire to make things for us
and make our situation the best it can
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possibly be. As Christians, we're
freed up from all of that. We're
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free to lay down even our very
lives, as Jesus laid down his life
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for us. Why? Because we
have much more than this life, because
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we have much more than our mo
money or our things. We have more
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than temporary honor and shame, all
kinds of things. We've been given an
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inheritance of heaven. We've been given
the very love of God. We have
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everything we could ever want. Sure
you could have my blanket, sure you
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can have my money, here's my
shirt. I can love you and I
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can love you freely because I don't
have to protect these things any more.
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It changes us. The love of
Christ changes us. Verse Sixteen, as
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I read by this, we know
love that he laid down his life for
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us, and of course we ought
to lay down our lives for the brothers.
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What does life in Christ look like
then? How is it manifested?
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These are the things John has been
talking about. Life outside of Christ is
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about practicing sin. Life in Christ
is about practicing righteousness right verse four.
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Everyone who the of chapter three,
everyone who makes a practice of sinning,
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also practices lawlessness. Sin Is Lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take
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away sins, and in him there
is no sin. No one who abides
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in him keeps on sinning. No
one who keeps on no one who keeps
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on sinning has either seen him or
know him. Christians are not those who
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make a practice of sinning, who
live in lawlessness. Christians are those who
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make a practice of righteousness, who
abide in the righteous one. or You
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could think about it in terms of
the works of Satan and the works of
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Cain. Those who are outside,
outside the family of God, are not
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his sons but, as described elsewhere
in scripture, our children of Wrath and
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do wrathful things and angry things and
terrible things and the works of their father,
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even the evil one. Not so
for the children of God who aim
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to please our father, who are
in heaven and praises hallowed name. Those
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who are outside of Christ are hypocrites, verse eighteen little children. Let us
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love, not in word or talk, but indeed or in truth, and
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that's maybe one of the main things
that John is impressing here. There are
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people who live their lives in a
hypocrisy and there's all kinds of that.
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This pretension of following Christ, this
pretend way of acting as though things are
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such and such a way when they
know they're really not. He is of
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the Truth and we ought to love
in truth and speak in truth and not
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just have a bunch of empty words
castles of air. This all has a
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real, deep effect on us.
It builds confidence in us. Verse Twenty
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One, Beloved, if our heart
does not condemn us, we have confidence
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before God. Now, confidence is
a funny thing. It's it's something that
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you can both have and not have
at the same time, or you might
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split it this way. It's something
that you can have a right to.
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It belongs to you, but yet
you are not feeling it. Maybe you've
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been in a situation where you're the
new boss, let's say you all of
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a sudden you've been promoted or something
like that, and you have these people
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who are under you, people that
you're responsible for, and they're looking to
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you for direction and for leadership,
and you're sort of feeling I don't feel
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this, I'm not comfortable giving directions, making commands, keeping people accountable and
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all the rest. You may not
have that confidence, and yet, of
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course you have a right to that
confidence. And so someone might say to
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you, be confident, be holy, even as you are holy, be
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confident, even as you are confident, and when you know and believe the
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thing that you have, which is
confidence before God, because of what Christ
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is done, this affects us.
We walk with our heads held high,
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we walk with our backs up straight, knowing that we belong to him,
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that were taken care of by him, that we can speak and act truthfully
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and lovingly, no matter what the
consequences are, and this includes our prayers.
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Whatever we ask, we receive from
him. Why? Because we keep
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his commandments and do what pleases him. This, of course, doesn't mean
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that we can command God around.
If you go just to the next chapter,
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of two chapters away, Chapter Five, verse fourteen, it says,
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and this confidence, same idea that
we have toward him, that if we
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ask anything according to his will,
he hears us, and we know that
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he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests
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that we have asked of him.
That qualification there is really important and it
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should be assumed whenever we think about
God answering our prayers. We have confidence
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before him because we are in him. We have confidence for the things that
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we ask, because we ask according
to his will. Will he not give
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us the very things he's promised?
Will he not love us, even as
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he has promised to love us?
Will he not keep us to the very
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end, even as he has promised
to? He will, and when we
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take all of these things together,
we loved. What do we have?
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We of lives that are changed,
we find that we are in a body
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of people that is new, knit
together in the spirits and in love.
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We see the Lord Jesus Christ,
at work in our lives, and by
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this we have confidence. By this
we know that we abide in him,
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because we're in the house of salvation
and all the marks of it are here.
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Now, of course, life is
not always perfect. The marks are
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mixed, we still sin, we
don't love as we ought, but there
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is this principle in place, there's
this way in which we are characterized.
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Jesus promises this. He says the
world will know you by your love.
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He says it it's not me,
Jesus says, this is what will happen.
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I will love you in such a
way that you will love others and
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they will know that you belong to
me. I look like my dad,
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you probably look like your dad.
I look like my mom, you probably
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look like your mom. It's the
same with us as Christians. When our
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heavenly father adopts us and make us
his own, he changes us in such
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a way that people recognize him in
us and US in him. Well,
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what do we do with all of
this? I've been trying to impress this
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doctrine on you, these truths about
who God is and what he has done
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for us, and if your eyes
are opening up to this thing, if
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your eyes are starting to see the
manifestation of God in the lives of his
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people, okay, that's good.
Right too, thumbs up. Now what
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what do you do with that?
There's all kinds of things we might say.
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Do we mention a few, and
I'll go through these relatively quickly,
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but I I hope you'll hear them
nevertheless. For one, it is a
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test. Marks of believers and unbelievers
do allow us to make distinctions. This
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is what we do on the session
when we interview or talk with or,
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however, what a verb you want
to use when we meet with people for
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membership. What do we want to
determine an order for you to be a
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member of this church? We want
to know that you are following the Lord,
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that you have the marks of a
Christian. Is that something that we
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can determine infallibly? Of course not, is it? Can we know the
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heart of every single individual person and
the way that God knows it? No,
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what do we do then? We
use the instructions God has given us.
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By this, you will know them. Do they love? Do they
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follow after me? Do they believe
in the name of the Sun, and
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do they love one another? This
is what these is God's given prescription of
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how we ought to live life in
the church. It allows us to test,
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by the Authority of God, the
genuineness of what people say. There
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are people we read back in Verse
Nineteen of Chapter Two. I'll read it
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to you. They went out from
us, but they were not of us,
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for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
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John is recognizing that there was a
situation where there were people in the
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church who said they belong to Christ
and yet didn't. How do we know?
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These tests, these marks, these
identifications, they help us know.
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One of the things God's word does
here. One of the things that these
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signs do is they put a little
pressure on the hypocrite. Maybe they're putting
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a little pressure on you, Godlee, pressure on your heart, a testing
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pressure to see is this true or
not? Sometimes God does this thing in
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our lives we're after a period of
blindness. He helps us to wake up
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and see our situation as it really
is. Maybe this is something God is
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doing in your life right now.
I know a couple stories. I won't
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tell you who they are, but
I know a couple stories about people falling
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asleep on buses. I don't know
if this has ever happened to you,
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but a person a falls asleep on
a bus, travels to the end of
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the Stop, wakes up, looks
around and realizes where they are. Panic
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right, this is not my stop, this is not my city. In
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one case this is not my country. It's a scary situation to look around
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and realize what really is going on. These soldiers are here and they shouldn't
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be here. Sometimes God does this. He wakes us up. He uses
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his words as a mean to say
wake up, look around you, look
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at the signs. Are you where
you think you are? And maybe you
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will look around and you'll say,
yes, I am, praise God to
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whom all blessings flow. Or maybe
you'll wake up and you'll say this is
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not where I thought I've been going, this is not where I thought I
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should be or where I was.
This is one reason these marks are very
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helpful. They also cause us to
press on, because they show us how
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our salvation is founded in the Lord. It begins in him. It continues
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in him and it ends in him. When we see the fruit of His
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grace in our lives, we don't
have to be embarrassed about that or hide
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it or pretend it's not there.
When we gain victory over sin, when
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we have even a moment of self
control that we knew a week ago we
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wouldn't have or maybe an hour ago
we wouldn't have, when we find patience,
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when we find love. Let's give
praise to God, all right,
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let's look at him and say praise
be to you, who is at work
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in my life. Remember what Paul
says in Philippians one six. I am
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sure of this, confident right,
I'm sure of this, that he who
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began a good work and you will
bring it to completion at the day of
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Jesus Christ. Let that be your
bold statement as well. When you see
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the fruit of grace in your life, even when it's tiny, it's if
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it's of God, it will become
big, it will grow strong and on
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the day of Jesus Christ, even
those tiny mustard seeds of faith will be
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revealed to be great giant trees,
a beautiful thing that should inspire you in
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obedience, as you are rooted more
and more in the God who promises these
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things and who is at work within
you. So, in conclusion, John
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does not tell us here, not
explicitly, what the foundation of our adoption
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is, what the cause of our
adoption is. He's talking more about the
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marks of our adoption, the conditions
of our adoption. He's telling us how
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we know. What do you do
then, if you wake up at the
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end of the bus line and you
find that these marks are missing? What
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do you do if you bake up
and you find yourself in a scary place
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of lawlessness, of sin, of
hatred against God and other and other people
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and people, people other than yourselves? What do you do? Will you
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go to Jesus Christ, who has
commanded you to follow him? Well,
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I don't know if I'm elected,
maybe I'm not predestined. Jesus doesn't say
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figure out your predestination and come follow
me. He says come follow me,
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I command you, come follow me. Believe in the name of the sun
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and you will be saved. What
is your warrant for belief? What right
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do you have to stand before an
Almighty Holy God and say count me in?
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Nothing in yourself, but on the
basis of the command of God.
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You can stand confidently in before him
and say, you told me to come,
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you sent me here, you beckoned
me, you said come to me,
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all who weary are in heavy laden, and I will give you wet
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rest. I got the wedding invitation
in the mail. Here it is.
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And what did Jesus is parables tell
us he will do. Come on in,
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come on in, come on in. Why? Because I have invited
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you. Count this, every single
one of you here today, count this
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as your official invitation from God.
Right now, believe in the name of
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the son of Jesus, Christ,
whom God has sent, and you will
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be saved. Trust him and go
on the basis of that command, on
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that invitation, on that call.
And if you wake up at the end
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of the bus line and you say, well, that was a nice rest
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and here's my stop, then get
off and enjoy yourself. Enjoy being found
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in the salvation and in the love
of Christ, Jesus, Our Lord.
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It's deep, it's wonderful, it's
overwhelming. Don't go back and follow after
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the old ways, don't go back
to lawlessness, back to slavery. No,
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dwell and enjoy the love that God
has given you and walk in that
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love, walk in that light.
All Praise be to God. I haven
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of rest. A heaven of rest
is him. Let's pray.
