Episode Transcript
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Genesis three, verses one to six, the story of the fall of man,
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and then an axe. Ten will
look at an excerpt from the sermon
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Peter Preached to Cornelius. Genesis three, one, two, six, here
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is the word of God. Now
the serpent was more crafty than any other
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beast of the field that the Lord
God had made. He said to the
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woman, did God actually say?
You shall not eat of any tree of
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the garden. And the woman said
to the serpent, we may eat of
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the fruit of the trees in the
garden. That God said, you shall
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not eat of the fruit of the
tree that is in the midst of the
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garden, neither shall you touch it
lest you die. But the serpents said
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to the woman, you will not
surely die, for God knows that when
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you eat of it, your eyes
will be opened and you will be like
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God, knowing good and evil.
So when the woman saw that the tree
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was good for food and that it
was a delight to the eyes and that
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the tree was to be desired to
make one wise, she took of its
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fruit and ate, and she also
gave some to her husband, who was
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with her, and he ate.
And then acts chapter ten, verses thirty
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four to forty be three, in
the middle of the sermon, the middle
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of the message, Peter Brings to
Corneius when he comes to his house.
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Next chapter ten, verse Thirty Four. So Peter opened his mouth and said
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truly, I understand that God shows
no partiality, but in every nation,
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anyone who fears him and does what
his right is acceptable to him. As
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for the word that he sent to
Israel, preaching good news at peace through
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Jesus Christ, he is Lord of
all. You yourselves know what happened throughout
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all your dia, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism of John, proclaimed
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how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with
the Holy Spirit and with power. He
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went about doing good and healing all
who were oppressed by the devil, for
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God was with him, and we
are witnesses of all that he did,
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both in the country of the Jews
and in Jerusalem. They put him to
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death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third
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day and made him to appear not
to all the people but to us,
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who had been chosen by God as
witnesses, who ate and drank with him
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after he rose from the dead,
and he commanded us to preach to the
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people and to testify that he is
the one appointed by God to be judge
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of the living in the dead,
and to him all the prophets bear witness
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that everyone who believes in him receives
forgiveness of sins through his name. This
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is the word of the Lord.
Would you pray with me please? Father,
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we thank you tonight that you are
the God who delights to reveal yourself
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to your people. You delight to
give yourself to us. You have said
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that we will be your people and
you will be our God, and all
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that you are, you are and
to us as your redeem people. Show
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US yourself tonight, show us who
you are as father, son and spirit,
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that we may trust you and,
in trusting you, obey you.
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Through Jesus Christ, we pray a
man. Well, this evening, I
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want to talk to you about trusting
God, I want to talk about believing
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in the goodness and the faithfulness of
our father, and I want to give
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you reasons to trust in God's goodness
and to fight the lies that contradict the
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truth that God is good and they're
three kinds of people. Are Three circumstances
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in which you may find yourself for
whom this message may be relevant tonight.
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Number one, you may feel like
life is out of control and you're anxious
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in the midst of that. Your
life may be characterized by many cares you.
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You may be obsessing over those cares. You may be obsessing over what
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you eat or what you earn,
or or how to spend money, or
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how to pay your bills or how
to raise your children or how well your
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children are going to do when they
become adults. But you feel life is
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not within your control and so you're
anxious. Or number two, you may
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feel right now life is very hard
because you're in the middle of significant affliction.
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Those circumstances are different than you want. Maybe it's illness, maybe it's
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employment, maybe it's income, maybe
it's the burden of depression or other bad
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things that have come into your life, or maybe even the loss of loved
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ones that you have faced. You
are facing affliction in life is hard.
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Or maybe your sacred circumstances. Right
now, you're in the place where what
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God has called you to do is
very hard. You're resisting. God's word
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calls you to a path of obedience
that you find distasteful and difficult and you
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wish God's commands were more flexible.
Now those three circumstances in many ways sound
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like something all of us, at
one time or another, will face.
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Life is out of control, life
is difficult, obedience to God is hard,
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and I want to speak to the
particular temptations you may face in those
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situations, because either to night or
next week or a year from now,
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you will face one of those three
circumstances and in those circumstances you are called
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to do it. A friend of
mine used to say, is exercise your
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faith. Faith is something you have
to exercise. You have to exercise your
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faith towards God in the midst of
those is his wisdom, his goodness.
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You have to work to trust God
in those and in all of those circumstance
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use. You not only have to
work to trust God, to exercise faith,
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you have to work to resist what
I call the original lie, the
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original slander of God, the first
slander of God, which we will find
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here in genesis chapter three, because
if you do not resist the slander,
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you will find it very difficult to
exercise faith and trust God when life is
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out of control, when life is
difficult that when obedience seems very hard.
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So I want to do is walk
you through tonight three things. One is
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the first slander. The second is
what happens when we believe that slander.
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What's the fruit of when we believe
that slander? And then third is God's
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last word about the slander. So
genesis three, the first slander, tells
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a story that if you've been a
Christian any amount of time, you're probably
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aware of and maybe even were aware
of if you weren't a Christian, the
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story of the serpent tempting Adam and
Eve. It's a wonderful tax genesis one,
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two and three. It's the story
of how God created man and woman
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in his image. He placed them
in a lavish garden and that garden was
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God's Temple, God's dwelling place.
Scholars today would say that Eden was the
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dwelling place of God and God dwelt
among his people, which in this case
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was just Adam and Eve, and
in that lush and Lavish Garden, God
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says God, the Lord God,
commanded the man, saying you may surely
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eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge
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of good and evil, you may
not eat, you shall not eat,
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for in the day you eat of
it you will surely die. That's a
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lavish provision. God had made a
garden, sort of like the Tucson Botanical
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Gardens, where all manner of resources
were available to him, but one was
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prohibited, the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. Now, traditionally
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we've read this as a call to
obedience. It's a command to which Adam
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had to give obedience. But I
I think scripture gives a little deeper understanding
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of this. I don't think this
is simply a called obedience. I think
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God is calling Adam and Eve to
trust him, to trust him as the
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giver of the command, to believe
that his commands are good because he is
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good. He's calling Adam and eve
to a life of faith, to trust
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in the God who made them,
knowing that such trust would lead to obedience,
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and not just obedience, but a
life of faith, a life of
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trusting in the character of God.
Now there are lots of reasons I say
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that. I could demonstrate that through
the rest of scripture or just quoting Hebrews
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eleven six. Without faith it is
impossible to please God. But I think
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if you reread the account of Genesis
too, you'll be struck first of all
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by the lavish provisions of God.
This was not God giving them a little
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this was God landing in in the
middle of a grocery store in which everything
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they could desire or need was present. Only it was a garden, lavish
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provision. You may eat if every
tree of the garden, and this garden
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had everything imaginable in it to them, but you may not eat of one
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tree in the midst of the garden. He prohibited access to one fruit and
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he says if you eat of it, you will die. He doesn't explain
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why he prohibited he just gives the
consequences, gives a fair warning. It's
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a call of Adam and Eve to
believe God is good. Look at his
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abundant provision, look at all the
things he has given to you. So
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his goodness is seen even in the
prohibition not to eat of the knowledge tree,
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of the knowledge of good and evil. Well entered the serpent, which
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Genesis says was more subtle or more
cunning than all the other beasts of the
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field. The serpent slithers up to
the woman, although at this point he
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probably wasn't slithering, because that's a
result of his the curse, that he
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approaches the woman and he cons her, he plays on her desires. And
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verses four and five, that says
the serpent said to the woman, ask
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did God command the she said Yes, God did, and the serpent just
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comes right out and says you will
not surely die, for God knows that
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when you eat of it, your
eyes will be opened and you will be
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like God, knowing good and evil. That's that's a contract direct contradiction of
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God. And then first five is
interesting. God knows that when you eat
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of it, your eyes will be
opened and you will be like God,
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knowing good and evil. What's the
serpent doing here? She he's giving her
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reason to disobey, and he gives
her reason to disobey by slandering God.
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That's what he does. First for
he says, God lie to you.
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First five he says the reason God
lie to you is he's not telling you
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everything. There's a hidden motive here. See, God knows that if you
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eat of that freed to the knowledge
of good and evil, that tree,
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that something good will happen to you, and God doesn't want something good to
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happen to you. God knows that
you really they won't die. God knows
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that. Really, what's going to
happen is you will be as him,
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knowing good and evil. God knows
that, Eve, and he hasn't told
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you everything, and he's tempting eve
to believe a slander about the character of
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God, what I call the first
slander, the original slander. And See,
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God had said, you can surely
eat of every tree of the garden,
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and God gave them generous provisions,
all trees, every tree. The
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serpent said, not really, he's
really holding back from you. The Best
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God is being deceitful. So the
serpent is directly attacking the name and the
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character of God, because the serpent's
goal is to undermine Eve's trust, because
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if eve no longer believes God is
good and wise, she will now have
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reason for disobedience. See, all
disobedience comes from distrust and believing lies about
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God. This is slander, right, slander is to mark the good name
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of someone, only, in this
case, the slanders of God, which
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we call blasphemy. Slander simply suggests
that you don't know the whole story.
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Right. That's how slander works.
You're talking to someone and they say well,
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really what's going on and they put
their hand over their mouth. It
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will really what's going on and they
tell you what really is happening, what
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the real motives are. Well,
that may be what the boss said,
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but I happen to know that may
be with the Pastor said, but I
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happen to know that may be what
your husband said, but I happen to
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know that may be what your parents
say. But see, the slander says
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they're going to give you the rest
of the story, they're going to tell
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you the whole truth, because they
have inside and the person who you're speaking
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of in a way that you don't, and if you knew what they knew,
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you would think differently about that person. Only here it's the serpent saying
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this about God. The goal of
slander is to undermine trust, to create
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suspicion. Slander is usually private as
it begins, and it's simply a suggestion
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that there's another way of looking at
this. And Satan is the first slander
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and the first person he slanders is
God. So what does heve do?
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Well, you know the story.
When the woman saw that the tree was
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good for food and that it was
a delight to the eyes and that the
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tree was to be desired to make
one wise. She took of its fruit
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and ate, and she also gave
some to her husband, who is with
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her, and he if you read
the whole account, you'll know that God
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had already said in Genesis to nine
that he was giving every tree that is
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good, beautiful to look at and
good for food. She already is is
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missing the fact that God did give
her the tree that was good for food
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and a delight to the odes.
But now she's added to it. She
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wants more. God had given her
lavish gift. She wants one more gift,
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which is to be wise, to
be like God, to determine good
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and evil. She she didn't believe
God was good and she believed God was
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lying to her. That unbelief was
created by slander. The slander created her
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distrust. The distrust gave her grounds
for disobedience, and she disobeyed God,
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believing God had been holding back.
Now let's pull back a second. What
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is slander? The slander here is
very simple. What is the slander?
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God is not good, God cannot
be trusted. The slander was God is
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a scheming, manipulative being who does
not joyfully scatter his gifts to his people,
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but calculates his every move as every
command, and he was only using
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Adam and need for his purposes.
That's the first slander. It led to
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the first sin. And, as
a result of believing the slander, leave
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is really saying God's a bully.
I don't believe God he's a bully.
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He's only commanding us this because he's
a bully. He's bigger and stronger than
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we and we have to obey him. And she was Def Ying God because
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she believe God was not to be
trusted. God is not good, holding
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back from us. Now, what's
so unusual about this first slander? It
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has been passed on to every one
of Adam and each descendants. Usually,
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slander gets passed on like right.
That's how it gets passed on. Here
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gets passed on by DNA, not
literally DNA, but it gets passed on
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by birth. We are born into
this world believing the first slander. God
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is not good, God is not
to be trusted. It's a slander.
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Every member of the human race believes
and I know that because whenever God asks
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a member of the human race outside
of Christ to do something we don't like
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or whenever God brings us into a
time of affliction or whenever God brings us
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into situations that seem out of our
control, we revert to the slander God
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is not good. God cannot be
trusted. God doesn't know what he's doing.
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God is demanding, he's using his
position to force us to obey him.
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He has mixed motives. He wants
to take away our pleasure. That's
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the first slander that Satan brought about, the original slander that infects every member
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of the human race outside of Christ. If you read all the criticisms people
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have of Christianity, they all come
down to believe giving the first lie about
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going God is not good. God
doesn't want us to be free. Once
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to take away our freedom. God's
not going to do anything to stop evil
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because he doesn't care. You're a
full to trust to God who rules the
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universe the way he does. You're
a fool to believe in a God who
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comes up with the rules he comes
up with. That's the first lander and,
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like I said, it wasn't just
Adam and Eve who believed it.
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If you know your own heart,
you know that when life is out of
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control, when the command is hard, when the path is filled with adversity
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without explanation. You and I attempted
to believe this slander. Right. You
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and I attempted to think God doesn't
know what he's doing. So the other
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day I was thinking about this,
happened to be taking a walk. I
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was walking the dog. My wife
had gone off in the morning to teach
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pilate's, which he does, and
I was taking the dog in a walk
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and I was worrying about one of
our children. I'm going to come to
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this again later, and I realized
that why am I worrying? I'm worrying
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about what might happen to them.
Why am I worried about what might happen
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to them? I'm worried about what
might happen to them because God might let
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that happen to them. Why am
I worried about? Why? God might
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let that happen to them? Because
I don't think God knows what he's doing.
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That was what it came to.
Very simply, I was believing a
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lie which led me to look at
a circumstance with one of our children and
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worry. So that's the first slander. How you think about God will affect
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how you respond to God when life
seems out of control, when you're in
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adversity or when the commands of God
seem very hard. Now, be a
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Christian a long time, you learn
to put a good face on it,
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the game face, but inwardly you
know whether you're truly trusting in the goodness
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of God. That's the first slander. What about what happens when we believe
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in the slander? What are the
effects of believing this lander? Well,
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let's let's think about the effects for
a minute. Well, the effects of
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Adam and Eve was death. Death
to them, and all of us condemnation
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death. But what about us?
What happens when we believe God is not
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good, God is not worthy of
being trusted? Well, when life is
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out of control, we become anxious. When life involves suffering, we resist,
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we become bitter, we live under
guilt, and when the Commands of
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God seem unreasonable, we resist them, we kind of Chafe under them.
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Let's let's take a look at each
of those. Suppose suppose you feel life
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is not under control, and anybody
here who thinks life is under control,
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that's a whole different subject. I
think all of us know life is not
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under our control. Right that when
it seems particularly true that life is not
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on our control and we believe Eve
God is not good, God does not
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know what he's doing, what is
the outcome in our souls? Anxiety,
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right anxiety. And that's how Jesus
diagnose the problem. You might remember Matthew
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six and the sermon on the Mount. He talked about people who are anxious,
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anxious about their life, what they
would eat, what they would drink,
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about their body, what they're going
to be clothed with. And he
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says to the people who are anxious, look at the birds of the air.
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They neither sow nor reap, nor
gather into Barnes and get their heavenly
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father feeds them. Are you not
of more value than they is? If
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God is good to the birds,
do you think he's going to be good
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to you? and which of you, by being anxious, can add a
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single hour to his life span?
And why are you anxious about clothing?
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Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow? They neither toil
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nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon and all his glory,
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was not a raid like one of
these. Do you think God loves the
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lilies more than he loves you.
So what do you hear? What Jesus
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is saying here? He's speaking to
the anxious and he's saying your anxiety.
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Your anxiety is rooted in the fact
that that you don't think God cares or
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God can't do anything to help you. Your anxiety is rooted in the fact
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that you've believed the original why God
is not good, God doesn't care,
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and and you live in a world
that's filled with many needs and live in
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a world filled with uncertainty and things
not in your control. If you believe
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the lie that he will not give
us what we need, you will be
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anxious. Anxiety is a theological problem. Ultimately, they have medical causes,
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me of chemical issues, but ultimately
anxiety is a theological problem. We're believing
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a lie about God. We don't
trust him because we question his goodness and
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his ability to take care of us, and that leads to anxiety. Why
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is it lead to anxiety? If
God's not going to take care of it,
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who has to me? Right,
I know to take care of it.
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The only problem is controlling life is
way above my pay grade, and
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anxiety is the fruit of my attempts
to be God. Anxiety is like.
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Is like the sign that I think
I'm God, and guess why? I'm
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not big enough to do it.
So I'm anxious. God's never anxious.
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I'm anxious I cannot control my life. I cannot guarantee the outcomes I want,
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Martin Luther said to Philip malengthen there
was a real warrior. He rebuked
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Philip one day. He said Philip, let Philip cease to rule. What
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was he saying to him? Stop
playing God, you are not in control.
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God is in control. Trust him. Your anxiety is telling me that
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you think it all depends on you, which means you're not believing the truth
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about God. You're believing a lie. To be quite candid, if the
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God, who is the true God, who created and governs all thing,
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is not all things is not good, we have a lot of reasons to
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be anxious. But if he's good, then we may not fear and trust
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him. God is worthy of our
trust, and anxiety is the fruit of
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believing a lie about God rather than
trusting him. Well, what about the
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next subject I gave? What about
when life is hard, when we suffer?
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Lots of ways we suffer. Sometimes
I think suffering is almost infinite.
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Infertility, cancer, divorce, in
justice, betrayal, we could go on
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down the list. Now, when
you come into suffering, especially prolonged suffering,
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how do you believe the lie when
you come into suffering? Well,
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their couple ways. We believe Satan's
lie, the first slander. We believe
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God's punishing me. I must have
done something wrong. He's going after me
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to punish me. Or God's just
learning me something. I hear that one
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so much. I'm not I must
must be. I'm just thick skinned and
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God has to break me up to
get my attention. or I just don't
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understand how God works. I don't
understand suffering. I don't understand how,
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if God is good and Almighty,
this can happen. So I just don't
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trust him. In short, we
come into times of suffering and we believe
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a lie when we say God must
not be good and God must not be
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sovereign. He's severe, he's using
severe means when less severe means would do
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just as well, and this leads
to what Selfpity, anger against God,
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against others, despair. How can
you fight God? prayerlessness? What's the
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point of praying? Now it's interesting
once again. Scripture goes after how we
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think of God when it addresses how
we respond to suffering. Hebrews twelve.
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These people are undergoing great suffering,
and the writer of the Hebrews has the
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boldness to say, have you forgotten
the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
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My son, do not regard lightly
the discipline of the Lord, nor be
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weary when reproved by him, for
the Lord disciplines the one he loves and
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chastises every son whom he receives.
What's the writer doing? He's going after
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their hearts. He's going after what
they believe to be true about God.
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He's giving them reason to exist.
The original slander that God is not good,
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that God does not love his people. Now what's interesting is is sufferings
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a challenge to us from many ways, and we all know their false teachers.
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Today, Prosperity Gospel preachers who insist
that suffering cannot be from God,
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that are good in loving God would
never allow his people to suffer. The
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reason we suffer is our unbelief.
If we just had enough faith, we
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wouldn't suffer. Now, please.
That's not what I'm saying when I say
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we need to trust God. In
response to our suffering. I'm not giving
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you the key that unlocks you into
a prosperous and healthy life. I actually
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think the prosperity God is a cruel
God, because he's saying if you get
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a sea plus or above in faith, you won't suffer, but if you
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get to see her below, you're
going to suffer too bad. That's not
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what Hebrews is saying. Hebrews is
saying God, in his love, sends
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us suffering for our good so that
we might know him better. He's so
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committed to our wellbeing that he even
use pain to shape us, only when
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necessary, and c s Lewis said, pain is God's megaphone and it's because
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he cares so much for us that
he will deploy it for our good.
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He can be trusted. So when
life is out of control, we have
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to resist the first slander and believe
God is good and will take care of
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me and is ruling over all the
events of my life. When I'm suffering
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a specially prolonged suffering, I resist
the first slander and I believe that God
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is good and wise and loving and
he's doing what is according to his goodness
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and wisdom and love. Well,
what about what? Obedience is hard.
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See, if I believe God is
not good, I'm left with commands that
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may not be good. If I
believe God is not good, I'm left
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with thinking when God gave that absolute
he didn't take my situation into account.
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I'm left for thinking God maybe holding
back on me, that his commands are
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not for my good, that,
in a sense, God ends up being
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a playground bully. I have to
obey even if I don't want to,
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because he's bigger and stronger than I
am. Now here's where it gets interesting
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this particular case. See, if
I believe God is not good and I'm
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a follower of Christ, there they're
two options before me. And what to
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do when it comes to the Commands
of God. One has good optics,
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the other has really bad optics.
Good optics is I'm going to submit grudgingly.
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Now no one will know it's grudging
on the out how to to look
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like obedient Jane and Obedient Harry,
Oh aren't they godly? Look at them.
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How they obey God, even though
it's hard. But inwardly, here's
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what's going on. I'm stuck.
I got to submit to God. He's
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bigger than I am. I'm going
to do what I'm told, even though
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I don't like it, even though
I don't think God knows what he's doing.
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I'm going to be just like that
older brother in the parable the two
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sons. That's the good optics.
Looks Great on the outside. Inwardly I
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don't trust God. Bad optics.
I'm going to be authentic, the modern
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virtue of authenticity. I don't think
God knows what he's talking about. I'm
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not going to obey him. I'm
going to do what I want to do.
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I don't care if he wins.
Well, that looks bad. That's
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the younger brother in the parable the
two sons. Now it's exting. Option
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one is a legalist who obeys without
joy and submits with gritted teeth. We
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could also say the legalist is the
one who muscles there for anxiety down,
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wrestles it down, doesn't let it
control them, deals with their resentment against
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God for suffering, but doesn't really
change their hearts. That's the legalist.
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The option to is the licentious.
Now notice in the Church we reward number
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one and we punish number two.
Right, so long as someone's outwardly conforming,
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that's good. That's not how Jesus
sees it. Number One and number
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two, the legalist, who resents
God but obeys, the licentious, who
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resents God and disobeys, are really
the same. They only look different.
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and Saint Claire Ferguson says, the
League is legalist, believes God is not
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good, but he yields to God
because God is bigger than he is,
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and the licentious believes God is not
good and disobeys for the same reason.
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They both bought the lie, the
slander. Both of them believe God makes
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up rules without lover wisdom. Both
of us believe God. Both of them
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believe God wants US happy only when
it suits his purposes. Both of them
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believe God just hold holds back what
is really good because he's not good.
385
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That's because I believe the first slander. God can't be trusted. God knows
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that if you get to do that, something good's going to happen. He
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want that to happen for you,
so he's just making a difficult so we
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looked at the first slander. We
look at the fourt the what happens when
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we believe that and how it affects
us when life's out of control, when
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life is difficult or when the command
is very hard. And now we're going
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to look at God's last word.
I love the I love the imagery of
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the last word. There ever been
a conversation with somebody where one of you
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had to have the last word?
How'd that go? Conversation never ended right.
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Somebody always wants the last word in
the argument. Well, God gets
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the last word because he's God.
If you've ever been slandered, especially if
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you've ever been publicly slandered, you
know it is foolish to try to answer
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the slander publicly. You can't.
You can't argue with it, you can't.
398
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You can't say that's not true,
because the slander will always have another
399
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way to interpret things to make it
sound like it's true. It's a foolish
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to try, once the slander has
spread, to try to talk it away.
401
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The only way to answer a slander
is by actions, by showing it's
402
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not true, by demonstrating with your
life it's not true. And that's exactly
403
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what God has done. That's exactly
what God has done by showing us what
404
00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:28.789
he is really like. He gives
us a weapon against the slander that Satan
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00:33:28.869 --> 00:33:31.750
put upon us. Well, how
does God do that? Well, in
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Jesus Christ, God gives the final
word that he is good and to be
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trusted at all times. That takes
place in a couple ways. Number when
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you look at the life of Jesus
and you find that he is, as
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Peter said, an act abundantly good. He went about doing good and healing
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all who were oppressed by the devil. Everywhere he went he did good,
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because that is what God is like. Matthew says this is the generosity in
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the goodness of God that when Jesus
fame spread throughout all of northern Galileans and
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Syria, they brought him all the
sick, those afflicted with various diseases and
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pains, those are pressed by demons, epileptics and paralytics, and he healed
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them. That's how good he is, not reluctantly, not grudgingly, but
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lavish. We see in Jesus the
goodness of God revealed. BB Warfield,
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who was a noted Bible scholar,
theologian and of the Nineteen Early Twentieth Century,
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commented that what we have in the
Gospels, if you put it all
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together, is probably two weeks of
Jesus, three to four your public ministry.
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That's all he said. If you
if you just do reasonable extrapolation on
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his Galilean Ministry, where he was
the majority of his time, and you
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take those incidents of healing that we
have recorded in some Rey statements like this
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Warfield said, it would not be
unreasonable con to conclude that all disease was
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vanquished in Galilee while Jesus was there. That's how good he is. So
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we see it in his life,
we see it in his teaching. I
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was, I'm struck by this again
again. The fundamental reason Jesus says we
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should pray. It's because God is
generous. Why does he have to keep
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reminding us of that? We don't
believe it. We don't believe it.
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If you, being evil, give
good gifts, how much more will your
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father in heaven give good gifts to
those who ask him? In order to
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show us how we think about God, he portrays God as the unjust judge,
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that the widow has to beg and
annoy UN till she gets her answer,
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because that's how we think of God. And he says, if that's
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the way your picture God, even
that kind of a God, eventually gives
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you something but he's God's not like
that. If you, being evil,
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00:36:06.719 --> 00:36:12.039
give good gifts, how much more
will your father in heaven? So we
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see it in his life, we
see it in his teaching. That where
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do we go ultimately see the generous
goodness and love of God? We go
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to the cross. Jesus in obedience
to the father who sent him marched to
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the cross, trusting the father the
whole way, not grudgingly. Don't read
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Gussemite as well, I guess I
have to now. There is trust in
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Jesus toward the father as he goes
to the cross. He says in John
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the father is with me now.
He demonstrates rust in the generous love of
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the father even as he walks a
path of obedience on to death. And
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he reveals to us the generous love
of God by dying for sinners like us.
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Paul says, while we were weak
at the right time, Christ died
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for the ungodly, for one will
scarcely die for a righteous person, though
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perhaps for a good person one would
dare to die. But God shows his
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love for us and that while we
were still sinners, Christ died for us
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and the giving of his son for
us God gives the last answer to the
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00:37:29.630 --> 00:37:35.420
satanic slander. You think I'm not
good, I will show you how good
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I am. I will do what
no human whatever do. I will show
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love to my enemies, not to
the good, not to the righteous,
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but to my enemies. I will
not spare my own eternally precious son to
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00:37:50.170 --> 00:37:57.409
redeem sinners who hate me from their
destruction. I will act to restore you
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to me, to forgive you of
your unbelief and to pour out my favor
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00:38:00.719 --> 00:38:07.679
on you as my sons and daughters, at the highest price imaginable. That's
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my answer to Satan slander. And
there's no answer to God's answer. He
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who did not spare his son but
delivered him up for us all. How
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00:38:20.150 --> 00:38:25.909
will he not, with him freely
give us all things? So that becomes
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00:38:25.949 --> 00:38:31.860
a weapon, and I use the
word weapon intentionally, because this battle for
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what I believe in my heart is
a war. The slander of Satan has
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deep roots in the human soul.
It has mighty weapons because we are lean
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that way as sons of Adam and
daughters of Eve, and it takes this
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00:38:49.889 --> 00:38:53.449
great truth of God's Love, revealed
in the Gospel, to Pummel that lie
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into submission, to take that plant, which has such deep roots, and
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00:38:59.519 --> 00:39:02.400
tear it up again and again and
say that is not who my God is.
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00:39:04.440 --> 00:39:07.920
My God is good, my God
is just. My God has shown
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00:39:07.960 --> 00:39:10.550
his great love for me. My
God is worthy of my trust. All
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00:39:10.670 --> 00:39:16.309
his ways are good. I will
follow him gladly and confidently because he has
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00:39:16.510 --> 00:39:24.139
shown me what he is. The
brothers and sisters don't yield to the slander
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of Satan which infected our first parents. Take the truth about God that he
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has answered in the Cross and when
life is out of control, when you're
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in the midst of suffering, when
the commands of God seem hard, go
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00:39:38.449 --> 00:39:43.730
back to the love of God revealed
in the Cross and let that answer all
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00:39:43.809 --> 00:39:49.489
your questions about his goodness and trust
him. Let me pray for us.
