Episode Transcript
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Well, please remain standing in turn
your attention. You can turn in your
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bibles as well if you like,
to John, Chapter Eight, John Eight,
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verse Thirty One, and I'll read
through a verse forty seven. But
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focusing on the beginning of this passage
today, the passage begins with a very
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famous verse, verse you should memorize
thirty one and thirty two. And then
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we have a response to this very
famous thing that Jesus says. So let's
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give our attention to it and ask
that God allow us to hear it with
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faith. So Jesus said to the
Jews who had believed in him, if
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you abide in my word, you
are truly my disciples and you will know
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the truth, and the truth will
set you free. They answered him.
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We are offspring of Abraham and have
never been enslave to anyone. How is
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it that you say you will become
free? Jesus answered them. Truly truly,
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I say to you, everyone who
practices sin is a slave to sin.
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The slave does not remain in the
house forever, but the sun remains
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forever. So if the sun sets
you free, you will be free.
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Indeed, I know that you are
offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to
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kill me because my word finds no
place in you. I speak of what
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I have seen with my father,
and you do what you have heard from
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your father. They answered him.
Abraham is our father, Jesus said to
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them. If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the work,
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that's, the works that Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me,
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a man who has told you the
truth that I heard from God.
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This is not what Abraham did.
You are doing the works your father did.
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They said to him. We were
not born of sexual immorality. We
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have one father, even God.
Jesus said to them. If God were
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your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I
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am here. I came not of
my own accord, but he sent me.
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Why do you not understand what I
say? It is because you cannot
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bear to hear my word. You
are of your father, the devil,
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and your will is to do your
father's desires. He was a murderer from
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the beginning and does not stand in
the truth, because there is no truth
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in him. When he lies,
he speaks out of his own character,
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for he is a liar and the
father of lies. But because I tell
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the truth, you do not believe
me. Which one of you convict me
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of sin if I tell the truth? Why do you not believe me?
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Who is of God? Here's the
words of God. The reason why you
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do not hear them is that you
are not of God. You may be
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seated. We all know the difference, right between hearing and really or listening
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and really hearing, or seeing but
not really seeing or really seeing. Perhaps
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you've had a conversation with someone,
and maybe even someone you love very much,
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and you're trying to tell them something
and you just can get the sense
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that they're not listening and then three
days later, you say, remember what
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I told you, and they have
no recollection right. This happens to us
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all the time. We have ways
in which we can sort of let ears,
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as we say, our words,
as we say, go in one
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ear and out the other. Where
we are paying attention, our eyes are
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focused, were looking at the person
who's speaking to us, and yet it's
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really just kind of passing through.
But sometimes it's the problem is much deeper
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than just paying attention. Sometimes the
reasons we don't pay attention. Sometimes the
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reasons we just flat out aren't listening
or refuse to listen or aren't even able
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to hear our spiritual problems, problems
that go very, very deep. I'm
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Jesus demonstrates this in a number of
ways in his miracles on the ways,
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for example, that he will cause
a blind person will come to this in
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chapter nine. The way he'll cause
a blind in person to be able to
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see, is a way of him
expressing this very real thing that happens to
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us, that we are people who
are blind to the things of God and
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it takes a work of God to
be able to help us to see.
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Here in our passage the emphasis is
on hearing. They hear him and they
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believe him in a way, but
not not fully, it seems, perhaps
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not in a saving way, because
he says the reason you do not hear
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the words of God, these true
words I am speaking to you, is
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that you are not of God.
So that should at least get US warmed
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up and framed for listening. Right
here, Jesus is speaking to us,
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he is revealing things to us.
Let's make sure that we hear him,
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and hear him rightly. So,
as we start with this passage today,
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let's start with Jesus's words, these
famous and inspiring words, and verse Thirty
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One and thirty two. If you
abide in my word, you are truly
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my disciples and you will know the
truth, and the truth will set you
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free. This is a verse,
as I said before I started, this
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is these are a verses that you
should memorize, because these are verses that
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really explain and describe the essence of
what it means to be a disciple of
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Jesus. What does it mean to
follow Jesus? It means to abide in
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him right, not just listen,
but abide right. That's a strong word
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to dwell, to to live in
something. We abide in him by abiding
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in his word, which means we
pay attention, which means we listen,
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we take it in. But in
addition to this, he also explains the
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consequences of that. When we abide
in him, we know the truth and
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the truth sets US free, which
means that to be a disciple of Christ
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always carries this note of hope,
a strong note of hope, a promise
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of hope that as we do this, we will find freedom. This verse
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sets before us, these verses,
this thing Jesus says sets before US great
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possibilities. Perhaps the thing that we
want more than anything else, freedom possibilities
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and promises that grow out of very
particular realities. Abiding in his word,
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and this is one reason many people
have picked up on this verse. You
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will know the truth and the truth
will set you free. Right, this
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is expressed and television shows and books
and movies, and people will just know
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it and say it. But what's
interesting here is, though, that as
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we hear the reaction of the Jews, they don't seem very inspired, do
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they? All? Right, Jesus
doesn't say you will know the truth and
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the truth will set you through it
free, and they all sort of rise
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from their seats and a Plod and
move out into the world rejoicing. Right,
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no, they they seem confused,
maybe even indignant, a little upset.
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A why in the world would they
be upset when Jesus is just promised
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them freedom, freedom grounded in truth? I'll give you an example. Imagine
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you go to visit a very wealthy
king, right, and you you are
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approaching his castle and as you get
closer, you will walk past all the
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flags and the statues and the fountains
and the gardens, and you walk past
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gold plated door knobs and well healed
servants and then you walk into His throne
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room and they are beautiful rugs and
tapestries and guards and fine uniforms, and
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there's the king and he sits on
this bejeweled throne and you say, Oh,
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king, believe in Jesus and you
will no longer be poor, you
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will be rich. He looks like
you, says, who said I was
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poor? Look around you. I'm
sitting on a golden throne, but decked
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with jewels. I'm in this beautiful, ful palace. I have servants everywhere.
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I could have all I could ever
eat. Why are you calling me
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poor? A similar thing happens here. Jesus says to them the truth will
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set you free, and they go
free. Who said we were slaves?
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We are the offspring of Abraham.
They say we are the offspring of Abraham
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and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you
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will become free? So you do
you understand their question? Jesus is promised.
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It is not inspiring and hopeful because
they don't think it's really connected to
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their reality. We are children of
Abraham, we are free, we've never
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been enslaved anyone. Your promise is
ridiculous. And maybe even a little bit
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offensive. So let's take a moment
and look at the world and the way
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that they were seeing it, and
then, after that, consider the way
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Jesus was seeing it. So,
as children is of Abraham, they believed
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themselves to be the apple of God's
eye, his special chosen people in the
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world, and indeed they were.
God had made a covenant with Abraham that
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his offspring would become a great people. You can hear this foundational promise in
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many places in scripture. Here's one
from genesis seventeen, four and following.
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So this is God's promise to Abraham. This is what they perhaps have in
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their mind when they say we are
offspring of Abraham. God says to Abraham,
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behold, my covenant is with you
and you shall be a father of
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a multitude of nations. I will
make you exceedingly fruitful, I will make
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you into nations and King shall come
from you, and I will establish my
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covenant between me and you and your
offspring after you, throughout their generations,
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for an everlasting covenant to be a
God to you and to your offspring after
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you, and I will give to
you and to your offspring after you the
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land of your sojourney all the land
of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and
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I will be their God. So
you see what Jesus makes our Jesus.
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Jesus is saying here in John Eight
that God, when God spoke to Abraham,
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he spoke to him the truth,
and Jesus is also speaking the truth.
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And when God spoke to Abraham and
promise these things, they were indeed
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true and Abraham believed in them.
And what were these things? They were
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a promise to him and to his
offspring that they would become a great and
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mighty people, they would not be
slaves but but royalty, that God would
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give them the land of Canaan,
that he would make with them an everlasting
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covenant. And so they're saying,
we are children of Abraham. Why are
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you saying that we are slaves?
Why is Jesus telling them that if they
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abide in his words, they would
be set free? Now, what could
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Jesus say in response to this?
There's a number of different things. What
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for one, he could have pointed
out that Abraham's children have in fact been
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enslaved many times in history, despite
what they claim. In fact, when
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God makes his promise and Covenant to
Abraham, he does say that they will
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possess this land, that kings and
nations will come from them, but he
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also says he in Genesis Fifteen,
he says know for certain that your offspring
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will be so journers in a land
that is not theirs and will be servants
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or slaves there, and they will
be afflicted for four hundred years. So
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even in God's promise to Abraham there
is a note of slavery, interestingly enough,
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temporary, something that will be undone, something that God will rescue them
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from, but nevertheless they would become
slaves in Egypt and for a long time.
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Let me just pause for a moment
and say that hearing that your children
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are going to be enslaved for four
hundred years certainly gives you, I think,
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a lot of perspective about life,
least potentially. Could we often get
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really tied down in the moments of
these this and that thing? Can you
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imagine being a slave in Egypt and
knowing that this was going to last another
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three hundred years and other two hundred
years? Our our own country hasn't even
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been around, maybe half that long. Right, four hundred years is a
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long time and even that, the
way God describes it, as just a
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blip in history, the Jews and
all of us get very tied to this
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particular moment, these particular things that
we're facing right here, right now,
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these struggles. I'm not a slave
or I'm a slave, or whatever it
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is we're reviewing from this life and
these perspective, God's perspective, is much,
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much bigger than most of us are
used to thinking about. Even here,
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when God makes this promise to Abraham
in Genesis fifteen that he's going to
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establish an everlasting covenant and he tells
them that there will be four hundred years
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of slavery as part of that.
Well, that's a side note for now.
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But Jesus, interestingly, doesn't point
this out. Nor does he point
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out the many times in which they
were ruled by foreign nations during the period
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of the judges, or the ways
in which they were slaves under the Assyrians
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or the Babylonians or, and not
to put too fine on a point of
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it, now, yes, they
are not slaves and they have many freedoms,
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but they are under the watchful eye
of the Roman government, the government
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that has placed a conscious pilot,
a person there for the particular job of
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overseeing this region of the world and
making sure that they don't cause too much
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trouble. That didn't happen everywhere and
it happened there. Nevertheless, Jesus doesn't
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point to any of us. They
say we've never been enslaved, and that's
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just not true. But he doesn't
really address that. Why? Because,
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as usual, Jesus is operating in
a whole nother plane then we're used to
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thinking about. As we've read before, he says I am from above,
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you are from below. Are Thinking
often gets varied, as I've mentioned,
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tied to the things of this world, tied to the circumstances of right.
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He you're right. Now we view
all of our successes, all of our
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failures based on sort of what's immediately
in front of us, even in the
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context of hundreds of years, and
that's still too low. Even if we
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look at thousands of years of history, it's still too low, it's still
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too close to the ground. And
Jesus doesn't address them in this way because
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Jesus knows that it's ultimately not their
outward condition in their life or this moment
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of history, that really matters.
It's their internal condition it's their heart.
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Jesus wants to see them, to
see, and he wants us to see
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as well, that as long as
they continue to make a practice of sinning,
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they are not truly children of Abraham, despite what their DNA says,
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despite where they live in the world, despite their moment of history. How
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could that be true? Well,
here's Jesus's argument, Verse Thirty Nine.
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He says, if you were Abraham's
children, you would be doing what Abraham
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did. The children are like the
parents, but because you do not act
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like your father, he's not your
father. He's not your true father.
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He may be biologically your father,
but ultimately your true father is the devil.
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If that's not going to get somebody
riled up, I'm not sure what
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would. Jesus is not afraid to
be direct. Jesus is not afraid to
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say things as they really are and
to help them understand this. Jesus points
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out this fact of he points them
to a household in an environment where slaves
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are common, and he says,
if you look at a household, you
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have us. You can have a
son and a slave, both in a
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house at the same time, under
the same roof. They might even look
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similar to one another, but only
one remains, and that's the sun.
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And then he goes on to say
so if the son of the house then
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sets you fray free as a slave, then you're free. You become a
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member of the family. But there
is a way in which these two kinds
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of people can be seemingly under the
same roof, a slave and a son.
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This is Paul's Point in Galacians,
Chapter Four. Let's turn their glacians
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and chapter four. Let me read
just a little bit of the beginning of
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that chapter. I mean that the
air, as long as he is a
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child, is no different from a
slave, though he is the owner of
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anything, but he is under guardians
and managers until the date set by his
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father. In the same way,
we also, when we were children,
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were enslave to the elemental principles of
this world. But when the fullness of
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time come, God sent forth his
son, born of a woman, born
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under the law, to redeem those
who were under a law, so that
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we might receive adoption as sons.
And because you are sons, God has
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sent the spirit of his son into
our hearts, crying Abba father. So
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you are no longer a slave but
a son, and if a son,
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then an heir through Christ. In
later in chapter four, Paul will give
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this contrast between Hag are and Sarah. You will talk about there are the
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children who are born into slavery and
children who are born on to a free
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woman. How do you become what's
interesting about what Jesus is saying, though,
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as you can transfer from one category
to another. The ancient we're all
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that hardly ever happened, but here
Jesus is saying that's possible and you can
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actually become children of Abraham when you
do the works of Abraham. What are
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the works of Abraham? Believing the
truth, not believing the lies and live
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in lies, as the devil does
and as the children of the devil does.
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But do but believing in Jesus.
So, as always, Jesus is
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reminding us that what goes in our
hearts, or what goes on in our
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hearts, is the most important.
When our lives are devoted to hearing the
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truth of the word of God as
it comes to us in Jesus, following
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him, loving him, worshiping,
hoping in him, then we are free.
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Why? Because he's The sun,
and the sun has the power to
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set those who were slaves free.
We are free then, because we were
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living as we are made to live. This note about slavery is important,
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not just because it helps us understand
these ways in which Jesus is talking regarding
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sons and slaves, but it helps
us to understand what truly goes on in
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our hearts as it relates to sin. You See, a lot of times,
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when we think about our sins,
we like to minimize them, we
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like to downplay them, we like
to push them away, we like to
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not think about them. But the
Bible says that the wages of sin is
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death. The Bible talks about sin
in terms of slavery, bondage, captivity,
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and that's the truth. When we
are enslaved to sin, we are
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like a crooked stick trying to make
a straight line. Freedom is like being
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a tree that's planted by water.
Right, when you take a tree and
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you plant it over by a wash, what happens? The tree gets big,
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tree gets strong, it's leaves are
good. It's a happy tree,
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right. It is who it's supposed
to be. It's doing tree things right.
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It's what God made it to be, and when we abide in God,
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that's what we're like. But what
happens if you take that same tree
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and you go plant it on a
slab of cement? Will met look great
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for a day, but it won't
take long before it starts withering and then
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eventually dies. God made us for
a particular purpose to glorify him, to
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enjoy him, to abide in him, to live in him, to love
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him, and as we do do
that altogether. That extends out into our
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community. It's not just me in
my place with God, but a humanity
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together are glorifying and worshiping God.
This is who he made us to be,
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and that's freedom. But when we
don't abide in him, when we
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go plant ourselves on slabs of cement
and don't believe in truth, but believe
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in lies, and don't live according
to righteousness, but live according to unrighteousness,
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that don't trust in the saving work
of Christ and the forgiveness of sins,
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but in sided trust in our striving, in our working, it's slavery.
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We keep trying to be a tree, but we just die. It
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doesn't work, and that's why Jesus
can put life in these stark terms.
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To be in him, to be
in the truth, is to be alive.
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It's to be free, it's to
have hope, it's to produce,
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it's to provide shade, it's to
enjoy and have pleasure. And that's what
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Abraham did. When Abraham received this
promise from God, you know what he
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did. He believed it and it
was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham,
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by the way, spent his whole
life living as a sojourner, living
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in tense this land of promise that
he was promised. He never was able
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to fully settle down him, but
he remained confident. Why? Because he
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wasn't tying himself to the things of
this world. He knew that God promised,
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was promising something greater. Hebrews ten
says that he was looking forward to
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the city that has foundations, whose
designer and builder is God. To Be
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a child of Abraham, therefore,
is playing. The Children of Abraham are
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those who, like Abraham, act
in faith. When Abraham was promised offspring,
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what did he do? Did he
try to kill it? Did he
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try to take the promise of God
that was born to his wife and slay
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it? There's the story of Isaac, but that's another that's another wrinkle.
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Will come back to that another time. The answer is no, no,
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he didn't. He waited for that
promise, he trusted in that promise and
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ultimately it wasn't even Isaac who was
that offspring, it was Jesus, and
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that's what the whole world has been
hoping for. The whole world has been
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waiting for. Abraham believed in the
promise, trusted in the promise. Abraham
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lived because Jesus and the promise of
Jesus gave him life, even though it
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was his son. If you go
back to Galatians, I'm going to have
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to go back. I toase turned
back to John. I'm Galatians chapter three.
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Listen to what it says in verses
seventh through nine. glacians three,
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seventh through nine. Know, then, that it is those of faith who
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are the sons of Abraham, and
the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify
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the gentiles by faith, preached the
Gospel Beforehand to Abraham, saying in you
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shall the nations be blessed. So
then, those who are of faith are
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blessed along with Abraham, the man
of faith. This is great news for
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both Jew and gentile. Now Look
at Verse Sixteen. Now the promises were
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made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say and to offsprings,
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referring to many, but to one
and to your offspring, who is
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Christ. That's who Abraham was hoping
in, him, hoping in. That's
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who Abraham was abiding in the Gospel
preached beforehand to Him, the same Gospel
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which is preached now to you,
a Gospel about hope in this offspring,
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a gospel, a good news,
about the promises of this covenant being given
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to you, even to those of
you who are not biologically children of Abraham,
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but can belong to him, can
belong to that house, because we
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no longer worship and live according to
the elemental principles of this world, but
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according to the truth that is sent
from heaven, the son who comes from
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the father and who has gone to
the father and who will come again.
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So what about you, then,
lay this principle on your own heart and
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life? Do you believe in Christ? Do you abide in him? Are
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you a son, a daughter of
God, or do you reject Christ the
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promises that are made in him?
Do you set aside his truth and his
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worship and his honor and his glory
and ignore it or, worse, despise
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it so that you can live in
your own way, on your own time,
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following your own sinful desires? Do
you attach yourself to the King of
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Heaven, who is come into this
world to reveal a kingdom that is everlasting
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and eternal, or do you attach
yourself to the things that are below,
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the things that will perish, the
things that will be destroyed? Do you
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tach yourself to life and truth and
freedom, or do you abide and live
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in unrighteousness and death and separation from
God? All those who abide in Christ
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are like that tree. They are
planted by streams of living water and they
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drink deeply from that water of life. We will go through droughts and trials,
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perhaps in this world, even temporary
slavery, even death of our bodies,
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but we know that God will keep
us safe, the God will protect
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us and the God will cause even
our bodies to rise from the dead with
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victory over slavery, Sin and death. So hold onto the things of this
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world lightly. Don't put pride in
your genetics, in your station of life,
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in your career and your money.
Don't overly be concerned about about these
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things, but wait, like Abraham
for a better city, founded on better
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promises and a savior who is eternal. Let's pray.
