Episode Transcript
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Mercy that you have shown us in
the light of the Gospel that has come
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into our lives, that we might
know you and love you and shine with
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your grace. There is no God
other than you, no God who brings
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us true joy and true peace,
true happiness, and true Godliness except for
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you and you alone. We thank
you for coming into this world at the
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proper time and revealing this word of
salvation to us, that we might be
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changed and then we might believe.
We thank you also, Lord, that
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you now use us as individuals and
together as your church, along with many
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others, to shine brightly with this
good news, that the world, even
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to its remotest end, might hear
you and fear you and love you as
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you have made us and are making
us to do. We asked that you
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would help us to hear your word, be with the preaching of your word
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as we as we come again to
your word in Titus through your apostle Paul,
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we pray this in Jesus name.
Amen. Let's turn to Titus chapter
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one, Versus one through four,
and here God's word I read this morning
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Titus one versus one through four.
So last week, when we looked at
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this passage, we considered Paul,
Paul's self understanding, how he understands his
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own mission as he writes this letter
to tite us to give him instructions about
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how he ought to understand his mission, his assignment, and ultimately that comes
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to all of us right. What
is Christ as the head of the church
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a desire for us? Last week
we focused on the source of um,
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the source of that strength, the
source of that message, which is God
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and the Word of Christ, the
revelation of the Gospel. Today we focus
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on the ends God has desired,
ends for his work goals, and we're
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gonna. Look, We're gonna.
I'd like you to pay attention to that
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this morning as we read now tied
Us one one through four. What's God's
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goal in sending out his word Paul, a servant of God and an apostle
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of Jesus Christ, for the sake
of the faith of God's elect and their
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knowledge of the truth which accords with
Godliness in the hope of eternal life,
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which God who never lies, promised
be for the ages began and at the
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proper time manifested in his word through
the preaching with which I have been entrusted
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by the command of God our Savior
to Titus, my true child in a
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common faith. Grace and peace from
God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
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May God bless his word to us, Please be seated. Mm hmmm
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m m. Having a good goal
is pretty essential for almost anything in life,
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whether you're waking up in the morning
and trying to figure out what to
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get dressed, or um, you're
thinking about your job, or thinking about
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something as big as what the church
is supposed to be, like what am
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I supposed to be doing as a
Christian? These are important questions. It
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makes me think of those cartoons where
um, somebody uh has the map upside
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down right and you're everyone's going the
wrong direction, and then you know,
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then that sort of comical moment,
you can turn it right side up.
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In that case, the problem maybe
not isn't the goal, but it's the
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route to get there, the direction, the means to that end also also
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important. In this passage, Paul
addresses all of these things. He starts
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with the source of our mission,
the source of his mission, the source
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of the work of Christian ministry,
and even the work of God in the
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Word of Cry. That's of course, God himself. And Jesus Christ,
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our savior, the eternal son of
God. But he also addresses the means
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right, the means towards an end
that he is it is his desire to
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achieve. Well, what is what's
his end? Well, he says,
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Paul goes out for a reason.
His work is suffering all of that for
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a reason. And he says,
it's for the sake of the faith of
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God's elect God's children, God's chosen, God's beloved ones. It's for their
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the sake of their faith. And
then he gives some details their knowledge of
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their the knowledge of the truth.
And he describes that knowledge as saying,
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as that which accords with Godliness and
is in hope of eternal life. So
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this faith he sort of unfolds in
this way, knowledge, godliness, and
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hope. I think these three things
correspond with the classic um faith, hope,
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and love, those virtues or what
we do, how we feel,
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and what we think. We might
say that one of God's ends, and
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when we have summarizing this is to
save us, and to save all of
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us, every part of us,
our minds our hearts, our actions.
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When God comes into the world and
he reveals himself in Jesus Christ. He
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comes to save you and all of
you. He wants us to have a
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knowledge of the truth, to no
longer believe, not believe lies. When
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we put our faith in Him,
we put our faith in real things,
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in a real salvation, not a
false one, not a lying one.
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And it's a truth that actually does
good things. It produces uh and in
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his and as an accord with Godliness, and it exists in the hope of
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eternal life. Lies don't do that. Lies don't produce Godliness, Lies about
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God, lies about ourselves, lies
about our world, they don't produce.
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They don't accord with Godliness, and
they certainly don't give us hope. I
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want to talk with about talk about
that with you a little bit more in
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a moment. The point here is
just to notice that Paul goes intentionally.
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He goes out intentionally, and he
does so at the command of God,
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which means that God goes intentionally.
When Paul says, when God sends out
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Paul, he sends out his servant, he sends out his apostle. We
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read in verse three, Paul goes
as one who is entrusted with something.
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Paul doesn't He's not just doing whatever
he wants to do. He's doing what
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God has intended. And so,
as I emphasized last time, we see
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not only Paul's heart or a command
for us and our mission as a church,
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but we also see God's heart and
his desire for us. And that's
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the thing that we want to keep
chief in our minds. This is all
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very important for a lot of reasons. One of them is that the world
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that we live in is a very
very dark place. It's a dark place.
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Now, that's not something we want
to hear all the time. It's
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something we try to distract ourselves from
sometimes. Uh, some of you perhaps
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come here this morning and you know
it. Maybe you feel better than anybody
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else. No one is going to
have to convince you this morning that the
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world is a dark place. Maybe
you are suffering in your relationships. Maybe
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you're feeling like you don't know how
it's gonna work out this week or even
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this afternoon with your friend or your
spouse or someone at work. Maybe you're
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seeing addiction pop up over and over
again in your life or in life of
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someone you love, and you're overwhelmed
by it and you're frustrated by it.
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Maybe it's money, problems. Maybe
it's all kinds of trials. Trials not
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in the sense of suffering, but
trials in the sense of you keep trying,
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and whatever it is, it keeps
not working. The world often likes
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to encourage us via optimism and tell
us that if you try harder and you
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pluck up and you do a little
better, or distract yourself with some entertainment
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or something like that, that maybe
things aren't so bad. And it's true,
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there is a lot of good.
There is a lot of good.
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We have so much to be thankful
for, clothes, shelter, food,
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good food, friends, family.
If we decide we want to start listing
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things to be thankful for, which
we often do this time of year,
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we can come up with very long
lists. But if we think about things
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as it aligns with this world and
his life is under the sun, we
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only come to one conclusion. Even
when you account for all of the good,
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all the very real good, we
come to the conclusion that the author
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of Ecclesiastes comes to about life under
the sun vanity of vanities. All is
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vanity. Good things pop up,
but they go away, And the book
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of Ecclesiastes gives all kinds of examples
for this right, flourishing and strength in
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your youth and then suffering as you
get older. You amass a great fortune,
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and then your bum son gambles it
all the way, and his inheritance
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like the prodigal son right in the
story Jesus Um. Then the on parable
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Jesus tells all kinds of examples throughout
that book of people gaining all kinds of
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great knowledge, learning, studying,
perfecting, really, establishing, good systems
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of thought, good systems of action, and then nothing failure. Ah,
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The world's a dark place. The
world is a very vain place, taken
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on its own terms, in an
accordance with its own way in life and
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the sun. And that's, of
course because of sin. When Sam came
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into the world, God cursed the
world hostily. He brought into the world
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all kinds of measures of frustration that
man would see the consequences of his sin,
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would be warned from it in part, and would learn not to exalt
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himself but exalt God and God alone. When we look around and we see
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the darkness of our world, where
do we turn? Where do we go?
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Well, you can go to a
bookstore in town and find huge sections
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of literature that will tell you how
to do all kinds of things, things
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that will help you, ways you
can help yourself. We call this self
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help. Right. What do you
want to learn? Right? Astronomy,
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computer coding, how to write a
better resume? Um? Do you want
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to learn how to communicate better with
people? How to be a better listener,
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how to be a better has been, a better spouse? Um?
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Do you want to how to know
how to organize your community or be more
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effective in the things that you do? Um? Set better goals, create
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better strategies. It's all there.
Go by the books. They're there and
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they will help, but only to
a degree. They only get so far.
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If that weren't the case, we
have utopia by now. Right.
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Humans have been working on perfecting their
their towers, and their languages, and
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their relationships and their families and our
wealth and everything else for thousands and thousands
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of years. And we keep doing
the same thing over and over and over
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again, keep repeating the same mistakes, keep hurting each other in the same
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ways, over and over and over
again. Vanity of vanities. It's all
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vanity. So you can go to
the library, you can go to the
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bookstory, you can find a measure
of help, but it will not get
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you the thing that you really need, the thing that the world really needs,
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which is God and the life.
Not in ourselves, which is ultimately
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damning, but life in Him,
life in Him. Notice what the apostle
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Paul, when he goes out for
the sake of the faith of God's elect
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and their knowledge of the truth.
What is the hope that comes with that
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knowledge? A knowledge about Jesus,
and knowledge about the Cross, and knowledge
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about what God is doing in this
world. A knowledge that isn't human generated
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but comes straight out of Heaven itself. A knowledge that cannot be found by
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going on beautiful walks in the mountains
or reading the best poetry or listening to
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the best music. A knowledge that
cannot be found by studying the greatest of
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our science. A knowledge that comes
special, special delivery from Heaven itself.
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A knowledge that is revealed to us
that could not be discovered by us,
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but is revealed to us by God's
grace. What does that knowledge do well?
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That knowledge comes in hope? Hope
of what? Eternal life? Not
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vanity, not darkness, not a
little bit better and two steps forward in
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one step back, not penultimate change, ultimate change, eternal life, rock
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solid hope, and he gives some
He gives some explanation and exposition of that
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when he says, which God who
never lies, promised before the ages began
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and at the proper time manifested in
his word. Right, when we put
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ourselves, are hoping ourselves our towers
of Babel, right, they come to
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nothing. But when God who never
lies decides to save us, you can
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have one hundred percent assurance that that
will not fail. It's rock solid.
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And he gives reasons here. One, God never lies. That's totally different
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than everything else we experience in this
world. Number two, he says,
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he promised it. This promise that
he made, he promised it before the
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ages began, which is to say, it doesn't depend on anything that we
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do, because the promise was made
before we did anything. Talks about this
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in Romans, addressing Jacob and Esa. He says, before they were even
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born, I chose Jacob, before
one or the other had done anything good
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or evil. He had made a
promise. He had made a decision,
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and he would and is doing it. Not only did God, God right,
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God who never lies, God are
amazing, perfect, wonderful, God
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make this promise before the ages began. But he says, at the proper
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time he manifested it in his word. It wasn't fate, It wasn't an
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accident. It wasn't us finally kind
of working things out so that at the
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perfect moment we then generated or discovered
or you know, climbed that last route,
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last rung up into heaven. No, at the proper time God manifested
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his word first in Jesus Christ,
who comes into this world, dies on
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a cross, and then resurrects from
the dead, and then through the preaching
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of that word in his apostles and
in the church following from them, Paul
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says, to the Glaciers Church,
Glacian Church, you've seen Christ and him
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crucified. Who was crucified before you? He says to them, in how
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do they see him? How do
they see Christ? In Paul's preaching,
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He proclaimed it to them. He
told them so that they might see with
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the eyes of faith what was true
and what's true when we look at the
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cross and we understand what Jesus does
on the cross, what's true about that
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is that he had to die for
us in order to save us. Not
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only is man not capable of saving
himself. In order to be saved,
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God had to become man and had
to die in order to save us.
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He didn't. God didn't come into
this world and say, forget the bookstore,
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forget the library, let me really
tell you how to live. He
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already did that. That's what almost
the whole Testament is about, telling us
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what we're supposed to do. He
gave the Israelites ten very clear laws what
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they're supposed to do. He filled
that out with a whole system and a
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land and a priesthood and all kinds
of things, giving them support of support,
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structure and life and everything. He
cleared the way right. He sent
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out their enemies, he placed him
in the land, you know, just
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turn the key and run with it. And they still failed. What Paul
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says about this ultimately is that the
law is incapable of producing the godliness that
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we need. The law is incapable
as good it is, as it is,
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of reconciling us to Christ. And
that's what the Cross shows us.
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The Cross shows us when the Lord
says, I will be the substitute for
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these people, what does he have
to do in order to be our substitute.
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He has to die, beloved,
He dies for us. He doesn't
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just give us some teaching. He
doesn't just tell us how we can do
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things a little bit better. He
dies for us. That's where are our
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works get us. They get us
to death. And we can either have
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that in Christ, who dies for
us. Or you can do it yourself,
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and we call that damnation and hell. You can take on the eternal
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wrath of God all on your own, and instead of eternal life, have
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the eternal death. Or you can
look at Christ and see that all he
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has done. You can hear the
word of the gospel that has preached.
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You can know that not only did
he die, but he rose again from
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the dead to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us and make us as
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white as the snow. We can
put our faith in him. We can
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put our faith in that truth,
in that promise from a God who never
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lies, and be saved, and
be saved. The world is a dark
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place, and we desperately need help. Our neighbors need our help, our
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family, our friends. They need
our help. They are suffering, they
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are dying, and they are not
going to be saved by helping themselves.
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You know what the problem is in
your own particular life. I only know
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it in a general way. I
know that according to UM, I forget
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whether it's Barna or Pew. Before
the coronavirus, Tucson was listed as the
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sixteenth most post Christian city in the
United States, twelve most unchurched. On
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any given Sunday, more than half
half the people here are not hearing the
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gospel. It's a lot of people. And those are pre coronavirus statistics.
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From the estimates that I've heard or
read studies that have been done, and
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just anecdotally from pastors and talking to
people in town. Well, thankfully it
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is not true here. In most
other churches, attendance is down thirty to
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fifty post um. You know,
lockdowns and coronavirus and all that kind of
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stuff. So whatever the statistics were
pre COVID, it's safe to assume that
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it's even worse. There's five thousand, eight hundred and sixty households within a
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half mile of this building. That's
according to the Postal Service. You can
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do lookups on there. That's a
lot of people. And othern Arizona rural
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southern Arizona, there's something like two
thousand people, and most of them have
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no church. That are is even
close much less assured, And that when
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there are churches, a lot of
them preach not the Gospel. They preach
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the law, they preach moralism,
they preach all kinds of not the Gospel
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things. I'm just saying that our
world needs help, and not just the
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world in some sort of abstract way, but like the people living right around
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us, they need the Gospel,
even as you and I need the Gospel.
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We need to hear it, we
need to believe it. And the
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good news for us is that God
has promised this to us, and He
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has come into the world at the
proper time. And for those of you
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who have put your faith in Him, those of you who have experienced exactly
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what Paul is talking about here,
you know how amazing this is, especially
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those of you who didn't grow up
with these truths but came to know them
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later in life through the preaching of
the Gospel. Those of you who know
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what it's like to live live lives
where you are constantly and only walking in
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lies. Even those of you who
generally were nice people and helpful and loving,
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you knew and know that godless,
that that immorality is not just doing
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bad things, but it's godlessness.
It's even doing good things without Him,
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doing good things in our own strength, doing good things for ourselves and our
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own glory. God Lessness is what
immer reality really is in every form,
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whether it outwardly looks good or bad, or whether it benefits our neighbors in
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a penultimate way or not. But
God doesn't promise just doing nice things.
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He promises godliness, which is not
just morality, but it is a morality
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that is centered in Him, sourced
from Him, enabled by Him. We
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as Christians have God in us,
living in us, breathing in us,
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shining in us. And this is
why we can be a good witness.
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It's why we will be a good
witness because God is working in us.
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And God is working in us in
such a way that he is not going
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to fail. He won't, he
can't. God comes into the world to
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achieve these ends, and He has
achieved them many of your lives. He
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has given you a knowledge of the
truth. He has helped you to see
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the Cross of Christ. He has
given you a hope that you didn't have
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when you didn't have Christ. He
has given you a godliness that is grounded
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in him. And so if we
want to be saved from the darkness ourselves,
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and if we want to be a
blessing to our families and our friends,
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our neighbors and even our enemies,
if we want out of the darkness,
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and if we want our world to
be out of the darkness, there
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is only one thing to do,
which is to put our faith in him
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who shines in the darkness, as
John says about Jesus, and the darkness
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has not overcome him. He he
entered into a dark world. He died
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on a cross for the forgiveness of
our sins, and he rose from the
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dead, and he ascended into heaven. Glorious, powerful, almighty King.
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God doesn't just promise, He fulfills
and he applies his gospel in our lives.
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That's what happens when we put our
faith in Him, and when our
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faith is in Him, it is
from that place that we can then be
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a real hope for others, instead
of neglecting them or giving them false hope.
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We shine with Jesus. We shine, and we tell them about him.
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We tell them what He's done for
us, We tell them what He's
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doing, and we simply watch God
at work. So my encouragement to you,
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as Paul's encouragement is too tight us
and to me, as God ultimately
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is commanding all of us, we
must trust Him above all. And as
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we trust Him above all, we
proclaim Him above all. And that is
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a true hope for a dark world. Let's pray, Lord Jesus, we
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know that when you come into the
world, you are not like a candle
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shining in the middle of the day, simply a nice thing to have,
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a pretty thing to look at,
if if we don't, if we want,
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But you are like a light in
the darkest depths of the earth,
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a light that shines and beats back, overcomes, destroys, annihilates the darkness.
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This includes o Lord, our sin
and the consequences of sin. We
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praise you, and we thank you
for being our savior and our King.
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Thank you for coming into this world
at the proper time. Thank you for
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giving to us the preaching of your
word through your Apostle. Thank you for
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continuing that word word out into the
world through both the ordained ministers of the
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Church and through every member of the
Body of Christ, through whom you are
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working, through whom you are proclaiming
the word of Christ, the word of
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the Cross, to a dead and
dying world. It's hard sometimes, o
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Lord, to be left in this
world, to suffer in it, to
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endure trials of various kind. I'm
too to be persecuted even for these things
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that we hold true. But Lord, we know that we can count all
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suffering as joy when we do it
in your name. We know that uncomfortableness
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and conflict and difficulties of various kinds, you are only working these to strengthen
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us and to purify us, and
to make us more and more like you.
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Lord, is our faith is less
and less in ourselves, and more
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and more in you. We see
the goodness that you are doing, the
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fruit that you are producing, the
knowledge that you give, the godliness that
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you bring forth, and the hope, O Lord, that we can just
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relax into a hope that we can
rest in and know that the world,
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that even though the world is spinning
and noisy and distracting and and sinful even
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around us, that we are going
to be okay. Help us to bring
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this message to others, that they
two might join us in the praise of
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your name and the proclamation of your
word. Help us to be faithful in
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these things, and we look forward
to the return of our Savior. We
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pray these things in his name.
Amen.
