Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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If you would please turn with me
now to First Corinthians, Chapter One,
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verses fourth through nine. First Corinthians
one, versus fourth through nine. All
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right, let's hear God's word together
this morning. I give thanks to my
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God always for you, because of
the grace of God that was given you
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in Christ Jesus, that in every
way you were enriched in him, in
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all speech and all knowledge, even
as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among
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you, so that you are not
lacking in any gift as you wait for
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the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end,
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guiltless, in the day of our
Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful,
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by whom you were called into the
fellowship of his son Jesus Christ.
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Our Lord. Amen. We'll sometimes
as Christians, we forget how blessed we
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are, we forget how much God
has given us His grace, so many
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gifts, so many things, and
we forget these things. But in this
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passage Jesus reminds us through his apostles
words, through Paul's words, that we
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really are better off then we think
we are, and there's a lot of
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payoff for remembering that truth, for
remembering God's gifts and his graces to us.
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It increases our gratitude, it decreases
our worry and it helps us to
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stay strong as we wait for Christ's
return. It may not seem like a
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big deal to forget about the gifts
that you've been given. You have the
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gifts, after all. Why do
we need to remember that we have them
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if we have them? But there
is a real danger in forgetting and there's
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a danger in forgetting the gifts God
has given to us. One danger is
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that when we forget about the gifts, we forget about the giver. Moses
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says to the people of Israel and
Deuteronomy six twelve. Then Take Care Lest
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you forget the Lord who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out
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of the House of slavery. Take
Care, don't forget the Lord who did
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these things for you. God had
blessed his people with a kind of freedom.
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They were no longer under the yoke
of a foreign king. They no
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longer had the harsh slavery that they
were under in Egypt. They were a
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free people. Now they were free
to worship, free to work, free
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to play, free to live,
free to enjoy all these things. That
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God had given them. But when
they forgot about these things, when they
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grumbled about those things, they lost
sight of the one who gave them to
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them, gave the gifts to them. What example of this, and there
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are many, is in found in
Nea Maia and nine, Ne Amiah Nine,
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verse nine. We read this speak
a recounting of Israel's history. And
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you saw the affliction of our fathers
in Egypt and heard their cry at the
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Red Sea and performed signs and wonders
against Pharaoh and all his servants and all
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the people of his land, for
you knew that they acted arrogantly against our
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fathers, and you made a name
for yourself, as it is to this
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day. And you divided the sea
before them so that they went through the
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midst of the sea on the dry
land, and you cast their pursuers into
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the depths, as a stone into
mighty waters. By a pillar of cloud,
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you led them in the day,
and by a pillar of fire,
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you of night, or by a
pillar of fire in the night to light
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for them the way in which they
should go. You came down on Mount
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Sinai and spoke from them from heaven
and of them right rules and true laws
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and good statutes and Commandments. You
made known to them your holy Sabbath and
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commanded them commandments and statutes and a
law by Moses, your servant. You
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gave them bread from heaven for their
hunger and brought water from them out of
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a rock for their thirst, and
you told them to go in and possess
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the land that you had sworn to
give them. But they and our fathers
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acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and
did not obey Your Commandments. They refuse
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to obey and were not mindful.
They were not mindful of the wonders that
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you had performed among them, but
they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader
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to return to their slavery in Egypt. God had here, and Neamia recounts
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all of these things that God had
done for them, one after another,
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after another after another. But the
people, instead of remembering to obey and
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remembering being mindful of the things he
had done, they stiffened their necks and
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tried to return to slavery in Egypt. This is forgetting, not being mindful
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is a dangerous thing, and sometimes
people in the church do the same thing.
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Today, we forget and are not
mindful about the wonders of mercy that
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we have received through Christ. We
forget about our Baptisms, we forget about
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the blessing of the Lord's Supper of
preaching we've we neglect the spiritual food in
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our lives. We don't thank the
Lord for the redemption that we see in
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others, the many ways in which
he is blessing us from day to day.
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And when that happens, when we
forget about the gifts, we tend
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to forget about the giver, we
depart from the Lord, we start acting
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and relying on our own strength,
and then we start wandering back into bondage.
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Forgiving how blessed we are and the
one who blesses us is a real
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danger. It's important, in other
words, to remember. We must not
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forget the gifts we are given.
We must remember them well. The good
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news here is that God helps us
to remember all the time. He is
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reminding us and, I might add, forgetting our sins. Praise be to
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his name, and that's partly what
he's doing here in this passage. He
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is reminding us of His grace through
the apostle, the Lord Jesus, is
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reminding us that we are better off
than we think we are. He helps
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us to remember his blessings. Let's
look and First Corinthians one, starting in
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verse four, and Meditate on some
of these things. We start with First
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Board. We see that Paul is
giving thanks to God because of the Grace
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God gave to the Corinthians in Christ
Jesus. This verse simply recognizes the fact
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that these are people who have received
gifts from God, and this is no
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small thing. It's easy to start
of pass over this and say, well,
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of course they're Christians, but just
pause for a moment and think about
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what that means. Last Sunday evening
my friend Paul Johnson preach to us and
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he told us the story about how
he and his dad would sometimes write letters
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to famous people and just wait and
see what they'd get back, kind of
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as a hobby, and sometimes they
would. People would send them little things,
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letters, autographs of perhaps you've done
something similar. You felt the excitement
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of opening a package and seeing what
you get and you'd be amazed right that
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you got something from this person.
Well, what if I told you that
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you've been given gifts, not from
a famous basketball player or a musician,
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but from God? Gifts from God
it's almost unbelievable, really right, but
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that's exactly what he says here,
and it's God himself who says it.
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Now, follow me here. If
it weren't enough to get gifts from God,
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remember that they are also gifts of
grace. That's what Paul says here,
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gifts, in other words, that
we don't deserve. It's one thing
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to get something from a strange,
famous person that we don't know. It's
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another thing to get a gift from
someone that you've sinned against over and over
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again, somebody you've offended time and
time again who then pours out his favor
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on you. That's an amazing thing. We not only receive gifts from God,
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but we've received gifts of grace from
God. And that's just verse for
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if we continue on, as we
must, to verse five, we read
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this where we begin to hear of
some of these specific gifts. Paul says
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in every way, you were enriched
in him, in all speech and all
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knowledge. First, notice the sort
of superabundance of this language, every way,
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enriched all speech, all knowledge,
and notice also how these two things
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are so important. Speech and knowledge. The Corinthians is we will see as
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we go on through this book,
doubted this. They were chasing after wisdom
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all the time, the wisdom of
this world. They were constantly out listening
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for the sweet talk of their day. Not Necessary, says Paul. You
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don't need to chase after those things. You don't need to be constantly turning
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the channel and buying another book to
to try to get something that you think
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you need. You have everything already. God has enriched in every way with
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all speech and all knowledge. You
have all you need in coming to Christ.
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You don't need to come go clamoring
after other teachers or other ways.
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You are not lacking, but you
are wealthy in having the wisdom of God
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and the word of God. And
if that's true for the Corinthians, it's
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even more true for us today because
we have more of the New Testament.
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We have easy access to the Bible
really anytime we want it. What a
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blessing. We don't have to go
search around for wisdom, constantly hunting,
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never finding, always learning but never
coming to a knowledge of the truth.
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No, in Christ, and it
is word that he has revealed, we
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have everything we need for life,
for godliness, and in particular, it
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is this word about Christ that Paul
Mentions in verse six, this word about
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Christ and his work on the cross, his forgiveness of our sins, his
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pouring out gifts on us. That
word is the foundation for all wisdom knowledge.
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It gives us a perspective on everything. This is what God has given
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to us. These are some of
the gracious things and the gifts that we
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have. As we continue on,
next and verse seven, Paul Says Explicitly
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that you are not lacking in any
gift. What a statement, to not
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be lacking in any gift. Let
me ask you this. How much of
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your life goes in trying to find
things that you think you lack? What
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if you spent that energy simply believing
that God has given you already exactly what
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you need? What if, every
day you told yourself, I'm not lacking
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in any gift? What if you
simply said that? I'm not paraphrasing here,
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I'm just reading the scripture right.
What if you simply said every day
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I'm not lacking in any gift?
What difference do you think that might make
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for your life? To really believe
what Paul is saying here? How might
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that change your relationship with God?
How might that change your relationship with others.
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Maybe instead of jealousy and strife and
selfish ambition trying to get what other
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people have, you can just love
them because you already have everything you need.
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As we finish the section, notice
how Paul Finishes this reminder of got
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with this reminder of God's grace.
He tells us that God is the one
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who will sustain you to the end. He is faithful, the word says.
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This reminds us that the enriching that
God does in our lives, it's
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like a bank account that can never
be drawn down ever. Right. So
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it's not. It reminds us that
God doesn't just give us these gifts which
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we then use and depend on and
then deplete over time, though. He
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gives us these gifts of which the
supply is limitless. You are not lacking
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now, nor in the next moment, nor in the next moment or ever.
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Why? Because God will sustain you. As he says, he loves
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you and he has called you in
his son. He has loved you so
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much that he has given his own
son to die for you so that you
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might have his life, eternal life. So we have these gifts from God.
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We have all speech, we have
all wisdom. We have his supply
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and every moment, in every way, you're not lacking in God is faithful.
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He'll sustain you to the very end. So, though we may be
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forgetful from time to time about God's
gifts, we can be thankful that he
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helps us to remember, and that's
what he's doing for us this morning.
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He's helping us to remember. He's
telling us these things because we tend to
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forget. Though we forget, God
is, as Nehemiah will go on to
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say, ready to forgive, gracious
and merciful, slow to anger, and
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abounding and Sadfast love. And he
did not forsake them. It's true,
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we may forsake God, but he
does not forsake us. We do not
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lack and we never will. God
even helps us to remember this thing as
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we go to the Lord now in
our hearts and we confess our forgetfulness,
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as we confess our complaining, as
we confess our jealousy and all these other
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things, and as we remember how
much we receive through Christ. Let's reflect
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for a moment, a few moments, on what this kind of remembering does,
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the advantages it gives to us in
our lives. I want to mention
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three things. The first thing is
that remembering increases our gratitude are remembering increases
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this joy in our lives. Great
as gratitude increases, joy increases closeness to
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God and a whole bunch of other
things. Remembering how you are blessed makes
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you happier person. I'm sure at
some point you've all been around somebody who's
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forgotten their blessings. I know because
we've all been that person. So I
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know you've been around them too,
and we all hate being that person,
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right. You hate being the whiner
and the complainer, that that kind of
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things, but we all do get
there sometimes. We complain about the temperature
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of the room, we complain about
the speed of the traffic, our friends,
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our jobs, our families, our
health, and it goes on and
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on and we never run out of
possible things to be complaining about. And
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we're constantly thinking that if we just
had this thing or just had that thing,
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then we'd be fine. But of
course that's not true. If we
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noticed how much we complain, we'd
know, we'd see how not true that
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is. We could be sitting on
a mountain of gold and we would say
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this is really uncomfortable right. We
never run out of things to complain for.
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But listen to what God's word says
in First Thessalonians five sixteen through eighteen,
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says rejoice, always, pray without
ceasing, give thanks and all circumstances,
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for this is the will of God
in Christ Jesus. For you now,
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perhaps you've been around a person who
does exactly that. First Thessalonians five
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sixteen through eighteen. Perhaps you've been
around people are you know, people who
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just treasure their friends, who don't
cake conveniences like cell phones or air conditioning
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for granted. People who know in
the deepest parts of their souls that they
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don't deserve anything that they have and
everything that they have is from God's grace.
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People who know, no, no, no, that they are loved
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by God and aren't dependent on anything, whether it's their immediate circumstances, a
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particular party, political party that's in
power, a relationship that's not quite right.
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They're not dependent on anything but God, who loves them to be happy.
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They know in the bottom of their
hearts that all good things come from
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God and that he only gives good
things to his children. Dietrich bondhoffer one
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said. In ordinary life we hardly
realize that we receive a great deal more
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than we give, and then it's
only with gratitude that life becomes rich.
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That's true. With gratitude life becomes
very rich. Perhaps you remember the story
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of the ten lepers from Luke Seventeen. It's short. Let me read it
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to you. Says when Jesus,
Jesus healed these men, ten lepers,
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and when he saw them he said
to them, go and show yourselves to
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the priest, and they went and
they were cleansed. Then one of them,
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when he saw that he was healed, turned back praising God with a
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loud voice, and he fell on
his face at Jesus feet, giving him
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thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, we're not ten
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cleansed. Where are the nine?
Was No one found to return and give
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praise to God, except this foreigner, and he said to him, rise
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and go your way. Your faith
has made you well. When the leper
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returned, he was a happier man, and not just because his he had
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been healed of his disease, but
by faith he had trusted in the Lord,
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and now he is a man whose
heart is full of praise, of
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Thanksgiving, and he was closer to
God, in this case, physically closer
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to God, while the other nine
were who knows where he is with Jesus,
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the Lord of Heaven and Earth,
praising and and worshiping him, his
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heart and his mouth filled with praise. It's a great thing. He was
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made well by his faith and that
gratitude that springs from faith is was expressed
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there. So ask yourself, what
do you have to praise and thank God
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for as Christians? There is so
much. Here are some things that you
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can be happy about this morning.
You can be happy about other saints.
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First, Corinthians one, for remember
Paul, says, I thank my God
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for you right. That's one thing
we can be thankful for for the people
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sitting all around you right now.
Romans fourteen six says we can be thankful
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for food. Hebrews twelve twenty eight
says we can be thankful for receiving a
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kingdom that cannot be shaken. Philippians
three twenty points us to our citizenship in
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heaven. Philippians for ten tells us
that we have or four seven says that
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we have peace with God that transcends
understanding Romans Twenty eight says that God is
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making all things work together for our
good. First John Ten says we have
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the sacrifice of Christ for the forgiveness
of our sins. Matthew Henry said Thanksgiving
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is good, but thanks living is
better. I really like that. That's
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God's plan for us, an eternal
life of praise and enjoyment of God.
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Consider what God has done for you. Every day we can be like that
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grateful leper. We can know how
much we've been forgiven, how well we
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have been made. We can put
our faith in Jesus, remember his blessings
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to us and instead of being blessed
but ungrateful, sad sacks, we can
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become happier people, thankful people,
joyful people, people who are close to
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Jesus and praising him, and as
we do that is God does that in
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us. We become eat we grow
closer and closer to fulfilling our chief end,
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which is glorifying God and enjoying him
forever. So that's the first thing.
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Remembering our gifts does, is it? It increases our gratitude. It
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also decreases our worry. Remembering how
we are blessed decreases our anxious worrying.
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Discontentment and worry are often tied very
close together. When we think we lack
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something we need, we tend to
worry. But go back to verse seven,
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and let's meditate on that. It
says you are not lacking in any
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gift as you wait for the revealing
of our Lord. Now the scriptures are
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very plain that waiting for the revealing
of our Lord will not be easy.
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They're very clear about this point.
We're told all the time that in this
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age, as citizens of Heaven but
people who are still in the world,
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we will face fiery trials, persecution, say, shame, darkness, the
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temptations of the evil one. We
will have to have a we will have
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to be in spiritual battle with the
powers of darkness and struggles with all kinds.
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And for Paul this was not hypothetical. When Paul Talks about Thanksgiving,
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when he talks about not lacking anything, he talks about a talks about it
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as a person who knows what it
means to suffer. In Second Corinthians Eleven,
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twenty three and a few verses following, Paul says of these false serve
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events of Christ. He says,
ARE THEY SERVANTS OF CHRIST? I'm a
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better one. I am any thing
he says. I'm talking like a madman
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with far greater laters, far more
imprisonments, far with countless beatings and often
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near death. So here what Paul
saying? He's saying. You want to
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talk about suffering, fine, let's
talk about suffering. You want to know
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what a light but it's like to
be a servant of the Lord and to
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suffer her is try to sake.
I beat you all, if that's how
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you want to play that game.
Five Times received at the hands of the
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Jews, forty lashes, last one. Three times I was beaten with rods.
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Once I was stoned. Three times
I was shipwrecked. A night and
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a day I was adrift at Sea
on Frequent Journeys, in danger from rivers,
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danger from robbers, dangers from my
own people, danger from the gentiles,
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danger in the city, danger in
the Wilderness, danger at sea,
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danger from false brothers, in toil
and hardshift, through many a sleepless night,
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in hunger and thirst, off and
without food and cold and exposure.
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And apart from other things, there
is the daily pressure on me of my
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anxiety for all the churches. Paul
knows what it means to have needs.
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Paul knows what it means to lack, or not lack things, but to
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but to feel the pressures of the
world around him. I don't think any
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of us here in this room have
had to suffer like that, but we
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do still suffer. Paul says we
suffer, we will suffer. Jesus says
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it too, and so we ask
ourselves, like no doubt Paul asked himself
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from time to time, am I
going to make it through this? Am
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I going to be okay? And
what Jesus is telling us to day,
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through Paul, who knows about these
things and speaks in the power of the
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Holy Spirit. He tells us you
are not lacking in any gift as you
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wait for the revealing of our Lord
Jesus. There's nothing, in other words,
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there's nothing that you don't have,
that you need in order to wait
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and to make it unto the end. Nothing, there's not one more doll
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or one more relationship, one more
spiritual gift than what you have right now
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to wait right now. Now.
Perhaps you're only more later, perhaps you'll
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need less later, but that's nothing
to worry about because why, as he
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says, God is faithful and God
will sustain you. He will sustain you
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to the end. And so,
brothers, the sister is based on this
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passage. We can banish worry from
our minds and our hearts. We can
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consider the blessings and the one who
has blessed us and know that we will
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be just fine. As Paul says
in Romans Eleven, if the spirit of
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him who raised Jesus from the dead
dwells in you, he who raised Christ
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Jesus from the dead will also give
life to your mortal bodies through his spirit
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who dwells in you. He continues
in Romans eight thirty five. WHO shall
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separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution
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or famine or nakedness or the sword? Paul goes on and says, for
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I am sure that neither life nor
death, death nor life, nor angels,
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nor rulers, nor things present nor
things to come, nor powers,
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nor height, nor depth, nor
anything in all creation, will be able
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to separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.
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Through faith in Him, remembering his
gifts and remembering the the giver, we
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truly can let our worries go because
he's solid and stable. And that leads
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to this last point. Is Our
joy increases as our anxiety and worried decreases.
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The Lord helps us, by remembering
these gifts, to stay strong as
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we wait for the Lord's return.
As our worry slips, a lay bravery
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shows up. Remembering the gifts God
has given us gives us courage, and
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there are many, many passages of
scripture that come to mind here. The
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first one I thought of was of
David Facing Goliath, unafraid of this giant,
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trained warrior. We hear David first
asking, as fellow Israelites, what
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shall be done for the man who
kills the Philistine and takes away the reproach
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from Israel? For who is this
uncircumspised, uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy
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the armies of the Living God?
David's looking at the situation and saying,
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what is going on here? Why
are you all afraid? Well, where
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is David's courage come from? Saul
will try to give him courage. He'll
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put his armor on him. Saul
will take his armor and put it on
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David. It doesn't work, it
doesn't fit. David tells us where his
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courage comes from. He remembers his
gifts, he is mindful of the wonders
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God has done for him, and
he says in for Samuels seven hundred and
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thirty seven, the Lord who delivered
me from the paw of the lion and
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the paw of the bear will deliver
me from the hand of this Philistine.
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And Saul said to David, go
when the Lord be with you. God
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equips us with his many graces so
that we would lack nothing and to give
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us courage. Paul says to Timothy, and Second Timothy, one verses six
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through seven, to hold fast to
his calling and to remember what he has
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been given as he goes forward.
Here the exact words Paul says to Timothy.
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For this reason, I remind you
to fan into flame the gift of
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God which is in you through the
laying on of hands, of my hands,
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for God gave us not a spirit
not of fear, but of power
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and love and self control. Paul
is reminding Timothy, just as he reminds
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the Corinthians here, of what Timothy
has, and God is doing the same
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for you today. He is reminding
you of what you have in Christ.
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So fan it into flame. Put
some oxygen on that thing. Let it
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grow, let it build, because
God did not give us a spirit of
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fear, but of bravery, of
courage, of self control and love,
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so that we can face the trials
that we will face in this life.
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David says in Psalm Twenty seven,
the one the Lord is my light.
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Whom shall I fear to be the
equivalent of bring it, let's go.
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I'm okay, I'm going to be
fine, because the Lord is on my
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side, and we likewise have been
given spiritual resources in Christ to stand strong,
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to know, to act, to
love, to hold fast, to
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fight against the world. We do
not need to shrink back as we wait,
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but instead we need to remain strong, and we will remain strong with
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eager expectation, full of hope and
courage, because we do not wear the
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armor of Man, we wear the
armor of God. As Paul says an
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Ephesian six, be strong in the
Lord and in the strength of his might.
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Put on the whole armor of God
that you may be able to stand
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against the schemes of the devil,
for we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
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but against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the cosmic powers over
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this present darkness, against the spiritual
forces of evil in the heavenly places.
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Therefore, take up the whole armor
of God. And then he goes on
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to describe that. First he says
that you may be able to withstand evil,
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withstand in the evil day, having
done all to stand firm. But
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then he begins to describe those graces
that God has given to us, those
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ways in which God has made us
sufficient through Christ. He's a stand.
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Therefore, having fastened on the belt
of truth, having put on the breastplate
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of righteousness and his shoes for your
feet, having put on the readiness given
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by the Gospel of peace in all
circumstances, take up the shield of faith,
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with which you can extinguish all the
flaming darts of the evil one,
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and take the helmet of salvation,
the sword of the spirit, which is
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the word of God, praying at
all times in the spirit, with all
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prayer and supplication. This is the
armor of God, this is the grace
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you have been given. You see
why we can stand strong? Do you
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see why we can stand firm?
Do you see why we can be grateful
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people, even in the midst of
much darkness? Because we don't stand in
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our own strength. We don't fight
in our own strength, we stand in
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the strength of God. We fight
in the strength of God. We draw
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our resources from Christ himself, who
is at work within US and will sustain
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us to the end. This passage
calls us to have courage in any trial
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or challenge that we might face.
If we remember our gifts, if we
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remember our armor, we can be
bold and fight in the strength of his
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might. So, in conclusion,
as you think of all these things that
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we've considered this morning, I hope
that you have been encouraged and that you
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have been reminded to survey the wonderful
gifts that come to us through Christ and
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his work for us on the Cross. And if you don't know Jesus,
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if you've not put your faith in
him, then I hope you have been
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duly enticed by the graciousness of the
love of God to his children. If
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you hear of a grant that you
can get at school, or a sale
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at the grocery store or free money
available some benefit at work, you take
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advantage of these things. Right.
So why would you wait and not trust
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in Jesus when he is freely pouring
these things out on those who put their
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faith in him. Why would you
wait to trust Christ to receive the free
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gift of eternal life, which is
a blessing to every Christian now and in
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the age to come? Don't wait. Instead, let us together, be
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a people who know our savior and
His grace to us. Let us be
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a people that remember, that are
filled with gratitude, find our worries slipping
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away, have greater and greater boldness
for the fight and for the weight as
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we eagerly wait for the revealing of
the Lord. Let us be a people
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of thanks, living by trusting in
God who sustains us to the end.
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Amen, let's pray.
