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2 episodes with Ultimate end
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Radiant, Part 4The Light of Peace | Isaiah 9:5(00:00) - Welcome and Series Overview (02:39) - Scripture Reading: Isaiah 9:1-7 (04:42) - Introduction (10:19) - 1. Through Jesus, There Will Be an Ultimate End to War (19:58) - 2. The Promise of Peacetime (30:45) - Closing Prayer
Identity Evolution In this 4-week group coaching experience, I will teach you how to completely rewire your self-concept at the core level, so you no longer operate from outdated beliefs or self-imposed limitations.
This podcast talks about the Narcissist's Playbook (Their Ultimate End Game). For phone coaching go to https://askyaz.wixsite.com/thegameexposed. To ask a quick question and get a personalized video back: https://www.wisio.com/The_GameEXPOSED. Read my books free with amazon kindle free trial: “Regain Your Power” on Amazon
A new MP3 sermon from Reformation Church of Elizabeth is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Ultimate End for All Men: Honor or Anguish? Subtitle: Romans Speaker: Kevin Swanson Broadcaster: Reformation Church of Elizabeth Event: Sunday Service Date: 8/11/2024 Length: 44 min.
A new MP3 sermon from Reformation Church of Elizabeth is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Ultimate End for All Men: Honor or Anguish? Subtitle: Romans Speaker: Kevin Swanson Broadcaster: Reformation Church of Elizabeth Event: Sunday Service Date: 8/11/2024 Length: 44 min.
Welcome to "The Ultimate End of Year Quiz Challenge!" In this exciting video and podcast, we put your knowledge to the test with an epic end-of-year quiz! Get ready to challenge yourself and see how much you remember from the past year. From pop culture to current events, we cover it all in this fun and engaging quiz.Join us as we bring together a collection of mind-boggling questions designed to challenge your memory and entertain you. Whether you're a trivia aficionado or just looking for a fun way to wrap up the year, this video is perfect for you!Our interactive quiz format allows you to participate from the comfort of your own home. Grab a pen and paper and play along as each question pops up on the screen. Test your knowledge and see if you can outsmart your friends or family!Not only is this quiz highly entertaining, but it's also a great opportunity to reflect on the significant events and trends of the year. Rediscover your favorite moments or discover something new in this engaging journey through the past 12 months.We've carefully curated questions from a variety of categories, including movies, music, sports, technology, and more. You'll be challenged on everything from viral internet phenomena to global news and everything in between. It's an all-encompassing quiz that ensures there's something for everyone!Don't miss out on this thrilling end-of-year experience. Join us for "The Ultimate End of Year Quiz Challenge!" and put your knowledge to the test. Get ready to laugh, learn, and celebrate the end of the year with us!Subscribe to our channel and hit the notification bell to stay updated with more exciting quizzes, trivia challenges, and entertaining content. Share this video with your friends and family, and invite them to participate in the ultimate end-of-year quiz! Leave a comment below with your score and let us know how well you did.Thank you for joining us in this exciting quiz adventure! Sit back, relax, and let the end-of-year festivities begin. Let's see if you have what it takes to conquer "The Ultimate End of Year Quiz Challenge!" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Co-Create With Carlie- Allow The Law of Attraction, Law of Assumption & Spirituality to Work For You
⚠️ Listener Discretion Advised: This episode mentions suicide. ⚠️ If you need mental health resources, please visit this link here. ❤️ ✨ If you are ready to allow in your manifestations with ease while also aligning with your authenticity through powerfully shifting your mindset, apply here for 1:1 Mindset & Manifestation Coaching with me! I am looking forward to co-create with you a joyous and aligned path to your manifestations! ✨ If you are interested in personalized manifestation tools tailored to and made just for you like self concept rampages, guided meditations, affirmations, and subliminals, click here. ✨ Connect with me for more conscious creating on my Instagram. Happy Manifesting Powerful Soul! Sending you all peace, love, and high vibes!
Have you ever asked the question: If Jesus defeated sin on the cross then why is sin still in the world? We live in a world that is full of sin, evil, and suffering. Will there ever be a day where Jesus does away with sin once and for all? That's what we seek to answer as we conclude our series “Evil”.
Sushant Sareen on The Ultimate End of Pakistan Afghanistan Indian Security TJD Podcast 23
EPISODE 390: HEADING INTO OUR ULTIMATE END (Impactful Stories & Songs About What Matters Most) In this episode hosts Greg & Stephanie Schlueter take the gloves off in addressing what is most consequential in this moment in history, in light of our ultimate end, the purpose for which we were created. Prepare to be captivated by the profound impact of personal stories and songs on our faith journey, featuring new songs by their son, recording artist Seph Schlueter, and Damascus Worship. Delve into the rich world of Catholicism as the landscape of our existence, as the hosts discuss the importance of storytelling in conveying timeless values. From Jesus' use of relatable parables to the present-day challenge of defending faith, they explore the significance of narratives and songs in our spiritual lives. Join the conversation as they highlight the critical need for protecting souls and lives in today's world, setting the stage for a significant upcoming election. Mark your calendar for November 3-4, Sanctus: Eucharistic Family Revival, which will be led by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Registration will be up soon. Check out CatholicRevival.us. LISTEN NOW! SHARE! GET ON BOARD NOW for SUPREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION (amazing 8 week journey for families beginning in September): CatholicRevival.us. IGNITE Radio Live was named by Spotify as a top podcast globally. Access all our other great programs at IGNITERadioLive.com, an outreach of Mass Impact, a dynamic missionary movement of families united in seeking, proclaiming, living, and building the Kingdom. Find out more and get on board at ILoveMyFamily.us. Please click on that partner tab. We are a full-time missionary movement 100% dependent upon your prayers and financial partnership. LISTEN NOW! SHARE! BROUGHT TO YOU BY Image Trinity (Mass Impact). We are families united in more fully seeking, proclaiming, living, and building the Kingdom. Over the past years, hundreds have been blessed by a "family roadmap." We've been united in gathering in our respective homes on a weekly basis to talk and pray using a fun, meaningful "Live IT Gathering Guide" based on subsequent Sunday readings. Get your free LIT Guide at ILoveMyFamily.us or the app at MassImpact.us/APP. IF YOU'RE A CATHOLIC MAN interested in missioned friendships, marked by the hearts of men united in striving to build the Kingdo GO: Pentecost365.us. JOIN OUR Belief & Beverages Nights: MassImpact.us/BNB PARTNER WITH THIS MOVEMENT at MassImpact.us/PARTNER. SUPPORT CATHOLIC BUSINESSES and leaders committed to professional excellence and building the Kingdom. GO: MassImpact.us/KINGDOM Oh, Most Holy Spirit, come and IGNITE the Great FIRE of Your Love! Set it ABLAZE in our minds and hearts! #Catholic #Marriage #Family #ilovemyfamily #ThyKingdomCome #christian #home #faith #children #virtue #holiness #funny #inspiring #love #parents #happiness #heaven --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/igniteradiolive/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/igniteradiolive/support
Rick Joyner reveals the devil's ultimate end-time attack...
Rick Joyner reveals the devil's ultimate end-time attack...
Worship Guide | Contact Us | Watch
After a Premier League season of transition for AFC Bournemouth, Sam & Tom return with the Ultimate End of Season Player Ratings Show for 2022/23 to discover which players emerge top of the tier, and which seemingly have work to do! Armed with new additions from January, Gary O'Neil slowly turned around our poor January to keep Cherries in the top flight, and in April, he got some key results in key games, with that month being the difference between relegation and survival - some stunning wins and amazing turnarounds. But which players impressed? Our tier-list categories are One of the Best, Consistently Good, Pretty Solid, Expected More, and Season To Forget - but who goes where? Thank you to everyone who has contributed to all our platforms. If you're enjoying this show, you can help support us by buying us a coffee at https://www.afcbpodcast.com/coffee – we really appreciate it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
With the increasing pace of change in technology and communications and artificial intelligence and data analytics something is being left out of the discussions. The end user. The machine operator and the owner of the machine. Who is at the table in discussions about what is needed in technology and information who represents them? Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
The End Times can be confusing. In this episode of Tipping Point, Jimmy Evans explains the major events that will occur in the end times and when we can expect them. In the subscriber portion, Jimmy discusses current events regarding a war between Israel and Iran, as well as the China deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Also, Jimmy is answering questions from EndTimes.com subscriber such as "Why is there so much hatred towards the Jews?" To watch full episodes of Tipping Point, visit https://EndTimes.com -------- Jimmy Evans is a long-time pastor, Bible teacher, and best-selling author. He is the Founder and President of XO Marriage, a ministry devoted to helping couples thrive in strong and fulfilling marriages. For 30 years, Jimmy ministered as Senior Pastor of Trinity Fellowship Church in Amarillo, Texas, where he now serves as Apostolic Elder. During his time as senior pastor the church grew from 900 to over 10,000 members. Jimmy loves mentoring pastors and helping local churches grow to reach their potential. He is a popular speaker at churches and leadership conferences across America. Jimmy has written more than 18 books including Marriage on the Rock, The Four Laws of Love, 21 Day Inner Healing Journey, and Tipping Point. Jimmy and Karen have been married for 50 years and have two married children and five grandchildren. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Acts 28:23-31
Do you have that inclination associated with a greater need for achievement, higher propensity to take risks, and greater innovativeness? Our coach Trent Clark and his CEO guest will be able not only to discuss fresh knowledge but also to make enlightened decisions. Today's episode, as our international coach Trent Clark talks to our guest, Mike Faith, a serial entrepreneur, a founder, and CEO of www.Headsets.com, America's headset specialists. Best known for their world-beating customer service and undeniably a little bit of a fanatic about giving Customers love. Mike Faith left school at 15. No business, no training, and no education. Entrepreneurship was his fit. He has been at the helm for 23 years. “I really like people that I work with. And we really function well as a team. And that makes a huge difference. To me, I'd rather have that than all the monetary success in the world, but not enjoy the people that I'm working with” - Mike Faith Learn from our guest CEO Mike Faith: Audio Part 1 (3:07) How did Mike Faith creatively start Headsets.com? (6:52) What are the biggest challenges right now in social media particularly in duping young people to go and be an entrepreneur? (15:45) The story of young Mike and how things progressed. (17:46) How did Mike Faith overcome a category of losing, and find a way to come back and win? (21:09) What is Mike Faith's superpower to win? Audio Part 2: (0:57) What is their perception about taking a risk? (10:17) How does Mike Faith handle pain and tough times? (15:53) What's the best battle that he conquered in his lifetime? (18:21) What is his best way to win? Podcast takeaways: You have to keep learning. There's no ultimate end game. So I guess you can still get better, even if you're the world champion for continuous. I think it said in every problem, or in every adversity, the seed is sown and for yet a greater triumph. “Tough times never last, but tough people do” - Robert Schuller Connect with CEO Mike Faith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikefaith/ https://www.mikefaith.com/ https://www.headset.com/ Connect with Coach Trent Clark with these links : Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_76SFCClh6GbqLjzFgf8xw LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentmclark/ Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/leadershipity/?hl=en Fb Page: https://www.facebook.com/Leadershipity/?ref=pages_you_manage Thanks for tuning into today's episode of NO ULTIMATE END GAME ll MIKE FAITH with Coach Trent Clark. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the show and leave us a review.
Do you have that inclination associated with a greater need for achievement, higher propensity to take risks, and greater innovativeness? Our coach Trent Clark and his CEO guest will be able not only to discuss fresh knowledge but also to make enlightened decisions. Today's episode, as our international coach Trent Clark talks to our guest, Mike Faith, a serial entrepreneur, a founder and CEO of www.Headsets.com, America's headset specialists. Best known for their world-beating customer service and undeniably a little bit of a fanatic about giving Customer love. Mike Faith left school at 15. No business, no training, and no education. Entrepreneurship was his fit. He has been at the helm for 23 years. “I really like people that I work with. And we really function well as a team. And that makes a huge difference. To me, I'd rather have that than all the monetary success in the world, but not enjoy the people that I'm working with” - Mike Faith Learn from our guest CEO Mike Faith: Audio Part 1 (3:07) How did Mike Faith creatively start Headsets.com? (6:52) What are the biggest challenges right now in social media particularly in duping young people to go and be an entrepreneur? (15:45) The story of young Mike and how things progressed. (17:46) How did Mike Faith overcome a category of losing, and find a way to come back and win? (21:09) What is Mike Faith's superpower to win? Audio Part 2: (0:57) What is their perception about taking a risk? (10:17) How does Mike Faith handle pain and tough times? (15:53) What's the best battle that he conquered in his lifetime? (18:21) What is his best way to win? Podcast takeaways: You have to keep learning. There's no ultimate end game. So I guess you can still get better, even if you're the world champion for continuous. I think it said in every problem, or in every adversity, the seed is sown and for yet a greater triumph. “Tough times never last, but tough people do” - Robert Schuller Connect with CEO Mike Faith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikefaith/ https://www.mikefaith.com/ https://www.headset.com/ Connect with Coach Trent Clark with these links : Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_76SFCClh6GbqLjzFgf8xw LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentmclark/ Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/leadershipity/?hl=en Fb Page: https://www.facebook.com/Leadershipity/?ref=pages_you_manage Support our Sponsor: Rebellious Beverages For 10% off your next purchase, use the code 99999 Rebellious infusions are available at drink rebellious.com Thanks for tuning into today's episode of NO ULTIMATE END GAME ll MIKE FAITH with Coach Trent Clark. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the show and leave us a review.
Hour 2 Wiggy proclaims that the time is now for Brad Stevens to prove his GM skills and that the only untouchable player at this time is Jayson Tatum. Donovan Mitchell would be a perfect fit for this team, but who do you give up to bring him in? Jon Rahm says he understands the appeal of the LIV Tour but for him it's the history of competition within the PGA that has his heart. Do you buy his comments or does money make the world go round?
A reading from St. Louis-Marie De Montfort's The True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Discover The Beast Inside You With The Wolf Unleashed
On this Wednesday episode of THE POLITICRAT daily podcast: Omar Moore on what he thinks authoritarian/dictator Vladimir Putin's ultimate end game is with his invasion of Ukraine: weakening global economies. February 23, 2022. FREE: SUBSCRIBE NOW TO THE BRAND NEW POLITICRAT DAILY PODCAST NEWSLETTER!! Extra content, audio, analysis, exclusive essays for subscribers only, plus special offers and discounts on merchandise at The Politicrat Daily Podcast online store. Something new and informative EVERY DAY!! Subscribe FREE at https://politicrat.substack.com Buy podcast merchandise (all designed by Omar Moore) and lots more at The Politicrat Daily Podcast Store: https://the-politicrat.myshopify.com The Politicrat YouTube page: bit.ly/3bfWk6V The Politicrat Facebook page: bit.ly/3bU1O7c The Politicrat blog: https://politicrat.politics.blog Join Omar on Fanbase NOW! Download the Fanbase social media app today. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to this to this podcast! Follow/tweet Omar at: https://twitter.com/thepopcornreel
DOCUMENTATION AND ADDITIONAL READING PART 1 (0:0 - 7:37): ────────────────── From Peter the Great to Putin the Bully — A Briefing on the Ukraine Crisis and the Russian Threat: History, Empire, Kiev, Moscow, Religion and Worldview PART 2 (7:38 - 14:47): ────────────────── The Bloodlands of Europe: Ukraine Between the Nazis and the Soviets, and Death from Every Direction PART 3 (14:48 - 25:30): ────────────────── The West Will Merely Protest? Putin's Strategy for Supremacy in Ukraine and the Lessons of History PART 4 (25:31 - 31:19): ────────────────── The Ultimate End of Vladimir Putin: Russian Glory Restored and the End of Western Influence in the World THE ATLANTIC (ANNE APPLEBAUM) The Reason Putin Would Risk War
Bram Manusama speaking at Melbourne Life Christian Church
More great books at LoyalBooks.com
More great books at LoyalBooks.com
Recorded in 1995. Moral philosophy is the study of how character, ethics and virtue relate to leading a happy life. In this class, Ralph McInerny, the legendary University of Notre Dame Professor and founder of the International Catholic University, provides a first look at the central questions of human life. How shall I live? What will make me happy? How can I live in harmony with other people and with my best self? https://youtu.be/CzD2P9FrkA4 catholicthinkers.org
Neville Goddard Playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT2H5t_L9bWruMA7Yl0OCSESOn behalf of “Mystical Minds” Danny Girard and Jamie Girard, we'd like to introduce you to one of the great minds of the 20th century “Neville Goddard.” Some of you may already know his fascinating teachings on mysticism and metaphysics. He was a pioneer in self help in the 20th century, and given the fact we are both huge fans, what better way then to create a playlist compiled of his best teachings. We will be posting a video when we have them available. We will continue with the daily poem every Thursday and Saturday at 7am and the article on Mondays at 6pm. Stay tuned! Thanks everyone! Please check out our playlists. Poetry & Prose https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT3DjINaG5Dw-aepPWL_-q9oArticles https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT0yMiMqoXoFZzhoJOj2YOlX95 Poetic Cues https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT0DZwLBEZhnXUow3JrYZcKs55 Poetic Cues https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT1fBAOCK6YUCdmQLkBX-mtk23 Poetic Cues https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT2vI9-zOiRBPGPk6lsoikg9Dr. Joseph Murphy https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT3eH4vkqlutbcTY79o8Q-EQNeville Goddard https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT2H5t_L9bWruMA7Yl0OCSESRelaxing Music & Nature https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT3E0N4GNDROM2p45f2gqIoPPositive Affirmations https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT2upGOA1pOX7mFsyd5wOLWXBeautiful Sleep Music https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-pK4wTqaXT2E8yqu0C66Pr7-u_n2tfdk If you would like to help support Mystical Minds, Please click this link: https://anchor.fm/jamie-girard/support“95 Poetic Cues” https://www.amazon.ca/95-Poetic-Cues-Poetry-Mystical-ebook/dp/B085TCF633/ref=sr_1_1?crid=R23HGI43Y6NL&keywords=95+poetic+cues&qid=1588095005&sprefix=95+poetic+%2Caps%2C198&sr=8-1 “55 Poetic Cues” https://www.amazon.ca/55-Poetic-Cues-Poems-Metaphysics-ebook/dp/B07PP98ZXN/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?crid=R23HGI43Y6NL&keywords=95+poetic+cues&qid=1588095140&sprefix=95+poetic+%2Caps%2C198&sr=8-1-fkmr0“23 Poetic Cues” https://www.amazon.ca/23-Poetic-Cues-Poems-Spirituality-ebook/dp/B07D3NDYBH/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?crid=R23HGI43Y6NL&keywords=95+poetic+cues&qid=1588095140&sprefix=95+poetic+%2Caps%2C198&sr=8-2-fkmr0 With Love, Thank You So Much. Please check out our podcast and other links. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/mystical-minds/id1522043729 https://open.spotify.com/show/068SjBFSDYj4qJrGPlWsST https://anchor.fm/s/29caf6c4/podcast/rss https://pca.st/lw5i8v3n (pocketcast) https://radiopublic.com/mystical-minds-8jDe4p https://overcast.fm/itunes1522043729/mystical-minds https://www.google.com/podcasts? https://www.breaker.audio/mystical-minds https://www.facebook.com/MysticalMindsbyJamieandDannyG/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuKehanQUU8P9M-rrYpjWIA https://www.instagram.com/mysticalmindsbyjamieanddannyg/?hl=en #nevillegoddard #spirituality #selfhelp #inspiration #create #reality #psyence #creaturehood #imagination #sacredfeminine #ancient #mysteries #innerchild #innerbeing #invisibleself #babygods #god #christ #jesus #chi #lifeforce #visualize #meditation #feelitreal #feeling #thoughts #emotions #beliefs #truepower #psyche #Horus #Osiris #theroyalson #magicalchild #oraltraditions #liberty #freedom --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jamie-girard/support
I’ll continue exploring the Transhumanism topic we opened yesterday as it relates to the equality act.https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/Please Consider supporting Republic Keeper Broadcasting so I can keep bringing you events as they happen. ---http://www.republickeeper.com - http://www.patreon.com/republickeeper - http://www.paypal.me/republickeeper - VENMO: @republickeeper--- Republic Keeper Broadcasting PO Box 491 Woodinville, WA 98072-0491BTC : 3FR7YpQ6sA22bk3pzoitX1b9w4vqJ857rPETH : 0xdEE82A46A45678A16ED1Cc5802de385726FcC6c8
Teachers, if you're searching for a fun end-of-year activity with a twist, listen in to our chat about our wildly popular Logic Puzzles for Kids | Mini-Mysteries! The Teach Starter elves have been busy creating some wonderful Christmas logic puzzles – there’s more to Christmas mysteries than just what’s wrapped up under the tree! Do you love For the Love of Teaching? Don’t forget to subscribe on your fave podcast app to get all the latest updates and newest episodes! For the Love of Teaching is a podcast by Teach Starter. We save teachers hours each week by providing quality, downloadable teaching resources for their classrooms. To make your classroom buzz, visit Teach Starter. We also have a student-facing podcast with curriculum-aligned audio resources for kids! Check out Love Learning wherever you get your podcasts! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ultimate End Versus Ultimate Responsibility: Why We Must Never Again Vote for Evil Howell Underground on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/HowellUnderground/videos #UltimateResponsibility #NeverBiden Why I will not vote for Joe Biden https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/vote-joe-biden-200904085631525.html Joe Biden Touts Endorsement From the Guy Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan https://earther.gizmodo.com/joe-biden-touts-endorsement-from-the-guy-who-poisoned-f-1844959226 Democrat Biden adds former rival Buttigieg, ex-Obama officials to transition team https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-transition-idUSKBN25W0VJ Contact me directly: https://www.facebook.com/allen.kit.howell https://twitter.com/HwlUnderground --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/allen-c-howell/support
What is your ultimate end goal in this life? Are you on the path to achieve it? Join me today and be inspired to finish strong. Hey Friends...If you have been enjoying this podcast would you please consider helping me reach more people like yourself. So that I can continually inspire and change more lives. All I need from you is a POSITIVE review over on apple podcasts. POSITIVE PLEASE
We can get side tracked by things and forget about our ultimate hope,
Jesus chastised the religious elite of His day for their confidence in predicting things like the weather, but not being able to discern the signs of the times. In fact, He called them hypocrites. Remember? "When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red'; and in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times" - Matthew 16:2-3. I wonder if He would say the same about His church today? After all, it appears we all seem to know everything about everything. Just ask us. It seems we resemble those that Isaiah was called to address. Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight - Isaiah 5:20-21. But there is one prophetic statement of Jesus regarding the times before us that is hard for many, including me, to understand. That is until today. Jesus said "because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold" (Matt. 24:12). Got that. He also promised that "a man's enemies will be those of his own household" (Matt. 10:36). How is that possible? How can our love for our spouse or children grow so cold we will treat them as enemies to the extent of hatred and betrayal? (Matt. 24:10). How can that be true? What sort of perverted human would turn on his own family for the sake of himself? What kind of depraved mind or personality disorder would produce sociopaths with a love this cold? In a word, it's called narcissism. And it is the ultimate end-time personality disorder. Narcissism In general, narcissism or narcissistic traits can be described as follows: They have an exaggerated sense of self-importance. They have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration. They expect and demand to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it. They exaggerate their achievements and talents. They are preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate. They believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people.' They monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior (which is just about everyone). They expect and demand special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations. They habitually take advantage of others to get what they want. They have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others. They are envious of others and believe others envy them. They behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious. They Insist on having the best of everything because they are entitled. And they are everywhere! They multiply like kudzu. Narcissism may very well be the ultimate personality disorder of the end-times. And it certainly fits the Laodicean church model. In fact, psychologists believe that in the last 15 years over 30% of our population now registers on the narcissism spectrum. And that number grows daily. So what are we to do? Great question. Keep listening to find out more. The following is a study on Narcissism and the End Times.
Today, Pastor Phil Schaefer brings a message titled "The Ultimate End Game," and you can find the full sermon notes in the resources below. We hope this message encourages you and helps you know Jesus in a more real way. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to catch our sermons every week, or listen to them on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Walter Schultz talks with Paul about what criteria God's original ultimate end had to meet.
Why does God bless people? Join Rev. Patrick Kuchio on 'The Ultimate End of God's Blessings'. #CITAMChurchOnline #ChurchEveryday
The lecture was given as part of the West Coast Intellectual Retreat held at St. Albert's Priory March 22-24, 2019. Presenters: Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. (Assistant Director of Campus Outreach for the Thomistic Institute) Prof. Steven Jensen - University of St. Thomas (Houston) Fr. John Corbett, O.P. - Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception Conference Titles: 1. Principles of the Moral Life 2. The One Thing Necessary: The Last End and Beatitude 3. Our Good and God: Our Place Within the Greater Good 4. In Us Without Us: The Infused Virtues 5. Beyond Human Means: The Gifts of the Holy Spirit Retreat Theme Description: In the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, all creation proceeds from God and returns to him. With the complication of sin, that return is complicated. In Jesus Christ and through the sacraments, God orchestrates the redemption of sinful man by gradually introducing him into the life of divine communion. And, in that movement, man is engaged not merely as a passive recipient, but also as an agent—as a protagonist. Given this understanding, questions of morality cannot simply be boiled down to do’s and don’ts. For St. Thomas, the moral life is first about God and then about the way we are called to return to Him. This is what we mean by “the good life.” For more info about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1
Introduction: The Information Age So turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. We are looking this morning at verses 6-16. We live in an age, relentlessly hungry for information. Some people even call it the information age. It was born by digital technology which has resulted in remarkable devices like the smartphone. It's amazing what these things can do. Search on Google, some words of archaic medieval poem, and it comes up in like three-tenths of a second. It's more than just freaky fast, it's just simply freaky. Google's supercomputers handle 40,000 search queries per second on average, 3.5 billion searches every day, and 1.5 trillion searches a year on average. So there's this relentless thirst for knowledge, for facts. And it extends to an instantaneous awareness of current events. An earthquake in Haiti, or popular uprising in Venezuela, the death of a celebrity, all of it coming to us in real time, as it's happening. This is the power of these smartphones. Data shows that by next year, there may be as many as 2.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. Yet for all of this amazing access to knowledge, there's an appalling lack of wisdom. The world continues to go on, in its foolishness, acting like there is no God, acting like there are no 10 Commandments, that there is no death, and no Judgment Day that follows. The gospel of Jesus Christ is being heard every single day by more people than ever before, in history, but it's also being rejected by more people than ever before in history. Now, the text that we're going to look at today explains why. Look at verse 14. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned." But we who are Christians, we have been rescued from that spiritual darkness. And we have been specifically rescued from our darkness by the Holy Spirit of God. And so this morning we as Christians are going to celebrate the sovereign work of the Spirit in our lives. That He was able to speak into the darkness of our hearts, and show us Christ. And He's still doing that, He's going to continue to do that, as long as we live. This is the ministry of the Spirit of God. We're going to continue to follow the argument of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 as he wrote to the Corinthian church concerning the wisdom of God in the cross, and we're going to see specifically the ministry of the Spirit and delivering that wisdom to us. I. The Deep Mystery of God is Infinitely Wise The deep mystery of God is infinitely wise. Paul is tracing out for the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1-2, the apparent foolishness of the Gospel. And he's done it for a very clear reason because the Corinthians, like all Greeks, loved human philosophy, they loved human wisdom, they were enamored with it. Greek philosophy was their glory, it's what made them shine in the world. And Paul is seeking to expose their pride, their arrogance, the utter foolishness of human wisdom. And so he's been revealing effectively the competing systems of wisdom here. God's wisdom versus man's wisdom. They're in direct competition. And he's been revealing how God's wisdom appears to be foolish to the world, to the natural mind. And he does it in three steps. First, in the middle part of 1 Corinthians 1, he begins by talking about the cross of Christ. And the cross of Christ seems foolish. How could a dead Jewish man on a Roman cross be the Savior of the world? That just seems foolish. And then the second step was the Corinthian church itself. How could such an assembly of people that no one really would want, not many wise, not many influential, not many of noble birth, the foolish people really of the world, that no one wants. They are Christ's church. And that seems foolish. And then the third step we looked at last week is how would God choose as a messenger someone like Paul, who was not a very polished speaker and had rejected the strategy of polished rhetoric and speaking. He put that aside, and was even that day, not at his best. He said he was with them in weakness and fear and much trembling. It seems foolish. Why would God use such a messenger? But there is, in fact, an amazing wisdom in all of this. So as Joel began his reading in verse six it starts with the word 'yet.' So, I've been tracing out why we're turning now, we're turning a corner concerning all of this. There actually is an amazing wisdom in all of this. He's been calling Christ crucified the foolishness of God and the weakness of God, but actually it is infinite wisdom, it is infinite strength. And in this competition between God's wisdom and man's wisdom, God is going to have the final word. God is in the business of leveling human pride. Isaiah 2 makes this plain that God is set against human arrogance, human pride, against all the lofty towers and the stately trading vessels, and all the high mountains of human arrogance, those are idolatrous self-worshipping systems of human arrogance. Isaiah 2 says that God is going to level all of that. "The Lord alone will be exalted in that day." And He uses the gospel and the church and messengers of the Gospel to level human pride. The Gospel is Actually an Infinitely Wise Message So actually, Paul says here, we do preach a message of wisdom. Look at verses 6 and 7, "We do however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined, decreed for our glory before time began." So Paul speaks of we, we being messengers like me. Faithful evangelists, faithful missionaries, faithful pastors who are preaching this message. We who are speaking this message, we actually are speaking a message of wisdom. In fact, you're going to see on Judgment Day just how wise this message really was. In my home state of Massachusetts up in Newburyport there is the burial site of one of the greatest evangelists of all time, George Whitefield. And Whitfield wanted this put on his tomb as a memorial, concerning his life, "Here lies George Whitefield. What sort of man he was, Judgment Day will reveal." Now George Whitefield was one of the most famous men on earth at that point. A lot of people spoke for him or against him. He said, "You want to know who I really am, wait till Judgment Day. Then you'll see." That's true of all of us, what kind of person we really were will be revealed on Judgment Day. Well, I want to take that idea and apply it to the Gospel. Here is the Gospel of Christ, how wise it really is will be revealed on Judgment Day. But it would be very good for all of us to see its wisdom now while there's time. Before Judgment Day comes when it's too late to believe this message, it is good for us now, by faith to see how wise the message of Christ and Him crucified, really is. And so he says, "To the mature, we speak a message of wisdom." Or to the perfect, that's one translation but I think it just means to those who have received this gospel message, to those who love it, who are swimming in it, and delight in it, we can see it, can't we? We can see this is a message of wisdom. So, among the mature we are speaking a message of wisdom. And this deep mystery of God is infinitely wise. It is wise because it lines up with the central reality there is in the universe. It's foolish to live in a fantasy, in a fantasy world, in a world that isn't. We believe that God the Creator and the King and the Judge has a throne in Heaven, and that throne is the center of the entire universe. And so it is infinitely foolish to deny that Creator, King and Judge, that God. But this gospel message lines us up with that central reality. So it is very wise. The deep mystery of God and Christ is infinitely wise also because there are just so many dimensions to it, it's a very deep, wise, multi-faceted thing, what God is doing with sinners in the world through Christ. And so, it's very wise actually. And it's so wise and so overwhelming that the Apostle Paul as he was unfolding the deepest clearest exposition of the gospel, which is the book of Romans, as he's going step by step by step, and especially in that section in Romans 9-11, where he's dealing with the perplexing problem of the Jews and why the overwhelming majority of the Jews are rejecting Christ, and he gives us three chapters of answer to that, including the future when all Israel will be saved and he goes through all of that. And then it's almost like he looks at what he's written and he can't fathom everything that the Holy Spirit has told him to write in the book of Romans. And so he just gives this incredible doxology. "Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable His judgments. And His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? And who has been His counselor?" And so he's just in awe at the words he wrote that he doesn't understand, but he wrote them as an instrument of the Holy Spirit. And so, it is wise, this gospel is wise, because it is so multi-faceted and complex. Thirdly, this deep mystery of God is infinitely wise, because it is so powerful in humbling humanity, and we need humbling. We have been allied with Satan in his arrogant rebellion against God, who sought to ascend and topple God from His heavenly throne. We joined him in the Garden of Eden, and we have been arrogant and lofty and so proud and boastful, this gospel is wise because it humbles us. And what it's going to do is it's going to rescue people from every tribe, language, people or nation and humble us and quiet us around the throne of God, where we celebrate His grace in saving us. That's what it's going to do. So it's a very wise message. It is also infinitely wise, because it displays all of the perfections, the qualities, the attributes of God, puts them all on display. God's power, His justice, His wisdom, His mercy, His kindness, His patience, His love, all of these things are on display in the cross and in the gospel. And so it's infinitely wise, finally, because it overcomes all of Satan's complex powerful opposition to it. Satan is very intelligent, far more intelligent than any of us, and he set up all of these faulty religions and these idolatrous systems, and they're very persuasive and they're very powerful. God's wisdom is wise because it knows how to topple all of those systems and level them and rescue us out of them all, redeemed in Heaven. So see how wise is this gospel, how infinitely wise. The Ultimate End of this Wisdom: God’s Glory and Ours Now, the ultimate end of all this, look at verse 7, is God's glory in ours, in our glory. That's the end, that's where we're heading. God will be glorified by us being glorified. Look at verse 7, it says, "We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden, and that God destined or predestined or decreed for our glory, before time began." Now that's amazing. Before time began, God worked out this message, this gospel message, so that we would end up glorious in His presence. Now God does everything for His own glory, it says in Revelation 5:13. And this is a little glimpse of heavenly worship. They're all around the throne, and they are celebrating and this is what they say, "To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb," that's Jesus, "be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever." That's what we're going to be doing in heaven, just giving God the honor and the glory. So God does everything for that, for His own glory. But God will be most glorified in us when we are finally glorified in Him. When we are in our resurrection bodies, when we are shining like the sun in the kingdom of our Father, God will get maximum glory from any of His creatures at that point, that's the maximum glory there will ever be. And so God actually destined this message that we would be glorious in His presence, and it'll be His glory in us. It's not an independent glory like we're in competition, we'll be shining with His glory. In Revelation 21:10-11, an angel showed John the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Now listen to this Revelation 21:11, "It shone with the glory of God and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel like a Jasper, clear as crystal." That's the people of God, and we're going to be shinning with the glory of God through Christ. So God destined this message before time began, that we would end up glorious in Him. How powerful is that? II. The Deep Wisdom of God is Hidden from the People of this Age Now, the deep wisdom, this deep wisdom of God that we've been talking about is hidden from the people of this age. It is a secret wisdom. Look again at verse 7, "No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." This is a mysterious thing. This is a hidden wisdom. And Paul calls the wisdom of God, the secret thing hidden in the mind of God, he calls them the deep things of God. This is something that the world with all of its philosophical brilliance, or its scientific acumen, with all of the precision of human technology and science, we could never have figured it out, never have plumbed the depths of it. The focus of this wisdom is Christ who was hidden in the mind of God, before He revealed Him. Isaiah 49 speaks of Christ being concealed like a secret arrow in a quiver, and at the right time, He unveiled Him. And little by little He unveiled Him in prophecy, but then at the right time, unveiled Him. This wisdom has been hidden in the mind of God, and God destined for our glory before time began. So that means before God said, "Let there be light," He worked all of this out. Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. So that means He was effectively, it was worked out that He would die for our sins before God said, "Let there be light." All of this was worked out in the mind of God, before time began. And Ephesians 1 tells us that God chose His elect people from every tribe, language, people, and nation, before the world began. It says in Ephesians 1:4 that God "chose us in Christ," "before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight." So this is something God had worked out before the creation of the world. Now, God's wisdom is not the wisdom of this age. Verse 6, "Not the wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing." Here he makes it plain that the secret wisdom of God is not the wisdom that Satan is selling in the present age. The rulers of this age rejected it in every generation. So back in the day, the Greek heroes like Alexander the Great, who thought might makes right and won an empire with the edge of his sword, rejected the wisdom of God. And philosophical heroes like Plato and Aristotle and Socrates, they didn't discern the wisdom of God, they didn't discern Christ. And so also the rulers of our age are going to be universally rejecting the gospel of Christ. Don't be shocked by that, that the movers and shakers of the 21st century in America and around the world, the political leaders, the Fortune 500 CEO’s, the best and the brightest, the most brilliant individuals, the talking heads that everybody goes to for all this insight, for them, almost universally, this is foolishness. Just like it was in Paul's age. But Paul says the rulers of this age are coming to nothing. They're going to be exposed on Judgment Day as having been wrong, having been foolish. The crucifixion of Christ as essential moment in human history proves their blindness. Look at verse 8-9, "None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory." The rulers of this age proved that they did not understand what God was doing by crucifying Jesus. Some people think the rulers of this age refers to Satan and his demons, and that kind of terminology is used in Ephesians 6, but here I really think it's humans. Because in context he says, "As it is written, 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard…'" He's talking about human beings, human rulers. And so, Annas and Caiaphas and the Jewish Sanhedrin, by rejecting Jesus, by the high priest tearing his robes and saying, "He's spoken blasphemy," they didn't recognize that Jesus was what the text says, "the Lord of glory." They didn't see Jesus as the Lord of glory. And why? Because Isaiah 53:3 says, "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him." Nothing in His appearance, He just looked like an ordinary man, and they considered it blasphemy that He would be calling Himself the Son of God. And so, they didn't see it. If they had seen and known who He was, they would never have crucified Him. Pontius Pilate, I think he was puzzled by Jesus, he was troubled by Jesus. I think he wondered who Jesus was. His wife had a dream about Him, he was afraid of Jesus in some sense, but he didn't recognize Him as the Lord of Glory. If he had, he would never have given the order to his soldiers to crucify Him. They would not have crucified Him if they had known who He was, the Lord of glory. Supporting verse in verse 9, "However, as it is written, No eye has seen no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him." Now people who use this verse to talk about our own future. Like, I'm writing a book now on heaven, and one person said to me, "Well, I don't think we can know anything about heaven 'cause it says, 'No eye has seen no ear has heard, neither has it entered the heart of man what God has prepared for us in heaven.'" Just read the next verse. God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. So, so much for that. But I don't even think it's talking about Heaven, this is talking about Christ crucified and resurrected. It's talking about the gospel and no eye has seen, and no ear has heard and neither has it entered into the heart of man. The natural mind would never have thought of this. We would not have come up with this gospel. No human author, no William Shakespeare, no Charles Dickens, no Mark Twain, would have ever been able to concoct this, they never would have come up with this story. Some time ago I came across a bit of prose, written to just give us a sense of the greatness and the mystery of the life of Christ. Let me read it to you. It Said this: "More than nineteen hundred years ago there was a Man born contrary to the laws of life. This Man lived in poverty and was reared in obscurity. He did not travel extensively. Only once did He cross the boundary of the country in which He lived; that was during His exile in childhood. He possessed neither wealth nor influence. His relatives were inconspicuous, and had neither training nor formal education. In infancy He startled a king; in childhood He puzzled doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature, walked upon the billows as if pavements, and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His service. He never wrote a book, and yet all the libraries of the country could not hold the books that have been written about Him. He never wrote a song, and yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all the song writers combined. He never founded a college, but all the schools put together cannot boast of having as many students. He never marshaled an army, nor drafted a soldier, nor fired a gun; and yet no leader ever had more volunteers who have, under His orders, made more rebels stack arms and surrender without a shot fired. He never practiced psychiatry, and yet He healed more broken hearts than all the doctors far and near. Once each week the wheels of commerce cease their turning and multitudes wend their way to worshipping assemblies to pay homage and respect to Him. The names of the past proud statesmen of Greece and Rome have come and gone. The names of the past scientists, philosophers, and theologians have come and gone; but the name of this Man abounds more and more. Though time has spread nineteen hundred years between the people of this generation and the scene of His crucifixion, yet He still lives. Herod could not destroy Him, and the grave could not hold Him. He stands forth upon the highest pinnacle of heavenly glory, proclaimed of God, acknowledged by angels, adored by saints, and feared by devils, as the living, personal Christ, our Lord and Savior." —The Incomparable Christ Now, no human author would come up with that, it's impossible. And the rulers of this age cannot understand this Wisdom. Verse 14, "The natural man," that's the literalistic translation. One translation says, "The man without the Spirit," but it's just the normal man, the non-supernatural man, "does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." Every unbeliever around the world is inherently hostile to both the Law and the Gospel. When he hears the law of God, he fights against it. Romans 8:7 says, "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot." III. The Spirit Searches Out and Reveals to Us the Deep Wisdom of God The mind of the flesh, that's the natural mind, hates the law of God. Ten commandments, two great commandments, hates, fights against it. But also in this text, we would say the unregenerate mind does not accept the good news of the Gospel either. The blind eye cannot receive sight. No unbeliever can ever be talked into or persuaded to, or threatened or bribed or coerced into faith in Christ, just like none of those things would make a blind eye see. It's beyond us to do that. The Spirit searches out and reveals to us the deep wisdom of God. However, though no eye has seen, though no ear has heard, though it has not entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him, the Spirit has revealed these things to us. When I was going back over the sermon a couple of days ago, it became pretty emotional for me at this point because I have increasingly realized what I owe to the third person of the Trinity for my salvation. I would still be an unbeliever. I was converted at age 19 as a junior at MIT. I've gone on into a career in science and would never believed if it weren't for the Spirit. Look at verse 10, "But God has revealed it to us by the Spirit," unveiled it to us by the Spirit. Look at the powerful work of the Spirit of God in Verse 10-11, "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." Now, the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. We believe in one God who has eternally existed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, co-equal with God the Father, and God the Son, and His unique role in all of this, is to reveal Christ to unbelieving minds. To do it powerfully and effectively. And first, the text says, He searches all things, even the deep things of God. This reminds me of the first two verses of the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." So you get the sense of the depths and the darkness, and the Spirit is active and ready to work. The images of undulating chaos and turbulence and darkness and the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, He's ready to bring light and order out of the darkness and out of the chaos. Do not think the Holy Spirit of God was not involved in creation, He was. Just as Jesus was involved in creation, triune God created all things. And so it is with human conversion. 2 Corinthians 4:6 says, "God who said Let light shine out of darkness, made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." This text is saying He does that by the Spirit. By the Spirit, God says Let the light of Christ shine in your heart. That's what the Spirit has done for me and for all of you who are Christians. And what's amazing here, is the Spirit is said to understand the mind of God. And by extension, I'm gonna say He understands the human mind as well, He searches the mind of God, He searches out the deep things of God. Remember that doxology, Oh, the depth of the riches, the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Who has known the mind of the Lord?" This text actually answers. The Spirit has, the Spirit knows the deep things of God, He plumbs the infinite depths of the mind of God. He knows exactly what God the Father wants out of the human race. He knows what God the Father intended in sending His only begotten son Jesus into the world. He's not misunderstood theology, He's actually really good at theology. The Spirit understands predestination, election, He understands justification by faith alone, He understands sanctification, He understands glorification, He understands every heading of theology very, very well. He has searched out the mind of God and knows exactly what God thinks about all of these things. And though it doesn't say overtly here in the text, it's true, He understands your mind too. He's able to plumb the twisted dark depths of the human sinful mind. Says in Jeremiah 17:9-10, "The heart," the human heart, "is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind." He does that by the Spirit. So what that means is the Spirit of God both searches God's mind and searches our minds and is able to convert us and bring us together. He knows how to heal us, He knows how to give us spiritual sight when we are blind. I don't know if this is a good analogy, but I look on Him this morning, at least as a master safe cracker. He's able to pick the locks of your deceitful heart, and suddenly the door swings open. How did that happen? You put up all these defenses against Jesus. How many defenses did Saul of Tarsus put against this gospel? Remember how He said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads." He's been pressed, he's been pushed to faith in Christ, but he's resisting, resisting, resisting. But the Spirit of God is able to cause the locked gates of the soul to swing open to Jesus. He has that kind of power, He did it in my heart. All of you who are genuinely converted, He did it in your hearts too. He has that kind of power and that is a miracle, it's called the miracle of the new birth, of being born again. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again." But Nicodemus didn't understand that, and so Jesus used this, in other words He said, "Flesh gives birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit. The wind blows where it wishes, you hear its sound but you can't tell where it comes from, where it's going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." So the Spirit works on us to be born again to faith in Christ, and so every Christian in the world owes his or her salvation as much to the Spirit as he does to Christ. Jesus provided the atoning blood, the Spirit painted it on the doorpost and lintels of your soul. Just like the Israelites did on the night of Passover, He has painted the blood of Christ on you, and by that you are saved. Without that, it never happens. Jesus died 2000 years ago, and many people have heard about it and know about it and never believed it and went to hell. And so there needs to be that separate act of the application of the blood of Christ to our souls individually, and the Spirit does that. And the Spirit, verse 12-13, teaches us the words of the Gospel, the words of theology. Look what it says, "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truth in spiritual words." So the spirit of the world, Satan, is teaching worldlings, the people of the world, the language of the world. The language of wealth, the language of power, the language of pleasure, the language of self, that's what the spirit of this age is teaching the people of this age. But the Spirit from God teaches us the language of spiritual riches that God is giving us. He puts these riches into words that people like Paul and pastors like me speak, that's all we do. Just words, words that capture how rich Christians are in the Gospel. And the Holy Spirit is able to marry spiritual truths with spiritual words. It's a difficult phrase in the Greek, but the sense is, He's putting together, knitting together, the spiritual truths that God is giving in words where you get to understand what they are. Because they're all invisible. And so the Spirit teaches us the words of theology, the words of preaching, the words of scripture, so that we can understand how rich we are in Jesus IV. The Spirit of God Transforms Our Judgments Now, the Spirit of God also transforms our status and our judgment. Look at Verse 15-16, "The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment, for who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ." Martin Luther, who was put under a death sentence by the Catholic authorities, the Holy Roman Emperor and by the Pope used this text to say I'm above all of your judgments. You can't do anything to me. I am not judged by any of you. I've been already judged at the cross, and now I am innocent through faith in Christ. And so we're not under any worldly judgment, we've been already judged and now declared to be 'not guilty' through faith in Christ. But we get to evaluate the world, we get to judge the world, we get to say that the pleasures and the powers and the principalities of this world are going to nothingness, and we'll still be standing when they're all swept away by the judgment of God. And then Paul says, amazingly, the last verse of this chapter, "We have the mind of Christ." Isn't that amazing? If you're a Christian you have the mind of Christ. Not you ought to have it, you do. Through the indwelling Spirit, you are already fully capable of thinking like Jesus Christ, about everything. And yet Philippians 2, Paul says to the Philippian Christians there, "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ," and then talks about humility. So it's like, how do I put that together? Ah, contradiction in the Bible. No. He says here, You have the mind of Christ. In Philippians 2, he says, now use it, think like Jesus. And so in everything at every moment of our lives, we're able to think and then live like Jesus, by the power of the Spirit. V. Applications Alright, applications. First to the unconverted, the things of the Gospel, maybe when you walked in here even this morning, might have seemed foolish to you. But maybe this morning, something's happening inside your mind, inside your heart. Happened to me. October of 1982 it happened to me, and all of a sudden things change. Maybe that's happening for you. You've heard the Gospel this morning of God sending His Son who died on the cross for sinners like you and me, that we're justified, we're made righteous by faith, not by works, that's the gospel. And it may be that this is happening to you right now, you're seeing yourself more and more as a person who needs a Savior, that you have violated God's laws, that you need a Savior, and that Jesus is the Savior. If this is happening to you, this is the work of the Holy Spirit. And not only that, He begins to show you how glorious Jesus is, and you feel an attraction, a magnetic attraction, to Jesus and you want to follow Him, this is the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Let me just give you a warning, if today you hear His voice, don't harden your heart, don't put it off, call on the name of the Lord. You don't have to go anywhere, even now you can cry out inside your mind, inside your heart, Jesus save me, and He will. Now for you who are Christians, stand in awe of the wisdom of God in all of this. You have been instructed how amazingly wise this gospel is, just stand in awe of that. This is a wise message. And isn't it amazing that He crafted it for your glory? Think about that. This message will glorify you. It is the power of God for your full salvation, it will get you to glory, just stand in awe of that. And secondly, give the Holy Spirit full credit for your salvation. Thank God for sending the Spirit for you. Understand you would still be in darkness and blind and not born again if it weren't for the Spirit of God. Thirdly, rejoice that the Spirit's not done working on you, He's still hovering over the deep of your heart. He's still got more things to teach you, He's teaching you more and more the significance of the final statement. You have the mind of Christ. Now use it, use it here, use it there, use it in thinking about money, use it in thinking about marriage, use it in thinking about sex, use it in thinking about your time, use it in thinking about everything. You have the mind of Christ, now use it. And feed on this Scripture, feed on the word to know what that means. The mind of Christ totally harmonizes with the words of Scripture and the Spirit can minister that to you. Fifth, understand the state of the lost. We are surrounded by people who are without hope, and without God in the world, and they will never understand this message, and they're lost and they're on their way to hell. If they're not converted, they will be condemned for their sins. This is the only hope for them. And as you begin to talk to them, you're going to begin to realize just how true verse 14 really is. It's going to seem foolishness to them, they're going to push back on it, etcetera. Don't give up, the Holy Spirit has power to transform sinners. He has the power to pick the locks of their soul, and it will swing open, or just maybe blow open all the defenses and then the light floods in. How powerful is that? And so, let us this week, just say, Lord lead me to someone who's ready to hear this message and just open the gates of their soul. I would love to see that happen. I would love to be sharing the gospel with someone who says, "That sounds good. What do I do?" So it's like, Lord lead me to someone who's ready to come to Christ and I will rejoice. Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for the time that we've had in Your Word, we thank You for the power of the word, we thank You for the power of the Spirit in our lives. Thank you that You hovered over the deep of the mind of God, and You are able to draw the truths from the mind of God and deliver them to us. And thank You that You have hovered over the depths of our own twisted wickedness, the deceitfulness of our minds and You've been able to bring the truth through all of those obstacles, and barriers and hatred and dislikes, in order that we might be saved. God, make us truly thankful and make us bold as never before. Bold in our sharing of the Gospel. It's in Your name that we pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.
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In the fifty-eighth episode of Ultimate Losers, the Fantastic Four meet an alien named Nihil, who is totally not an evil puritanical tyrant lording over a dying universe. He's just a a screeching bugman with many mandibles and a cyborg Pterodactyl spaceship. Issues: Ultimate Fantastic Four 16-18 (The N-Zone Pt 2) In this episode the losers discuss: Pervy Falkor, Johnny Storm's lack of skincare and how to set up your very own butthat franchise. Follow along on with the companion image gallery here: www.ultimateloserspodcast.wordpress.com Intro music is "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" from "Live (Only Not)" by Lemon Demon. You can purchase the album here: lemondemon.bandcamp.com/album/live-only-not
15 Jahre existierte das Ultimate Universe (Erde 1610) neben dem "Standard-Universum" (Erde 616). In Ultimate End im Rahmen des Megaevents Secret Wars endet diese Ära... zumindest für den Moment. Wie hat mir das Comic gefallen? Hört es hier im neuesten Nerd Herd Podcast.
15 Jahre existierte das Ultimate Universe (Erde 1610) neben dem "Standard-Universum" (Erde 616). In Ultimate End im Rahmen des Megaevents Secret Wars endet diese Ära... zumindest für den Moment. Wie hat mir das Comic gefallen? Hört es hier im neuesten Nerd Herd Podcast.
**We Need More Matlock** Awful puns and bad impressions of Ringo Starr abound this week as we kick off with news about Jeff Loeb’s long-awaited Captain America: White series, the casting of Baron Mordo in the Doctor Strange movie, Archie’s upcoming reboot, One Piece breaking more world records and all sorts of other stuff. Our featured comics this week are Ultimate End, Battleworld: Ghost Racers, Marvel Zombies, Black Science, and Mark Millar’s Superior. If you've enjoyed this podcast, then please follow us on Twitter @4panelpodcast or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to https://www.patreon.com/thegeekshow and give whatever you can. Alternatively, we have a shop up and running so head over http://thegeekshow.co.uk/thegeekshop and partake in some of our lovely wares. Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't! #Battleworld #GhostRacers #BlackScience #Comics #GhostRacers #GhostRider #GraphicNovels #ImageComics #Manga #MarkMillar #Marvel #MarvelZombies #News #Podcasts #Reviews #SecretWars #Superior #TheGeekShow #TitanBooks #TitanComics #UltimateEnd
Introduction – Jake and I talk Christmas plans and take part in our live gift-opening tradition! Don't miss it! [26:40] News – We speculate on Alex Alonso's comments about the Punisher and WeirdWorld, and then we get weirded out about Frank Miller's comments about Elektra being in Daredevil season 2 [31:49] Mail Call – We get some Christmas well-wishes from Blackstone, and answer some questions about the Punisher's view on gun control, [51:01] Bullet Points – Ultimate End #5 wraps up and Jacob and I are okay with that. [1:07:50] Side Ops – Today we get hyped for a new segment. I'm going to keep this one under wraps to keep it a surprise! But visit this link later, ok? [1:36:30] Dane And Jake Go to the Movies – Jake and I get salty about Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Hey!! Welcome to Episode 158 of The Podcast That Goes SNIKT!! It's a B-b-b-bonus Secret Wars update for the holidays. We take a short and sweet look at the last of our Secret Wars tie-ins: Ultimate End #5. And also look at All-New X-Men #2...because it's out, so why not? This podcast is about all things Wolverine, specifically focusing on his appearances in Marvel Comics. I'll be offering comic reviews and commentary. Warning, this podcast features spoilers, so if that worries you and you haven't read the preceding issues, you may want to check back later... Enjoy, Share, and please come back!! Next up...more SNIKT! e-mail sniktcast@yahoo.com www.facebook.com/sniktpodcastfanpage https://twitter.com/sniktcast
(Recorded December 20, 2015) Brian, Kyle, and Nour see the year out with Ultimate End #5. Last one out, get the lights. 0:00 – Intros: The highly anticipated event is finally here! No, not that JJ Abrams movie. Let's talk about… 2:38 – Ultimate End #5: Not entirely bad, but way too late. What worked? What […] The post Episode 23: The Phantom Menace (Ultimate End #5; Listener Feedback) appeared first on Amazing Spider-Talk.
Ultimate Spin: The Spider-Man podcast about Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen Stacy
(Recorded December 20, 2015) Brian, Kyle, and Nour see the year out with Ultimate End #5. Last one out, get the lights. 0:00 – Intros: The highly anticipated event is finally here! No, not that JJ Abrams movie. Let’s talk about… 2:38 – Ultimate End #5: Not entirely bad, but way too late. What worked? What […]
Get the latest news plus comic reviews and your questions answered!
The Ultimate End of the Ben Sorer Umoreh (Ki Seitzei 5775)
(Recorded August 15, 2015) In this episode, we're joined by Superior Spider-Talk‘s Dan Gvozden as we take one step closer toward the end of Ultimate End and look back at a more successful miniseries, 2012's Spider-Men. 0:00 – Intros 1:15 – The lost episode? Why Bendis is sticking around; Robbi Rodriguez interview recap and what happened next 10:21– Ultimate […] The post Episode 19: Group Therapy (Ultimate End #4; Spider-Men) appeared first on Amazing Spider-Talk.
Ultimate Spin: The Spider-Man podcast about Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen Stacy
(Recorded August 15, 2015) In this episode, we’re joined by Superior Spider-Talk‘s Dan Gvozden as we take one step closer toward the end of Ultimate End and look back at a more successful miniseries, 2012’s Spider-Men. 0:00 – Intros 1:15 – The lost episode? Why Bendis is sticking around; Robbi Rodriguez interview recap and what happened next 10:21– Ultimate […]
Nuff Said: The Marvel, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, and Comics Fan Podcast
Phil and Charlie run down the Marvel comics for the week of 8-5-15. Learn more, subscribe, or contact us at www.southgatemediagroup.com. Follow us on Twitter @nuffsaidpodcast and on Instagram as nuffsaidpodcast. We also have a Tumblr blog at southgatemediagroup.tumblr.com. You can write to us at southgatemediagroup@gmail.com and let us know what you think. Be sure to rate us and review the episode. It really helps other people find us. Thanks! Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #10—Phil-Thumbs Up Ms. Marvel #17—Charlie-Thumbs Up Age of Apocalypse #2—Phil-Thumbs Up Giant Size Little Marvel AVX #3—Charlie-Thumbs Up Siege #2—Phil-Thumbs Up Spider-Island #2—Charlie-Thumbs Up Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #3—Phil—Thumbs Up (Phil’s pick of the week) Ultimate End #4—Charlie-Thumbs Up (Charlie pick of the week) Civil War #2—Phil-Thumbs Up Future Imperfect #4—Charlie-Thumbs Up, Phil-Thumbs Up
In #150, we cover Fantastic 4 (Fant4stic), The Flash Season 2, Gotham Season 2, Sex Criminals #11, Ultimate End #4, Detective Comics #43 and more! What made you broke this week? Tell us on Twitter: @ReasonsImBroke
Chew, We Stand on Guard, The Spire, Secret Wars, A-Force, Red Skull, Injustice, Planet Hulk, Tales of Honor, Ultimate End, Detective Comics, Batman Beyond and more.
Ultimate Spin: The Spider-Man podcast about Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen Stacy
(Recorded July 4, 2015) In this episode, we take a look at the teasers for the All-New All-Different Spider gang and brave the mess that is Ultimate End. 0:00 – Intro 1:15 – Hellos; Hints about the Spider gang in the All-New All-Different Marvel previews. 13:47– Ultimate End #3: We’re trying. Really. Please send help. 26:15 – Listener feedback: […]
Power Pack, Weirdworld, Mad Max Furiosa, Black Canary, Old Man Logan, Ultimate End, Thors
HOSTS: Dan and Scott NEWS/TALK: Scott went to Special Edition: NYC COMICS: Star Wars #6, Batman #41, Starfire #1, Insufferable #1 & #2, Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #1, Ultimate End #1, Silver Surfer #12, All-New Hawkeye #3 WHERE TO FIND US: Comic Book Pitt is part of the SORGATRON MEDIA NETWORKEMAIL: comicbookpitt@gmail.comCALL: 412-450-0227FACEBOOK: facebook.com/comicbookpittTWITTER: @comicbookpittINSTAGRAM: @comicbookpitt
Ultimate Spin: The Spider-Man podcast about Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen Stacy
(Recorded June 13, 2015) This month, we welcome guest co-host Jack Chambers of the Inter-Comics podcast for a fun extended episode! Lots to catch up on this month with alt-Spidey news, plus we get our socks rocked by Spider-Gwen #5 and check in on Battleworld with Secret Wars #3, Ultimate End #2, and Spider-Verse #2. […]
Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Longbox Edition is a podcast dedicated to covering the weekly and classic Marvel comic book issues and news. If you want to hear more the ABC television show Marvel’s Agents of Shield, Marvel's Agent Carter, Marvel’s Daredevil on Netflix and the general Marvel Comic Universe as well as these same segments please check out the main Legends Of Shield podcast found at LegendsOfShield.com This edition of Legends OF S.H.I.E.L.D. Longbox edition covers Marvel comics for the week starting June 10th, 2015. THIS TIME ON LEGENDS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. – LONGBOX EDITION: Neil’s Mighty Marvel Moment - Silk issue #5 - Spider-Gwen #5 - Silver Surfer #12 - Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #9 - Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps #1. - Spider-Verse #2 - 1602: Witch-Hunter Angela #1 - Inhumans: Attilan Rising #2 - Ghost-Racers #1 - Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos #1 - Secret Wars Journal #2 - Marvel Zombies #1 - Ultimate End #2 - Inferno #2 - Secret Wars 2099 #2 - Weirdworld #1 - Longbox Pick Of The Week: 5-issue Dr. Strange mini-series The Oath from 2006 Adam, Lauren, Neil and Stargate Pioneer love to hear back from you about your take on Marvel comics or this podcast. Feel free to drop us a voicemail at 1-844-THE-BUS1 or 844-843-2871. You can tweet us @LegendsOfShield on twitter, go to our Facebook page: Facebook.com/legendsofshield, swing by our website www.legendsofshield.com, lookup our Tumblr page at legendsofshield.tumblr.com, checkout our Legends Of Shield YouTube channel, or send us a voicemail at 844-THE-BUS1 or 844-843-2871. Join Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. next time as we cover the next week in Marvel Comics. And don’t forget, you can join Haley, Lauren and Stargatepioneer live on Wednesday nights as they stream their podcast recording live about the latest in the General Marvel Comic Universe. Join the chat at GonnaGeek.com/live. Also check out their podcast episodes at legendsofshield.com or wherever podcasts are downloaded. This podcast was recorded on Saturday October 10th, 2015. Standby for your S.H.I.E.L.D. Comic Book debriefing ---
Gisele Lagace and Menage a 3, Captain Britain, Jaime Hernandez, Terry Moore, Richard Corben, Gary Panter, Matt Wagner, Steve Rude, Mark Bright, Mike Ploog, Darwyn Cooke, Jerome Opena, Rob Liefeld, Andy Parks, Jason Pearson, Starman, Secret Wars-O-Rama: Master of Kung Fu #1 by Haden Blackman, Dalibor Talajic, Goran Sudzuka, and Miroslav Mrva, Infinity Gauntlet #1 by Gerry Duggan and Dustin Weaver, Where Monsters Dwell #1 by Garth Ennis, Russ Braun, and Dono Sanchez Almara, Planet Hulk #1 by Sam Humphries, Marc Laming, and Jordan Boyd, Inhumans: Attilan Rising #1 by Charles Soule, John Timms, Roberto Poggi, and Frank D'Armata, Ultimate End #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Scott Hanna, and Justin Ponsor, M.O.D.O.K: Assassin #1 by Christopher Yost, Amilcar Pinna, Terry Pallot, and Rachelle Rosenberg, Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars #1 by Cullen Bunn, Matteo Lolli, and Ruth Redmond, Old Man Logan #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Andrea Sorrentino, and Marcelo Maiolo, and much more, Avengers: Ultron Forever and Alan Davis, Omega Men #1 by Tom King, Barnaby Bagenda, and Romulo Fajardo Jr., Iron Fist: The Living Weapon by Kaare Andrews, NYCC Special Edition, Heroes Con, Andrew MacLean's ApocalyptiGirl: An Area for the End Times from Dark Horse, and a whole mess more!
Hey there! Welcome to episode 10 of Back-Up Stories. This week Justin and Rob seek to find out what the All-New, All-Different Marvel looks like. They discuss the rumors that have begun to circulate about upcoming books. Battleworld books have started hitting the shelves and the guys choose some standout issues to talk about. Those include A-Force, Planet Hulk, Ultimate End. They also get into Some more books from Image Comics and DC Comics. Spoilers are involved so catch up and join in the discussion!
It's been a long time since we answered listener questions so we spend the show answering as many questions as humanly possible (in a reasonable amount of time). Amidst all of that, we talk about comics and even a little bit about The Flash finale from last week (HOLY OMG). Lightning Round Shaft #6, Sensation Comics #10, Avengers #239 (1984), Bandette Vo. 2, Mouse Guard Vol. 1 Fall 1152, Goners Vol. 1 We All Fall Down, Dirk Gently #1, Battleworld, Ultimate End, Bloodshot Reborn, Mad Max: Nux and Immorten Joe, Daredevil #15.1, Manifest Destiny Vol. 2. Book of the Week Thor #134--#136 (with a side-bar into What If...? #10), Hellbreak #1, Twenty-Seven Vol. 1 & 2 by Charles Soule, Rebels #2. Shared Book of the Week A-Force by G. Willow Wilson, Marguerite Bennett and Jorge Molina. Next week's TCBOTW is: Sons of the Devil #1 by Brian Buccellato and Toni Infante. FYI: the crew have gone all superhero on the world, thanks to the wonderful Hanie Mohd. Like them? Make sure to follow her and let us know what you think of our superhero pictures. The Comic Book Podcast is brought to you by Talking Comics (www.talkingcomicbooks.com), a blog dedicated to covering the latest and greatest in comic book releases. The editorial staff is composed of Editor-in-Chief Bobby Shortle (Fanboy Remix, Doctor Whocast), Stephanie Cooke ( Misfortune Cookie) and Steve Seigh (JoBlo.com contributor) who weekly dissect the releases and give you, the consumer, a simple Roman yay or nay regarding them. Our Twitter handle is @ TalkingComics and you can email us at info@talkingcomicbooks.com.
Ultimate Spin: The Spider-Man podcast about Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen Stacy
(Recorded May 23, 2015) Nour, Kyle, and Brian try to crack the mystery of Ultimate End (it doesn’t go well), and distract themselves with an alternate take on an alternate Spider-character. Listener poll: How are we doing and what would you like to hear on the podcast? Plus your comments and a reminder of our super prize […]
- A-Force #1. Marguerite Bennett, G. Willow Wilson y Jorge Molina. (Marvel). - Battleworld: Master of Kung Fu #1. Haden Blackman y Dalibor Talajic. (Marvel). - Planet Hulk #1. Sam Humphries y Marc Laming. (Marvel). - Secret Wars: Battleworld #1. Joshua Williamson y Mike Henderson. Ed Brisson y Scott Hepburn. (Marvel). - Spider-Verse #1. Mike Costa y André Araujo. (Marvel). - Ultimate End #1. Brian Michael Bendis y Mark Bagley. (Marvel). - Bloodshot Reborn #2. Jeff Lemire y Mico Suayan. (Valiant). - Kaptara #2. Chip Zdarsky y Kagan McLeod. (Image).
- A-Force #1. Marguerite Bennett, G. Willow Wilson y Jorge Molina. (Marvel). - Battleworld: Master of Kung Fu #1. Haden Blackman y Dalibor Talajic. (Marvel). - Planet Hulk #1. Sam Humphries y Marc Laming. (Marvel). - Secret Wars: Battleworld #1. Joshua Williamson y Mike Henderson. Ed Brisson y Scott Hepburn. (Marvel). - Spider-Verse #1. Mike Costa y André Araujo. (Marvel). - Ultimate End #1. Brian Michael Bendis y Mark Bagley. (Marvel). - Bloodshot Reborn #2. Jeff Lemire y Mico Suayan. (Valiant). - Kaptara #2. Chip Zdarsky y Kagan McLeod. (Image).
In #139, we cover the Nintendo World Championships, Captain America 3, Archie Comics' Kickstarter, Donald Duck #1, Ultimate End #1 and more! What made you broke this week? Tell us on Twitter: @ReasonsImBroke
Series Introduction As I begin this series in Ephesians, I want to share with you a special moment in my life. I was on a mission trip in Kenya in June 1986, ministering on a 10-week mission trip. This was one of the turning points in my life. I was sitting on a bench waiting for a bus to come take me back to Nairobi. I asked a Kenyan brother who was also there when the bus would come. He said simply, “In the afternoon.” I remember thinking, “In the afternoon? What does that mean?” Being a typical, time-driven, Type-A American, I was there at 11:49 a.m., ready for the afternoon bus, which rolled in at 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. I had nothing except my little pocket Bible with me. After a while I got the sense that it was going to be a long wait. I didn’t know what to do. I had dabbled with scripture memorization but that day, I opened up to Ephesians and, beginning with Ephesians 1:1, memorized that book. “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.” That day, I began a journey of scripture memorization that has continued for 29 years. I have memorized many entire books and portions of books in those 29 years, but this one is special for me, being the first one. I have recited this book to myself more than any other — hundreds and hundreds of times, with some portions of it approaching 1000 times. This is a precious book to me. I want to commend the practice of Scripture memorization to all of you. The book of Ephesians is a great place to start. Those 155 verses address many deep doctrines that will take you a long time to ponder, as well as very practical issues of the Christian life. Today we begin a journey in one of the most astonishing books ever written in human history. If you think about it — 6 chapters, 155 verses — you may wonder, “How much could be in there?” It takes less than 15 minutes to recite the whole book but it covers the scope and magnitude of God’s working in this world in ways that no other book does. It has a high view over all of these things. Paul doesn’t write to specific situations in the Ephesian churches. He doesn’t address people by name or situations that he wants to try to solve. He is giving an amazing view of God’s overall plan and how it is lived out in life. Today I will give a grand overview of Ephesians 1-6. A number of years ago, my son and I took a trip to the Grand Canyon. We had a breathtaking view of the whole thing from the South Rim. I have never forgotten my first sight of it, after driving along higher and higher, parking and walking through some trees — and suddenly, there it was. We walked along the South Rim, on the foot path, taking in the expanse of this thing, The Grand Canyon. It was hard to imagine the scope and magnitude of it. Since we spent a few days there, we wanted to get more of an experience with the Grand Canyon. We had a number of options. We chose a white water raft ride along the Colorado River. We spent 2/3 of the day looking at the walls of the canyon, stopping for lunch and then coming back. It was a great time, but there were other options available to us if we wanted to get to know the canyon a little better. For example, there was a hot air balloon ride for $300.00 per person per hour. We weren’t going to do that, but we could imagine coasting very slowly and silently at 400 feet up, with breathtaking views. Then there was the possibility of a small plane ride, 5000 feet up, at $450 per person per hour, but covering a much more vast area. There was a helicopter ride, 1000 feet lower than the small plane, able to hover and study certain aspects and different parts from that altitude. The price was not listed for the helicopter ride; we were call for quotes, so I figured that was not going to happen. Then there was the donkey ride down to the Colorado River with overnight camping. This morning we will take the airplane ride. We are going to fly over the book of Ephesians at 5000 feet to look at some of the grand and glorious themes in this book. Next week we will begin our donkey ride, going verse by verse to look more carefully at aspects of this incredible book. Quick Overview of the Epistle Let me begin with a quick overview of all of the book of Ephesians. I am going to break it into two main sections: Ephesians 1-3 and Ephesians 4-6. Ephesians 1-3 could be titled, “What God Has Done in Christ”. It is a picture of the saving work of God in Christ. Ephesians 4-6 could be titled, “What We Must Do in Christ”. It is more a picture of the Christian life and answers the question “How, then, shall we live?” given this great salvation. The epistle begins with Paul’s standard greeting, Ephesians 1:1-2, which I’ve already quoted to you. He emphasizes his call as an apostle “by the will of God” and he writes to give God’s people grace through the epistle. God’s Eternal Purpose in Redemption: 1:3-14 In Ephesians 1:3-14, we have God’s eternal purpose in redemption. Paul, in these incredible 12 verses, traces out in astonishing terms God’s eternal salvation plan, beginning with election and predestination —“before the foundation of the world”; carried out by the redeeming work of Christ on the cross, the redemption by His blood; and then applied to the sealing work of the Holy Spirit. We see the Trinity at work, Father, Son and Spirit, which we will come back to later in this message. In Ephesians 1:4-7, it says,“For He [God the Father] chose us in Him [that is, in Christ] before the creation of the world that we should be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one He loves.” [Ephesians 1:7] “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” I can’t help but stop there and make an appeal to any that are here, outside of Christ, who are lost. Perhaps you have been invited by someone and this is your first or second week here, and you know that you are not a Christian. Ephesians 1:7 speaks to you. It speaks of redemption through the blood of Christ. Christ shed His blood. Christ is God’s eternal Son who became incarnate by the power of the Holy Spirit, who lived a sinless life and who died on the cross in the place of sinners like you and me. He has worked a redemption through His shed blood. Ephesians 1:7: “…redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin”. Oh, how we yearn for that, don’t we? We need forgiveness of sins, and it is available for us through faith in Christ. Paul’s First Prayer for the Ephesians: To Know God’s Power: 1:15-23 Then Paul, having traced out the work of the Father, the Son and the Spirit, prays for the Ephesian Christians in Ephesians 1:15-23. This is the first of many prayers you see in Paul’s epistles and the first of two incredible prayers here in Ephesians. Paul reveals his prayer life for them. He prays in verses 18-19 for them to know God better, that they would have a deeper knowledge of God and that they would also “know the hope to which he has called [them], the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for those who believe” so that they would know God better. This is my prayer for this sermon as well, that, as a result of this study in Ephesians, you will know God better, that you will have a deeper sense of the knowledge of God. Beyond that, for you who are Christians, that you would know the hope to which you are called, your heavenly hope, and how rich you are as Christians. You are infinitely wealthy in Christ. Also that you would have a sense of the immeasurable power that is at work in your life and in the world around you to get you to your heavenly inheritance. Paul is praying for you to know these things, and he says the power that is at work in your life is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. That power raised Christ from the dead out of that tomb and ascended Him through the clouds, through the heavenly realms, up to the very highest place at the right hand of God. There He sits at the right hand of God. He is “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion and every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the Church which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.” That is Ephesians 1. Paul wants you to have a sense of that same power that raised Jesus to that lofty place, and a sense that Christ is ruling over heaven and earth for you, for your benefit. That power is at work in your life. It is breathtaking. The Ephesians’ Journey from Dead in Sin to Raised in Christ: 2:1-10 In Chapter 2, Paul transitions to say, “Do you understand what your condition was? You also were dead.” “You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live.” He wants us to realize just how desperate the condition was. We were the living dead. We were biologically alive, but apart from Christ, we were spiritually dead. God has taken every Christian and raised him or her from the dead by the power of the gospel, by the power of the Spirit, by His grace. God has raised us up from the dead and now we are alive and we will live forever and ever by the sovereign power of God. We need to understand this grace. Paul celebrates grace in very familiar verses, probably the most famous in the epistle, Ephesians 2:8-9 (the first that I memorized a few years before I memorized the whole book): “For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.” We have this incredible grace at work in our lives, and God has raised us up that He might put that grace on display. Now in Ephesians 2:10, we see that we have a glorious life of good works to live, and those good works are worth doing. Our good works, which God has “prepared in advance that we should walk in them”, are not done in vain. All of these good works are tending toward the end of God’s glory and the building of His Church. We have a role to play. Life is worth living for the Christian. How beautiful is that? God’s Purpose in Jew-Gentile Unity: 2:11-22 Paul then talks about the mystery of God’s purpose in making Jew and Gentile Christians one in Christ. In Ephesians 2:11-22, Paul reveals this mysterious purpose, that Jewish believers in Christ and Gentile believers in Christ are now one in Him and that God has created in Christ one new humanity —“one new man out of the two” — no longer Jew or Gentile, but now Christian. We have an amazing unity in Christ. God has taken the barrier,“the dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile, and destroyed it, eradicated, it through the death of Jesus on the cross. Circumcision, dietary regulations and other laws that separated Jew from Gentile have been removed in Jesus. He has made Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians perfectly one. He is building us together into a structure, a kind of spiritual building. There is an architecture, a foundation that has been laid. There is this rising building, rising up through the workings of the body of Christ, rising up through the power of the Spirit, rising to become a holy temple in which God will dwell by His Spirit, eternally. This, the gospel of Jesus Christ, really is the only answer to racism and racial divisions and disharmony in the world. Paul’s Ministry for the Gentiles: 3:1-13 In Ephesians 3:1-13, Paul talks about his own ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. He is in prison for the Gospel, as he frequently was, and he writes to them about the administration of his ministry and what a special and unique individual he is. He says this not because he is arrogant or boastful, but because God has set him apart as apostle to the Gentiles. God has sent him to show His saving purpose to the Gentiles by revealing at last this mystery which, in ages past, stayed hidden in God, but has now been made known, as God intends Jews and Gentiles together in Christ to be one. This is an incredible mystery but it has now come into time. There is a lavish bumper crop of Gentiles coming to faith in Jesus, and Paul, as an apostle to the Gentiles, is there at the dawning of that age to do ministry to bring them in, that they might have a sense of the magnitude of this work. Ephesians 3:6-7: “This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” He says in verse 13, “Don’t be discouraged because of my sufferings. Don’t be discouraged because I am in prison. It is not a shameful thing for me. I am not ashamed of this work. This is a glorious, mysterious thing that God is doing. My sufferings really are your glory. Because of my sufferings, this is how the gospel advances.” Ephesians 3:1-13. Paul’s Second Prayer for the Ephesians: To Know Christ’s Love: 3:14-21 Now we come to what, for me, is the best part of whole book. I love the prayer that Paul prays in Ephesians 3:14-21. It is the kind of thing that moves me emotionally. It is the kind of thing that I pray for myself, for my family, for our church, frequently. In it, God speaks through the apostle Paul of a yearning and a desire that Paul has of a special work of grace in the heart of the Ephesian Christians. Look at verses 16-19. It says,“I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” — I can’t hear those words without thinking about the Grand Canyon — “[that you would have a sense of the magnitude, the dimensions of Christ’s love for you. That you would have] power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, [and that you would] know this love that surpasses knowledge.” It goes beyond cognitive knowledge. It goes into a whole different level of knowledge — that you would have an ever-expanding sense of Christ’s love for you so that you would “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Wow! It is breathtaking — that you would “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” I would say that this is not the common experience of most Christians. As a matter of fact, I would say that many Christians go their whole lives without really approaching the dimensions which Paul prays for here. My desire is that the ministry of the word and a regular beseeching on your part will lead to an incredible expansion of the work of the Spirit in your heart, that you would have a sense of just how much Jesus loves you — how dearly and deeply loved you are — and that you would be empowered by the Spirit to do those good works that He has for you to do (Ephesians 2:10). “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we [could] ask or imagine, [to Him that is at work in you and in the church around the world], to Him be glory in the church … throughout all generations [now and forever].” Ephesians 1-3: that is the scope and magnitude of what God has done for us in Christ. Living Out Our Unity in Christ by the Spirit: 4:1-6 Then Paul turns the corner in Ephesians 4-6, and says in effect, as Francis Schaeffer said, “How, then, shall we live?” “How shall we live in light of these incredible teachings?” He wants us to live out our unity in Christ. Ephesians 4:1-6 is how he starts. He talks about unity, the oneness that we have. Not merely Jew/Gentile, but every individual Christian with every other individual Christian and every individual local congregation with other local congregations and the worldwide work of unity of the Spirit. This unity is under constant assault. It is constantly barraged by the world, the flesh and the devil. We’ll get to that in a moment. But this unity is something that we have to defend and so he says in Ephesians 4, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit — just as you were called to one hope when you were called — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” One, one, one, one, this work of unity which we have to defend and fight for. Working for Our Unity by the Gifts of the Spirit: 4:7-16 Then in verses 7-16, he talks about diversity. He has gone from unity to diversity. Verse 7 begins with the word “but”: “We have been talking about unity and I’m going to go in a different direction.” “But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.” We have a sense of the special working of the Spirit in each individual Christian’s life, and so we come to the doctrine of spiritual gifts. The concept of spiritual gifts is clearly taught in Ephesians 4:7-16, that we have different gifts that God has given to us by the Spirit according to the measurement of Christ by the power of the Spirit — different gifts.“He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service.” There are those works again (as in Ephesians 2:10) — “to prepare God’s people for works of service,” so that by those works of service, the body of Christ might be built up into full maturity in Christ. That means we have a role to play to get the body of Christ to the level of full maturity. You might be an evangelist, or a missionary. You might be a pastor or a teacher. You might be an administrator. You might have the gift of giving or the gift of serving. You might have the gift of prayer or the gift of faith. You might have a variety of gifts. Those gifts are given to you by Christ through the Spirit for the building up of the body so that (verse 13) “we [will] all reach unity in the faith in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” [Verses 15 and 16] “Speaking the truth in love we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From Him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.” We have a role to play in the body of Christ; everyone does. We have a spiritual gift ministry that God has given to us to get the body of Christ to full maturity. Protecting Our Unity by Fighting Sin by the Spirit: 4:17-5:21 Now we come back to what I mentioned before: We must protect our unity because it is under constant assault. In 4:17-5:21, Paul addresses the issues of the assault of the unity and what it is that divides Christians. The root of the issue is sin, and if we are going to be one as the Father and the Son intend, if we’re going to be one as the Father and the Son are themselves one, we are going to have to fight sin in every way. Paul begins by focusing on the mind: it all starts in how you think. He says in verses 17-24, “I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” [Do you hear all of those mental/mind words?] “Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” That is the overarching battle we must have against sin. We must be a holy people, and it begins with how we think and what we love with our hearts and our minds. We must be pure. In the next section, Paul goes back and forth between what we’ll call negative sanctification and positive sanctification. What we must not do or be and what we must do or be, back and forth; both of those are valid aspects of sanctification, of growth and of maturity. So he says that we must not lie; we must put off falsehood, but rather we must speak truth. Thieves must stop their stealing, but instead they “must work, doing something useful with [their] own hands so that [they] may have something to share with those in need. [We should not say unwholesome things, but rather we should speak what is useful for] building others up according to their needs. [We should not be sexually impure, but instead we should be holy with our bodies and our minds. We should not speak obscenity, but rather, we should speak words of thanksgiving. We should not live as children of darkness, but rather we should live as children of the light. We should not live a foolish life, but rather we should] find out what pleases the Lord [and do it. We should] not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery, [but] instead [we should] be filled with the Spirit.” This is going to be a big theme in Ephesians, the Spirit-filled life: to be being filled with the Holy Spirit, to be empowered with the Spirit. Only by the Spirit can we defeat the world, the flesh and the devil. Displaying Unity in Christian Marriage: 5:22-33 Beyond that Paul talks about significant roles in the body of Christ and how submission works in those roles. He says in verse 21, as a subset of the Spirit-filled life, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” When I get to that, God willing, I will talk about how I believe that this is not teaching a universal mutual submission of every Christian to every other Christian, which would vacate the word submission of its meaning. Submission always has to do with recognition of God ordained authority. He is saying, “Category 1 is going to submit to Category 2 in the way I am about to describe to you. So this group is going to submit to this group, but this group — the one submitted to — should carry themselves in a certain way as Christians who have that authority.” Paul goes through the marriage relationship, husband and wife. He goes through the parenting relationship, child and father, and he goes through the master and slave relationship, slave and master. It is always the one who is commanded to submit first (the wife, the children, the slave), and then the one who is receiving the submission, how they should carry themselves (the husband, the father, the master). Then immediately, Paul goes into the most important and most significant human relationship on earth, which is marriage. Christian marriages should be putting the unity of the gospel on display. So he says, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which He is the Savior.” [The husband is then told,] “Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” We get this beautiful picture of Christian marriage. If husbands and wives were living that out, what an incredible effect it would have on our church and on the nation. Displaying Unity in Godly Submission: 6:1-9 Then Paul goes to the parenting relationship. Children are to submit to their parents, to obey them in everything. But fathers are not to “exasperate [their] children, [but rather] bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”. The same thing with the master and slave relationship: first slaves are to submit to their masters, to obey them as if they were obeying Christ, not only when the master’s eye is on them, but all the time. Then, for their part, the masters should not dominate and be tyrannical and evil toward their slaves, but realize that they have a master too, and they are going to have to give him an account on judgement day. Protecting Our Unity by Standing Firm Against the Devil: 6:10-18 Having presented the issues of unity, and struggling with sin, and key relationships, Paul then talks about the main, central attack on the church and on our unity. This is the work of Satan and his minions. Ephesians 6 is probably the clearest, most detailed teaching on spiritual warfare in the Bible. We are told to stand firm in the Lord because we have enemies. We have, as Peter called it, “an adversary, the devil.” Paul says in Ephesians 6 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.” “So, stand firm and put on your spiritual armor.” He goes through the articles of spiritual armor; they are impenetrable, they are powerful: “the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, which is able to extinguish 100% of Satan’s flaming arrows. So we are thoroughly equipped. We have in our hand the sword of the Spirit with which we can make advances for the kingdom of God.” We can call down God’s sovereign power in prayer — some liken it to a walkie-talkie, calling down artillery fire on our enemies. We are going to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests … and keep on praying for all the saints.” Standing Together in Prayer: 6:19-24 Paul ends up by saying, “Stand together with me in prayer. Pray for my mission, pray for my work, pray that I would declare the gospel” “fearlessly, as I should. … Peace to the brothers, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.” Major Themes So that is Ephesians 1-6. Now I want to draw out some main, significant themes. Pretend that we are not in the airplane anymore; we are now in the helicopter. We are going to hover for awhile to look at these main ideas, these themes. I. God’s Ultimate End: “The Praise of His Glory” The first is God’s ultimate end in all of this. Why is God doing all this? What is His purpose? I would say few, if any, books in the Bible, are so clear on what God’s ultimate end and purpose is, as is the book of Ephesians. God does everything “for the praise of His glory.” It is a simple answer coming to us three different times in Ephesians 1:3-14. Again and again we have this. God does everything for the praise of His glory or the praise of His glorious grace. Look at Ephesians 1:4-6: “In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will, [here is this phrase, verse 6] to the praise of His glorious grace.” Or perhaps, to the praise of the glory of His grace. In other words, God predestined us for salvation before the world began, so that after world history had ended, we “might be for the praise of His glory” as revealed in His grace. He says it again in Ephesians 1:11-12: “In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of His glory.” We have it again in verse 14. In verses 13-14, Paul says of the Ephesians,“Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession [here is that phrase again] to the praise of His glory.” What is God’s Glory? How Will His Glory Be Praised? What does that mean? What is God’s glory? God’s glory, I believe, is the radiant display of His attributes, of His nature, the shining brightness of His wisdom, His power, His love, His patience, His kindness, His wrath, His justice; there are various attributes. God wanted to put His own glory on display and He has done that in creation, but He does it even more in redemption. He does it even more in the salvation of the elect from every tribe and language and people and nation. He shines through us and He will do so for all eternity. He does everything for “the praise of His glory.” II. God’s Eternal Plan: “To Bring All Things Together into One in Christ” Secondly, in order to achieve this end of the praise of His glory, God has worked out a meticulous plan. He has actually planned out everything, and I mean everything. Not just grand overarching themes, like in this sermon, but details — down to the tiniest detail. We will get a chance to look at that when we get to verses 11 and 12, but God has worked out His plan in great detail. He had a plan, clearly, in these verses that I just read: “He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless.” That is purpose language. He has a plan, and this plan is mentioned plainly in verse 11. It speaks of us having been “predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will.” The Final End of this Plan: Unity Now what is the final end of this plan? What is He getting to? What is happening in history? Verses 9 and 10 answer the question very powerfully and well. Verse 9 says, “And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, [verse 10] to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” I picture God in perfect unity before He created the universe, before He created anything — perfect unity. Then He willed to create heaven and earth and he created them, saying, “Let there be light.” He did all this work in Genesis 1, and God pronounced everything “very good.” Creation and Creator were in perfect unity, perfect harmony. But then sin entered the universe — wickedness and evil entered the universe — and it behaved like a fragmentation grenade. It blew everything apart into bits, hurtling away from the true center. The disunity between the human race and God, vertically, has led to a disunity between human beings, one with another. From individual to individual, group to group, nation to nation, we see this every day on CNN or MSN or wherever you go. You see the evidence of this fragmentation and this brokenness. God is willing to reverse this and to bring everything back together under one head, Christ. This is His purpose in all of these things. He is going to bring together the elect and make them one. One new man, one new people, together, with no disunity at all. Central to that is the redemptive work of Christ. III. God’s Plan Effected: By Christ, by the Spirit, by the Gospel, by the Gifts The third theme is how God’s plan is effected: by Christ, by the Spirit, by the gospel and by the gifts. These things are given to bring the plan about, so it will happen. He sent His Son, and in Christ we have redemption through His blood. God the Father made the plan. God the Son worked it out, paid for it in His blood. God the Spirit moves throughout all of the world, throughout all of history to apply the plan, the saving work of Jesus Christ to individual people and to groups. By Christ, by the Spirit, by the gospel message, as it says, “In Him you were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything, conforming to the purpose of His will. … You heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were then marked with a seal.” The gospel is out there, the word of truth is out there, powerful. People are hearing it. By the Spirit, they are believing and they are marked, sealed with the Spirit. That is the unfolding of God’s plan that is applied by the Spirit. Spiritual gifts — given to and used by gifted individuals, human beings, Christians — are instrumental to that plan. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers take the work of God out to the ends of the earth. They settle in and they shepherd churches. They prepare the body of Christ to do those works of service and then the gifted Christians use their gifts and the whole building of Ephesians 2 or body of Ephesians 4 grows up to perfection and finality. That is what is happening. That is what is going on in the world today. IV. God’s Plan on Display: Unity in the Heart, in the Church, in Marriage Now God’s plan is put on display. It is a unity in the heart through holiness, it is a unity in the church, Jew and Gentile, together one. It is made one through the Spirit. It is a unity in marriage, in parenting and in the master/slave relationship as each group does what it needs to do. This unity is put on display perfectly and beautifully. That is God’s purpose of all of this. V. God’s Plan Opposed: By Satan, by the World, by Sin God’s plan is going to be opposed, as I’ve said, by the world, the flesh and the devil. We should not expect an easy ride. It is going to be hard, but we are going to win. Isn’t that awesome? The church, the elect, will be saved and glorified and radiant with God’s glory for all eternity in heaven. Applications This is Ephesians 1-6. This is the book of Ephesians. Now, God willing, if He gives us time, we will get a chance to go through it verse by verse. If He doesn’t, we will get to see it with our own eyes, the glory of God in heaven. Amen? What applications can we take from this? Salvation History Get a sense of the scope of salvation history through this. We will have a chance again next week and in subsequent weeks to see how meticulously God has put history together. This is not thrown together, but this has been meticulously planned. Get a sense of that and feel secure in that. Don’t feel like every time you watch the news or go onto a website which tells you some of the things that are happening like we are going off the rails or the wheels are falling off. No, this is exactly what we would expect to happen. This is the disunity and fragmentation that Satan has worked, but there is a secret power at work in the world called the Gospel, the power of the Spirit, that is changing everything. Be confident as you look at world history. Be confident that God knows exactly what He is doing. How God’s Commitment to His Own Glory Affects Us And how should God’s commitment to His own glory affect us? Live for God’s glory. Away with your selfish plans. Away with living for your own glory. Away with living for you own purposes. Say, “God, what is your plan for me? What is your purpose for my life? How have you gifted me? How have You prepared me? What am I to do? How can I live for your glory?” It is such a powerful idea, isn’t it? Husbands and wives, say, “I want our marriage to be for the praise of God’s glory. How can we do that?” “I want our parenting to be for the praise of God’s glory. How can we have a household that will be for the praise of God’s glory? How can I do my employment? How can I be an employer or an employee for the praise of God’s glory and putting God on display? How can I do that?” The Greatness of Christ Thirdly, how can we see in Ephesians the greatness of Christ? I want to zero in on one thing. There are so many things about the greatness of Christ, but as Paul prays at the end of Ephesians 3, I will be praying for you every day, through this series, that “you would have power together will all the saints” to get the sense of the scope and magnitude of Christ’s love for you. You are greatly underestimating it right now. You are greatly underestimating, and I am too, how much Christ loves you and me. It will be unbelievably empowering and liberating for you to improve even by 10% the sense of the magnitude of Christ’s love for you. So I am going to be praying that you would have a sense together with all the saints of how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. Unity And what about unity? Pray for the unity of our church. Pray that our church would put on display supernatural unity. First of all, just two sinners getting along in Christ is supernatural. Amen? We are so selfish, wicked and carnal — that we could actually genuinely love each other from the heart is supernatural. I want to see racial reconciliation on display through this church. I want to see surprising unity. I want to see a unity that makes people, like in John 17, sit up and say, “What could have caused this? Only the Gospel.” Let’s see what God can do in a supernatural work of unity in FBC Durham, right here in this city. Satan’s Work vs. Our Work Finally, how can you be exhorted to be about the Master’s business, covered with the armor of God, aware that Satan is opposing you? How can you be exhorted to be active in evangelism and missions? Satan is going to be attacking, especially the more we get fruitful here, but God has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5). Ephesians makes very plain that only by putting on the spiritual armor of God with our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace will we be able to make progress in the external journey of evangelism and missions. I would ask that you present yourself to God as ready to serve Him. Invite people to church. Talk to lost people about their faith and about the Gospel. Be instrumental. Then internally, within the walls of the church, use your spiritual gifts to build up the body of Christ until it reaches full maturity in Christ. Close with me in prayer, if you would. Father, we thank you for this very quick fly over we’ve had in Ephesians. It has been rich. I look forward, almost can’t wait, to get into the section next week in Ephesians 1. I pray that you would teach us, instruct us and prepare us, oh Lord, for that. I pray that the things we’ve already learned now from Ephesians would be so ingrained in our hearts and our minds that we would want to live them out. Oh, God, I pray for your Christians that are here now. Fill us with the Holy Spirit of God. I pray that we would be Spirit-filled. And Lord, for lost people, one more time, I pray that they would not leave this place lost, but that they would see, by faith, Christ crucified for their sins, risen from the dead by the power of God, and that full forgiveness could be theirs if they will just trust in Him. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Capítulo #20 NOTICIAS [00:04:22] Trailer teaser de los 4 Fantásticos. I am a Hero tendrá un spin off de Osaka. Novela e enciclopedias para Arrow. Superman tierra uno, Volumen 3 anunciado. Warner bros anuncia lego Marvel’s Avengers para otoño. Tyresse Gibson posíble Green Lantern. Expo tebeos de posguerra de Badajoz. David Tennent será el Hombre Púrpura. Reforma código penal dibujos de menores. Todd McFarlane, no a trabajar con Marvel o DC, sí a los Crossovers. Revista Plot 2.0, primer número de Star Slammer en el especial de Walt Simonson. Ultimate End, el fin del Universo Ultimate por Bendis y Bagley. Warzones, Last Days y Battleworld, tres tipos de colecciones para Secret Wars. Relanzamiento de Milestone Comics. Se usa la imagen de Kamala Khan ( Ms.Marvel) para lucha contra los anuncios Anti-Islam de San Francisco. Avance Norma Marzo. Avance Planeta Abril. Previews USA Abril. NOVEDADES [00:45:21] Batman Silencio. Thorgal. Michel Tanguy. Los Invisibles 1: Di que quieres una revolución. Batman/Lobo de Alan Grant-Neil Gaiman-Simon Bisley. Checklist de la semana, novedades ECC. BIOAUTORES: JIM LEE [01:03:02] Nueva sección mensual de la mano de Eduardo en la que repasaremos la trayectoria de grandes autores del cómic, hoy toca el turno para el dibujante Jim Lee. ANÁLISIS: LA ÚLTIMA CACERÍA DE KRAVEN [01:28:08] Hablamos de la aclaada etapa del lanzaredes escrita por J.M. DeMatteis y dibujada por Mike Zeck, otra obra imprescindible que no puede faltar en tu comicteca. OYENTES [01:48:02] Leemos todos vuestros mensajes dejados en las redes. Muchas gracias por escucharnos y el apoyo que nos dais! También en iTunes Síguenos @TomosyGrapas www.tomosygrapas.com Participa también y publica en nuestra web! escribenos a tomosygrapas@gmail.com
Capítulo #20 NOTICIAS [00:04:22] Trailer teaser de los 4 Fantásticos. I am a Hero tendrá un spin off de Osaka. Novela e enciclopedias para Arrow. Superman tierra uno, Volumen 3 anunciado. Warner bros anuncia lego Marvel’s Avengers para otoño. Tyresse Gibson posíble Green Lantern. Expo tebeos de posguerra de Badajoz. David Tennent será el Hombre Púrpura. Reforma código penal dibujos de menores. Todd McFarlane, no a trabajar con Marvel o DC, sí a los Crossovers. Revista Plot 2.0, primer número de Star Slammer en el especial de Walt Simonson. Ultimate End, el fin del Universo Ultimate por Bendis y Bagley. Warzones, Last Days y Battleworld, tres tipos de colecciones para Secret Wars. Relanzamiento de Milestone Comics. Se usa la imagen de Kamala Khan ( Ms.Marvel) para lucha contra los anuncios Anti-Islam de San Francisco. Avance Norma Marzo. Avance Planeta Abril. Previews USA Abril. NOVEDADES [00:45:21] Batman Silencio. Thorgal. Michel Tanguy. Los Invisibles 1: Di que quieres una revolución. Batman/Lobo de Alan Grant-Neil Gaiman-Simon Bisley. Checklist de la semana, novedades ECC. BIOAUTORES: JIM LEE [01:03:02] Nueva sección mensual de la mano de Eduardo en la que repasaremos la trayectoria de grandes autores del cómic, hoy toca el turno para el dibujante Jim Lee. ANÁLISIS: LA ÚLTIMA CACERÍA DE KRAVEN [01:28:08] Hablamos de la aclaada etapa del lanzaredes escrita por J.M. DeMatteis y dibujada por Mike Zeck, otra obra imprescindible que no puede faltar en tu comicteca. OYENTES [01:48:02] Leemos todos vuestros mensajes dejados en las redes. Muchas gracias por escucharnos y el apoyo que nos dais! También en iTunes Síguenos @TomosyGrapas www.tomosygrapas.com Participa también y publica en nuestra web! escribenos a tomosygrapas@gmail.com
sermon transcript Introduction Turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 27, looking this morning at verses 1 through 10. And as we come to this very sobering text, come to the text that I just mentioned, ordinarily we wouldn't choose necessarily to study, choose to preach a sermon on. But we come here in this text to the shocking end, the tragic end, of Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve. And we can picture him in our mind's eyes swinging on at the end of a rope, dead. Lifeless, alone. The suicide of a truly evil man, who was richly blessed by the proximity of his relationship with Christ, richly blessed, but never believed, never trusted, and turned him in for 30 pieces of silver. And we can see those 30 silver coins, we can almost picture them clattering on the stone pavement and rolling until each one of them came to a stop. You can see the hypocritical priests kneeling down to pick each one of those 30 silver coins up, the very coins that they had paid out to Judas just a short time before, to effect the betrayal of Jesus into their hands. Now no one wanted those coins. They seemed like poison coins. No one wanted to touch them, no one wanted to do anything with them. And this whole tale is really a warning to us in many ways, a warning to all of us, a warning from the life of Judas of the proper valuation of life and money, and especially the proper valuation of Jesus. Jesus is the most infinitely valuable man that ever lived. The only infinitely valuable Son of God, Son of man who ever lived. And in this account, we are brought ever closer, as we're going verse by verse, passage by passage, through Matthew's gospel, brought ever closer to the cross of Christ by which he will save his sheep from their sins. And poignantly, also we have a timeless warning of the self-destructive nature of evil. So I entitled this sermon, “The Suicide of Evil.” How evil is self-destructive in the end. Judas' so-called friends, his new allies turned their backs coldly on him and had no interest whatsoever in comforting or counseling with him. But he, Judas, in some mysterious way indwelt by Satan himself and Satan, who was a murderer from the beginning, driving him to his death. And how ironic is it that at that same time, Satan was committing suicide by killing Jesus? Using the weapon of death to bring with his own hands, bring his own kingdom down around himself. And so in the end, though this is a dark story and a warning, yet for us who see the evil in the world, very encouraging. Because everything that happened here was according to God's eternal plan, and his plan for us as Christ's sheep is good. And in the end, sin and death and darkness and evil will be destroyed, really ultimately by its own hand, and we will be free at last. And what a joyful thing that is. Jesus Condemned According to Plan (vs. 1-2) Final Aspect of the Jewish Trial So we begin our account by looking in verse 1 and 2, as Jesus is condemned according to plan. Look at verses 1 and 2, “Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound him and led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor.” So this is the final aspect of the religious trial of Jesus before the Jews. The wicked, illegal religious trial before the members of his own people now comes to its final end, its final phase. Now, the whole effort, this wicked hypocritical sham had been to kill an innocent man with at least an outward semblance of justice. The false witnesses could not harmonize their story sufficiently to give that semblance of justice. So you remember the high priest charged Jesus under oath, “By the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” And he answers simply in Mark's gospel, “I am,” God's name. And he says in Matthew, as we studied, “In the future, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” And at this the high priest tore his robes, and they condemned him and abused him. The Jewish Council Met Once More to Confirm Jesus’ Condemnation to Death And here in chapter 27, the final phase, they meet one more time to make it official, completely illegal. They “took counsel together,” it says in one of the translations, this refers to the carefully laid plans to execute him without a just cause. Contrary to Rabbinic law, they hurried him off now to the Gentile trial before Pontius Pilate. Ordinarily, as I've said, they would have had to wait another day to fast and pray and be sure that what they were doing was just and merciful, but they didn't wait, they were in a hurry to kill Jesus. And so they met one more time to condemn him to death, this perfectly innocent man, and they bound him and hurried him off to Pilate. All of this Was Exactly According to God’s Sovereign Plan Now all of us was exactly according to plan, but whose plan? Now, certainly it was their plan, everything had gone as they had desired. In Matthew 26:3-4, it says, “Then the elders and chief priests of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they took counsel together to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him.” This had been their plan, their plot, their scheme. But infinitely above their wicked heads was God's sovereign plan. Amen? Infinitely above all of their plotting, infinitely above all of their scheming was God's intention in all of this. As Peter would preach on the day of Pentecost, in Acts 2:23, “This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you with the help of wicked men put him to death.” And so all of this is according to God's eternal plan. The Binding of Jesus And so Jesus is bound in verse 2 and led away and handed over to Pilate, the governor. Jesus had already been bound earlier in the evening on his arrest in John's gospel, John 18:12, “They bound him in Gethsemane.” But apparently they unbound him when he was on trial. Now, they bind him again and lead him away. This led me to think about Samson being bound. You remember how he was bound and how his bonds couldn't hold him, because Samson was so powerful when the Spirit of God came upon him. What was it then that held Jesus' hands together? Was it not his determination to do the will of his Father? Was it not his love for us, his sheep? Was it not his desire to glorify God and go to the cross for us? Jesus says in Luke 12:50, “I have a baptism to undergo. A baptism to be baptized with.” And he says, “How straightened I am.” That's in the KJV, “How straightened I am, until it be accomplished. I'm in a straight jacket, I'm bound in until at last, I die on the cross.” Bound in by the will of God, bound in by the plans of God, and that's what kept Jesus's hands together. I can assure you, if it was not his will to be bound with those leather straps, he would have been able to rip them free, because he is far greater, far more powerful than Samson ever was. Also, the binding of Jesus fulfills a prophetic type. You will remember how God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac, on a particular mountain, and on the third day, God showed him Mount Moriah, where later the temple would be built. And when they reached that place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there, arranged the wood on it, and he bound his son Isaac and laid him there on the altar on top of the wood, and he took out a knife to slay him. But the angel of the Lord stopped him. And so the binding of Isaac I think a picture or a type of the binding of Christ. And also the leading of Jesus, a direct fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 53:7, “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.” And so all of these things are indications of the perfect plan of God to give his Son in our place for our salvation. Judas Condemned According to Conscience (vs. 3-5) Judas “Saw that Jesus Was Condemned” Now, in verses 3 through 5, we have Judas condemned according to conscience. Look at the verses, “When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the 30 silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. ‘I have sinned,’ he said, ‘For I have betrayed innocent blood.’ ‘What's that to us?’ They replied, ‘That's your responsibility.’ So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.” So this part begins with the words, “When Judas saw that Jesus was condemned.” It implies somewhat of a surprise on Judas' part, which is almost incomprehensible to me. How could he not know what the betrayal would lead to? It's possible that, like Peter, he could see Jesus being led away at this particular moment, could see him and this trial was unfolding and it, in some strange way, hit him what was going to happen. It's hard for me to understand that. “Seized with Remorse” But at that moment then, he's seized with remorse. Which is a good translation, I think, for what he's feeling. He feels guilty, he feels bad for what he did. It was a bad feeling that's come over him as he sees this. Now, the Greek word translated here, “remorse” is different than the word ordinarily translated for “repentance.” Repentance. Judas did not repent, but he did feel terrible for what he had done. It's important for us to make that distinction. Some have asked concerning the case of Judas, “Didn't he repent here?” No, there's no indication in the original that he repented, he just felt badly for what he did. And I think 2 Corinthians 7:10 shows us that there are two different ways to feel badly for sin, two different ways. 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret.” - Isn't that marvelous? Friends, that's your future. You'll have no regrets in heaven, perfect memory of everything you did in life, I believe, but no regrets. Now, that's a mystery, and we can talk about that, but other than that, we're all lobotomized in heaven and have no idea what grace is. And “Thank God, Jesus saved me from my sin, from our sins.” We will remember, but no regrets. It leaves no regret. - “But worldly sorrow brings death.” And I think Judas is a very good example of worldly sorrow that produced death. So there are two different ways to feel badly for sin. Peter felt terribly for what he'd done, and these accounts follow one right after the other. And so you have Peter weeping bitterly and he feels terrible for what he's done, but there's no doubt in my mind that God, through the Holy Spirit, led him step by step into a healthy, wholesome repentance, reconciliation with Jesus, with God and a life of service to him, leaving no regret. But how different is Judas? Judas felt remorse, sickness, over the wretchedness of who he was and what he had done, but this led directly to death, not to God. It didn't bring him to God asking forgiveness. It didn't bring him to run up to Jesus, falling in front of him and saying, “Forgive me for what I did.” It just led him to death. “I Have Sinned… For I Have Betrayed Innocent Blood” And so he says these words, “I have sinned, for I have betrayed innocent blood.” This is an amazing realization by Judas. First of all, his sin. What was his sin? Well, he bore false witness against a neighbor. Jesus was innocent, he never sinned. Deuteronomy 27:25 says, “Cursed is the man who accepts the bribe to kill an innocent person.” Sounds like Judas to me. And so he was cursed by the law for this sin. But we have to go deeper than that. We have to go deeper. To whom much is given, much is required. And much had been given to this man, Judas. He was one of the 12. He had astonishing access to Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory.” Judas was an eyewitness to the glory of God in Christ, in ways we can scarcely imagine. John MacArthur said this about Judas, "No man could be more evil than Judas Iscariot. Only eleven other men in all of history have had the intimate personal relationship he had with the incarnate Son of God. No man has ever been more exposed to God's perfect truth, both in precept and example. No man has been more exposed firsthand to God's love, God's compassion, His power, His kindness, his forgiveness and grace. No man had had more evidence of Jesus' deity or more firsthand knowledge of the way of salvation. Yet in all of these three indescribable blessed years with Jesus, Judas did not take so much as the first step of genuine faith. In a way that defies comprehension, Judas persistently resisted and rejected God's truth, God's grace, and ultimately God's Son. Also, in a way that defies understanding, he managed to completely conceal his wicked rebellion from everyone but Jesus.” He was a thoroughly wicked man. So at this moment, his wickedness has led him to feel bad. And he feels badly for what he's done, but not with the conviction that leads to salvation. Even more amazing is this testimony to the innocence of Jesus. I’ll talk more about this, I think, next time. But he says, “I betrayed innocent blood. I have betrayed innocent blood.” The sinlessness of Jesus is essential to my salvation and yours. Jesus committed no sin. There's no deceit in his mouth. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. Friends, it is innocent blood that saves you and me from sin. Innocent blood, the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for us. I plead with you, trust in that. Every week, we are reminded that people assemble here today that are outside of the grace of God, they're not Christians yet, unregenerate. You're listening to me right now, you're in an unregenerate state. I plead with you, trust in the innocent blood of Jesus. It was shed for sinners like you and me. This sermon has a lot of potential hopelessness in it, as you look at Judas, as you look down a dark tunnel of hopelessness, but it doesn't need to be that way for you. Don't leave here hopeless. Don't leave here without hope and without God in the world. Come to Christ, and if you're already a Christian listening to these words, then memorize them and then say them to some lost person this week. We are surrounded by people that are wrestling with despair, they are without hope and without God in the world. There is an answer, and his name is Jesus. And so I love that phrase, “innocent blood,” because that's what saves me from my sins. Jesus’ Enemies Had No Heart to Listen And so Judas testified to it to his enemies, but Jesus's enemies had no interest in listening to that. “‘What is that to us?’ They replied, ‘That's your responsibility. It's on your head.’” The incredible coldness of these new friends and allies of Judas. There's no honor among thieves, dear friends, and there's no friendship in hell. Friendship is a gift of God's common grace, isn't it? Isn't friendship a reflection of the Trinity, how two persons can be one, can be friends? That's where we're heading in Christ. We're gonna be as one as the Father and the Son are one. We're gonna have perfect and consummated relationships in heaven, friendships in heaven. Every marriage is just a dim reflection of the perfect unity we're all gonna have in Christ in heaven. Friendship is for heaven, not for hell. So do not be deceived if you're outside Christ and you think you're gonna have a good time with all of your lost friends in hell. They'll be there, but they won't be your friends. See, there’s no friendship in hell. And the coldness of what's going here: They don't care about Judas at all. Satan doesn't care about Judas at all. He wants to kill Judas. He'd like to kill all of us. Jesus diagnosed these cold-hearted sinners, these chief priests and elders of the people very well. He said in Luke 11:46, “You experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry and you yourself will not lift a single finger to help them with those burdens.” That's what they're doing here. They don't care, “It's your burden. You bear it yourself.” Godly ministry, godly pastors, godly elders, they're in the business of lifting burdens. That's what we're here to do, we're here through the preaching of the gospel to lift burdens off people, but these cold-hearted religious experts, all they do is crush people with burdens. The Tragic End: Judas Hangs Himself And so it's over for Judas, now, it's over. He has nowhere to turn to. He is empty, he is bereft of all hope, bereft of all light. And so verse 5, “He threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.” He is completely alone. Those coins, they're repulsive to him now, it's like they're on fire. It's like they're covered with some malignant virus or something like that. No one wants them, they're evil, wicked things. I wonder if Judas in hell can see a matrix of 6x5, 30 coins. If he sees them forever, was it worth it? 30 silver coins. 30 silver coins. Is it worth it? Was it worth it? 30 silver coins for Jesus? He didn't think so at that point. He threw them away from him, he hated them, already hated them, hates them still. And he's completely alone. He left, he goes away without a friend in the world, and he hangs himself. Matthew Henry, Puritan commentator said this, “Driven by the horror of God's judgment against him, he jumped straight into that judgment. Seeking to escape the licking flames of guilt, he plunged into the roaring fire of hell.” The Chief Priests Counsel According to Prophecy (vs. 6-10) The Chief Priests: Wicked Legalists to the Very End Verses 6-10, then the chief priests take counsel according to prophecy. “The chief priests picked up the coins and said, ‘It is against the law to put this into the treasury since it's blood money.’ So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. That is why it's been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled. ‘They took the 30 silver coins, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter's field, as the Lord commanded me.’” So here are the chief priests, wicked legalists to the very end. These are the ones of whom Jesus said, “You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.” Later this very morning, they're gonna refrain from going in Pilate's house lest they be defiled, so they could celebrate the Passover. And Jesus is the reality of the Passover, and they wanna kill him, doing everything they can to kill him, but they don't wanna be defiled according to the law. They Take Counsel Together: What Shall We Do With the Thirty Silver Coins? It's amazing too because those 30 silver coins came from their hands, probably out of the temple treasury, and now they don't want any part of them, nobody wants them, and so they counsel together, they take counsel together, “What shall we do with the 30 silver coins?” And so they decide to use them to buy the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. And Matthew says this is in direct fulfillment of a prophecy, which he ascribes to Jeremiah. The Mysterious Fulfilled Prophecy: Jeremiah or Zechariah? Now, I'm doing scripture memorization now in Zechariah, and it sounds an awful lot like Zechariah 11:12-13. So let me read Zechariah, 11:12-13. There it says, “I told them, ‘If you think it best, give me my pay, but if not, then keep it.’ So they paid me 30 silver coins. And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’ - The handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.” Amazing points of context. In that chapter, the Lord has called Zechariah the prophet to act as a shepherd to a rebellious people, the Jewish nation. And it's in the context of false shepherds who are not doing what's right. But the people love the false shepherds, and they don't love his true shepherding, so they hate him and turn on him. So he says, “Fine, give me my severance pay.” And so they weighed out for him 30 pieces of silver. He says, “That magnificent price at which they priced me.” And then the Lord comes a second time and says, “Throw it to the potter.” And he does throw it into the house of the Lord and it ends up at the potter. There's a lot of similarities there, aren't there? Shepherding, false shepherds, potter, 30, silver, coin, throne, house of the Lord. Lots of connections and frankly, more connections on this prophecy than you'd find on many of the allusions that Matthew says, “This was to fulfill this or that.” And yet he ascribes it to Jeremiah. What do we do with that? Well, we skip it and don't talk about it. So let's just go on to the next part and just say, “I don't know.” So that's gonna be kind of my ultimate answer is I don't know, but there are some decent explanations. John MacArthur says that the law, the writings and the prophets sometimes referred to by the chief writer in those categories, law equals Moses or Moses equals law, David would be the writings, and Jeremiah the chief prophet sometimes chosen for the prophets. That was John MacArthur's explanation. We'll reject the idea that Matthew wrote an error into the scripture, because once you start saying there's an error, then you never know where that ends, and it's just gonna unravel the entire garment. And you know when it's gonna unravel is when the scripture convicts you of your sin. And you say, “Well, I don't know. I think that's an error right there.” So we don't want to allow the concept of error to creep in here, it's inerrant. Don Carson gives another explanation, and he goes over to Jeremiah 19, and that's where the Lord commands Jeremiah the prophet, to go and buy clay from the potter and to make a clay jar and smash it in a particular field in the valley of Ben-Hinnom. So the focus there is on the clay in the field and the field in which this thing was smashed, and the prophecy ends up being about the field where the wicked of Israel will be buried after the slaughter. So I think we ought to think at a higher level, what Matthew is doing is he's saying, the real deal here is about the ultimate end of these coins and the ultimate end of Judas, and I don't doubt, frankly, that Judas might have been the first stranger that was buried in that field. Why do I say that? The Ultimate End of Judas Well, in Acts 1:18-19, it says, “With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field.” Judas bought a field. What does that mean? Well, “There he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language, Akeldama, that is Field of Blood.” It could have been that some people put it together, that Judas hanged himself on a tree, on a cliff or something like that, and the branch broke and then he gets dumped into a field which ends up being the same field that they bought and they buried him there as the first stranger. Outsider, outside of the grace of God, outside of redemption, eternally lost. And I think that's probably a more sophisticated answer ultimately to what's going on here. This was a conflated prophecy between Zechariah and Jeremiah and just ascribed in the end to Jeremiah. Applications The Proper Valuation of Christ Well, that's the exegesis; what application can we take from this text? Well, let's start with valuing Christ properly. Shall we do that? Peter tells us, “You know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold, that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you by your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” How precious is the innocent blood of Jesus to you? How precious a substance is that blood to you? I tell you right now, you may be the most mature Christian in here, you undervalue the preciousness of the blood of Christ, I guarantee you do, and you'll spend eternity properly valuing it. For eternity, you will study the value and worth of the innocent blood of Jesus, and you will celebrate what it has done for you. You are not redeemed with silver and gold, you are redeemed with the precious, the infinitely precious blood of Jesus. If you have been redeemed. If you haven't been redeemed yet, then let the Spirit do a work on your heart right now. Let the Spirit show you the value and worth of the blood of Jesus. Do not try to stand before God's judgment seat without it. You will be condemned as Judas was. But you don't need to have that happen. There is time for you. Today is the day of salvation. So I urge you, value Christ properly. Don't be like Judas who traded Jesus in for some part of the world that then was worthless to him. Worthless to him. He threw it away because he learned too late how worthless it was. What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul? So don't trade Jesus for 30 pieces of anything. Love and follow and believe in Jesus. “Taking Counsel”: The Sovereign Plan of God Cannot Be Derailed Secondly, and this is so precious to me, see the value of the sovereign power of God over the evil plans and plots and schemes of people. There's all this “taking counsel together” in this text. In verse 1, the chief priest and the elders “took counsel” against Jesus to put him to death. They “took counsel” together in verse 7, and bought with the 30 silver coins, the potter's field. So they're conferring together and they're taking counsel together. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans of a man's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails.” Nowhere has that ever been more true than when it concerns the taking counsel that wicked people did around the death of Jesus. They meant evil, but God means it for good for you, if you are one of his. The church, when they assembled together after the Jewish authority started persecuting the church, started opposing the gospel, and Peter and John were arrested for doing a miracle, and they bring them in and they warn them and release them. So they go to their own people, they go to the church, they gather the church together and they start to pray, and they pray Psalm 2, “‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples conspire or take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed one?’ Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire to take counsel together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen.” Now, friends, this is a mystery but it's so precious, so precious. When I was writing this sermon, the events of the Boston Marathon bombing were fresh in my mind, and I was thinking about how destabilizing bombings can be. You just never know when something's gonna just erupt, a trash can, a locker in a train station, and it just plays into our fears, and people don't know what to do with that nameless fear of terrorism and of plots and schemes. Maybe some people are led to trust the government, the CIA or the FBI, or the drone program or something like that, and wire taps and cell phones, be able to listen to cell phones, and have super computers keeping us all safe. Some people are worried about the encroaching government, worrying if the government's what we need to fear after all that. How do we find refuge and protection against the evil plots and schemes of sinners? Find it here, dear friends, find it in the sovereign power of God. There are terrorist cells that meet together and plot the death and destruction of many people, it's happening probably right now, but they are under God's sovereign power and control. God is restraining their evil for his own purposes. I know that brings us into difficult questions about, “What about when it does break out and people lose life and limbs and health?” and those are serious questions, but still in the end, aren't you comforted to know that God sits on his throne above the circle of the earth and all its people are like grasshoppers and only his purposes and plans prevail? Now, I entitled this sermon, “The Suicide of Evil,” and isn't it comforting to know that God has ordained that Satan would pull his kingdom down by his own wicked plot and scheme? Isn't that marvelous? Doesn't that bring you joy? That evil is self-destructive to our glory and our salvation. Satan killed Jesus, and in killing him destroyed his own kingdom, and we are the recipients of the grace and mercy that came out of that. We are rescued, we are living stones quarried out of Satan's dark kingdom, and we are put into a beautiful new living temple, rising to glorify God, and so it's beautiful to see the suicide of evil. Understanding Guilt, Despair, and Suicide But this brings me finally in terms of application to the question of suicide itself. Suicide itself. I'm an expository preacher, I just take the next text and preach it, and I preach whatever's in it, and it takes us to the question and the issue of suicide. And it's not something, as I said, that I would choose if I were a topical preacher to preach on because it's so painful and difficult, maybe one of the most painful topics there is in this life. But it's only addressed three times directly in the Bible, there are only three people that kill themselves in the Bible. King Saul in the midst of a battle with the Philistines, surrounded by the Philistine warriors about to die, did not wanna die by their hands, so he fell on his own sword and killed himself. Ahithophel who was David's counselor, betrayed David, turned his back on him, helped David's son Absalom to revolt against him, gave excellent counsel like he always did, but Absalom didn't listen to it, and Ahithophel knew the writing was on the wall and there was no way that Absalom was going to win, and so he put his affairs in order and hanged himself. And then this one, Judas. Now, we must acknowledge that Judas' suicide is utterly, completely unique in redemptive history. There's never again gonna be the circumstances like what happened with Judas. The proximity to Christ, the three years of seeing the incarnate Savior, being indwelt by Satan, all of the circumstances that'll never happen again. Utterly unique. And yet, there are some aspects of it that are worth our study in our education, our training theologically, so that we can understand this dark issue of suicide. Judas knew he had done wrong, guilt came upon him like waves. Guilt is to the soul, what pain is to the body. Tells you that there's a problem. Now, it's not inerrant, it's not true that every time you feel pain, there's a significant problem or any problem at all, but usually there is. As a matter of fact, people with leprosy can't feel pain, and that's why they destroy themselves 'cause they don't pull their hand off the hot plate quick enough, or they don't feel the pain and they're not able to stop. So when we feel guilty, it's probably because we are guilty. When we feel a sense of shame, it's probably because we've done something shameful. A healthy person takes that pain and addresses, they take their hand off the hot plate, they stop doing that action. Or they go see a doctor and they address the strange pain they're feeling in their chest cavity or something like that, they try to deal, the pain is telling them something's wrong. Well, guilt and shame should lead us to the cross of Jesus Christ, that's where it should bring you. We shouldn't deny it, say, “I haven't done anything wrong,” instead, we should take it to the cross. Even as Christians, we feel guilty and we should because we do wrong things. We feel ashamed and we should because we do shameful things. But we have learned the grace of God is limitless, and where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. And we are able to bring our dark feelings of despair and guilt to the cross of Christ and be healed by Jesus. Now, why do people commit suicide? Why does it happen? Well, there are a variety of reasons. Retaliation, some people do it just to get back at loved ones, they feel hurt, they feel abandoned. Maybe a spouse leaves someone and marries someone else, and then the jilted spouse commits suicide just to get back. It seems to be the case a lot of times in terms of teen suicide, that the teenagers are trying to get back at their parents and make them hurt. And it does hurt. There are a few things as painful as being there after the suicide and having to pick up the pieces, and the guilt and all of the things that the survivors of the suicide have to deal with. It's a very selfish thing for the individual to do it, it leaves a wreckage, it leaves a world blown up. Some people do it because they wanna be with departed spouses, perhaps elderly people, and they lose their desire to live and they don't eat and they don't do what's necessary to keep healthy and keep strong because they just want to be with the departed loved one. Some people do it for religious reasons, especially in other religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, Jihadists in Islam think they've got a short route to paradise, they do it for that reason. Some people do it for the sake of atonement 'cause they've done something so hideous and so horrible that they think maybe if they kill themselves, they can make up for it, that's why sometimes prisoners hang themselves in prison. Most people I think do it because circumstances in life become so overwhelming that they just can't face them anymore. It could be a financial crisis, it could be that they've committed a crime and they don't wanna face the repercussions. Could be a medical situation, they're in so much pain that they just can't face it anymore, other circumstances. So what does the Bible say about it? What can we learn? How do we think about this? Well, first thing I want you to know is, it doesn't mean that God isn't sovereign. I know it's hard to think it through, but there's a particular passage that God showed me, I think a number of years ago in 1 Chronicles 10, it was talking there about King Saul, and remember I told you he's one of the three suicides in the Bible, but in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14, it says, “Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He did not keep the Word of the Lord, and even consulted a medium for guidance and did not inquire of the Lord.” Listen, “So the Lord put him to death.” Ponder that one. The Lord put him to death. Other than that, we'd have to say, you know that passage in Psalm 139, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Unless I take matters in my own hand and grab the last three pages of the book out, rip them out. No, that doesn't happen. God's sovereign even over this painful topic of suicide. Secondly, suicide is a sin, it is self-murder, and we are not to murder, and it is very selfish, total self-absorption, not thinking, “What would this do to my wife or husband? What would this do to my children? What would this do to the people who knew me and love me?” Those aren't the thoughts at that particular moment. Lesson number three, great guilt can produce great desperation and can change your views of God. Despair can be like a drug and make you think differently about God than he really is. Satan's selling you a different view of God, a harsh tyrant who just wants to crush you and destroy your life, that's not the God of the Bible, but Satan is able to deceive people. The remedy must be the scripture. Go again to the passages that talk about the attributes of God, is Exodus 34, where Moses says to God, “Now show me your glory,” and he puts him in a cleft of the rock and hides him, and the glory goes by and he pronounces these words, “The Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding and lovingkindness. Maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” Meditate on those words when you're depressed. Feed on those words. Lesson number four is that God is merciful. And whatever has brought you to the edge, God can forgive and restore and bring you back away from the edge. Some people think and I think it's probably true, is that Judas' biggest sin was despair that did not lead him to repent. It's that in the end, he didn't think God could or would forgive him, and that the best thing for him to do would be to kill himself. But Jesus said, “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, even those who speak a word against the Son of Man.” I think Jesus would have forgiven Judas if he had run and thrown himself on his mercy and called on his name, but he wouldn't do it. And so let's know the marvelous, infinite matchless grace of God. Lesson number five: fear what happens next. Fear what happens next, you don't know what happens from this world to the next. Are you so sure that you're in Christ as you're thinking these dark thoughts of self-murder? Are you really ready to die? Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing to you, but I'll tell you who to fear, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Can a True Christian Commit Suicide? But this brings us finally to the hardest question of all. Is it possible for a genuine Christian to commit suicide? Is it possible to go from suicide to heaven? The medieval Catholic church said no, it was an unforgivable sin. Suicide could not be forgiven, because they distinguished two different types of sins, mortal sins and venial sins, the only way you could be forgiven for a mortal sin was to do penance and confess to a priest and all that, there wasn't time for that, when you committed suicide, you're definitely in hell, no doubt about it. They think that they get this from 1 John 5, “There's a sin that leads to death, you shouldn't pray for that,” etcetera, mortal sin's unforgiven. But can you imagine the grief of those that are left behind if this were true? And I think it's going beyond what we have the right to say, it's going beyond what scripture gives us permission to say, as though we are the judges and we're able to say, “We know in this case, everybody who commits suicide goes to hell.” How do you know that? So, to say, “No, it is not possible to go from suicide to heaven,” is to make an absolute statement that logically leads in every case, you can go and be the messenger and saying, “Well, you know they're in hell. We know that with absolute certainty.” Well, I don't know that. But to say “yes” brings us to all kinds of thorny issues as well, doesn't it? Suicide is a paradox, very difficult. Is it possible to go from suicide to heaven? Yes, it's possible. Well, we are saying, “This is a genuine Christian, they're born again, their sins are forgiven, all of them, they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit will filter their temptations, will not allow them to be tempted beyond what they're able to bear, but with the temptation will make a way of escape so they can bear up under it.” It's hard to imagine how someone can be indwelt with the Spirit and kill themself. Very hard to understand that. But let me ask a question, what is the difference between that and all sins by Christians? Aren't we the weirdest things in the universe, we sinning Christians? We are. We are the weirdest thing there is in the universe. Everything else behaves just like it is, we are conflicted, deeply conflicted. We are indwelt by the Spirit and indwelt by sin, and they battle, Galatians 5, against each other so that we do not do what we want. In Romans 7, “The very thing we hate, we do.” It's insanity. So are we ready to say, “Yes, all forms of insanity but that one.” I don't think so. I think it is irrational for a Christian to sin, and I think it's irrational for a Christian to be depressed. I don't say it's irrational for a Christian to be sad. I think we should be sad, there are a lot of sad things. I think it's better though, that we be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. How about that? Sometimes sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. So in the midst of all of our sorrows as Christians, we still have the joy of the gospel, don't we? We still have the fact that we're going to heaven when we die, our sins are forgiven. We have friendship with God now. I love the hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” I love the starkness of the statement, “We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer.” I love that. Don't ever be discouraged, that means you just, you're depressed, you're down and you have nowhere to turn to, you always have somewhere to turn to, always. Christians have struggled with thoughts of suicide. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Christian and Hopeful are in doubting castle, Giant Despair beats them up every day and gives them the implements of their own demise, a knife, some poison, a rope, and is leading them to kill themselves, and only by finding the key of promise, the Word of God, that they're able to unlock the door and get out, and Giant Despair stop beating them up at last. Do you think Bunyan might have been writing out of his own discouragement and imprisonment? Tempted with thoughts of suicide? William Cowper, great Christian hymn writer of the 18th century, struggled with mental illness and suicide every day of his adult life. Michael Card wrote a song about suicide called “The Edge,” you could look it up and listen to it, it's very powerful. In that he says, “Before I ever come again to that dark place where I might make the choice for life to end.” Very few Christian song writers will write about that topic. Psalm 88 seems to be appropriate for that. Psalm 88 doesn't end on a high note. Psalm 88, very discouraging, very depressing, and at the very end, verse 18, “You have taken all of my companions and loved ones from me, darkness is my closest friend,” end of Psalm. But what that does is, it speaks to me that sometimes that's how the day feels. Live for the next day. The next day, his mercies are new every morning. Sun rises, he refreshes, he renews and you are restored. So I'll say one final thing and we'll be done. I believe there can sometimes be a physiological side to suicide as well. In 2 Corinthians 4:6, it says, “God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” That's regeneration, God speaks light into the darkness of a heart. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay.” Let me simplify. What's the treasure? Knowledge, the knowledge of God in Christ. We have this treasure in jars of clay. What's a jar of clay? Well, where do you keep your knowledge? Do you have your knowledge in your pinky? Do you have your knowledge in your foot? Is it in your knee perhaps? It's right in here, this is your jar of clay. And we were made out of the dust of the earth, amazingly. This is amazingly complicated clay, but the jar of clay image is a fragility that it can be broken. Cracked. So what about Alzheimer's or people with dementia? And all their lives, this woman, this man were sweet-tempered, pleasant and patient, and now they're maybe openly cursing or blaspheming? Don't recognize loved ones? What is going on there? Have they lost their salvation? No, their jar of clay has been cracked. God still knows who they are. And so for us to say it's impossible to go from suicide to heaven, underestimates how fragile that jar of clay can be. Sometimes the world, the flesh and the devil can overwhelm it, and darkness can come in waves and for his own purposes, God permits that darkness to latch on. So what comfort can we have for those that are left behind to take up the pieces? Turn to Christ, turn to the Scripture, turn to prayer, turn to the church. Don't face this alone. And what about if you're the one depressed and discouraged? What if you're asking, “Will God forgive me if I kill myself?” Do you realize what an odd question that is? How paradoxical? "Will the God who can't help me now welcome me into heaven?" That's weird. The God you wanna spend eternity with in heaven can help you right now. Turn to him and trust in him. Let's close in prayer and then we'll get ready for the Lord's Supper. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had in the Word. Thank you for the depth of the Word in dealing with a very painful subject. I pray that you bring comfort and consolation to any that have been touched and brought to great pain through this topic. I pray, Father, that you'd bring them the comfort and consolation of the gospel. And now as we turn our attention to the Lord's Supper, we pray that you pour out through your Spirit, the grace of God on all of us who have trusted in you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Deacons, if you would come, please.
The Puritan Thomas Brooks: 58 Sermons on This One Verse I can't tell you how excited I am to preach this message. This is something that God has worked in my heart. I preach today about holiness for the glory of God and for your happiness and your fruit. Some time in early 1662, a Puritan pastor named Thomas Brooks began a sermon series, a new series with these words or these thoughts. "If I were the fittest man in the world to preach a sermon to the whole world, gathered together in one congregation, and if I had some high mountain for my pulpit, from whence I might have a prospect of all the world in my view, and if I were furnished with a voice of brass, a voice as loud as the trumpet of the Archangel that all the world might hear me, I would choose to preach on no other text than Hebrews 12:14." "Wow," I thought as I read those words. Hebrews 12:14, "Pursue peace with all men and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." One text. This is an amazing statement. When you think about it, there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible. There are many verses that are far more famous than this one. In my opinion, there are other verses that capture the gospel a little more directly. I don't know that I would choose this one text, but this is what Thomas Brooks said. And what's even more amazing is that he proceeded to preach 58 sermons from this one verse. 58. It's in volume four of the collected works of Thomas Brooks, the entire volume, 400 little font pages, single spaced. 400. 58 sermons is over 13 months of preaching on one verse. Now, I'm not intending to nail you in one place for the next 13 months. You may be glad to hear that. Maybe you'd want to see if I could actually pull it off. I don't think I could, but the question that's in front of us is, why did this godly man, this veteran preacher, this pastor, think it worthwhile? What did he see in this one verse? What's here that he thought was worth 400 pages and 58 sermons? What can we learn from this text? What does this text say to our souls today? That's the business in front of us. Brooks in his sermon immediately began to answer some of those questions by zeroing in on the salvation of souls. This one verse, being an urgent trumpet call to all who heard him, to make sure that you have salvation, genuine salvation in Jesus Christ. That you are not self-deceived, that you haven't been deceived by the Devil concerning this. Brooks poured out like molten lava his convictions about this. As you read it your heart is convicted and strengthened. He said this, "The salvation of souls is that which should be first and foremost in a minister's eye and that which should lie closest to a minister's heart. O, beloved friends, our dear Lord Jesus was infinitely tender of souls. He left his father's bosom for souls. He trod the wine press of the wrath of God Almighty for souls. He prayed for souls, he sweated for souls, he bled out his heart's blood for souls. He made himself an offering for souls. And what an overwhelming encouragement this should be to all faithful messengers to plead for souls, to mourn for souls, to study for souls and in preaching to spend and be spent for the salvation of souls." So that's his answer why he thought it was worthwhile to zero in on Hebrews 12:14. 58 sermons. For us, it's just this one morning, this morning. To look at it and to have it speak to us, to be convicted by it, to look after the health of our souls, to look horizontally at others for the health of their souls, to be concerned for that. I. What Is Commanded? Now, what is commanded in this one verse? Well, look at the words again. The best translation for the first is pursue, we talked about this last week. "Pursue peace with all men and the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." The word pursue means to chase after something, to hunt it down as a huntsman would his quarry or as a persecutor would the one they're seeking to persecute, frequently translated persecute here, but it's a total focus of the mind and heart on chasing something and going after something. So life focus, pursue it diligently with everything you have. Pursue what? Well, two things in the text. "Peace with all," it says, "and the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." Now, we dealt with peace with all last week. I'm not going to say a word about it this morning. Instead I want to just focus on the rest of it and just connect the word pursue to the rest. Pursue, diligently seek after, chase or hunt down the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And so we have this idea of pursuing a holiness. What is that holiness, that's going to be very much the message of this sermon. What is the holiness the author has in mind here, and what does it mean without which no one will see the Lord? And this is my simple doctrine from this one verse, there is a personal holiness that comes as a result of diligent effort, diligent striving and pursuit, diligent labor. There is a personal holiness that comes from sincere diligent labor that is absolutely required in order to spend eternity with God in heaven. That's the doctrine. Simply put, there's a holiness you strive for and if you don't have it, you're not going to heaven. II. What Is the Holiness We Must Pursue? So what is this holiness that we must pursue? Well, first, let's talk about what it is not. The holiness that we must pursue is not the legal holiness that Adam had in the Garden of Eden, by this I mean the holiness that comes from perfectly obeying all of God's commands. This is the legal righteousness that Adam had in the Garden of Eden before he fell. But since he fell, not a single one of his descendants has had it. All of us sinned in Adam, all of us fell in him. Of course, Christ being excepted, who is without sin in every way. But we are sons and daughters of Adam, and we have no legal holiness with which we can stand before God. As it is written, "There is no one righteous. Not even one." Neither is it the imaginary holiness that secular people think they have that they think will be enough on Judgment Day, when they say, "I'm basically a good person." This kind of holiness. It's not that imaginary holiness, that's based on some arbitrary standard of morality that they mostly keep. Based on their moral achievements, their hard work, their diligence, their frugality, their generosity to the poor, the few hours they gave to the YMCA last summer, it's not based on any of those things. They do not realize the truth of the situation. Proverbs 30 in verse 12, "There are those who are pure in their own eyes, and yet are not cleaned of their filth." How can that be? But it's true, there are some people that are pure in their own eyes, and yet they are filthy in the sight of God. Revelation 3:17, speaking to church people, "You say, 'I am rich, I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked." Neither is it that outward visible external sanctity of life, free from scandalous vices, filled with religious duties and responsibilities, that characterize frankly, genuinely holy people, such as Job and Zechariah and Elizabeth, so it's said of them that they are blameless in their generation, etcetera. And the apostles who preached to the Thessalonians say, "You can testify how holy blameless we were among you who believe." So it's an outward invisible holiness. I'm going to argue that it's going to be part of that, but that's not enough, it's not sufficient. Because think of the Scribes and Pharisees that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 23, "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like white-washed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside you appear to men as righteous, but inside you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness." Now, that's not what Hebrews 12:14 is talking about, that's not the holiness we have to pursue. Neither is it referring to the set-apartness of the people of God, as they are set apart for his prized possession. That is something that God did with the Jews. It is something he does with the church, it is a beautiful thing, it is a wonderful thing, but that's not what it's talking about here. In Exodus 19, "Out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession, although the whole Earth is mine, you will be for me, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," set apart under God. Think about how in the Old Covenant, the words "holy to the Lord" are vital to the sacrificial system. Many things, it was even written on those elements, this or that was holy to the Lord. Think about the sacred incense, the holy incense, the recipe for which is in Exodus 30. You can find out what the ingredients are, you can mix them together, you can grind them into a fine powder. But if you did that as a Jew in the Old Covenant you'd be sinning greatly. Because that incense was to be holy to the Lord, it was set apart for his own personal possession, it wasn't to be used in a common way. That is not what this verse is talking about, although that certainly comes and it's part of God's sovereign action on the church, on individuals, but that's not what this verse is referring to. And this is the hardest one of all, but if I can say it directly, this is not referring to the imputed righteousness of Christ that comes by faith in Jesus. It's not referring to that. That imputed righteousness is the centerpiece of the Gospel. It is justification righteousness, it's yours by simple faith in Jesus. The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, the righteousness that is from faith to faith. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." That is absolute perfect holiness, that is perfect righteousness, that is yours by simple faith in Jesus. Without this holiness, the holiness of imputed righteousness, you have no hope of Heaven at all. But it's not the holiness referred to in this verse. Now, I say without that holiness this holiness will never happen. First, there must be justification holiness, then there must be sanctification holiness, and that's what this verse is talking about. The imputed righteousness of Christ does not come by labor or effort or striving or chasing or pursuing or any of the verbs that you could use to translate this Greek verb in 12:14. No, as a matter of fact, we're told in Romans 4:3, "What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." And it says a few verses later, "However, to the man who does not work, but trusts God… his faith is credited to him as righteousness." There's no working, no striving, no effort, nothing, just simple faith in Jesus. But that's not what the author is talking about here. Because he says, it's a holiness we must pursue, it's a holiness we must chase and hunt down and make our quarry, and we the huntsman the rest of our lives chasing after this holiness. That's what the author is talking about. So what is it? Well, it's an inherent internal qualitative holiness, something that actually describes you. And it comes in two parts, one from God and one from yourself. From God it consists in the infusing of holy principles, holy graces by the indwelling Holy Spirit of God, making the new heart filled with new desires, new loves, new hatreds, something that the Spirit works in us, all of these workings are holy. And from that comes a holy use of those new principles, a pattern of holy lifestyle, holy living, holy walking, as the scripture says, walking as he walks, walking in the light because the Lord is in the light, not walking in darkness, that's what we're talking about. A holy lifestyle, as defined by the Word of God, it is ultimately Christ-likeness. It's becoming actually in fact like Jesus, whereas justification righteousness, that is just credited to you. It's written in your bank account, your heavenly bank account is how God sees you with his eyes. But it's not how you actually are, how you actually behave. No, that comes immediately after justification with sanctification, that growing. This is a holiness we are to chase after and hunt down the rest of our lives. I think it's very much the issue of Hebrews 12:1. You're still in the chapter, if you look up at the beginning, it says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith..." Same thing, 12:1 and 12:14 are teaching the exact same thing. All that's happening in 12:14 is saying, "If you're not running that race, you're not going to heaven." That's what it's saying. III. What Is At Stake? So what's at stake? By the way, this is not perfection either. You're never going to fully attain it. You'll be chasing it down the rest of your life. And I also want you to say, "Thanks be to God, you're not going to stand before God on the basis of your own holiness. Even as a Christian, it's not enough. You've never had a single hour of holiness that's holy enough for heaven. I'm not trying to be insulting, friends, I'm just telling you the truth. There's not been a single hour, in which your motives have been pure, you've lived only for the glory of God, you've perfectly obeyed all of his commands and you've stayed away from all of his prohibitions, and you've just... I don't think you've had one perfect hour. If you think you have then you had one holy hour. But what about the rest of your life? The fact of the matter is, our holiness is insufficient for heaven. Only Christ's perfect holiness is enough for heaven. Please don't misunderstand. You're not going to go to heaven based on this holiness you're chasing and hunting down. All we're saying is, if you're not hunting it down, if you're not chasing it, if you're not growing in holiness, you're not going to heaven, that's all I'm saying. I'm describing the kind of life that leads to heaven. So that you can be sure you're living that kind of life, so you don't go to hell, rather than heaven. That's what's at stake here. Why do I say that? Because of what the verse says, "Pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord." Now, what does that mean? Without which no one will see the Lord, what does it mean to see the Lord? Well, I think this is nothing less than spending eternity in the presence of God, looking on the face of God, seeing him. Seeing him in his glory, seeing him in his majesty. Seeing him high and lifted up on his throne, seeing the radiance of his glory streaming down, God who dwells in unapproachable light streaming into your eyes, seeing that glory. It's described in Revelation 22:3-4, "The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve Him. They will see his face. And his name will be on their foreheads." That should fill you with a holy longing to see the face of God. It's the very thing Jesus prayed for in John 17:24, "Father, I want those whom you have given me, to be with me where I am and to see my glory. The glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world." It is the seeing of God that's implied or spoken of in 1 Corinthians 13:12, "Now, we see, but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face-to-face. Now, we know in part, then we show know fully even as we have been fully known." This is the very thing that filled Job with a yearning desire in the midst of his afflictions. In Job 19, he said, "After my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes, I and not another. How my heart yearns within me." It's the very thing that Moses asked of God up on that holy mountain, after he had interceded successfully for Israel that God would not destroy them in his holy zeal for his own name, and he interceded, he said this, "Now, show me your glory." God says, "I'll cause all of my goodness to pass in front of you, and I'll proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. But you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." But it's what Moses wanted. God, I want to see your face, I want to see your glory. It's the very thing that will fill our hearts with eternal bliss, eternal happiness. The sight will be so awesome, it will be so incredible, so transforming that you'll be instantaneously made like Jesus just by seeing him. " Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." That's the third final stage, that's glorification, when you see him instantaneous you will be transformed and made like Jesus in all respects, you will be holy and perfect completely. That's the great hope of the Gospel. And what does it? In 1 John 3:2, it's seeing Jesus as he really is, not by faith anymore, but face-to-face. It will be so powerful a vision that you will be instantaneously transformed forever. But look at the next verse, in your mind, listen to it. Everyone, 1 John 3:3, "Everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifiers himself as he is pure." That's what Hebrews 12:14 is all about. Do you see it? The ones who hope to go to heaven are purifying themselves now, in preparation for it. If that's not going on, then you're not going there, see, or you have no assurance that you've begun your salvation journey, put it that way. It's a consistent teaching, to see the Lord, then, means to go back to the source of all the happiness you've ever experienced in your life. To trace it back. Have you ever had that? You've had some happy moment. Think about these young parents that stood in front of us and they're holding their little babies, and already these little sons and daughters have made them really, really happy. But oh, happy mothers and happy fathers, you ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to happiness. Trace that happiness back to its source, the source is God himself. Go back to the source of the river, of all the happiness you've ever had in your life, it's God himself. C. S. Lewis, in his book, "Till We Have Faces" captures this idea, one of the characters says to another about it, he said this, "It was when I was happiest that I actually longed the most. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to reach the mountain, to find the place where all this beauty comes from. My country, my home and native land, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing? All that longing, the longing for a home? For indeed now, it feels not like going, but actually more like going back." It's a longing for heaven. It's in the heart of all true genuine Christians. But what this verse says is that without holiness, you'll never see God's face. And notice what it says. What does it mean that no one? It means it doesn't matter who you are, there will be no exceptions to this. It doesn't matter your financial situation, rich or poor. It doesn't matter your station in life, you might be master, you might be servant, you might be potentate, you might be subject, doesn't make a difference. IV. Why Is It True that This Holiness is Required for Heaven? You might be the most average person on the earth, does not matter. Without this holiness, no one will see the Lord. It's true of everyone. Why is this the case? Why? Why such a strong statement? Well, it has to do with the nature of God himself, it has to do with who he is. "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were Seraphs," that means "burning ones," "each with six wings. With two wings they cover their faces, and with two they cover their feet, and with two they were flying, and they were calling to one another, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory.'" Now, these Seraphim, as they're calling to one another, they just can't stop talking about the holiness of God, and it's very much linked to his glory. And God called it on the mountain with Moses his goodness, it all flows together, the perfect holiness of God. It has to do with the essence of God himself, he is holy and he cannot dwell with any wickedness. "God is light, and in him, there's no darkness at all. And if we claim to walk with him, and yet live in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from every sin." You see, you don't have to be sinless and perfect on this earth to be walking in the light, isn't that good news? I mean, you may think 1 John is teaching perfectionism, I'm not perfect, what can I do? It isn't teaching perfectionism. You can walk in the light, and still need to be constantly cleansed by the blood of Jesus, and you do. But if you're walking in darkness, you're lying to yourself. That's what this text is teaching. Because of the nature of God, because of what God has done in the past, how one rebellion kicked Satan and all of his angels, the demons, out of heaven. How one sin by Adam and Eve, God evicted them from the Garden of Eden. How one sin by Akin caused the Jews to fall into defeat in front of their enemies on the other side of the Jordan. How one sin by Ananias and Sapphira, God evicted them from life. God is holy, he's communicated this very plainly, and he's made these kinds of assertions. God has described heaven, he says in Isaiah 57:15, "This is what the high and lofty one says, he who lives forever and whose name is holy, 'I live in a high and a holy place.'" Stop right there. I mean, that just says it to me. God's telling us what kind of place he lives in, and he lives in a high and holy place, "but also..." Oh, those are sweet words, aren't they? "I live with some people there, "also with him who is humble and contrite in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and revive the heart of the contrite." So those that are broken-hearted and those that are faith-filled and flee to Jesus, he saves them, imputes righteousness to them, and he lives with them in a high and holy place. But it is a high and holy place. And so therefore he tells us plainly in various warning passages, what kind of people will not inherit the Kingdom of God. He's not saying it out of hatefulness, no, out of love and mercy he tells us. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified." You see, that's what God does, he saves you out of the life. He sanctifies you, he makes you different. Again, Galatians 5:19-21, "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious, sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like.I warn you as I did before, that people who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God." And why also? Because of the essence of the unholy person, what is he or she really like? Well, Colossians 1:21 says, "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds as demonstrated by your evil behavior." There's a link between the evil behavior and the mind, and God will not dwell with people who are enemies in their minds to him, he's not going to dwell with them. Now, the sweetness of the Gospel is he says, "Once you were like that, now you have been transformed by the Gospel." Isn't that glorious? That's what you used to be. V. How Does This Relate to Justification by Faith Alone? So you may ask, "How does this relate to justification by faith alone?" I feel like I've already explained that, but maybe we just can't explain it enough. We need to really understand salvation. It's simple enough, but it still takes study, it takes God opening your heart and mind. Perfect righteousness is a gift of God, not by works. This righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ, it's a gift, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace." At justification, guilty sinners like us are made righteous positionally in the sight of God, and in that righteousness, we go to heaven. It's the imputed righteousness of Christ. But at that exact same time he transforms our hearts, regeneration, makes us new creations, gives us the indwelling Holy Spirit, and then commands us to run in the path of his commands, for he's set our hearts free, tells us to live a holy life. That's how they relate. So you can ask the question, "If we are perfectly righteous in God's sight by faith, apart from works, how can you teach that there is a holiness that I must strive for, and that if I don't have it, I'm not going to heaven?" Well, I can teach it, because that's what the text says. Do you see it? I hope you see it at this point, it's what the text says, but there are other answers. It's what James 2 says. It says, "What good is it, my brothers, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?" Can such a faith save him? Clearly, the answer is no, a faith without holy deeds is dead, he says, it's dead. Faith apart from deeds is dead. Answer number three. The transformation of salvation results in a changed life, every time, not some of the time, every time. So much so that when Zacchaeus was transformed by the Gospel and pledged to change his life, Jesus said, "Today, salvation is come to this house." You remember the story? Zacchaeus, a tax collector, a wicked man living for money, an idolater, an enemy to his own countrymen, a man short of stature, couldn't see Jesus, climbs up in a tree. You guys know the children's story. And he sees Jesus and Jesus goes right to the tree where he's sitting, saying, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately, for I must stay at your house today." And so they go. Alright, but what happens after that? That's what I'm interested in. Afterwards, Zacchaeus stands up and says, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." Now, what did Jesus say? "Today, salvation has come to this house, for this man too is a son of Abraham." And then he said, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." Luke 19:10. So save means, save into a transformed life; without that transformed life you haven't been saved, does that make sense? Answer number four, many verses in the New Testament teach the striving after holiness and righteousness that this same verse teaches, it's not just one verse here. For example, 1 Timothy 6:11-12, "But you man of God flee from all this and pursue righteousness." Wow, he's already a man of God, he's already a pastor, and Paul is commanding him to flee wickedness, and pursue, does that sound familiar? Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love and endurance and gentleness, "Fight the good fight of faith, take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called." That's exactly what we're teaching here. Run and go get it, Timothy, go get your eternal life. Pursue it, run it, chase it down, you man of God. See, justification and sanctification, they go together. Romans 6 teaches it, "Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to wickedness and ever increasing ungodliness, so now offer yourselves to God and the parts of your body as instruments to ever-increasing righteousness." Or it says, "Leading to holiness." It's teaching the same thing. And so justification inevitably leads to sanctification, which inevitably leads to glorification, that's it. Everyone who is justified will be, is sanctified, and everyone who is being sanctified in that way will be glorified. No one is lost, to God be the glory. And so I just want to say to you if you are here today, and you don't know that you've been justified, if you're afraid that your sins will sink you down to hell, you've never come to the cross in justifying faith, can I urge you to flee the wrath to come. Can I urge you to come by simple faith in Jesus and take hold of Christ, take hold of Jesus, if you see that there is none of this holiness in your life, then flee to Christ, and he will save you. You don't need to do anything, as I've said five times in the sermon, just trust in him and his righteousness will be given you as a gift. VI. How May We Be Sure We Have This Holiness? Now, how may we be sure that we have this holiness? By the way, in that 400-page book, I'm about at page 30 right now. "It's Mother's Day, Pastor, we have lunch reservations." I know you probably do. If you've been here any length of time, I hope you didn't make them for 12:30. You just must know. But how can we be sure? Brooks gives 16 answers to that; I'm going to cut it down to 12 and I'm going to give you each one in about 45 seconds, each one. How do you know that this kind of holiness is in you? Deep Delight and Admiration of the Holiness of God First, you have a deep delight in the holiness of God, it's not just his love, or his mercy, or his power, or his omniscience that interests you or attracts you, you are actually attracted to the holiness of God, it's enticing to you to be with such a holy being. You want to be in the light, as he is in the light. Having a Holiness That Spreads to All Areas of Life Secondly, you have a holiness that spreads over all areas of your life, there's not a pocket, or a corner, or a darkness in your life that you don't want Jesus invading. There are no dark corners, there are no dark basements, there are no dark closets. You've basically thrown open the doors of your life, and said, "Lord, make it all light." I want it all to flow, I want the aroma of holiness in every room of the house, it pervades everything. Setting Highest Esteem on Holy Things Thirdly, there is inside you a constant yearning to be holier than you are. It's a relentless yearning. You may sin, you know you do sin, but you are so hungry and thirsty for holiness, you want to be free from sin, it would be the deepest desire of your life to no longer sin, to never sin again. Matthew and I were talking right before worship, and I said to him, I was just saying, "Wouldn't it be incredible to have one week free from sin? In which, just as two men, as husbands and fathers, we didn't sin at all?" And our wives are going to say, "Boy, I could get used to this. Wow, what a husband, what a father." And then to go back, to what it was before, maybe that's why God doesn't do it, but at any rate, the delight you have is a thought, a hungering and a thirsting that someday you will be righteous. You'll be pure in heart, it's in you, you're yearning for it, even though you may not be able to achieve it. And so, there's a constant drive. You never say holiness enough. That's enough holiness, you never would say it. Like Paul in Philippians 3, forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, you press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called you heavenward in Christ Jesus. And that is perfection, that's what you want, every day you want perfection in Jesus. And you just strive after it. That's the pursuing we're talking about. Constantly Yearning to be Holier Still Fourth, you have a true hatred for all sin and wickedness, you just hate it. All sins are equally detestable. Jesus loved righteousness and hated wickedness, you do to. You love righteousness and you hate wickedness. And three specific types of sins in particular that I'm mentioning here. Secret sins, those secret things that you struggle with, or you dally with, or you play with, or whatever. Those secret patterns of sin in your life, you hate them. And you would like them out. Little sins, so to speak. There are some sins that are greater than others, we know that. But the little sins, the little lies, the little gossip, the little slander, the little complaining habit you have, the irritability. I just am irritable before I have my coffee in the morning, whatever it is. How we make excuses for our sins, those little sins. You hate them, you'd like them out of your life. And then there's habitual sins, the ones that you're tempted to stick a white flag and say, "I just can't do anything about this, it's going to be with me the rest of my life." Now, this holiness is, I'm going to fight sin wherever I see it in my life, wherever. I'm at war with sin. True Hatred for All Ungodliness and Wickedness: All Sins Are Equally Detestable And then fifth, I'm deeply grieved and troubled by my sins. I don't take it lightly, I don't take it as a small thing. It really grieves me. As David said in Psalm 38:18, "I confess my iniquity, I am troubled by my sin, it bothers me that I sin." 2 Corinthians 7:10, "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret." You know what that means? The road of salvation is filled with godly sorrow. If you're going to be continually repenting, then you're going to be continually grieving over sin. Now, you're also going to be continually rejoicing, sorrowful yet always rejoicing. All those sins are forgiven, someday you'll be free from them, you have the power to defeat all of them. There's a joy in all of that. But still there's a grief that you hate your sins, and they cause you grief. Deeply Grieved and Troubled by Their Own Unholiness... Not Merely the Consequences of Sin Sixthly, you are attracted to, and delighted with holy duties. They're not a burden to you, it's not a burden to come to church. It's not a burden to listen to a sermon, it's not a burden to study scripture. It's not a burden to have a good prayer time. These things are a holy delight to you, you're attracted to them, it's not a burden to be with the family of God, you enjoy being with the people of God. Attracted to and Delighted in Holy Duties: Prayer, Bible, Worship, Witnessing Seventh, you labor to make other people holy, it matters to you whether other people are holy or not. And so, you exert effort, you pray for the holiness of others, you witness to other people who are not saved, so that they can be holy too. Laboring to Make Other People Holy And connected with that, eighth, is other people's unholiness causes you grief. It's a misery to you to see the wickedness of the world, it's a misery to you, like Lot, that righteous man who is tormented, it says, in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. Now, I might have given him some advice, "Why don't you move out of Sodom? Just a thought." Would have been good advice. He didn't take any; it damaged, in some ways destroyed his family. But he, 2 Peter 2 tells us, was a righteous man, and he was tormented. As the Psalmist says in Psalm 119, that rivers of tears flow down his eyes because God’s law is not obeyed. Conformed to the holiness of Christ Ninth, this holiness is conformable to Christ. Conformed to Christ, it's a Christ-likeness. We were predestined to be conformed to his image, and so therefore it is Christ-likeness, the Holy Spirit of Christ is in us. And so it's more than just what would Jesus do? It's just a yearning to be like Christ, to have the mind of Christ, to have the heart of Christ, to have the holy lifestyle of Christ. Delighted in the Word of God, Especially in its Holiness and Purity Tenth, it's delight in God's word, especially in the holiness and purity of the word, it's the word of God, and you yearn for it, you feed for it. Like newborn babies, you crave the nourishing milk of the word, you feed on it and it delights you. God's word is all of your delight. Regularly Making God’s Glory the Ultimate End of All the Person Does Eleventh, regularly making God's glory the ultimate aim of all you do, you do what you do that God may be glorified, that his attributes may be put on display. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you do it all for the glory of God. The glory of God is the overriding desire of your heart. Speaking a Holy Language; A Mouth Filled With Holy Things And then twelfth and final from my list, you speak a holy language. You just talk holy things, you speak the language of Zion, friends, you speak the language of the heavenly Jerusalem, you talk about Jesus, you talk about the scripture, you talk about what you've learned in your quiet time. You talk about how God has saved you. Jesus said, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him. The evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him." And so you just are filled with holy thoughts and actions and all of that, and you just speak it, it just flows out. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. James tells us only perfect people are never at fault in what they say, but still there's just a holy language here. VII. How Must We Make the Most of This Verse? Alright, so how must we make the most of this verse? Well, come to Christ, come to Christ and come to Christ again and again, I've already pleaded with you who are lost right now. You've come here today by the providence of God, maybe to see a family member dedicated. Maybe it's you that needs to be dedicated today. Maybe you need to come to Christ and find full forgiveness of sins. Jesus is a merciful Savior. His blood is shed for sinners like you and me. We're no different, we're the same. Flee to Christ. But for those of you who are claiming to be Christians, your claim may be a valid one. It's good to have a valid claim to be a Christian, but I'm just urging you, examine yourself, to see if you're in the faith, "test yourself," 2 Corinthians 13. This is the test, this is it, this is the test you're supposed to use, the holiness test. Ask this simple question, 'Am I holy? Am I holy?'" Give careful attention to the sin areas of your life. Are you at war with these sins, are you fighting them? How is it going? Are you sexually pure? Are you careful what you look at on the internet? Are you careful what you're doing, what comes into your eyes, what are you filling your minds with? What about your speech purity, are you a gossip, are you slandering, are you depressing to be around Because you complain all the time? Are you arguing, are you an arguer, fighter? These are sins, put them to death, kill them. What about your relationships? Are you harboring bitterness, unforgiveness, are you unkind to people? Are you holding back fellowship with others because of something they said or did? Are you in the thralls of bitterness? Fight it, put these sins to death. Are you ensnared by some kind of lawful pleasure that's become an addiction for you now? Materialism, gluttony, drinking, hobbies, money. I don't know what. Be holy. Focus on Christ above all else, apart from Jesus there is no holiness, he has become for us justification and sanctification. You won't get holy apart from Jesus, he is the vine and you are the branch in the holiness plant, the holiness grapevine. As soon as you're justified, you got engrafted into him, and the life-giving sap of holiness began flowing through you, abide in him, abide in Jesus, moment by moment focus on Jesus. You can't remember this list of 12 things. Okay, don't. Focus on Jesus, trust in Jesus. Zero in on him and say, "Jesus, make me holy. Jesus, make me holy. I want to walk with you. I'm a branch, you're the vine, just flow through me." And my final words to you is the delight, the delight of all this. I could preach this in a way that would just be scathing and crushing and convicting. I could flay your souls with it, and mine too. I'd be no different. All of us sin every day, we stumble in many ways. My desire is to give you delight in Jesus. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. We can now, the holier we are, by faith, turn our eyes upon Jesus, and see him. Look full in his wonderful face. You'll see more by faith now of Christ, and you'll be happier and happier. The things that are afflicting you are your sins. If you'll defensively put them to death, and be strong in this area, you will be happy and fruitful in Christ. So yesterday, I was mowing the lawn. And I was listening to my ear buds and I had my headphones on, and I'm listening to Christian worship, and I was thinking about this sermon. And the Lord opened my heart and poured out his grace in my heart, and said, "You're going to make some of my people really happy tomorrow. Go do it." So, be happy by being holy. Fight for joy, fight for fruit, be a holy people. Close with me in prayer.
Claims of ultimate ends, like happiness or well-being, are impossible, says Hobbes. In this life, the fact that you are still acting shows that you have not achieved any ultimate end. Does action really express dissatisfaction? You can act to keep something happening, rather than to try to change things.An ultimate end is not praxeologically impossible. Is it required? Yes. There has to be some final end. There is a minimum threshold of things worth striving for. Above that level, you are happy. Once there, higher levels can make you happier. We are committed to having some overarching goals – but not impossible ones, nor ones too easy.The second of ten lectures from the Foundations of Libertarian Ethics seminar with Roderick T. Long.
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