Podcasts about verse three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Twenty and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Nineteen and Verse Three

God doesn't overburden us or cause us spiritual anxiety…man does that! The order of verse 3 promises that the Lord will RESTORE my soul, then lead me in the RIGHT path from a place of rest and strength. -----Official WebsiteInstagramTwitterFacebook

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Eighteen and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Seventeen and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Sixteen and Verse Three

Pastoral Care Pastor Jolene Veenstra will present a message titled “Return to Me”. She will be looking at the book of Zechariah, Chapter One, Verse Three.When I was younger I first thought repentance was feeling badly for what you've done and saying you're sorry. Then I learned in church that it is a 180* march away from what you are doing in the opposite direction. It's only in seminary that I learned what I now see as the most important part of repentance. Repentance is an embrace.

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Fifteen and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Fourteen and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Thirteen and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Twelve and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Eleven and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Ten and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Nine and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Eight and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Seven and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Six and Verse Three

Rev. Dhammabodhi offers Buddhist chanting. https://muktivihara.org/three-refuges-and-five-precepts-liturgy/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/downwiththedharma/message

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Five and Verse Three

In this episode, John Bruna, the spiritual director of the Way of Compassion Dharma Center, offers commentary and guidance on the third verse of the Eight Verses of Mind Training.In all actions I will observe my mind And the moment a disturbing emotion arisesEndangering myself and othersI will firmly confront and avert it.John offers practical methods and mind-training techniques to put this verse into practice in our daily lives. This episode was recorded on April 26th, 2023.Welcome to the Way of Compassion Dharma Center Podcast. Located in Carbondale, Colorado, the Way of Compassion Dharma center's primary objective is to provide programs of Buddhist studies and practices that are practical, accessible, and meet the needs of the communities we serve.  As a traditional Buddhist center, all of our teachings are offered freely. If you would like to make a donation to support the center, please visit www.wocdc.org.  May you flourish in your practice and may all beings swiftly be free of suffering.

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Four and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter Three and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of John Chapter One and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of Micah Chapter Seven and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of Micah Chapter Six and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of Micah Chapter Four and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of Micah Chapter Three and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of Micah Chapter Two and Verse Three

Verse by verse study through the book of Micah Chapter One and Verse Three

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.God, first of all, we just thank you for the kids of Mosaic, and just what a tremendous blessing that they are. God, we pray for them, we pray for their families. We pray that You would bless the kids' summer nights this year and everybody that's working so hard to put that together. Lord, we thank You for all the brothers and sisters in Christ that are not only working on that, but are down in Mini Mosaic every week just being a blessing and service to our children. God, we thank You for these kids, but we thank You also that You have made us Your kids, that You have made us Your heavenly father through Your son, Jesus Christ. You have adopted us into Your family. God, I just pray that You would help us to grasp what good news that truly is for us, that our salvation is not contingent upon anything that we have done or need to do, but fully upon what You have done for us in Christ.And that Lord, just as we did nothing to contribute to our conception or physical birth, we can do nothing to save ourselves, but it is Your spirit alone who regenerates hearts and causes us to be born again. We enter Your household by sheer grace through faith in Your son Jesus Christ and we thank You for this amazing grace. We pray also Lord, that Your grace taught us would not be in vain, that You have done a great work for us and we pray now that You do a great work in us, so that by the power of your Holy Spirit, You could do a great work through us for the sake of Your mission, Your kingdom, and Your glory. Lord, we thank You for this time. We pray that You just speak to us today through this amazing passage of scripture that we have. We pray all this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.All right. Well, today is an exciting day. I think first of all summer is officially here and so you might see me breaking a sweat up here today, but that's not really why I'm excited. I'm excited because we finally have made our way to Romans Chapter Eight. If you were here at the beginning of the series of Romans, we talked about how the Bible, holy scripture, is without comparison, the most important, the most influential book in human history. Nothing else even comes close. You cannot begin to understand the world as it is today if you have not read the Bible. But within the Bible, we talked about how the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans, is arguably most influential letter within the most influential book.Today, as we come to Romans Chapter Eight, if you are familiar with the Book of Romans, you know that within the Book of Romans, this is a halfway point, it's the summit, it's the peak, it is the crowning jewel of Paul's letter. It is arguably the most influential chapter, within the most influential letter, within the most influential book, that has ever been written. This chapter has been called the inner sanctuary within the cathedral of the Christian faith.Have you ever had a really exciting story to tell, and you just can't wait to get to the point of it, but you know that you can't do that because if you just jumped straight to the point that the people that you're telling this to, they're not going to grasp the full weightiness of just how great of a point that you're trying to make? A few weeks ago, my son Owen is 10 years old, he just finished up the baseball season this past week. And a few weeks ago during baseball, Owen got a base hit. That's the point of the story. But if that's all I tell you, you haven't even begun to grasp the point.And so let me set this up. A few weeks ago, Owen's team began the playoffs. It's a double elimination tournament and they lost their first game. What that meant is they went into the loser's bracket and if they lost one more time, their season would be over. And so in the second game of the playoffs, they're losing the entire game. It's the bottom of the last inning, there are two outs, but there are runners on second and third. The team had been down the whole game. They made a little bit of a comeback in the last inning, but victory was just within grasp, but not quite there, and Owen is up to bat and he has three balls and two strikes, full count. This next pitch is going to determine everything. If he strikes out, the inning is over, the game is over, the season is over, they finish last place and he becomes that poor kid that struck out in the last inning and blew the game for everyone. The pressure was insane.Now, within that context, you understand the weightiness, the gravity of my words, when I say Owen got a base hit and he hit in, drove in the winning runs to win that game. Actually his team, after that, they came back and they made their way all the way up to the championship game and they beat the defending team in the first game 26 to seven, and then they lost the second game, which ruins the story. But you get the point. You can't just jump straight to the point, sometimes you need some context. And what Paul has been doing in his letter to the Romans is you can sense his excitement as he gets to Romans Chapter Eight, as he gets to the big idea, to the big point, but he's taken his time for the last seven chapters setting up the context so that we can really feel how great, how good, this good news really is.In the first couple of chapters, he presents, he lays out the human problem that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and that the wages of sin is death. He builds this argument, this case that proves that we all actually know that. Deep down in our hearts and our souls we know that we are not as we ought to be, and that we are deserving of judgment.Then for a couple chapters, he presents the divine solution, that even though we have all sinned and that the wages of sin is death, that we can be justified freely by grace through Jesus Christ, because Christ has made propitiation for our sins on the cross. But then right as he gets there, he takes this unexpected detour, and for a couple of chapters Paul begins to answer the objections that he is anticipating from his critics. He does this in order to show definitively how bad our problem really is. That it's not just that we're sinful, it's that we are sinful beyond all measure, and that even something as good and perfect and holy as the law of God, this is Romans Chapter Seven, even the law is powerless to save us. The law cannot make us good. It can show us what is good, but all it can really do for us is show us how far from good we really are.Paul brings us back down deep into the pit, right up to the brink of utter hopelessness and despair. At the end of Romans Chapter Seven, he just says, "Wretched man that I am. Who can deliver me from this body of death?" What hope could we possibly have to overcome the presence and the power and the penalty of our sin, of our depravity, that we are all guilty, we are all without excuse, we have no defense, we are not worthy of anything but judgment, and judgment is coming and deep down we all know it.Then all of a sudden in Romans Chapter Seven, Verse 25, Paul makes this sudden shift, and it's like in a symphony, he begins this crescendo in verse 25 and he says, "But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and then he launches into Chapter Eight of our text today with this triumphant proclamation that, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." How can he say that? That's what we're going to be looking at in our text today.If you would please look at Romans Chapter Eight, we're going to be looking at verses one through four together this morning. This is Romans Eight and beginning in Verse One. The apostle Paul says this, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done, with the law, weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit." This is the reading of God's holy word for us today.As we look at this text, I have three questions that I want you to ask yourself this morning. First of all, what has God done for you? Do you know what God has done for you? Second, what is God doing in you? And then thirdly, what could God do through you? The first question that we need to ask, it's not what must we do for God in order to justify ourselves or be saved? It's what has God done for us? We all know this, but this is what sets Christianity apart from every other worldview, every other philosophy, every other religion, is this idea of grace.Going back to the beginning of Romans, Paul begins Romans Chapter One, and he tells us that, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." This is good news, in a strange way. It's bad news for us. It's good news because what this means is that God is good and because God is good, God is just, and in order for God to be just, then He must condemn sin. But now that's bad news for us because we are sinners.Why is Paul so excited in Romans Chapter Eight? Well, we get a clue to that a little bit later on when he gets to Romans Chapter Three. He says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith." And why did He do that? He says, "This was to show God's righteousness," because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just, and the justifier of those, of the one who has faith in Jesus.This is the miracle of the gospel, that through Christ God is both just and justifier, that God upholds His justice by properly condemning sin on the cross, proving Himself to be just, but He also in upholding His justice is upholding His mercy as well, by taking that condemnation upon Himself, proving to also be the justifier of those who have faith in Christ. And this is what God has done for us. And the question is why would God do that? Why would He sacrifice so much to justify us who are so unworthy?1 John Four, the Apostle John in Verse Nine, says, "In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His own Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."What is it that makes you a Christian? Are you a Christian because you love God? If you think that loving God is what makes you a Christian, scripture says you might not be a Christian. That God doesn't love you because you're loving. He doesn't love you because you're lovely. Your love for God, yeah, that may show that you are a Christian, but you are not a Christian because you love God. The only reason you are a Christian is because God has loved you. That God first loved you. He chose you. He adopted you as His own. And so does that mean that God's love, sometimes we hear this phrase God's unconditional love, is God's love unconditional? No, not exactly. God's love is not universal. It's not unconditional. It is actually completely conditional, but the good news is that it's not conditional upon us. It's conditional upon the character of God the Father. It's conditional upon the sacrifice of God the Son, that God is love. We do not define the love. Love is defined by the character of God. And He has manifest His love by sending His Son to come, to seek, and to save us who were lost.And so back to our passage, Paul says at the very beginning, he just kind of bursts into this excitement of, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." In Greek, what he actually says, "Is no therefore now condemnation," which doesn't make a whole lot of sense in English. But if you understand the way that Greek sentences are structured, the point is he is trying to powerfully emphasize the no, the noneness of our condemnation, which stands in total contrast to the fullness of the condemnation that we actually deserve.We talked about this earlier, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That's Romans 3:23. That the wages of that sin is death. That's Romans 6:23. And so how can Paul say now that there's no condemnation? Well, he goes on in Verse Three and he tells us, "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending His own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit." That where there was no hope, where there was no way, God made a way. He made a way to justly condemn sin in Christ on the cross, while at the same time mercifully justifying sinners. And this is the gospel.He says that God the Father sent God the Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And notice that word likeness there. Jesus did not come in sinful flesh. Jesus never sinned. Jesus was fully God, and yet he was fully man. He took on flesh. He was incarnate. But like Adam before the fall, Jesus did not have a sin nature. And so what that means is that Jesus faced all the limitations of a human body. He faced all the temptations that we experienced in a fallen world, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, He lived every moment of His life from the cradle to the grave without sin. He loved the Lord His God with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength continually and loved His neighbor as Himself perfectly. And so being fully man, Jesus had to be fully man, because what this meant was that He could stand as a worthy substitute in humanity's place. He was one of us. He could represent us. But being fully divine, He could also stand as a worthy sacrifice, capable of actually paying that debt and in doing so, He actually defeats Satan, sin, and death itself.So Verse Four says that by sending Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, that this is the reason that God sent Christ, this is the reason He came, was to deal with our sin. God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus in order that the righteous requirement of the law may actually be fulfilled in us, that Jesus took our condemnation and exchanged it for His justification, that God the Father declares Jesus guilty so that we could be declared perfectly righteous. That all the penalty that our sin deserved was placed on Christ. It was imputed to Him at the cross and there, and all of His righteousness is imputed to us, all the glory that His righteousness deserved is given to us by grace, through faith. That the curse of our lawbreaking fell on Him so that the blessing of His law keeping could be given to us.And so before we begin to consider what God wants to do in us or through us we need to just sit in this and be immersed, be overwhelmed, by what God has done for us. That God has done what even the law weakened by our flesh could not do. He's saved us from the penalty of our sin. And He has now hidden our lives in Christ. That's the language that Paul uses in Ephesian, that your life in Christ, you are hidden in Christ. And so think of it like this. We're going to talk a bit about sanctification. Sanctification is the power of Christ's life in you. Justification is the position of your life hidden in Christ. That if you are in Christ, that right now, when God the Father looks at you, He sees Christ's perfection, that all of your sins past, present, future, they were nailed to the cross. It's done. It's finished. They're forgiven, forgotten, cast to the bottom of the sea. Scripture says removed as far as the east is from the west.That all of our debt was transferred to Christ on the cross and He paid it in full with His blood. And now by grace God credits Jesus righteousness to us and it is sitting on our ledger, that you are in Christ and Christ is in you. And so now do you begin to understand why the Apostle Paul is so excited? Do you remember who this guy was like? This is Paul, the persecutor of Jesus Christ, the persecutor of the church, the murderer of Christians, the blasphemer, that this man, now in Christ, has been given the full assurance of the Father's eternal unfailing love. The full assurance that God the Father is never going to rub his sin in his face again.And it's not just that Paul got a second chance. We're not talking about a blank slate where you can go and try to do better next time. What we're talking about is actually Paul's given Jesus' slate. It's like imagine Jesus is the big brother. Paul's the little brother. Paul's the class clown. He's failing out of every subject in school. Jesus is the is the valedictorian and on the way home to Dad, to show their report cards, Jesus takes them, He swaps the names. Paul gets to go home and show this perfect record to the Father and experience the perfect pleasure of the Father. Not because of what he's done, but because of what His brother Christ has done for him. And you begin to get, get a sense of what has Paul so excited in this chapter.Psalm 103, 11 and 12 says that, "As high as the heavens are above the earth so great as His steadfast love to those who fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions from us." This is why we sometimes sing Amazing Grace or we sing the song Scandalous Grace, that this is amazing, this is scandalous. It seems almost too good to be true. And really the reason that Paul had taken that detour around Chapter Six and Seven is to answer the objections of those who were claiming that, "Yeah, this actually is too good to be true, that you can't preach this, that you can't go around telling people this message of grace, this message of complete forgiveness, that there's no condemnation. Because if you go around talking about this amazing grace, well then aren't you just taking away people's motivation to not sin? Aren't you just going to encourage them to sin more?" And Paul says, "No. If that's what you think, then you've still yet to understand grace."And that brings us to the second question today, that God's grace doesn't set us free in order to sin or for sin. God's grace sets us free from sin. And so Paul goes on and he says, Romans back to Romans 8:1, "There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death." That grace, it takes us out of this impersonal realm of religion and law and it brings us into the personal realm of relationship and love. And this is pretty easy for us to understand if we think about it in human terms. Like if I sin against my wife and I go and I beg her for forgiveness and she forgives me, I don't think, "That was so easy. I'm going to go do that again because now I know she's just going to forgive me. And so I can just keep doing."No. I think, "Wow, I didn't deserve that forgiveness and I never want to hurt her like that again. I never want to do that again." That forgiveness and that grace actually motivate me to not sin again. Why? Because we're in a relationship, because we love one another, and this is what the gospel does. It brings us into this relationship with God the Father.I said this earlier, but justification is the position of your life in Christ and sanctification is the power of Christ's life in you, that the reason there is no condemnation for us is because our lives are hidden in Christ. But now the reason that we can fight the good fight of faith and put our sin to death is because we have the power of Christ living in us.And so if you remember last week we were in Chapter Seven and Chapter Seven is, it's kind of a lot to wrap your mind around, but we talked about how the big idea that Paul is getting here is he's trying to illustrate that as good and as holy as the law was, the chapter is really showing us that it was weak and it was incapable of saving us from our sin. And if Chapter Seven, Paul wrote that to show us the weakness of the law, then Chapter Eight, he wrote us to show us the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. And so in Chapter Seven, you see law, law, law, over and over and over, and here in Chapter Eight, you see he's just talking about the spirit, the spirit, the spirit.And the first thing that we need to understand here, Paul talks about the law of the spirit of life compared to the law of sin and death. In the Book of Romans, Paul uses the word law in two different ways. And so sometimes when he uses the word law, he's referring to God's law, the Mosaic law, the 10 Commandments. Other times he's using the word law in a more general sense. It's like a governing principle. It's like a power. Like we would think of the law of gravity. And so that is the way that he's actually using it in these verses, that the law of the spirit of life, the law of the sin and death, in the flesh, the law of sin and death, this was the governing power, principle, in our life. That before Christ, sin had this, it was like the gravitational pull of the sun and our lives revolved around sin and we were slaves to that orbit. There's nothing that we could do to escape the power of sin's gravity on our lives.And so when I picture what Paul is describing here, it's as if Christ has come and He has just ripped us out of that orbit around sin. He's broken the power of sin's gravity on our lives and He's now placed us in a new orbit, that we have this new governing principle, this power that he calls the law or the power of the spirit of life. That we were once under the power of sin that led to death, but now in Christ, our lives revolve around the spirit who gives abundant and eternal life.Now here's the tension that we live in as Christians. We've been ripped out of one orbit, we've been placed into this other orbit. Now does that mean that after you come to Christ that you're never going to feel the pull of temptation again? Does that mean that after you come to Christ that you're never going to sin again? No, of course we know that. But so then just as your life will no longer revolve around sin, it doesn't mean that you're never going to experience sin again. 1 John 1:8 says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous."We talked about this a little bit last week, that we are never going to be perfect and without sin on this side of eternity. That until Jesus comes back and gives us our resurrected, glorified bodies, that sin is going to continue to be this constant threat and presence in our lives, that none of us are ever going to in this life, none of us are ever going to come close to fulfilling the greatest commandment, which is the love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind and all of your strength. I can't even imagine doing that perfectly for a few seconds, let alone a lifetime. And the second commandment, which is to perfectly love your neighbor as yourself. We're never going to be sinless, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. That's the big idea. Pastor Jan said this last week that you will never be sinless, but as a Christian, you should be sinning less, that there is a real change, a real difference, a real distinction, between your life and the flesh before Christ and your life in the spirit in Christ.And that difference is you now for the first time have the power to say no to sin, to fight back against your sin, and to put the flesh to death. That before, you were powerless, that sin was your master. You were its slave. Your mind was set on it, your life revolved around it. But when Christ became your master, He set you free. And in setting you free, He deals a death blow to sin. And so on the one hand, sin is not dead, but it is dying and it's power over you should be growing less and less as you progress in your sanctification. And so sin is no longer your master, but it is still very much your adversary. This is why we still need to be on constant alert. Peter tells us that our enemy is He's roaming around like a roaring line seeking someone to devour. God told Cain in Genesis 4:7, He said, "Cain, sin is crouching at your door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it"And that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have to rule over our sin. We're told that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. If we draw near to God, God will draw near to us. So in Romans 7:4, Paul asked the question, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" And then in Romans Eight, he tells us. Who will do this? God sent Christ to deliver us from the penalty of our sin, but also that Christ sent the Holy Spirit to deliver us from the power of sin in our lives and we need to fight in that power to rule over sin.And so the practical question right now for all of us is what is your life revolving around? What is your mind set on? We're going to talk about, Tyler is going to talk a little bit more about this next week when we get to the next passage, but in Romans 8, five and six, Paul says that those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. What is your mindset? What is your mind set on? And the question is what are the practical rhythms that you are placing in your life right now in order to set and to reset your mind over and over on the things of the spirit?Now you're here right now. That's a pretty good start, right? Gathering for worship with the church, with the communion of the saints. This should be a habit. This should be a rhythm of our lives. And not only that, we show up here on once a week and worship together. But when you do, do you have your mind set on it? Are you thinking about it? Are you looking forward to worship all week? Are you preparing yourself to come and to be present and to be focused and to be attentive, to actually sing God's praise and to apply your mind to His word during worship. We need to do that. Daily, just reading God's word, abiding in God's word, being constant in prayer. It's another habit we need to have to set our mind on the spirit. Serving the body of Christ. Having fellowship with the believers. Are you committed to a community group? Are you dedicated and are you consistent in your participation with other believers and their lives? These are all very practical things, but they're practical things we need to do because the Holy Spirit uses these practical things in very profound ways to sanctify us in our fight against sin.Now, I want to take a moment to just talk about something else that is going on in Romans Chapter Eight. As we think about these things, most of us at one time or another have probably had a concern, a question, come and linger in our mind. And that is if all these things are true, if we are saved, if we are in Christ, if we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we are adopted into the family of God the Father, if we have truly been set free from the law of sin and death, then why do we still experience sin and death?As a Christian, do you still face temptation? Yeah. As a Christian, do you still sometimes sin? Yeah. As Christians, we still suffer. As Christians, we still die. And I believe that these concerns, these questions, are actually the reason that Paul is writing this chapter. He's anticipating these thoughts because if all of this is true, then we're going to ask then why is the Christian life so hard? And Paul is writing to a people who have suffered and they know how hard it is. Paul himself is a man who knows how hard. He had suffered so much as a Christian for his faith. But if you look at Romans Chapter Eight and you just sit down and just read the entire thing and just kind of zoom out on it, you see Paul begins the chapter with this promise, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.And then he ends the chapter with another promise that there's also no separation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that nothing in heaven on earth can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. That Romans Eight, what he's doing is he's giving hope, he's giving comfort, he's giving assurance to Christians and to us that the trials and the temptations that we face in this life, these are not a sign that we're still condemned. They're not a sign that we're not saved. They're not a sign that God has forsaken us or left us. And they are not a sign that God is not in control. That this pain that we experience as Christians in this life, these are not the pangs of death that we're experiencing. These are the pings of birth. And that's what he says towards the middle of Chapter Eight, that this pain is real, but we need to understand that there is a purpose in this pain that is bringing about something so good that the pain is soon going to be totally forgotten.That's the hope that Paul wants to give us and he wants us to hold onto as we read Romans Chapter Eight, because, yeah, we are saints, but we're also sinners. We have eternal life, and yet we see Christians still die. We are more than conquerors, and yet we still face suffering and persecution. And if God has not chosen to just kind of teleport us off this earth and give us our glorified bodies as soon as we get saved, then it's because He has work for us to do here until Christ returns, that His good purposes for us in this world are not yet complete. And so that brings us to the last question we need to ask ourselves today. If that is true and if God has you here for a purpose, for a reason, then what will God do through you? What does God desire to do through you? Have you stopped to just imagine what God could do in your life?One of the things that I didn't mention earlier when I told the story about Owen's baseball team is that one of the reasons that moment was so tense, and one of the reasons that the outcome was such a big deal, is that for the first half of the season he had not gotten a single hit, I don't think. He was really struggling to hit the ball this year. This was the first year that he was doing kid pitch instead of coaches pitch, so the kids are pitching the whole time. And what that means is all the batters, they need to develop a new skill. And that skill is how do you bat against a pitcher who's not just, he's not just going to throw consistent strikes over the plate, some of these pitches are going to be all over the place. Actually, there were a few games where I think the pitchers were hitting the batters more than the batters were hitting the ball.And so, it's a new skill you got to develop, is how do you choose your pitches and how do you know when to swing, when not to, but he was struggling with this. And what it meant was he was striking out most of his times at bat. About halfway through the season, though, something changed. There was a turning point. Owen's coach rented some batting cages and for just several hours, there was just intense, focused, practice over and over and over with hitting the ball. And when he came out of that practice and went back out into the field, he started hitting the ball really consistently for the rest of the year. And practice is important. Practice makes perfect. There is a work that needs to be done in us, but what good would all of that have practice have been for him if he had never gone back out and applied those new skills on the field in a real game?And one of the temptations that we face as Christians is that a lot of times we'd rather practice than play the game. That when the coach calls us in, we would rather sit the bench, and it's a lot more comfortable to study the Bible theoretically in a simulated environment than it is to live it out in real life with real people and real problems. And this is one of the reasons that we intentionally want to try to keep things simple here at Mosaic. We talk about love Jesus simple, that really at Mosaic, we just focus on really three main things and we make them a priority.We worship together. That is a priority. We need to make it a priority. Every week we gather for worship together. We serve together. It's another important priority, that Jesus Christ did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. That He was a servant and we need to be servants. And then thirdly, we gather in homes and have community groups together. That is another priority. But beyond that, we really don't want to pack people's schedule full with a whole bunch of like churchy stuff. Like one hand, we know how busy people's lives are in the city already, but we don't want to just cram and just have people where all they're ever doing is going from seminar to class to study to one thing after another, because all those can be very good things, and necessary things at times, but you can't win championships if you never leave the batting cage. That's the point that I'm trying to make, that we all need enough margin in our lives to actually go out and do something on the field. And this city is a field. This is our mission field.If you remember, earlier in Romans, really the big idea of Romans is this idea that justification comes by grace through faith. And Paul, the way that he proves this case is by pointing all the way back to the example of Abraham, that this is how God had always intended it to be, that we are justified not by our works, but by grace through faith. But do you remember what God said to Abraham the very first time He speaks to him, when He calls him? This is Genesis Chapter 12, One through Three. It says, "Now the Lord said to Abraham, 'Go from your country and from your kindred in your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you, all the families on earth shall be blessed.'"Romans Chapter Eight can really be read as a list of the blessings that we have in Christ. That in Christ we have the blessing of justification. In Christ, we have the blessing of adoption into the family of God. In Christ we have the blessing of sanctification and the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. That in Christ we have the blessed hope of glorification that Christ is going to return and make all things new. But God's grace toward us, God's blessings toward us, and God has been incredibly gracious toward us, but his blessings toward us should not be in vain. That like Abraham, there is a greater purpose in all of these blessings than just the way that they bless us individually. That God has blessed us in Christ in order to make us a blessing to all the nations, as he said to Abraham.And the nations are in this room. The nations are right outside our door. And so what that means is on the one hand we cannot give up this inner battle of the work that Christ is doing in us. We need to fight against sin. We need to grow in sanctification. But we also cannot forget we have an outward mission to the world, to share the gospel of what Christ has done for us, to testify to the reality of what Christ is doing in us and to allow Christ to work through us by making disciples of all the nations.We say this in our membership class a lot, but if you haven't taken the class for a while, if you've been a member for a while, just a reminder, if you are a Christian living in Boston, Massachusetts, then the chances are when you go to school, when you go to work, when you see your neighbors, chances are that you are the only Christian that they personally know living in this city. You may be the only person they know who has the answers to the meaning of life. Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? How should we live?You may be the only person they know who is filled with the Holy Spirit of God, that you have been set free by the law of the spirit of life from the law of sin and death. You can show them what that looks like. To live a life in the power of the Holy Spirit, without guilt, without shame, with no condemnation, to the love sacrificially, to forgive people quickly from the heart, and to extend people grace in a graceless world, to tell them why you have hope, why you have peace, why you have joy, and why you are different. You may be the only person who can be the hands and the feet and the words of Christ to them that can come and say, "Come and see what God has done for you. Come and see what God wants to do in you and come and imagine what God could do through you."Later on in Romans Chapter 10, the Apostle Paul tells us that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Then he asks some questions. How will they call on him, in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching, and how are they to preach unless they are sent. As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news.As a Christian you need to know that you have been saved in order to be sent, in order to be that blessing. And so, as we close today, just a couple of things, as you prepare to go out and live your lives this week, first of all, I just want you to remember that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, that you are in Christ. That you are loved, you are chosen. There is no condemnation for you. There is no accusation that the enemy can bring against you. That there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That you are in Christ. And approach this week with that mindset, that you are in Christ. But also approach this with your mind set on the spirit, with the mindset that as much as you are in Christ, that Christ is in you. And if Christ is in you, then what might He desire to do through you in this coming week, in this coming season, in this life?And then, finally, if you're here today and you are not a Christian, and you want to experience what this means, that there can be no condemnation for you? And the way you do that, you just simply repent, turn and put your faith in Jesus Christ, call on the name of the Lord, as the Apostle Paul said, and you will be saved. You can do that today, as we close in prayer. So let's pray and we'll continue and worship.God, we thank you for this good news. We thank You for saving us. We thank You for sanctifying us, for adopting us into Your family, for giving us a future and a hope and an eternal inheritance through Christ Jesus. God, we pray that the good work that You began in us, both individually and as a church, that You would carry on to completion until the day that Christ returns. And Lord, I pray that if there is anyone here today that has not been justified by Your grace, that You would save them, that You would give them faith and that they would put their faith in Christ and what He's done for them, that Your spirit would fill them and begin a good work in them, that their lives would become a testimony to Your grace, and Your power would work mightily through them. For the sake of Your name and glory, we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. God, first of all, we just thank you for the kids of Mosaic, and just what a tremendous blessing that they are. God, we pray for them, we pray for their families. We pray that You would bless the kids' summer nights this year and everybody that's working so hard to put that together. Lord, we thank You for all the brothers and sisters in Christ that are not only working on that, but are down in Mini Mosaic every week just being a blessing and service to our children. God, we thank You for these kids, but we thank You also that You have made us Your kids, that You have made us Your heavenly father through Your son, Jesus Christ. You have adopted us into Your family. God, I just pray that You would help us to grasp what good news that truly is for us, that our salvation is not contingent upon anything that we have done or need to do, but fully upon what You have done for us in Christ. And that Lord, just as we did nothing to contribute to our conception or physical birth, we can do nothing to save ourselves, but it is Your spirit alone who regenerates hearts and causes us to be born again. We enter Your household by sheer grace through faith in Your son Jesus Christ and we thank You for this amazing grace. We pray also Lord, that Your grace taught us would not be in vain, that You have done a great work for us and we pray now that You do a great work in us, so that by the power of your Holy Spirit, You could do a great work through us for the sake of Your mission, Your kingdom, and Your glory. Lord, we thank You for this time. We pray that You just speak to us today through this amazing passage of scripture that we have. We pray all this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. All right. Well, today is an exciting day. I think first of all summer is officially here and so you might see me breaking a sweat up here today, but that's not really why I'm excited. I'm excited because we finally have made our way to Romans Chapter Eight. If you were here at the beginning of the series of Romans, we talked about how the Bible, holy scripture, is without comparison, the most important, the most influential book in human history. Nothing else even comes close. You cannot begin to understand the world as it is today if you have not read the Bible. But within the Bible, we talked about how the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans, is arguably most influential letter within the most influential book. Today, as we come to Romans Chapter Eight, if you are familiar with the Book of Romans, you know that within the Book of Romans, this is a halfway point, it's the summit, it's the peak, it is the crowning jewel of Paul's letter. It is arguably the most influential chapter, within the most influential letter, within the most influential book, that has ever been written. This chapter has been called the inner sanctuary within the cathedral of the Christian faith. Have you ever had a really exciting story to tell, and you just can't wait to get to the point of it, but you know that you can't do that because if you just jumped straight to the point that the people that you're telling this to, they're not going to grasp the full weightiness of just how great of a point that you're trying to make? A few weeks ago, my son Owen is 10 years old, he just finished up the baseball season this past week. And a few weeks ago during baseball, Owen got a base hit. That's the point of the story. But if that's all I tell you, you haven't even begun to grasp the point. And so let me set this up. A few weeks ago, Owen's team began the playoffs. It's a double elimination tournament and they lost their first game. What that meant is they went into the loser's bracket and if they lost one more time, their season would be over. And so in the second game of the playoffs, they're losing the entire game. It's the bottom of the last inning, there are two outs, but there are runners on second and third. The team had been down the whole game. They made a little bit of a comeback in the last inning, but victory was just within grasp, but not quite there, and Owen is up to bat and he has three balls and two strikes, full count. This next pitch is going to determine everything. If he strikes out, the inning is over, the game is over, the season is over, they finish last place and he becomes that poor kid that struck out in the last inning and blew the game for everyone. The pressure was insane. Now, within that context, you understand the weightiness, the gravity of my words, when I say Owen got a base hit and he hit in, drove in the winning runs to win that game. Actually his team, after that, they came back and they made their way all the way up to the championship game and they beat the defending team in the first game 26 to seven, and then they lost the second game, which ruins the story. But you get the point. You can't just jump straight to the point, sometimes you need some context. And what Paul has been doing in his letter to the Romans is you can sense his excitement as he gets to Romans Chapter Eight, as he gets to the big idea, to the big point, but he's taken his time for the last seven chapters setting up the context so that we can really feel how great, how good, this good news really is. In the first couple of chapters, he presents, he lays out the human problem that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and that the wages of sin is death. He builds this argument, this case that proves that we all actually know that. Deep down in our hearts and our souls we know that we are not as we ought to be, and that we are deserving of judgment. Then for a couple chapters, he presents the divine solution, that even though we have all sinned and that the wages of sin is death, that we can be justified freely by grace through Jesus Christ, because Christ has made propitiation for our sins on the cross. But then right as he gets there, he takes this unexpected detour, and for a couple of chapters Paul begins to answer the objections that he is anticipating from his critics. He does this in order to show definitively how bad our problem really is. That it's not just that we're sinful, it's that we are sinful beyond all measure, and that even something as good and perfect and holy as the law of God, this is Romans Chapter Seven, even the law is powerless to save us. The law cannot make us good. It can show us what is good, but all it can really do for us is show us how far from good we really are. Paul brings us back down deep into the pit, right up to the brink of utter hopelessness and despair. At the end of Romans Chapter Seven, he just says, "Wretched man that I am. Who can deliver me from this body of death?" What hope could we possibly have to overcome the presence and the power and the penalty of our sin, of our depravity, that we are all guilty, we are all without excuse, we have no defense, we are not worthy of anything but judgment, and judgment is coming and deep down we all know it. Then all of a sudden in Romans Chapter Seven, Verse 25, Paul makes this sudden shift, and it's like in a symphony, he begins this crescendo in verse 25 and he says, "But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and then he launches into Chapter Eight of our text today with this triumphant proclamation that, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." How can he say that? That's what we're going to be looking at in our text today. If you would please look at Romans Chapter Eight, we're going to be looking at verses one through four together this morning. This is Romans Eight and beginning in Verse One. The apostle Paul says this, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done, with the law, weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit." This is the reading of God's holy word for us today. As we look at this text, I have three questions that I want you to ask yourself this morning. First of all, what has God done for you? Do you know what God has done for you? Second, what is God doing in you? And then thirdly, what could God do through you? The first question that we need to ask, it's not what must we do for God in order to justify ourselves or be saved? It's what has God done for us? We all know this, but this is what sets Christianity apart from every other worldview, every other philosophy, every other religion, is this idea of grace. Going back to the beginning of Romans, Paul begins Romans Chapter One, and he tells us that, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." This is good news, in a strange way. It's bad news for us. It's good news because what this means is that God is good and because God is good, God is just, and in order for God to be just, then He must condemn sin. But now that's bad news for us because we are sinners. Why is Paul so excited in Romans Chapter Eight? Well, we get a clue to that a little bit later on when he gets to Romans Chapter Three. He says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith." And why did He do that? He says, "This was to show God's righteousness," because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just, and the justifier of those, of the one who has faith in Jesus. This is the miracle of the gospel, that through Christ God is both just and justifier, that God upholds His justice by properly condemning sin on the cross, proving Himself to be just, but He also in upholding His justice is upholding His mercy as well, by taking that condemnation upon Himself, proving to also be the justifier of those who have faith in Christ. And this is what God has done for us. And the question is why would God do that? Why would He sacrifice so much to justify us who are so unworthy? 1 John Four, the Apostle John in Verse Nine, says, "In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His own Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." What is it that makes you a Christian? Are you a Christian because you love God? If you think that loving God is what makes you a Christian, scripture says you might not be a Christian. That God doesn't love you because you're loving. He doesn't love you because you're lovely. Your love for God, yeah, that may show that you are a Christian, but you are not a Christian because you love God. The only reason you are a Christian is because God has loved you. That God first loved you. He chose you. He adopted you as His own. And so does that mean that God's love, sometimes we hear this phrase God's unconditional love, is God's love unconditional? No, not exactly. God's love is not universal. It's not unconditional. It is actually completely conditional, but the good news is that it's not conditional upon us. It's conditional upon the character of God the Father. It's conditional upon the sacrifice of God the Son, that God is love. We do not define the love. Love is defined by the character of God. And He has manifest His love by sending His Son to come, to seek, and to save us who were lost. And so back to our passage, Paul says at the very beginning, he just kind of bursts into this excitement of, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." In Greek, what he actually says, "Is no therefore now condemnation," which doesn't make a whole lot of sense in English. But if you understand the way that Greek sentences are structured, the point is he is trying to powerfully emphasize the no, the noneness of our condemnation, which stands in total contrast to the fullness of the condemnation that we actually deserve. We talked about this earlier, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That's Romans 3:23. That the wages of that sin is death. That's Romans 6:23. And so how can Paul say now that there's no condemnation? Well, he goes on in Verse Three and he tells us, "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending His own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit." That where there was no hope, where there was no way, God made a way. He made a way to justly condemn sin in Christ on the cross, while at the same time mercifully justifying sinners. And this is the gospel. He says that God the Father sent God the Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And notice that word likeness there. Jesus did not come in sinful flesh. Jesus never sinned. Jesus was fully God, and yet he was fully man. He took on flesh. He was incarnate. But like Adam before the fall, Jesus did not have a sin nature. And so what that means is that Jesus faced all the limitations of a human body. He faced all the temptations that we experienced in a fallen world, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, He lived every moment of His life from the cradle to the grave without sin. He loved the Lord His God with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength continually and loved His neighbor as Himself perfectly. And so being fully man, Jesus had to be fully man, because what this meant was that He could stand as a worthy substitute in humanity's place. He was one of us. He could represent us. But being fully divine, He could also stand as a worthy sacrifice, capable of actually paying that debt and in doing so, He actually defeats Satan, sin, and death itself. So Verse Four says that by sending Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, that this is the reason that God sent Christ, this is the reason He came, was to deal with our sin. God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus in order that the righteous requirement of the law may actually be fulfilled in us, that Jesus took our condemnation and exchanged it for His justification, that God the Father declares Jesus guilty so that we could be declared perfectly righteous. That all the penalty that our sin deserved was placed on Christ. It was imputed to Him at the cross and there, and all of His righteousness is imputed to us, all the glory that His righteousness deserved is given to us by grace, through faith. That the curse of our lawbreaking fell on Him so that the blessing of His law keeping could be given to us. And so before we begin to consider what God wants to do in us or through us we need to just sit in this and be immersed, be overwhelmed, by what God has done for us. That God has done what even the law weakened by our flesh could not do. He's saved us from the penalty of our sin. And He has now hidden our lives in Christ. That's the language that Paul uses in Ephesian, that your life in Christ, you are hidden in Christ. And so think of it like this. We're going to talk a bit about sanctification. Sanctification is the power of Christ's life in you. Justification is the position of your life hidden in Christ. That if you are in Christ, that right now, when God the Father looks at you, He sees Christ's perfection, that all of your sins past, present, future, they were nailed to the cross. It's done. It's finished. They're forgiven, forgotten, cast to the bottom of the sea. Scripture says removed as far as the east is from the west. That all of our debt was transferred to Christ on the cross and He paid it in full with His blood. And now by grace God credits Jesus righteousness to us and it is sitting on our ledger, that you are in Christ and Christ is in you. And so now do you begin to understand why the Apostle Paul is so excited? Do you remember who this guy was like? This is Paul, the persecutor of Jesus Christ, the persecutor of the church, the murderer of Christians, the blasphemer, that this man, now in Christ, has been given the full assurance of the Father's eternal unfailing love. The full assurance that God the Father is never going to rub his sin in his face again. And it's not just that Paul got a second chance. We're not talking about a blank slate where you can go and try to do better next time. What we're talking about is actually Paul's given Jesus' slate. It's like imagine Jesus is the big brother. Paul's the little brother. Paul's the class clown. He's failing out of every subject in school. Jesus is the is the valedictorian and on the way home to Dad, to show their report cards, Jesus takes them, He swaps the names. Paul gets to go home and show this perfect record to the Father and experience the perfect pleasure of the Father. Not because of what he's done, but because of what His brother Christ has done for him. And you begin to get, get a sense of what has Paul so excited in this chapter. Psalm 103, 11 and 12 says that, "As high as the heavens are above the earth so great as His steadfast love to those who fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions from us." This is why we sometimes sing Amazing Grace or we sing the song Scandalous Grace, that this is amazing, this is scandalous. It seems almost too good to be true. And really the reason that Paul had taken that detour around Chapter Six and Seven is to answer the objections of those who were claiming that, "Yeah, this actually is too good to be true, that you can't preach this, that you can't go around telling people this message of grace, this message of complete forgiveness, that there's no condemnation. Because if you go around talking about this amazing grace, well then aren't you just taking away people's motivation to not sin? Aren't you just going to encourage them to sin more?" And Paul says, "No. If that's what you think, then you've still yet to understand grace." And that brings us to the second question today, that God's grace doesn't set us free in order to sin or for sin. God's grace sets us free from sin. And so Paul goes on and he says, Romans back to Romans 8:1, "There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death." That grace, it takes us out of this impersonal realm of religion and law and it brings us into the personal realm of relationship and love. And this is pretty easy for us to understand if we think about it in human terms. Like if I sin against my wife and I go and I beg her for forgiveness and she forgives me, I don't think, "That was so easy. I'm going to go do that again because now I know she's just going to forgive me. And so I can just keep doing." No. I think, "Wow, I didn't deserve that forgiveness and I never want to hurt her like that again. I never want to do that again." That forgiveness and that grace actually motivate me to not sin again. Why? Because we're in a relationship, because we love one another, and this is what the gospel does. It brings us into this relationship with God the Father. I said this earlier, but justification is the position of your life in Christ and sanctification is the power of Christ's life in you, that the reason there is no condemnation for us is because our lives are hidden in Christ. But now the reason that we can fight the good fight of faith and put our sin to death is because we have the power of Christ living in us. And so if you remember last week we were in Chapter Seven and Chapter Seven is, it's kind of a lot to wrap your mind around, but we talked about how the big idea that Paul is getting here is he's trying to illustrate that as good and as holy as the law was, the chapter is really showing us that it was weak and it was incapable of saving us from our sin. And if Chapter Seven, Paul wrote that to show us the weakness of the law, then Chapter Eight, he wrote us to show us the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. And so in Chapter Seven, you see law, law, law, over and over and over, and here in Chapter Eight, you see he's just talking about the spirit, the spirit, the spirit. And the first thing that we need to understand here, Paul talks about the law of the spirit of life compared to the law of sin and death. In the Book of Romans, Paul uses the word law in two different ways. And so sometimes when he uses the word law, he's referring to God's law, the Mosaic law, the 10 Commandments. Other times he's using the word law in a more general sense. It's like a governing principle. It's like a power. Like we would think of the law of gravity. And so that is the way that he's actually using it in these verses, that the law of the spirit of life, the law of the sin and death, in the flesh, the law of sin and death, this was the governing power, principle, in our life. That before Christ, sin had this, it was like the gravitational pull of the sun and our lives revolved around sin and we were slaves to that orbit. There's nothing that we could do to escape the power of sin's gravity on our lives. And so when I picture what Paul is describing here, it's as if Christ has come and He has just ripped us out of that orbit around sin. He's broken the power of sin's gravity on our lives and He's now placed us in a new orbit, that we have this new governing principle, this power that he calls the law or the power of the spirit of life. That we were once under the power of sin that led to death, but now in Christ, our lives revolve around the spirit who gives abundant and eternal life. Now here's the tension that we live in as Christians. We've been ripped out of one orbit, we've been placed into this other orbit. Now does that mean that after you come to Christ that you're never going to feel the pull of temptation again? Does that mean that after you come to Christ that you're never going to sin again? No, of course we know that. But so then just as your life will no longer revolve around sin, it doesn't mean that you're never going to experience sin again. 1 John 1:8 says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." We talked about this a little bit last week, that we are never going to be perfect and without sin on this side of eternity. That until Jesus comes back and gives us our resurrected, glorified bodies, that sin is going to continue to be this constant threat and presence in our lives, that none of us are ever going to in this life, none of us are ever going to come close to fulfilling the greatest commandment, which is the love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind and all of your strength. I can't even imagine doing that perfectly for a few seconds, let alone a lifetime. And the second commandment, which is to perfectly love your neighbor as yourself. We're never going to be sinless, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. That's the big idea. Pastor Jan said this last week that you will never be sinless, but as a Christian, you should be sinning less, that there is a real change, a real difference, a real distinction, between your life and the flesh before Christ and your life in the spirit in Christ. And that difference is you now for the first time have the power to say no to sin, to fight back against your sin, and to put the flesh to death. That before, you were powerless, that sin was your master. You were its slave. Your mind was set on it, your life revolved around it. But when Christ became your master, He set you free. And in setting you free, He deals a death blow to sin. And so on the one hand, sin is not dead, but it is dying and it's power over you should be growing less and less as you progress in your sanctification. And so sin is no longer your master, but it is still very much your adversary. This is why we still need to be on constant alert. Peter tells us that our enemy is He's roaming around like a roaring line seeking someone to devour. God told Cain in Genesis 4:7, He said, "Cain, sin is crouching at your door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it" And that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have to rule over our sin. We're told that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. If we draw near to God, God will draw near to us. So in Romans 7:4, Paul asked the question, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" And then in Romans Eight, he tells us. Who will do this? God sent Christ to deliver us from the penalty of our sin, but also that Christ sent the Holy Spirit to deliver us from the power of sin in our lives and we need to fight in that power to rule over sin. And so the practical question right now for all of us is what is your life revolving around? What is your mind set on? We're going to talk about, Tyler is going to talk a little bit more about this next week when we get to the next passage, but in Romans 8, five and six, Paul says that those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. What is your mindset? What is your mind set on? And the question is what are the practical rhythms that you are placing in your life right now in order to set and to reset your mind over and over on the things of the spirit? Now you're here right now. That's a pretty good start, right? Gathering for worship with the church, with the communion of the saints. This should be a habit. This should be a rhythm of our lives. And not only that, we show up here on once a week and worship together. But when you do, do you have your mind set on it? Are you thinking about it? Are you looking forward to worship all week? Are you preparing yourself to come and to be present and to be focused and to be attentive, to actually sing God's praise and to apply your mind to His word during worship. We need to do that. Daily, just reading God's word, abiding in God's word, being constant in prayer. It's another habit we need to have to set our mind on the spirit. Serving the body of Christ. Having fellowship with the believers. Are you committed to a community group? Are you dedicated and are you consistent in your participation with other believers and their lives? These are all very practical things, but they're practical things we need to do because the Holy Spirit uses these practical things in very profound ways to sanctify us in our fight against sin. Now, I want to take a moment to just talk about something else that is going on in Romans Chapter Eight. As we think about these things, most of us at one time or another have probably had a concern, a question, come and linger in our mind. And that is if all these things are true, if we are saved, if we are in Christ, if we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we are adopted into the family of God the Father, if we have truly been set free from the law of sin and death, then why do we still experience sin and death? As a Christian, do you still face temptation? Yeah. As a Christian, do you still sometimes sin? Yeah. As Christians, we still suffer. As Christians, we still die. And I believe that these concerns, these questions, are actually the reason that Paul is writing this chapter. He's anticipating these thoughts because if all of this is true, then we're going to ask then why is the Christian life so hard? And Paul is writing to a people who have suffered and they know how hard it is. Paul himself is a man who knows how hard. He had suffered so much as a Christian for his faith. But if you look at Romans Chapter Eight and you just sit down and just read the entire thing and just kind of zoom out on it, you see Paul begins the chapter with this promise, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And then he ends the chapter with another promise that there's also no separation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that nothing in heaven on earth can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. That Romans Eight, what he's doing is he's giving hope, he's giving comfort, he's giving assurance to Christians and to us that the trials and the temptations that we face in this life, these are not a sign that we're still condemned. They're not a sign that we're not saved. They're not a sign that God has forsaken us or left us. And they are not a sign that God is not in control. That this pain that we experience as Christians in this life, these are not the pangs of death that we're experiencing. These are the pings of birth. And that's what he says towards the middle of Chapter Eight, that this pain is real, but we need to understand that there is a purpose in this pain that is bringing about something so good that the pain is soon going to be totally forgotten. That's the hope that Paul wants to give us and he wants us to hold onto as we read Romans Chapter Eight, because, yeah, we are saints, but we're also sinners. We have eternal life, and yet we see Christians still die. We are more than conquerors, and yet we still face suffering and persecution. And if God has not chosen to just kind of teleport us off this earth and give us our glorified bodies as soon as we get saved, then it's because He has work for us to do here until Christ returns, that His good purposes for us in this world are not yet complete. And so that brings us to the last question we need to ask ourselves today. If that is true and if God has you here for a purpose, for a reason, then what will God do through you? What does God desire to do through you? Have you stopped to just imagine what God could do in your life? One of the things that I didn't mention earlier when I told the story about Owen's baseball team is that one of the reasons that moment was so tense, and one of the reasons that the outcome was such a big deal, is that for the first half of the season he had not gotten a single hit, I don't think. He was really struggling to hit the ball this year. This was the first year that he was doing kid pitch instead of coaches pitch, so the kids are pitching the whole time. And what that means is all the batters, they need to develop a new skill. And that skill is how do you bat against a pitcher who's not just, he's not just going to throw consistent strikes over the plate, some of these pitches are going to be all over the place. Actually, there were a few games where I think the pitchers were hitting the batters more than the batters were hitting the ball. And so, it's a new skill you got to develop, is how do you choose your pitches and how do you know when to swing, when not to, but he was struggling with this. And what it meant was he was striking out most of his times at bat. About halfway through the season, though, something changed. There was a turning point. Owen's coach rented some batting cages and for just several hours, there was just intense, focused, practice over and over and over with hitting the ball. And when he came out of that practice and went back out into the field, he started hitting the ball really consistently for the rest of the year. And practice is important. Practice makes perfect. There is a work that needs to be done in us, but what good would all of that have practice have been for him if he had never gone back out and applied those new skills on the field in a real game? And one of the temptations that we face as Christians is that a lot of times we'd rather practice than play the game. That when the coach calls us in, we would rather sit the bench, and it's a lot more comfortable to study the Bible theoretically in a simulated environment than it is to live it out in real life with real people and real problems. And this is one of the reasons that we intentionally want to try to keep things simple here at Mosaic. We talk about love Jesus simple, that really at Mosaic, we just focus on really three main things and we make them a priority. We worship together. That is a priority. We need to make it a priority. Every week we gather for worship together. We serve together. It's another important priority, that Jesus Christ did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. That He was a servant and we need to be servants. And then thirdly, we gather in homes and have community groups together. That is another priority. But beyond that, we really don't want to pack people's schedule full with a whole bunch of like churchy stuff. Like one hand, we know how busy people's lives are in the city already, but we don't want to just cram and just have people where all they're ever doing is going from seminar to class to study to one thing after another, because all those can be very good things, and necessary things at times, but you can't win championships if you never leave the batting cage. That's the point that I'm trying to make, that we all need enough margin in our lives to actually go out and do something on the field. And this city is a field. This is our mission field. If you remember, earlier in Romans, really the big idea of Romans is this idea that justification comes by grace through faith. And Paul, the way that he proves this case is by pointing all the way back to the example of Abraham, that this is how God had always intended it to be, that we are justified not by our works, but by grace through faith. But do you remember what God said to Abraham the very first time He speaks to him, when He calls him? This is Genesis Chapter 12, One through Three. It says, "Now the Lord said to Abraham, 'Go from your country and from your kindred in your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you, all the families on earth shall be blessed.'" Romans Chapter Eight can really be read as a list of the blessings that we have in Christ. That in Christ we have the blessing of justification. In Christ, we have the blessing of adoption into the family of God. In Christ we have the blessing of sanctification and the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. That in Christ we have the blessed hope of glorification that Christ is going to return and make all things new. But God's grace toward us, God's blessings toward us, and God has been incredibly gracious toward us, but his blessings toward us should not be in vain. That like Abraham, there is a greater purpose in all of these blessings than just the way that they bless us individually. That God has blessed us in Christ in order to make us a blessing to all the nations, as he said to Abraham. And the nations are in this room. The nations are right outside our door. And so what that means is on the one hand we cannot give up this inner battle of the work that Christ is doing in us. We need to fight against sin. We need to grow in sanctification. But we also cannot forget we have an outward mission to the world, to share the gospel of what Christ has done for us, to testify to the reality of what Christ is doing in us and to allow Christ to work through us by making disciples of all the nations. We say this in our membership class a lot, but if you haven't taken the class for a while, if you've been a member for a while, just a reminder, if you are a Christian living in Boston, Massachusetts, then the chances are when you go to school, when you go to work, when you see your neighbors, chances are that you are the only Christian that they personally know living in this city. You may be the only person they know who has the answers to the meaning of life. Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? How should we live? You may be the only person they know who is filled with the Holy Spirit of God, that you have been set free by the law of the spirit of life from the law of sin and death. You can show them what that looks like. To live a life in the power of the Holy Spirit, without guilt, without shame, with no condemnation, to the love sacrificially, to forgive people quickly from the heart, and to extend people grace in a graceless world, to tell them why you have hope, why you have peace, why you have joy, and why you are different. You may be the only person who can be the hands and the feet and the words of Christ to them that can come and say, "Come and see what God has done for you. Come and see what God wants to do in you and come and imagine what God could do through you." Later on in Romans Chapter 10, the Apostle Paul tells us that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Then he asks some questions. How will they call on him, in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching, and how are they to preach unless they are sent. As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news. As a Christian you need to know that you have been saved in order to be sent, in order to be that blessing. And so, as we close today, just a couple of things, as you prepare to go out and live your lives this week, first of all, I just want you to remember that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, that you are in Christ. That you are loved, you are chosen. There is no condemnation for you. There is no accusation that the enemy can bring against you. That there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That you are in Christ. And approach this week with that mindset, that you are in Christ. But also approach this with your mind set on the spirit, with the mindset that as much as you are in Christ, that Christ is in you. And if Christ is in you, then what might He desire to do through you in this coming week, in this coming season, in this life? And then, finally, if you're here today and you are not a Christian, and you want to experience what this means, that there can be no condemnation for you? And the way you do that, you just simply repent, turn and put your faith in Jesus Christ, call on the name of the Lord, as the Apostle Paul said, and you will be saved. You can do that today, as we close in prayer. So let's pray and we'll continue and worship. God, we thank you for this good news. We thank You for saving us. We thank You for sanctifying us, for adopting us into Your family, for giving us a future and a hope and an eternal inheritance through Christ Jesus. God, we pray that the good work that You began in us, both individually and as a church, that You would carry on to completion until the day that Christ returns. And Lord, I pray that if there is anyone here today that has not been justified by Your grace, that You would save them, that You would give them faith and that they would put their faith in Christ and what He's done for them, that Your spirit would fill them and begin a good work in them, that their lives would become a testimony to Your grace, and Your power would work mightily through them. For the sake of Your name and glory, we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

Finishing up my breakdown of Andrew and Polly's Forever Young, it's clear the song hit on some major themes for me. Being able to adjust to the unexpected, whether physical or emotional, and keeping a song in my heart all the while, have been critical factors contributing to my state of health. But engaging life with a youthful sense of awe and wonder and joy is an absolute “must have” as I travel along my personal path of wellness.

Now on the run, Vector heads back home to the Tin Inn with Lucky. Nowhere to turn and in way over his head, Lucky struggles to make sense of his feelings for Vector and keep his identity a secret around the Electrics. 

Pastor Brandon LaFontaine helps us look deeper into the verse Psalm 23:3.

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao The Tao Te Ching was written around 2,500 years ago by a man named Lao-Tzu. It is one of the oldest texts in existence and certainly one of the wisest. Its wisdom is timeless and its message is as relevant and important now as it was back then - if not more so. It is vital that we learn to come back into balance with the natural world, to live in a more harmonious and selfless way...and the Tao Te Ching beautifully instructs us in bringing ourselves and our lives into alignment with the 'Tao'. About Me (Will S.) My mission has been an experimental venture aimed at teaching and sharing with others how to find purpose in life and getting on the path to living the best version of themselves. I want to give others the roadmap to do the things they love and get paid for it. It's been a decade long journey to learn these skills and lessons to get ------->There & Back Again (the Hero's Journey) This book changed my life in 2017: Change Your Thoughts: Change Your Life Living the Wisdom the Tao. https://amzn.to/3t7GX9q Everything we do is guided by these 81 verses. Credit for Essays go to Rory at http://daily-tao.blogspot.com/2011/12/verse-3.html --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thedailytaoist/message

Please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get access to bonus content, printable PDF transcripts for new episodes, and a personal song explanation of your choice:https://www.patreon.com/explainedinenglishFree interactive transcript, lyrics and music at: https://explainedinenglish.com/podcast/hunghead.htmlNow, let's Improve your English with this special dual episode featuring an explanation of the song "I Hung My Head" by Sting and covered by Johnny Cash.Lyrics Difficulty: ✦✦✧INTRODUCTION:(00:22) Introduction to "I Hung My Head"VERSE ONE:(02:20) Early one morning with time to kill(03:01) I borrowed Jeb's rifle and sat on the hill(04:21) I saw a lone rider crossing the plain(04:56) I drew a bead on him to practice my aim(05:26) My brother's rifle went off in my hand(05:59) A shot rang out across the land(06:24) The horse he kept running, the rider was dead(06:54) I hung my head, I hung my headVERSE TWO:(07:37) I set off running to wake from the dream(08:18) And my brother's rifle went into the stream(08:41) I kept on running into the salt lands(09:14) And that's where they found me, my head in my hands(09:52) The sheriff he asked me, "Why had I run?"(10:16) Then it came to me just what I had done(10:48) And all for no reason, just one piece of lead (I hung my head, I hung my head)VERSE THREE:(11:34) Here in the courthouse, the whole town is there(12:28) I see the judge high up in his chair(13:15) "Explain to the courtroom what went through your mind(13:52) And we'll ask the jury what verdict they find"(14:45) "I said I felt the power of death over life(15:04) I orphaned his children, I widowed his wife(15:43) I beg their forgiveness, I wish I was dead" (I hung my head, I hung my head)VERSE FOUR:(16:40) Early one morning with time to kill(16:48) I see the gallows up on the hill(17:35) And out in the distance a trick of the brain(17:59) I see a lone rider crossing the plain(18:19) He's come to fetch me to see what they done(18:53) We'll ride together till Kingdom come(19:31) I pray for God's mercy, for soon I'll be dead (I hung my head, I hung my head)INTERPRETATION:(20:12) "I Hung My Head" song explanation(21:18) Is the Sting or the Johnny Cash version better? Vote and leave a comment at facebook.com/explainedinenglish(22:02) More narrative songs available at: https://explainedinenglish.com/podcast.htmlLINKS:Find unreleased song explanations and search by grammar at:https://explainedinenglish.com/podcast.htmlImage Credit: By Sting_by_Yancho_Sabev.jpg: Yancho Sabevderivative work: Fiorellino (talk) - Sting_by_Yancho_Sabev.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped from the original version at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10723467

Disciple Up # 177 Hebrews Pt. 1 – Prologue By Louie Marsh, 9-16-2020   Intro.   Prologue Hebrews 1: 1-4   1  Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2  but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4  having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Hebrews 1:1-4 (ESV)   VERSE ONE:   1  Long ago,  - God has been communicating with mankind for a long, long time, nothing new about it.   at many times – He didn't do it all at once but scattered the prophets and others throughout Israel's history.   and in many ways,   This refers to the difference of the various revelations in contents and form. Not the different ways in which God imparted his revelations to the prophets, but the different ways in which he spoke by the prophets to the fathers: in one way through Moses, in another through Elijah, in others through Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc. At the founding of the Old Testament kingdom of God, the character of the revelation was elementary. Later it was of a character to appeal to a more matured spiritual sense, a deeper understanding and a higher conception of the law. The revelation differed according to the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of the covenant-people.   Vincent - Word Studies in the New Testament.   10  so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Ephesians 3:10 (ESV)   A very striking phrase. The adjective occurs only here, and means variegated. It is applied to pictures, flowers, garments. Ποίκιλον is used in the Septuagint of Joseph's coat, Genesis 37:3. Through the Church God's wisdom in its infinite variety is to be displayed—the many-tinted wisdom of God—in different modes of power, different characters, methods of training, providences, forms of organization,   Vincent - Word Studies in the New Testament.   God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,   "In many ways." Adverb from old adjective polutropos, in Philo, only here in N.T. The two adverbs together are "a sonorous hendiadys for 'variously'" (Moffatt) as Chrysostom (diaphorōs). God spoke by dream, by direct voice, by signs, in different ways to different men (Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, etc.). -  Robertson - Word Pictures in the New Testament.   VERSE TWO:   2  but in these last days   Yes, we are living in the Last days and have been for over 2000 years.   16  But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: 17  “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18  even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. Acts 2:16-18 (ESV)   he has spoken to us by his Son,   Hath spoken (elalēsen). First aorist indicative of laleō, the same verb as above, "did speak" in a final and full revelation – Robertson - Word Pictures in the New Testament.   Note the absence of the article. Attention is directed, not to Christ's divine personality, but to his filial relation. While the former revelation was given through a definite class, the prophets, the new revelation is given through one who is a son as distinguished from a prophet. He belongs to another category. The revelation was a son-revelation. See 2:10-18. Christ's high priesthood is the central fact of the epistle, and his sonship is bound up with his priesthood… - Vincent - Word Studies in the New Testament.   whom he appointed the heir of all things, Hath appointed (ethēken). First aorist (kappa aorist) active of tithēmi, a timeless aorist.  Heir of all things (klēronomon pantōn). See Mark 12:6 for ho klēronomos in Christ's parable, perhaps an allusion here to this parable (Moffatt). The idea of sonship easily passes into that of heirship (Galatians 4:7; Romans 8:17). See the claim of Christ in Matthew 11:27; Matthew 28:18 even before the Ascension. -  Robertson - Word Pictures in the New Testament. 27  All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Matthew 11:27 (ESV)   through whom also he created the world. Hebrews 1:2 (ESV)   1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2  He was in the beginning with God. 3  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4  In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:1-5 (ESV)   VERSE THREE:   3  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature,   The word apaugasma, late substantive from apaugazō, to emit brightness (augē, augazō in 2 Cor. 4:4), here only in the N.T., but in Wisd. 7:26 and in Philo. It can mean either reflected brightness, refulgence (Calvin, Thayer) or effulgence (ray from an original light body) as the Greek fathers hold. Both senses are true of Christ in his relation to God as Jesus shows in plain language in John 12:45; John 14:9. "The writer is using metaphors which had already been applied to Wisdom and the Logos" (Moffatt). The meaning "effulgence" suits the context better, though it gives the idea of eternal generation of the Son (John 1:1), the term Father applied to God necessarily involving Son. See this same metaphor in 2 Cor. 4:6. - Word Pictures in the New Testament.   Charaktēr is an old word from charassō, to cut, to scratch, to mark. It first was the agent (note ending = tēr) or tool that did the marking, then the mark or impress made, the exact reproduction, a meaning clearly expressed by charagma (Acts 17:29; Rev. 13:16-17). Menander had already used (Moffatt) charaktēr in the sense of our "character." The word occurs in the inscriptions for "person" as well as for "exact reproduction" of a person. The word hupostasis for the being or essence of God "is a philosophical rather than a religious term" (Moffatt). - Word Pictures in the New Testament.    and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.   Rend. maintaining. Upholding conveys too much the idea of the passive support of a burden. "The Son is not an Atlas, sustaining the dead weight of the world" (quoted by Westcott). Neither is the sense that of ruling or guiding, as Philo (De Cherub. § 11), who describes the divine word as "the steersman and pilot of the all." It implies sustaining, but also movement. It deals with a burden, not as a dead weight, but as in continual movement; as Weiss puts it, "with the all in all its changes and transformations throughout the aeons." It is concerned, not only with sustaining the weight of the universe, but also with maintaining its coherence and carrying on its development. - Word Studies in the New Testament.   After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high   indicates that the work of purification was done by Christ personally, and was not something which he caused to be done by some other agent. - Word Studies in the New Testament.   Comp. Psalm 110:1, 8:1; 10:12; 12:2; Ephesians 1:20; Revelation 3:21. The verb denotes a solemn, formal act; the assumption of a position of dignity and authority The reference is to Christ's ascension. In his exalted state he will still be bearing on all things toward their consummation, still dealing with sin as the great high priest in the heavenly sanctuary - Word Studies in the New Testament.   20  that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, Ephesians 1:20 (ESV)   VERSE FOUR:   4  having become as much superior to angels   The informal and abrupt introduction of this topic goes to show that the writer was addressing Jewish Christians, who were familiar with the prominent part ascribed to angels in the O.T. economy, especially in the giving of the law. - Word Studies in the New Testament.    as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs   The comparative only in Hebrews. In the sense of more excellent, only in later writers. Its earlier sense is different. The idea of difference is that which radically distinguishes it from κρείττων better. Here it presents the comparative of a comparative conception. The Son's name differs from that of the angels, and is more different for good. - Word Studies in the New Testament.

Chapter Two, Verse Three (2:3) It was a great pleasure and honor to have this meaty mobile discussion with my good friend Mike Allen, theologian extraordinaire and dean at RTS-Orlando. Thanks for tuning in! RESOURCES: + Some of Mike's Many Books: • Grounded in Heaven: Recentering Christian Hope and Life on God -- https://amzn.to/2DhTD54 • Sanctification -- https://amzn.to/33morMH • Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (with Scott Swain) -- https://amzn.to/2pXazek + Richard Middleton's book that is being addressed in Grounded in Heaven -- https://amzn.to/35MgsKL   Credits: Produced by Jonathan Pennington and Mandy Pennington Video and Audio Engineering and Music: Mandy Pennington

Chapter Two, Verse Three (2:3)It was a great pleasure and honor to have this meaty mobile discussion with my good friend Mike Allen, theologian extraordinaire and dean at RTS-Orlando. Thanks for tuning in!- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -RESOURCES: + Some of Mike’s Many Books:• Grounded in Heaven: Recentering Christian Hope and Life on God -- https://amzn.to/2DhTD54• Sanctification -- https://amzn.to/33morMH• Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (with Scott Swain) -- https://amzn.to/2pXazek+ Richard Middleton’s book that is being addressed in Grounded in Heaven -- https://amzn.to/35MgsKL- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Credits: Produced by Jonathan Pennington and Mandy PenningtonVideo and Audio Engineering and Music: Mandy PenningtonFollow CCT on social media:+ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/carscoffeeth...+ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cars_coffee...+ Twitter https://twitter.com/CarsTheologyFollow Mandy Pennington here:+ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mandy.penni...+ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/mandypenning...+ Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/6v16Y...+ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTbQ...

Chapter One, Verse Three (1:3)[Mea Culpa: My apologies that during part of this episode my microphone makes a scratching sound when it comes in contact with my seatbelt. The person responsible (me) has been severely reprimanded. The conversation was so good we had to keep it!]My guest for this episode is my good friend Dr. Bryan Dyer, NT scholar and academic editor extraordinaire at Baker Academic.Bryan earned his PhD from McMaster Divinity College and has recently published his dissertation on suffering in the Book of Hebrews in the LNTS series.In this episode Bryan and I discuss his academic work, why he named his first car Toby Mac, and most importantly, the moment when I break the news to him that his book has been wrongly classified by the Library of Congress. I’ve worked closely with Bryan as my editor at Baker for several years and I love spending time with him.Thanks for tuning in!NOTE: For a longer and even richer "Uncut" version of this episode, join our support team through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/carscoffeetheologySources Referenced in this Episode: Bryan Dyer, Suffering in the Face of Death: The Epistle to Hebrews and Its Context of Situation -- https://amzn.to/2PR0ZEM  See also Dyer, The Synoptic Problem: Four Views -- https://amzn.to/2TcGrWa  Jason Whitlark, “Cosmology and the Perfection of Humanity in Hebrews,” in Interpretation and the Claims of the Text: Resourcing New Testament Theology, edited by Whitlark, Longenecker, and Novakovic -- https://amzn.to/2DfqRTU  David Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews -- https://amzn.to/2T7WEfh  More information on the Library of Congress Classification System: https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/Credits:Produced by Jonathan Pennington and Scott SlucherAudio Engineering and Music: Mandy PenningtonFollow CCT on social media:+ Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/carscoffeetheology/+ Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/cars_coffee_theology/?hl=en+ Twitterhttps://twitter.com/CarsTheologyFollow Mandy Pennington here:+ Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/mandy.pennington.music/+ Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/mandypenningtonmusic/+ Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/6v16YnjTPOryfyUjccyDDc?si=dUK4RCynSp2L0hx2AjQZ_w+ YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTbQYQno1u5wn-Y80n17szgCheck out Scott Slucher's helpful hiking vlog, Slucherville:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAeRwgydVIlCFvrMIma5K9A

Ephesians 5:2-3And now, Admonition, brought to you by the Collierville Church of Christ.What's a good contrast to God's appreciation and care and love and concern and attitude towards the sacrifice of Christ? In Ephesians chapter five verse two we read: And Walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma. So there's God's attitude towards Christ's sacrifice, but what's the contrast? Verse Three says, But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you as is fitting for saints. You want to contrast Christ's sacrifice with something God hates. How about fornication? Uncleanness. How about desiring what belongs to somebody else? Those are things God cannot stand.For more from the Collierville Church of Christ. Visit Colliervillecoc.org.

Andrew and Apoorva are more than pleased to prostrate themselves at the beauty, the glory that is “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” before talking about a surprising Golden Globes ceremony. They also both recommend a classic foreign film from their respective mother lands. Subscribe for free, review us at Apple Podcasts, and follow us on Twitter: @PoTCPodcast. Main segment: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” Foreign Film of the Week: “Three Idiots, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”

In the Firefly episode Out of Gas, Malcolm Reynolds says, “No matter how far the long arm of the Alliance might get, we’ll just get ourselves a little further.”   This is The Celtfather, Marc Gunn. I’m going to share with you the story behind my song “The Long Arm”. It was the first single released for my new Firefly album, As Long As I’m Flyin’. The album came out on March 6, 2018. And the physical CD will no longer be available after March 31. So if you want that album, buy it in my Bandcamp store.   SHOW TIMES   0:30 Celtfather News 2:01 Intro toThe Long Arm  4:15 Verse One, Basic Human Rights 5:50 Verse Two, Environmentalism and Unification 8:22 Verse Three, Fake News, Lies, and Resistance 10:25 Chorus, Fighting Back Thru the Arts 12:05 Creating Change Through Politics 14:44 Congressional Dish Podcast Recommendation   NEWS   Before we get to that, I want to share some news.    My next CeltfatherLive internet concert is scheduled for Sunday, April 15, 2018. If you want to watch that show or future internet shows, please register now at celtfather.com/watch/.    If you love the TV show Firefly, like I do, please follow my Firefly Drinking Songs playlist on Spotify. You can listen to all of my Firefly albums PLUS other Firefly songs by other artists.   You can find all of my upcoming news for April in the Celtfather Monthly. It's a free post on Patreon. You'll also learn a great tip for engaging on social media.   Find all these links in the shownotes.   In general, I prefer to let my music speak for itself. “The Long Arm” has a lot of nuances though. So I want to talk about it.    While it is set in the Firefly verse, it is a very political song. It is inspired by our current administration which I am not fond of. So if you are a fan of what’s happening in the White House, you probably don't want to listen to this episode.    Might I suggest instead that you check out the Canton Radio episode of Geek Pub Songs.    Alright, I'm hoping everyone who doesn't want to listen has logged off now.   ABOUT THE LONG ARM   When that line by Malcolm Reynolds is first spoken, it comes from a man who’s been beaten. Reynolds fought in one of the worst battles in the Unification War. The Battle of Serenity Valley saw some of the biggest loss of life of that war.    You can hear in his voice a man who had lost his faith in God, in justice and in humanity. He just wanted to hide away and avoid the encroaching “civilization” of the Alliance. He wanted to escape.    The Serenity movie turned that all around. He and the crew learned about one of the atrocities committed by the Alliance. He found faith in a cause bigger than himself. And once again he took up arms and won.    This song is about fighting for something bigger than oneself.    It was written at the very beginning of the Trump Administration. Trump was picking people to run various parts of the government with an obvious aim to dismantle the government. Most were corporate flunkies, people who wanted to decrease the size of the government and strengthen their own businesses. Liberals were up in arms and I believe rightfully so.    You see, one of the things Trump ran on was to run the government like a business. I used to be a fan of that idea. I remember watching the movie Dave. One of the lines that stuck with me is “if I ran my business like this, I would be out of business.”   I remember thinking, “right!”   Then I saw it in practice. A government cannot be run as a business. Because either you end up giving one business a monopoly or you stop thinking about what’s best for the people.    The for-profit business does what’s best for the business. That is not always what's best for its customers. The for-profit business focuses on what's best for its shareholders. Sometimes they coincide, but not always.   I am not a fan of big debts and deficits. America's is out of control. And the supposedly fiscally-conservative Congress is not doing anything to stop it. In fact, they're making it bigger, even while they attempt to dismantle the minuscule programs that actually help every day Americans like you and me.   It comes down to another lie by Trump. The Machiavellian idea of "the ends justify the means". He'll lie and support that lie even if he doesn't believe it, as long as he gets support for it.   I'm sort of jumping ahead of myself. So let's break down the lyrics.   The Long Arm is reaching for you Wants to wrest and take control It struck down your family   Now it's aimin' for your soul   The Long Arm is of course the Trump administration fighting to take away the basic human rights of Americans. It is trying to destroy everything that makes America beautiful and beloved by its people.   This might be an over-dramatization. But it makes the point.   It's grasp is filled with hate. It's fingers naught but fear White knuckled, it grips you Till your eyes fill with tears.   One of the things I've noticed most about the election of Trump is the hate. I'm not gonna point fingers at conservatives though. This is a universal thing. Conservatives are arguing that Liberals are hate-filled and Liberals are saying the same about Conservatives.   I think it's safe to say that this administration inspires hate. Trump is very polarizing. He bullies and belittles those who disagree with him. And he riles people up, both his supporters and those who despise him.   That's a narrative that liberals tried to warn about during the election. That's what all the claims of sexual misconduct were all about. Yes, Trump will never sue those women who claimed he abused them because he did, either physically or with emotional abuse. I have no doubt. He's the worst kind of person.   That's why I used the imagery of rape in this verse. I wanted the listener to get the feeling of being forced against your will to submit to Trump's will.   Alright, I'm gonna save the chorus for the last because admittedly, it takes a slightly different twist.   The Long Arm took our planet Down our throats, it done rammed The promise of unification But it left us all damned.   This second verse is mostly about environmentalism. However, it starts with another broken promise of Trump. Much like in Firefly, the Alliance promised unification. But that idea was only if it's under their rule.   Trump was the same. He promised to unite America and to work across the aisle. But he lied about that. Yes, Liberals were not willing to work with him. But he didn't even try. The great "negotiator" once again was not so great. Because all he cares about is himself and maybe his progeny. The rest of us are damned.   Laid waste to our landscape While its pockets grew fat Left us homeless and cold Now it's time we fight back   Now we get to the next prediction, that Trump would make it easier for corporations to destroy our environment for his own profit.   To that end, he removed a lot of bad regulations that Obama setup. And I say bad, because Obama did not get these passed as law. He used executive orders to protect our country because he couldn't get the Republican Congress to pass any laws to protect our country.   So let me talk a moment about regulations. I am not a fan of regulations. Or at least the idea of them. But this goes back to why for-profits should not run non-profit institutions.    Corporations are beholden to their shareholders. The most-important thing for investors is to make money. So if that means cutting costs or not doing stuff, like regulating your own company in the short-term so that your investors are happy, so be it.    Meaning, Corporations will not regulate themselves. And when it comes to convenience, consumers will not regulate corporations. That's one of the big pro-free market lies. The market will not regulate corporations if there's no immediate incentive.    So sure, when Conservatives finally see climate change as a real thing because our air quality, water quality and health diminish, THEN they will be fine with regulating corporations. But by then it's too late.   This goes back to Firefly too. "Earth's resources were all used up."   Why on Earth would any sensible person wait until THEN to protect our resources. It's stupid. Regulations are necessary to prevent profit over health.   Of course, who's making money while our environment goes to hell? Trump and his corporate cronies. Who's not? You and me.   The only way to protect true Americans is to defend the environment and to regulate corporations.   We're done running from the Long Arm Browncoats rise again We'll weaken your grip  And the stories you spin    As we start the final verse, I bring it back to the Independents. The Browncoats rising to fight for freedom and to fight against the "stories we spin" aka Fake News.    In the case of the Browncoats, it's the news spread over the Cortex by the Alliance. In our case, it's pretty much everything that Trump says and tweets. He is the #1 creator of Fake News in our country. Everything is Trump extremism.   I wish that "weaking your grip" was as easy as sharing the "facts". But as Ben Kenobi said in Empire Strikes Back.   Obi-Wan: "So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." Luke: "A certain point of view?" Obi-Wan: "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."   Yes. There are many facts that are easy to dispute. That's why Politifact has a scorecard for Trump that lists about 69% of his statements as Mostly False all the way down to Pants on Fire at 15%, higher than any other politician. Follow the link in the shownotes to see specific truths and lies.    Even though Trump is held accountable for every statement, if you're a true believer in him, you will blow off facts. That's a truth for any believer. Whether you're a fan of Trump or Obama or whatever you believe. If you are a believer, you will ignore facts.   This is especially true if he's keeping his big promises. And according to Politifact he's working on those. Even stupid ones like building a wall.   Like you done with all your lies That you packed in your fist But you ain't seen the truth yet Till you seen us resist   Of course, the final line calls for Browncoats and Americans to stand up and fight back, to Resist against tyranny.    We fight for freedom, freedom, For poetry and song We fight for actors and authors Painters and potters, Dancers and dreamers, Laborers and learners, It's them artists who make us strong.   I should point out that despite the resistance and calls for fighting for freedom, I am personally a pacifist. I believe in peaceful resistance. While this hearkens back to the Browncoats fighting for independence, I believe in fighting back through poetry and song, through the arts.   This actually makes a lot of sense, because the arts are often some of the first things attacked by conservative politicians as they rail on about fiscal responsibility while spending even more money elsewhere.   The arts are easy to overlook. But they are the best sign of a prosperous country. They're a sign of culture and humanity. The arts tell a story. Truth is revealed through that story. That's how humans grow. That's why we are no longer living in the dark ages. We live longer. We are more prosperous.    Even a small independent musician like me, I can make a living playing music thanks to the arts and the internet. I am able to tell this story.   And of course, I'm not alone. There's actors and authors, painters and potters, dancers and dreamers. Thank you Patty for coming up with the "dreamers". That line got new meaning because DACA, Differed Action for Child Arrivals, that was up in the air back in February.   And of course laborers and learners.   It's you who make us strong.   But it's not just the artists. It's each and every one of us who tries to make a living in this country. We're all struggling to be heard. We are all the heroes of our own Firefly episode. Each of us can make a difference. But we have to fight for a better world.   We can't just stand by idly and watch the world go to hell. We have to get to the polls and vote for people who stand for something better, people who will make a difference.    And I don't mean egotistical billionaires like Trump. I mean you or one of your friends.   Over the past year, I feel like I have finally learned how our government works. There's so much I didn't understand. But I read and learned.   Last December, Doug Jones won a senate seat here in Alabama. What I learned from that win and from everything last year is that our votes matter. Even a Democrat in Alabama can win a seat in a very Republican state if we vote, and if we find non-extremist people to run for office.   Republicans tried to brand Jones as an extremist liberal. But he's not. He's moderate who is now campaigning for bipartisanship, the very thing our Congress needs right now.   But how many others could step up and make a difference, in Congress or even at the state level. Or heck! How about the city level.   I saw a post on Facebook by a libertarian friend. He went to a school board meeting and was aghast. He ranted why couldn't the board do what was in the best interest of the students instead of trying to put money in their own pockets.   Of course, my friend Jamie and I rolled our eyes after reading that. Because the same could be said about your city hall, your state legislature, and definitely the Congress and Trump.    OpenSecrets.org publishes data on how each politician gets their money. Most are lobbied and owned by corporations. That's why the NRA has such a stranglehold on gun legislation. That's why Wall Street and banks were able to remove many of the regulations that were setup to prevent another recession like we had ten years ago. They own many of our politicians. And that's why the oil companies block the development of renewable energy resources.    But just imagine if you wanted to just do good for your city, state, or federal government. Just imagine if you weren't in it to get rich quick.    Well, the fact is you can do it. Anyone can get elected. Thanks to the internet, anyone can raise funding. All it takes is a passion and a willingness to make good change for our country.   That's ultimately what "The Long Arm" is about. It's about doing what's right for individuals. It's about standing against governments or corporations or anyone who tries to limit your freedoms. I pray to God that we never end up with a Unification War like on Firefly. "The Long Arm" is my small contribution to make sure that never happens.    Plus it’s just a gorgeous song inspired by an amazing tv show.    One final note. The president doesn’t make the laws. That job falls to Congress. But the news doesn’t report much about the laws that congress passes.    That’s why Jennifer Brinely started Congressional Dish. She reads the actual laws to see what’s in them and shares the facts. She also provides references in the shownotes. This is a great podcast if you want to find out what’s happening in our country beyond the headline.    I can’t say the show is unbiased. Brinely has very strong opinions. But I do think she does a good job at staying with the facts. She was very critical of Obama and is just as much of Trump. But more than anything she is critical of congress no matter what side they are on.    It’s an awesome show. You can subscribe for free at congressionaldish.com.    -   Thank you so much for listening. I know politics these days is very divisive. And I'm not gonna make a habit of doing political episodes. But if I'm to be true to myself and my songwriting, I felt I should share my thoughts on this song.    You can support this podcast for as little as $1 per month when you join the Gunn Runners Club on Patreon. You'll get hours of great content for one low fee and help me create new music for you.    You can also subscribe to the podcast and download free music at celtfather.com.      

Support for this program is needed, Patrons receive additional content & rewards @ www.Patreon.com/OaC - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Get Support with: Conscious Spirit-Coaching- A ONE-on-ONE Service of SHAMANIC direction, guidance, personal support & inspiration to eventually induce undeniable first-hand spiritual & multidimensional experiences on a consciously aware level. Learn More @ www.OpenandClear.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Verse Three - Tao Te Ching - Overvalue others, your start to believe you need them. Overvalue possessions, your believe they are crucial for survival. A Trained Mind assists the world by emptying people of thoughts and emphasizes their essence, by weakening their ambition for goals and strengthening their inspiration within this moment. They help people detach from everything they know, everything they desire, and generate confusion in those who thought they knew, braking down improper perceptions. Now they can actually begin to experience being in this moment, and feel everything falling into place. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The HD version of this program and many others, are available by generous donors, like yourself @: www.OpenandClear.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Have any Questions or Advice? Contact us @: OpenandClear@GMail.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Please Like Us on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/openclear/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - www.OpenandClear.com

Support for this program is needed, Patrons receive additional content & rewards @ www.Patreon.com/OaC - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Get Support with: Conscious Spirit-Coaching- A ONE-on-ONE Service of SHAMANIC direction, guidance, personal support & inspiration to eventually induce undeniable first-hand spiritual & multidimensional experiences on a consciously aware level. Learn More @ www.OpenandClear.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Verse Three - Tao Te Ching - Overvalue others, your start to believe you need them.Overvalue possessions,your believe they are crucial for survival.A Trained Mind assists the worldby emptying people of thoughts and emphasizes their essence, by weakening their ambition for goalsand strengthening their inspiration within this moment. They help people detach from everything they know, everything they desire, and generate confusion in those who thought they knew,braking down improper perceptions.Now they can actually begin toexperience being in this moment, and feel everything falling into place. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The HD version of this program and many others, are available by generous donors, like yourself @: www.OpenandClear.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Have any Questions or Advice? Contact us @: OpenandClear@GMail.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Please Like Us on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/openclear/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - www.OpenandClear.com

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Our conclusion on our trip through out cosmic consciousness. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

We continue with the qualities that you and I should possess and practice in order to receive God's support and divine guidance. This session covers the 3rd verse of 'The Cow'

Dobro, Mandolin, Fiddle, Banjo's, Guitar, Tambourine and Handclaps. Our Bluegrass Gospel Version of The Classic Gospel Song—The Hallelujah Side Lyrics:Johnson Oatman, Jr  Music: J. Howard Entwisle 1898 Public DomainThe 1st to Record “The Hallelujah Side” Was Ernest Stoneman & His Dixie Mountaineers. On September 21, 1926, They Recorded It for Victor. Since Then The Classic Gospel Song Is Been Recorded by The Tinley Quaker City Gospel Singers, Bill Gaither, The Chuck Wagon Gang and, and the Country Gentleman.“The Hallelujah Side”Verse One:Once a sinner far from Jesus....I was perishing with cold....But the blessed Savior heard me when I cried.....Then He threw His arms around me and He led me to His fold....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....The Chorus:O glory be to Jesus...let the hallelujahs roll....Help me ring the Savior's praises....far and wide.....For I've opened up toward Heaven all the windows of my soul.....And I'm living on the hallelujah side.....Verse Two:Though the world may sweep around me...with her dazzle and her dreams....Yet I envy not her vanities and pride......For my soul looks up to Heaven where the golden sunlight gleams....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....Verse Three:Not for all earth's golden millions would I leave this precious place....Though the tempter to persuade me oft has tried....For I'm safe in God's pavilion, happy in His love and grace....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....Verse Four:Here the sun is always shining...here the sky is always bright....Tis no place for gloomy Christians to abide....For my soul is filled with music and my heart with great delight....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....Verse Five:And upon the streets of glory...when we reach the other shore.....And have safely crossed the Jordan's rolling tide...You will find me shouting "Glory" just outside my mansion door....Where I'm living on the hallelujah side....The Chorus:O glory be to Jesus...let the hallelujahs roll....Help me ring the Savior's praises....far and wide.....For I've opened up toward Heaven all the windows of my soul.....And I'm living on the hallelujah side.....© 2013 Shiloh Worship Music COPY FREELY;This Music is copyrighted to prevent misuse, however,permission is granted for non-commercial copying-Radio play permitted- www.shilohworshipmusic.com

I wrote this song and recorded it on my spiritual birthday. I had such a strong desire to praise and thank the Lord Jesus Christ for saving me from the power of sin. I am very grateful to see Jesus for The free gift of eternal life!CHORUSYou Saved My SoulAnd You Made Me WholeYou Took Me from the DarknessAnd You Brought Me to the LightVERSE ONEI Was Lost in the DarknessI Did Not Know Where to Go VERSE TWOI Was Wandering In the Darkness..yeah...I Was Blind As I Could BeMy Mind Was BlownBy the Things I'd Been ShownAnd I Certainly Want to LiveI Want to Live for EternityVERSE THREEI Was Looking For SomethingTo Fill the Emptiness InsideSo I Laid down My PrideAnd I Invited You insideAnd I Received Your Free Gift Of Eternal LifeVERSE FOURYou’re a Treasure DiscoveredYou're the Pearl Of Great PriceNow I'm Singing a New SongCause I Said so Long To This WorldAnd All, All of It's Pride©2000-2010 Shiloh Worship Music COPY FREELY;This Music is copyrighted to prevent misuse, however,permission is granted for non-commercial copying only.

Fighting the Tide in the Summer of 1983 For me, personally, the summer of 1983 was a critical summer in my development as a Christian. In the fall of 1982, I gave my life to Christ through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ at MIT. And then I went on a summer project at Hampton Beach the following summer in 1983. And so the summer of 1983, I was doing beach evangelism. I learned how to do contact evangelism that summer. We read a book by David Bryant called "In the Gap." And I learned about missions, about praying for unreached people groups, and became aware of the missionary call of Christ on my life. I learned to work at a job, a secular job, as a Christian, and be able to put my faith into practice in some challenging work situations. That was the summer I did all that. That was also the summer I almost died in the Atlantic Ocean. Funny now, but it wasn't funny then. There was a big storm, not quite a hurricane, but it whipped the ocean into a frenzy. And it looked like Hawaii, like the pipeline, Waikiki Beach, something like that. And I should have known something. My friend, Chaz Mortenson, and I, we should have known something, that in the middle of the summer, middle of the week, there was not a single person swimming. We should have thought something at that point. There's no one swimming here today, except the two of us, as we did some incredible, awesome body surfing, best of my life. Almost paid for it with my life, but the best of my life. And we were just riding these waves in, and just one wave after another, and just having a great time, until I noticed that we were getting pulled gradually and inexorably out to sea. Much further along and further down the beach, than when we started. And I said, "Uh oh." And I called over to Chaz, and I said, "We need to start going back in." And he had already seen that danger. We were in some kind of a riptide. I don't know how long it took for us to get back to the beach. I have no idea. It felt like an hour. Probably, it was like 10 minutes. But we rode a wave in, and then swam like crazy to fight the current, and then rode the next wave in. In this way, in little steps, we finally made it back to the beach exhausted. And this became, in the years that followed, a picture to me of the issue that's in front of us in the text today. And that is the powerful forces on my soul, causing me to drift away from Jesus. And the author in Hebrews 2:1 says, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." Is it possible to drift little by little, further and further away from an active, healthy, vibrant walk with Christ, our hearts becoming gradually hardened to the things of God and the dangers of sin? The Book of Hebrews says that not only is it possible, but it's the great danger of our Christian lives. In my opinion, the whole book was written as a warning to us, who are in the church, to look after our souls in our walk with Christ. And here we have, very plainly and clearly, the first of several significant warnings in the Book of Hebrews to us as Christians. I. Such a Great Salvation And what's in front of us, as we look at this, is the greatness of our salvation. Remember that the central message of the Book of Hebrews is that a superior mediator, Jesus Christ, greater than all other mediators, greater than all other figures in Old Testament history, this great figure, Jesus Christ, has brought us a superior covenant, the New Covenant, which results in a superior life, a life of complete forgiveness for sins, and a fruitfulness before God, of free access into the very throne room of God, a better life. This is what we have in the New Covenant. And it talks, in Verse Three, about, "Such a great salvation," such a great salvation. Now, in our culture, the word 'great' is used too much. We have it all the time. It's used for everything. It's used for natural features, like the Great Lakes, or the Great Barrier Reef, or the great white shark. In history, there's Alexander the Great, and the Great War, World War I. In literature, you have "Great Gatsby" and "Great Expectations," which I didn't think were so great, but I got through that book, somehow survived. Someone thought they were great. Dickens, I guess. But we have that word all the time. In commercial life, you can go for a great haircut to Great Clips. Or you can search on Google to find great wedding gifts or a great vacation spot. Perhaps, in no aspect of American life is the word so overused, as in sports. The "100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time," or Muhammad Ali calling himself, "The greatest of all times." Once, I was watching a basketball game, in which a star player scored a lot of points in one, in the fourth quarter, and won a key basketball game. And the announcer said, "You are watching what true greatness is all about." And, as a Christian, I was offended by that. I was watching a basketball game. You want to know what true greatness is all about? Look to the cross. Look to Jesus Christ, to this great salvation. The word 'great' is overblown in our lives, but it is actually an understatement, when it comes to our salvation. Amen? It is such a great salvation that we have. And that's what we have before us in verse Three. We've already seen the greatness of the Savior. It really begins with just the greatness of Jesus. Although, it does mention that He provided a purification for sins, it really just focuses on just how great He is, as the second person of the Trinity. Verse one of our passage says, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard." And the 'therefore' points us back to the 14 verses of chapter 1. Because Jesus is so great, because of all we've seen of Jesus, these truths. We have a great salvation given by an infinitely great Savior, Jesus, the final Word, God's final Word to the human race. "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, He's spoken to us in His Son," Jesus, the final Word of God, greater than all the prophets. He is the heir of all things. And through Him, God made the universe. And He is the radiance of God's glory, and the exact representation of His being. He sustains all things by His powerful Word. He is the one who provided purification for sins and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven. And so, for the rest of the chapter, the author compares Him to the angels, and He's greater than all the angels. He's inherited a name greater than theirs. Angels are merely servants of God's people, servants of God. But Jesus, the Son, is God on His throne. "Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever. Righteousness will be the scepter of your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness, and therefore, God, your God has set you above your companions, by anointing you with the oil of joy." Jesus is the one who will roll up the present universe like a garment and throw them away, but will establish the new Heavens and the new Earth. How great is this person of Jesus Christ? And He is the one that brings us a great salvation, an infinitely great answer to the problem of sin. Hebrews 1:3, "After He had provided purification for sins…" He sat down, His work finished. I'll talk more about that later, in the Book of Hebrews, but a finished work once for all, sat down at the right hand of God. Sin's power over us is broken by our rescue, our transfer from Satan's dark kingdom into the Kingdom of Jesus. Sin's practice gradually being eradicated in our lives by the indwelling spirit, and by the instruction of the Word, like this very morning. Little by little, we're learning new habits of righteousness, and unlearning old habits of wickedness and sin. One day, in glorification, it will all be finished, and we'll be done with sin forever, and we'll be done with these mortal bodies forever. We will be in resurrection bodies, surrounded by glorious beings and worshipping a glorious God. That's a great salvation, friends, magnificent salvation, justification, sanctification, glorification. How marvelous is that? This is our great salvation, but it also arouses, from us or around us, great enemies. Satan is the enemy of our souls, the enemy of our salvation. And the world system that he has set up attacks us spiritually every day, makes it hard for us to make progress in the Christian life. And our own internal sin nature, the enemy within the walls betraying us day after day, though in our minds, we love God's law, but in our flesh, we yearn to rebel against Him. These enemies make it so very, very difficult for us, in our salvation. We have a great danger and it's listed right here in verse One, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." II. The Danger of Drifting Away We come to this potent image of drifting away. I can tell you, as a pastor, there are few things sadder than this, and that's watching somebody drift away spiritually. It's of the essence of pastoral ministry. It's grievous to me. I've seen it more times than I can count. How many people were doing well at one point, and then, give it a few years, or even a few months, and they're not doing well anymore? And you try to reach out, you try to persuade them. You meet with them, you pray for them. You do all these kinds of things, but still, they drift away. It reminds me of that problem in the infant stages of an infant, failure to thrive. It's not gaining weight. There's no direct problem, it seems, but it's just anemic. It's not thriving, and it just gets weaker and weaker, until finally, it dies. And you just see it happen, and there's nothing, it seems, that you can do to stop it. It's very sad and it's happened. We've seen it again and again. So, we have this image here of drifting away. The Greek word is a picture of a flowing system, like a river, if you could imagine, with a strong current. And you could throw a twig out, and the current just causes it to just float away from you, very, very quickly. The image I get is of a sailboat that's not properly moored to the dock, out on the ocean. The rope is just laying across. Somebody got distracted. They didn't tie it to the... They didn't moor it well. The little ebbs and flows, the rising and falling of the little chop in the wave, it doesn't make much of an impact immediately. You wouldn't even notice. Came back in five minutes, if you were attentive, you might notice that the rope had slid a little bit down the dock, been a little bit of movement, but not much. But if you were to go away and come back in 10 hours, rising and falling of the tide, and all that, the boat is gone. It's just gone. There's a sense of something drifting away. There are actually two different ways to translate this verse and it depends on which translation you have. NIV has the sense of something drifting away, someone drifting away from Christ, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." So, here's Jesus, and we're just drifting further, and further, and further away from Jesus. KJV turns it around and says, "Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at anytime we should let them slip from us." It's a matter of perspective, but I have the feeling that Christ and the Gospel are there, and they're not moving. In any case, we are the ones moving further and further away. But from the perspective, these things that we once cherished are drifting away from us. The second image is not one of a sailboat. I get one, an image of an earthquake victim that's down in the basement of a crushed building, like in Port-Au-Prince, and they can't move. And they've received a number of small cuts and wounds, which could be attended to, if they were able to move, and get some treatment. But they're pinned. They're paralyzed under some pilings, or some cinder blocks, and they just can't move. And they're watching themselves bleed out, and their life blood flowing, flowing, flowing, away from them, out of their arm or leg, until they're dead. Either way, you see the danger here: Either something drifting away from you or you drifting away from Christ. Either way, it's a deadly problem. And so these things that we have heard, it mentions in verse One, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard," or, "The things which we have heard," are the Gospel truths about Christ. It's the doctrine of the Gospel, biblical doctrine. The idea is that we should be careful not to let these precious truths bleed out of our lives, little by little, so that they are gone from us. We've lost them. Joshua 1:8 says, positively, "Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth." It's just like the Word, just bleeding out and it's gone. This is a great danger, friends. It's a great danger, and I've seen it again and again. I yearn, I'm pleading with you to get your attention here. I want you to look to yourselves. I want you to look in the mirror of the Word and say, "Am I drifting from Christ? Is there evidence that I'm drifting from Jesus? Am I further away from Him, than I was a year ago? Am I less zealous for Him, than I was a year ago? What is the direction of my life?" I want you to look at yourselves through the mirror of the Word. That's what I want. And I'm going to do the same myself. The Book of Hebrews, as I mentioned, is the ultimate warning book of the Bible. And the warnings are going to get more severe, as we go on in the Book of Hebrews. The great danger here, is for you to blow it off, say, "It'll never happen to me. I don't need to hear this. Besides, I believe in, 'Once saved, always saved.' I believe in that, and so I don't think I need to heed these warnings in the Book of Hebrews. It doesn't apply to me." As a matter of fact, one very well known, and ordinarily reliable teacher of the Word of God, took this approach, even on this passage. He said this, "To whom is this warning directed? It cannot be directed to Christians." He wrote, "They can never be in danger of neglecting salvation, since they already have it. They can neglect growth and discipleship, but they cannot neglect salvation." Friends, I hope you're well enough trained to know that salvation comes to you in stages. We don't have it all yet. And if we're in the middle stage called 'sanctification,' our sense of assurance and certitude that we began with justification, is based on how sanctification's going. And if sin is just ravaging your life, how do you know you're justified? If you're living like a slave to sin, how can you know? I tell you, if you're not growing, you're drifting. If you're not growing, you're drifting. You're going to keep... You're going to make progress toward Christ-likeness everyday or you're going to drift. Now, this man that I referred to, if I told you his name, you'd know it, but I won't say it. But I tell you, that if you take that approach to Hebrews, you'll miss the whole point of the whole book. It's written to Christians, because we need the warnings. The warnings accomplish the final salvation. And we Christians, we do well to heed the warnings, and take them seriously, and not blow them off. If you think drifting away from Christ can never happen to you, beware. 1 Corinthians 10:12, "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall." What does, "Take heed," mean, except, how about read the Book of Hebrews and take its warning seriously? "Take heed," that's what it says. What Causes Drifting? Now, what causes this drifting? Well, the immediate answer, right in the verse, is neglect of the Gospel. Neglect of the Gospel. So the opposite, we have to pay more careful attention. That's the remedy. We'll get to that. The opposite is the truth. The one who neglects the Gospel is the one who's drifting away. Or in verse three, "How should we escape, if we ignore such a great salvation?" It's a sense of ignoring the things of the soul. It certainly could refer to someone who's heard the claims of the Gospel, but has not yet made a commitment to Christ. I don't think that's the home base of these verses. He speaks in this language, "We must pay more careful... Into what we have heard, our great salvation." He's speaking like one of the group. And so what causes it? Well, I'm going to say this later, and develop it a little bit later, but there is a voluntary drifting, and there's an involuntary drifting. Involuntary drifting is just, you get wrapped up with the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth. You're just not aware of what's happening. And little, by little, by little, you're just not where you used to be. You're not making an active choice at that moment, "I'm going to turn my back on Jesus," but you are making little choices to not follow Christ, little choices, and that's where it becomes voluntary. Hebrews 3:13 speaks of the hardening process due to sin's deceitfulness. We'll get to that next chapter, but sin is deceitful. It's not honest with us and it's not telling us everywhere that it's at work in our lives. We're not always aware. And so there's this hardening. What is the hardening? Well, the opposite is a yieldedness, a soft heart, a yielded spirit. When the Holy Spirit speaks to you through the Word, as it says in Hebrews 3:7-8, "As the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'" It's like you hear Him speak, and He's prompting you, and telling you what to do, and you are digging in your heels. You're being stiff-necked, like the Jews in the Old Testament. You're not yielded to Him. Your heart is hard, like Pharaoh. You're not yielding to what God's saying and sin does that. It has the power to harden your heart. What Are Some Markers Along the Way? Well, what are some tragic milestones along the way of someone drifting from Jesus? When I was out in the Atlantic Ocean, I started noticing the hotel where we first were. We wouldn't go to that hotel, but that's where we went in and started swimming. And it was diagonal down the beach. That was a marker and I knew that we had drifted a lot at that point. What are the markers? Well, how about a loss of that initial joy over salvation? Remember in the Parable of the Hidden Treasure? In his joy, he hides a treasure, and then sells everything that he has. I mean anything, everything for Jesus. That's how it is, the devotion of those early times with Jesus. And you love Him so much, and you want to worship Him. And you want to follow Him, and you're just so excited. But then there's a loss of that: Not so excited, not so yearning to be with Jesus, not so thrilled over the Word, not so excited about corporate worship, not so thrilled to sing hymns or spiritual songs, like you used to. And with that comes a gradual lessening of spiritual disciplines: Not spending as much time in prayer, not meeting as faithfully with the Lord in your quiet time, not reading as much, hurrying through it. And then a gradual lowering of standards of personal holiness. And why? Because your hungry heart wants to be happy, looking for something. And Jesus isn't doing it for you as much anymore, so you start to look toward the world, you start to look to other things. And so you start to lower your standards on holiness, so you can get some things from the world, growing hunger and thirst then, for worldly pleasures, and developing of habits in that direction. And with that, of course, a gradual lessening of spiritual disciplines, correspondingly. And then irritation with spiritual disciplines starts to creep in. "What a burden," you say, like in that Book of Malachi, "That you have to go do this, you have to go to church, or you have to pray, or do these disciplined things." And it starts to feel like a burden to you, not so eager to do it. And along with that, comes a critical spirit to those that probably are doing better than you spiritually. So excited, the new converts or even old ones, that have walked well with the Lord. And you just don't like being around them. Well, they annoy you. They irritate you a bit and it starts to become a burden to just be with them. And so Sunday morning isn't something you're really thrilled about, and start to be jealous of those people you pass on Sunday morning. They're out there unconcerned about church attendance." Oh, that I were free. Play golf like that guy or garden like that woman." And that these thoughts start creeping in, and at that point, you're pretty much ripe for changing habits on worship attendance, going from 52 times a year, to 50, to 48, to 46. And it starts 'til... You're bleeding out. You don't even know it's happening, but little by little, you're drifting. You're not where you used to be. Along with that, comes a growing irritability in life, in general. You're not as characterized by the fruit of the Spirit anymore. Those worldly things are not really making you happy. Maybe you think, "If I do a little more of them, they'll make me happy, but this level hasn't made me happy." And so fruit of the spirit does not really characterize you much. And you have spasms of conviction. Your conscience smites you. You make some changes. You turn over a new leaf a little bit, but it isn't really availing, because you haven't gone to the root of the issue. Those are some markers along the way. And when might it happen? Anytime. Times of prosperity, when things are going well, you can start drifting. Times of struggle, when there's an illness in the family, or might be persecution, or things going on, that can be a time when you start drifting away. Satan's at it all the time. Times of temptation are times of drifting away. III. The Remedy to Drifting Away Alright, so what is the remedy? Verse One, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." As I said, what we have heard is the Gospel. "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets, at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son." It's what God is speaking. It's what we've heard. The Word of God, the Gospel. Jesus is the Gospel and He is God's final Word to the human race. And I would say, more specifically, the words of the Gospel. Remember, Romans 10:17 says, "Faith comes by hearing and the hearing by the Word of Christ." And so your faith came initially by hearing with faith, hearing the Word with faith. And so your faith then gets bolstered, and strengthened, by hearing the Word with faith. Focus on what you have heard. It is by hearing the Word that your faith is renewed and given a new feast, so it gets vibrant and strong again. It's the Word. Colossians 2:6-7, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught." Colossians 2:6-7 is saying that the way you started is the way you make progress. It's Christ. It's the Word of the cross. It's taking it in, hearing with faith. That's how you make progress. And it says, "We must pay attention." The remedy is paying attention, consider, give full heed to what's going on. Consider who's speaking to you, God. Consider carefully the matter of this message, the gravity of it, the weight of it. Allow the Gospel's seriousness and power to rest heavily on your mind. The opposite of following this advice would be look on as a light thing, ignore it, blow it off. And it says, actually, we must pay, literally, more excellent attention to what we have heard. Pay more excellent attention. It intensifies it. Consider the matter of eternity, of Heaven and hell. Consider the Word of God and all of its power, its truth, its demands, its promises. Consider Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, did signs, and wonders, and miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit, preached like no man had ever preached, so much that those who are sent to arrest him came back, and said, "No one ever spoke like this man." This is the one who walked on water, who stilled the waves with His voice, who fed the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, who raised Lazarus from the dead on the fourth day. This is the one who is our substitute, who agreed in the Garden of Gethsemane to drink hell for you and me, and went and did it, who died on the cross, whose blood was shed, who stood in our place under the wrath of God, and then died, but on the third day, God raised Him from the dead. Consider these things. And for 40 days, He was with the church, instructing and teaching them, and then He ascended to Heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God Almighty. At that place, He is interceding for you every day, praying for you. And from that place, He will come back to judge the living and the dead. Consider these things. Pay more careful attention to them. Get a sense of a proper appraisal of them. Have you ever heard of Christie's of London? It's an art appraisal house and they have some of these famous art auctions, all time... Ming vase sold for a high price at Christie's. Well, who is Christie? Well, what they are, they hire the best art appraisers in the world, for something like 60 different categories. It's amazing. Antique Swiss pocket watches? Christie's is your place. The experts in the world are there. Or Rembrandt paintings. In order to develop that kind of expertise in appraisal, you have to know the history of the art, the history of the individual, like Rembrandt, you're studying. You can look at something and know right away, if it's a forgery, but more than that, you can say, "This is definitely Rembrandt, but not one of his better pieces." Why? "Well, this is what we see." We need to be appraisers of the Gospel. Not judges or critics of it, I'm not saying that, but just students of it. Pay more excellent attention to what you've heard. Diligently study, so that you do not drift away. IV. The Obligation to Take the Remedy And we have an obligation here, friends, to take this remedy. "We must pay more careful attention, therefore." We must, because Jesus is great. That's what the 'therefore' means to me. Because of the greatness of Jesus, we must pay more careful attention to what we have heard. It's an obligation. And we have to take this remedy. We have to take this remedy. I remember when we were in Haiti, one of the doctors gave a sick woman a prescription to be taken down to the pharmacy. And she took that prescription, and rolled it up, and put it in an amulet, and put it around her neck. Of course, Haiti is rife with voodoo and all kinds of mystical practices, but several days later, she came back, and she wasn't any better. Imagine our surprise, when we found out that she hadn't taken the written prescription down to the pharmacy to get the medication she needed. And even that wouldn't have been enough, she needed to take them. Here's your prescription: This is what you need to do, to not drift away, but you need to take the prescription. Don't write it on a strip of paper and put it around your neck. You need to actually do what it says. Go home this afternoon and pay more careful attention to what you have heard. Do it again tomorrow, until you know that you're not drifting. And why? Because God told us how great this salvation is, that was first proclaimed to us by the Lord. And God testified to it "By signs, wonders, and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to His will." Jesus was the first proclaimer of this Gospel. He stood up at the synagogue in Nazareth and they found that scroll in Isaiah, where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to heal all those that are sick in Zion, to rescue the captives." And he said, "Today, in your hearing, this Scripture is fulfilled." Jesus Christ preached this Gospel first, and then God testified to it by signs, wonders, and various miracles. He said, "This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him." Those are the apostles, I believe. And so the apostles heard Jesus, and then after Jesus ascended to Heaven, then they testified concerning it. It says in 1 John 1, "That which we have, which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim to you, concerning the Word of life." The apostles were eyewitnesses, and they handled these holy things, and they were with Jesus, and ate with Him, and saw Him. And saw Him in His resurrection, then they proclaimed. God testified by signs, and wonders, and various miracles. God, the Father, endued Christ with more wonder-working power than anyone else in history. Jesus did a river of miracles, showing the worth and value of the salvation that He came to bring. The blind saw, the lame walked, those who had leprosy were cured. The deaf heard, the dead were raised, and good news was preached to the poor. Those miracles accredited Jesus, testified to it. And so it was also, with the apostles. They were able to do great signs and wonders. Acts 2:43, it says, "Everyone was filled with awe, and many signs, and wonders, and miraculous signs were done by the apostles." In Acts 3, Peter and John healed a lame man at the temple gate called Beautiful. Acts 4, they prayed for power to do more miracles and more healing, "Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders." Acts 5, again, the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all of these served to testify to the Gospel, that it's true. It's coming from God. This is really God testifying through Jesus and through the apostles, that this is the true salvation message. And therefore, to ignore it, or to drift away from it, is worthy of great punishment. V. The Punishment of Ignoring Our Salvation The author gives us a note of punishment here. Look at verse 2-3, "For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, then how shall we escape, if we ignore such a great salvation?" The Old Covenant had its penalties for disobedience... The message spoken by angels is the Old Covenant. And if you broke the Mosaic Law, in many cases, you died. The murderer was to be put to death. The adulterer was to be put to death. The blasphemer was to be put to death. The Sabbath breaker was to be put to death. It was just the death knell that came from the law. Administer death. It was a terrifying thing. The author deals with it later in Hebrews 12, he says, "You have not come to a mountain that can be touched, Sinai, and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast with such a voice speaking words, that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: 'If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.' The sight was so terrifying, that Moses said, 'I'm trembling with fear.' " Well, the author's saying that he Old Covenant was binding. You couldn't blow it off and it had the death penalty connected with it. How much greater, then, are we worthy of punishment, if we neglect such a great salvation, the New Covenant in Jesus? That's physical death. We're dealing here with eternal death. We're dealing with the issue of hell, eternity apart from God. The Law of Moses didn't consign anyone to hell; it just killed them physically. But failure to come to Christ results in eternity in hell. In summation, we must pay more careful attention to the Gospel message about Christ, so that we do not drift away from Him. If we drift away, the punishment is more severe than we can possibly imagine. But paying more excellent attention to the Gospel is the remedy to this spiritual sickness. VI. Applications Application: First and foremost, all I can say is come to Christ. It could be that God sovereignly brought you here and you have never made a commitment to Christ. It's one thing to drift away from Christ, it's another thing never to have come. And it could be that God brought you, for such a time as this, to hear the Gospel. You've heard of Christ crucified, now I'm making a direct appeal to you: Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus and you'll find full forgiveness for your sins. You'll find everything you need at the cross. You'll find a welcome. God, the Father, like the father of the prodigal son, standing at the foot of the driveway, saying, "Welcome home." And all of your sins will be forgiven. Purification for sin, available through the blood of Jesus. But I'm mindful of the fact, that most of you who have come here today would call yourselves Christians. And that's why I say that this message is for you. Please don't drift away from Jesus. Please grow. Please feed your souls everyday on the Word of God. Please keep coming to church. And if you should move to another place, then find a good church, and go to that church. And I'm not getting legalistic here on church attendance. I know that there's some Sundays that you physically can't be there. I understand that. I'm just asking, when you don't go to church, what is the reason? Look at the reason. Test your hearts and see. And look at those milestones I listed. Are they happening to you? Are you drifting? Are you further from Jesus, than you were five years ago, ten years ago, five months ago? And if so, then repent, as it says in the Letter to the Church at Ephesus in Revelation 2. Turn around, you've forsaken your first love. Turn around, repent, and do the things you did at first. Go back and have those quiet times again. Be excited for Christian fellowship. Look at the sins that are in your life, that have drained your spiritual strength, and put them to death. They're killing you. They're waging war against your soul, it says in the Book of 1 Peter. Put them to death. And watch out for involuntary drifting. American lifestyle, it's a busy life. Corrie ten Boom said, "Beware of the barrenness of a busy life." Any of you, that are able to testify to that? "The barrenness of a busy life." Watch out for that. And finally, watch out for each other. See if anybody you know is drifting. It's not just the work of the elders, friends. We don't always know. Sometimes, we're among the last to know. Shepherd each other, love each other, ask questions. "How are you doing spiritually?" Take responsibility for each other's spiritual health. We'll talk more about that, much more in Chapter Three. But I'm just saying, please, notice each other, and say, "How are you doing? I haven't seen you in awhile. Are things going okay?" Many of you do that so beautifully, but keep doing it. Close with me in prayer, if you will.

I. Assurance of Salvation Please, if you would, take your Bibles and turn to the book of Romans. We're looking this morning at Romans 5. We're going to be zeroing in on verses 3-5, but we are also looking at the flow of argument spanning verses 1-11, so we can understand what is in there. Now, the Scripture testifies that, someday, there's going to be a wedding banquet of the Lamb. There's going to be an incredible feast. And there's going to be seats at the wedding banquet. Jesus said, "Many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the banquet table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven." I remember some time ago, I went to the most lavish wedding reception I've ever been to in my life. It was in New York City. The wedding itself had taken place in the United Nations chapel, and one of the most expensive hotels had opened its doors to this family for the wedding reception. And I have come to know, since then, about how much a wedding reception costs, and that must have been in the billions… Maybe millions… But it was very, very lavish. And at each place was a name card. And my name was on one of those cards. I had a place to sit down. And I thought to myself, today, as I prepared this message, how do you know that there is a place card at the wedding banquet of the Lamb for you? How do you know you're going to sit down there? On what grounds is your assurance? What is the basis of your certainty that you're going to be there? I believe that Scripture gives us three types of assurance, and I think we see all three in the text we're going to look at today. But some would say, and some have said, in church history, that, assurance of salvation, an absolute certainty that you are going to Heaven, an absolute certainty that your sins are forgiven, is impossible. That God does not give it. For example, the Roman Catholic Church, shortly after the Reformation, they convened together on what was known as the Council of Trent. And they said on January 13, 1547, their sixth session on justification... Remember what justification is? The doctrine that, by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, all of your sins can be forgiven. By faith in Jesus Christ, you can be declared not guilty by the Judge of all the Earth. How precious is that? But they said in their doctrine on justification, chapter nine, it says, and I quote, "No one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God." You can't know for sure, unless God testifies directly to you, by some special thing, like you're a prophet, you cannot know whether you're justified. You'll find out on Judgment Day. But even some Protestants, afraid that a sure and certain conviction, that all your sins are forgiven, that you will most certainly end up in Heaven at the end of your life, would lead to a sinful life. "Let us sin all the more, so that grace can increase. If I'm secure, I can do anything I want. I can murder, steal. I can treat my family any way that I want. I can do anything I want, any given day, and I'm forgiven." And so, therefore, pastors or leaders have stood up, and said, "Don't think that way. There is no sure and certain hope. You've got to stay with Jesus, day by day. You've got to be holy. You've got to work out your salvation every single day. There's no guarantees. You could be lost. You could be saved today and lost tomorrow, so you got to keep with it. You've got to keep walking with Jesus." And so they give no assurance of salvation, because they want you to stay with the program. But the Bible doesn't do this. And as a matter of fact, God labors that we would have an assurance of salvation. Jesus said this, "Fear not, little flock, it is the good pleasure of the Father to give you the Kingdom." That's assurance language, isn't it? Fear not little flock, it is God's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. And the whole book of 1 John, seven times, the Apostle John says, "This is how we know." This is how we know. This is how we know. Over and over. "This is how we know that we are in Him." "This is how we know that we belong to the truth." "This is how we know that He lives in us." You want to know the grounds of assurance? Read 1 John. There are tests in there, so that you may know that you're a Christian, a genuine Christian. He culminates the whole thing, 1 John 5:11 and following, "And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life. And this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life." Verse 13, "I write these things to you, who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life." God intends His children to have a sure and certain assurance of their salvation. And that is Paul's purpose here in Romans 5:1-11. That's what he's getting at. Now, last time, we looked at Verses 1-2, and we saw already, three of those words of assurance. He talked about having peace with God. He talked about an access into a permanent standing in grace. And he talked about, also, a joy, or an exalting in the hope of the glory of God. Now, what I'm going to do, is read Verses 1-11, but as I said, we're really going to be zeroing in on Verses 3-5. "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace, in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely, will anyone die for a righteous man. Though, for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him? For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life? Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." Now, that is the ground of your assurance, the Scripture. Now, Paul, as he's looking at this, is facing, realistically, some threats to assurance. We've been talking, since we began the study in the Book of Romans, about a Gospel message, which is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes that message. We've talked about how there's nothing in us that can respond to that message, that we are sinners, that we are lost, we are depraved. We do not see God. As it says in Romans 3. "There was no one righteous. No, not one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God." And so they wonder, "How can we be saved? How can anyone be saved?" But God and His mercy has given us Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ stood in our place. He took the punishment on His body on the cross. He absorbed the wrath of God, the righteous, just, condemnation for sinners. And He died the death we deserved to die. And He rose from the dead on the third day, to give us that sure and certain hope of our salvation. Threats to Assurance Threat #1: Justification is invisible...“It’s all just words...” And then, in chapter 4 of Romans, He talked about justification by faith. How are any of us sinners made right, simply by faith? Well, what is the faith like? It's just a believing in the Word of God, a simple trust. And so Paul is coming at us now, in chapter 5, and saying, "Well, how can we be sure we've received it?" You don't get a gold certificate from Heaven. Wouldn't that be great, if an angel came down and said, "Here's your certificate. As long as you have this, you know you have eternal life." Boy, I'll tell you what, wouldn't that be something? But God doesn't do that. Instead, He gives us these words. We read them on the page and we believe them. We trust them, and then we're open to doubts, aren't we? We're open to tremblings and to wonderings, "Have I really been saved?" Threat #2: Am I a real Christian? And then there's other threats. There's the threat of the issue of sham faith, a fake Christianity. "How can I know for certain that my faith is real?" I've heard stories about people who came to church for years, and then the temptations came, and they fell away. And it seems like they've lost their salvation. Now, I've heard of doctrine saying, 'Once saved, always saved,' but what about this person? What about this person? What happened over here?" And so we're shaking, were wondering, "Is my faith genuine? Is it real? Will it last? How do I know I'm not a sham Christian? How do I know I'm not fake?" That's a threat. Threat #3: Suffering in life... “How can God be at peace with me if I’m suffering all these trials?” And then there's the threat of suffering in life. There are some people sitting around you right now, that are going through unbelievable trials. All you need to do is say, "What are you going through right now? Tell me what's going on in your life," and you'll hear. There are incredible sufferings that we all go through, some more than others. And as we go through tribulations, we go through trials, we go through sufferings, you say, "Now, wait a minute. I thought we had peace with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ? I thought God was all powerful and that He loved me in Christ. Why is this happening to me? Why these trials? What's going on here? It used to be so easy. It used to be so good in my Christian life. I'd pray and God would answer. I'd share the Gospel and somebody would come to Christ. I would love to go to worship, but now, it's different. And I wonder sometimes, 'Have I lost it? Has He lost me? What about these trials? What's going on in my life?' " Suffering in life, a great threat to assurance. Threat #4: Will I persevere? How can I know for certain I will finish my life believing in Christ? And then, finally, that question, "Will I persevere? Will I finish? I don't just want to start. I want to finish the race. Will I be one of those ones, who, laying on my death bed, is clinging to Jesus Christ and to Him alone, and saying, 'Praise, God. Yes, I'm going through struggles. I'm facing death, it's true, but I have eternal life in Jesus. I know that when I pass through the veil, I'm going to come into His presence.'" Or are you going to be those that are going to be wondering, are going to be, perhaps, even at some point, repudiating Christ, or even blaspheming, because of some things that happened in your life? How do you know that won't happen to you? Because you're such a good believer? Because you're so strong in your faith, it's not going to happen to you? What is the ground of your assurance? That's the issue of Romans 5:1-11. The Terrible Threat of Sham Christianity Now, on the issue of the terrible threat of sham Christianity, this is not something that I, as your pastor, have invented. This is something that the Word of God talks a great deal about. If you look at James 1:22, it says, "Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." Now, that brings up a topic of self-deception, the fact that you can lie to yourself. You can assure yourself, when God is not assuring you. Deceive yourself, be a listener of the Word, but not a doer. You're deceiving yourself, you're self-deceived. And then Jesus, very, very clearly in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew Chapter 7:21 and following, it says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father, who is in Heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name, drive out demons, and perform many miracles?' And then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers'" Oh, that that might not be said to anyone in this room. Do you realize how terrifying that is? And if it's true of you, wouldn't you want to know today? Wouldn't you rather know today, when you can still repent and trust in Christ? What is a sure and certain ground of assurance, not a sandy one, but a solid one, that'll survive Judgment Day? What's the modern version or the Baptist version? Did we not walk the aisle, sign the card, get baptized, go to Sunday school, get involved in a church? Be the chairman of this or that important committee, serve for many years, and then die in the church? Is that a sure and certain ground of salvation? Well, what is? What is a sure and certain ground? I want to give you that. I want you to walk out, knowing that you're saved. I want you to walk out, knowing you're going to go to Heaven when you die, and base it on what God has based it on, not on a sham faith, but on a genuine one. Now, people have talked to me before about my preaching style. I'm an expository preacher. I just move through passages of the Bible. But, today, I'm going to give you three points in a poem. That's what I'm going to do today. As a matter of fact, if you look at your outline, I haven't even filled it in for you. I haven't done anything. I'm just giving you the three grounds of assurance, because I want this to be utterly clear. Here are your three points: What is the poem? I've rewritten verses to "Jesus Loves Me." We're going to sing it as the closing hymn, based on what I'm preaching today. That's your poem, three points in a poem. I'm not going to do that next week. This is it. This one time. This week, you're going to get your three points in a poem. What are the grounds of assurance? Assurance number one, assurance reasoned out in the mind. Second level, assurance worked out in the life. Third level, assurance poured out into the heart, by the Holy Spirit. That's it. That's what the Bible offers you, for your assurance of salvation. Let's see if we can understand them. II. Assurance Reasoned Out in the Mind First, assurance reasoned out in the mind. By the way, did you see that odd cover? You say, "What a strange thing to put on Mother's Day. What in the world does that have to do with Mother's Day?" Actually, it doesn't have anything to do with Mother's Day. It does have to do, however, with the message. My desire is, over the next two weeks, you will understand this diagram, including that odd looking swoosh at the top. We'll talk about the swoosh next week. Come back for the swoosh next week. Assurance that the Holy Spirit pours out into your heart. We'll talk about that fully next week. But you've got the three levels there: Reasoned out in the mind, worked out in the life, and poured out in the heart. That's an assurance that God is giving us for salvation. You could write right across the top, which I'll probably do for the bulletin next week, "This is how we know." That's just Scripture. That's 1 John. "This is how we know," First John 2:5, First John... Well, seven times, I'm not going to quote them all... "This is how we know." This is how you know: Reasoned out in the mind, worked out in the life, poured out into the heart. That's how you know. First, reasoned out in the mind. What is the basis of this? How does it work? The basis of it is God's unchangeable Word and His awesome promises. When God makes a promise, He never takes it back. He means what He says when He makes you a promise. And you can have an assurance based on the trustworthiness of God to keep His promises. Remember how Abram got saved? How did Abram get saved? On what basis is Abram, that sinner, going to stand before God on Judgment Day? On faith and faith alone. How did that faith get expressed? You remember the story? God took Abram out of the tent and said, "Look up at the stars, all the starry host." He pointed to them and what did He say to him? "So shall your offspring be." That is a promise, isn't it? What happened next? Abraham believed the promise. What happened next? God justified him. He declared him righteous, based on the fact that he believed the promise of God. That's how you get saved. There's no one in this room that's going to stand before God, acquitted on Judgment Day, on any other basis than that. You simply believe the promise of God, justified by faith and the promise. Now, God has made us better promises, hasn't He? We've got better promises than Abram had, much better. We're not going to a better Heaven. We get the same Heaven. We get the same God, but we get better promises. Like what? Like John 5:24. Write that one down. Absolutely spectacular verse. Jesus Christ said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my Word and believes Him who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned. He has crossed over from death to life." That's enough to hold onto the rest of your life. "Whoever hears my Word and believes Him who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned. He's crossed over from death to life." Can you ever cross back? How do you go back? You don't. You've got eternal life, simply by hearing and believing. Now, what is the reasoning out? How does that work, reasoned out? What happens is, you accept those promises, and then start to extend them in your life. You start to reason out by faith, and extend it to all areas of doubt and trouble in your life. That's exactly what Paul does here in Romans Five, as we'll see. He's working with us through reason and through logic. Now, the best description of assurance reasoned out the mind I've ever heard, is in the hymn, "Jesus Loves Me." How does the first verse go? "Jesus loves me, this I know." How do you know it? "For the Bible tells me so." That is assurance reasoned out in the mind. The Bible is secure. His promises are certain, therefore, I'm going to Heaven. That's how it works. Now, I'm telling you right now, if that's the only assurance you have, you have no assurance. You need the others as well, because the Bible makes these promises indiscriminately. "Many are called, few are chosen," the Scripture says. Anybody can pick up a Bible and read. How do you know it's true of you personally? We'll get to that. But the bottom line assurance is assurance reasoned out in the mind. God gives us a promise and He keeps His promises every time. Paul seeks to reason with us. The best reasoning you're going to see on this, is in verses 9-10 of our section today. I'm going to preach on this more in a couple weeks, but just look at it right now, in verse 9-10. It says, "Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him? For if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life?" The 'how much more,' which He says in verses 9-10 is reasoning language. He's arguing from the 'harder to do' to the 'easier to do.' It is harder for God to justify an ungodly sinner and an enemy, than it is for Him to finish saving an adopted child of God. It's harder to start, than to continue and finish. It may not seem that way to you. It didn't feel like anything when you got justified, but it was a huge thing for God, because He's so holy and we were so ungodly. And so, therefore, he's arguing from the greater to the less. It was hard to get you justified. It's easier to finish the whole way. Reasoning out in the mind is working it out. And he was reasoning it out. He's saying, "Look, if I began this good work in you, I will carry it to completion, until the day of Christ Jesus." There's other forms of reasoning. I reason with myself all the time. Like eternal life, if you were saved for six years, three months, and two days, and then you fell away, did you receive eternal life? No, you received six years, three months, and two day life. That's not eternal life. Eternal life's eternal, and you receive it, when you trust in Christ. There's all kinds of reasoning you can do with this, and it's all based on the Scriptures, based on the Word of God. Reasoned out in the mind. III. Assurance Worked Out in the Life Secondly, assurance worked out in the life. Now, I told you there's a whole book dedicated to this, it's 1 John. You want to understand what God does in you when you get justified? Read 1 John. Everyone who gets justified, this is what He does in their lives. And if He hasn't done this in your life, you're not justified. That's how it works. It's an assurance based on things done in your life. He works things out in you. You change. You begin to grow. You begin to be more and more like Jesus Christ. This is what we call the proving ground of justifying faith. Do you know what a proving ground is? You ever heard of the Aberdeen Proving Ground? 73,000 acres in Maryland. Anyone who wants to sell a weapons system to the Army, has to bring it to the proving ground, and prove that it works, show that it works well in various types of testing and circumstances. You bring the weapons system to the proving ground and it's proved out. Well, what is the proving ground of justifying faith? Your life. Your life. What happens in your life. Now, the Book of James talks about something called a dead faith. It's a faith that produces nothing, a faith that produces no works. Nothing comes of it. The Book of James also talks about a demon faith. It assents to all the right answers. It knows that there's one God and it shudders. There's no love. There's no obedience, no submission. Dead faith doesn't save; demon faith doesn't save. Justifying faith, now, that saves. How do I know that I've received justifying faith? It's proved out in your life. Things happen in your life as a result. Justifying faith always produces fruit. Jesus put it this way in John 15, "I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. While every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit…so proving himself to be my disciple." Do you see how it works? 'Fruits' is the proof of discipleship. 'Fruit' is the proof of justification. If you are engrafted into the vine, the sap will flow through you and it will bear fruit. No fruit, no justification. That's how it works. And so it's an assurance based on things that happen in your life. Now, what is the fruit? What comes as a result? Well, Jesus told a parable about this. Remember the parable "The Seed and the Soils"? The Kingdom of God is like a man who went out and scattered seed. Some fell on the path and the birds came, and ate it up. Some fell among the rocks, and it grew up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants withered and died, because they had no root. And some seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked the plants, making it unfruitful. Now, there's three categories, and all three end up in what? Unfruitfulness, nothing comes of it. Action Fruit and Attitude Fruit And then there's the seed that falls in the good soil, producing what? A crop, a harvest, 100, 60, or 30 times what was sown every time. Justifying faith, every time, bears fruit. And you say, "What is fruit?" John MacArthur divided it into two categories: There is action fruit and there is attitude fruit. Action fruit and attitude fruit. Now, I know we Baptists love evangelism. We tend to think of fruit, as only that you lead somebody to Christ. Well, that is a form of fruit, but it's not the only fruit God has in mind. What kind of attitude fruit? It has to do with what you love and what you hate, what your character is, what you're attracted to, what you're yearning for. It has to do with the fruit of the Spirit. What kind of person are you? Galatians Five, "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control," these character attributes, the Holy Spirit works in you. It's a characteristic. It's what kind of person are you? It also has to do with what kinds of things do you rejoice in? What do you enjoy? What do you exalt in? Look at our text. Look at verse 2. What does it say we exalt or rejoice in there? It says, "We exalt or we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." That's what a Christian rejoices in. That's what they get excited about: "The hope of the glory of God." What about Verse Three? What do we exalt in there? Our sufferings, our tribulations. How does that fit? We'll talk about that in a minute. And then, in Verse 11, what do we exalt in, or rejoice in? "We exalt in God through our Lord, Jesus Christ." This is attitude fruit, what you rejoice in, what you delight in. You delight in the Word of God. You love to hear about the advance of missions. You're excited when somebody comes to Christ. These are the things that drive you and interest you. These are things you love. And what do you hate? Well, you hate sin. You hate your own sin more than anything. You'd love to see it out of your life, every last part of it gone. That's character. It's who you are. What about action fruit? Well, it's all the stuff that flows out of that character. Jesus said, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good. Make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad. A tree is known by its fruit." So what kind of fruit flows from a justified person? Well, many good things, prayers and generosity, opening your heart, and your purse, or wallet, or your home. Serving God in bold ways, evangelizing, using your spiritual gifts. Many good deeds, so many I can't list them here. But God has listed the good deeds that flow out of a justifying faith: Action fruit and attitude fruit. How does this assurance work? Scripture says I will bear good fruit in my heart and my life, as a result of my faith in Christ. In 1 John and other places, tell me what that fruit is. Step two, I see that fruit in me. I see it happening in me. Praise God, He gets all the glory, but I see it happening in me. As a result, I know I'm a true Christian. I'm not a sham Christian. It's genuine. How does God work that into us? That's what Verses 3-5 talks about. Look at it again. The Holy Spirit works these in us through tribulation, sufferings, and trials. "Not only so," verse 3, "But we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us." In verse 2, we have the hope of the glory of God. We start with hope. We then go into the fiery furnace of trial. The trials works in us perseverance, perseverance works in us a proven or tested character, and the tested character becomes a sure and certain ground for a greater hope. You see, it's kind of a spiral. You start with hope and you end up with HOPE. You see how it works? And then you start next with HOPE, and you end up with... I won't do it. But big hope and it just keeps moving up. And what fuels that whole thing in Romans 5:3-5? It's trials, it's difficulties, it's suffering that produces that. And so we end up rejoicing, saying, "God, give me more." Not because you're a masochist, not because you love to suffer, but because you see that it's the only way that you may grow in your salvation. Rejoicing Because of Trials What kind of trial should we rejoice in? Well, James told us, "Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds" any kind, many kinds, all kinds of trials, "Because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." Turn that around: Without trials, you will be immature, incomplete, lacking something. But what kind of trials are we talking about? Well, there are trials that are common to all human beings, and then there are trials uniquely fitted to Christians. What kind of tribulations are common to all people? Physical trials, sickness, cancer, diseases, or a loved one that has those. Everyone faces that, Christian, non-Christian alike. Relational troubles, marital difficulties, parenting woes, ruptured relationships, perhaps at the work, or in the neighborhood, or even with total strangers. These are trials that anyone and everyone faces. Financial difficulties and economic woes, these things everybody faces. What are trials that only Christians face? I think there are two, in particular, that I'm thinking of. Persecution, because of Christ, and temptation. Now, you could say, "Temptation? Non-Christians face temptation." Well, they face it, but they cave in. There's no suffering there. They don't bear up under temptation, but Christians have to, and so there's a suffering that comes from that. These are the trials that God brings into our lives. And what happens as a result? We grow in character. How are we different from non-Christians when we go through the trials? Well, anybody, Pagan or Christian, anybody can rejoice when things are going well, isn't that true? You just had a baby. The baby's healthy. You're excited, you're thrilled, maybe, perhaps, even thought you were barren for a while, but now, you've got a child. Who can't rejoice at that? Anybody can rejoice in that. Or maybe you just got a promotion at work, or you just moved into your dream home, or you got a vacation coming up. Just good things happening, anybody can rejoice at that. The difference comes when the trials, and the difficulties, and the troubles come into the light. That's the difference. Now, a non-Christian can rejoice despite the trial. You see? They can somehow, through stoic philosophy, or through a certain way of thinking, or their own religion, or whatever, somehow manage to make their way through that, rejoicing, despite the trial. But a Christian rejoices because of the trial, "Thank you, God, for this trial. I need it. I'm glad for it. I see it working in me perseverance and perseverance proven character. And so, therefore, I'm glad to have it." What happens when you go through trials? Maybe some of you are going through them right now. What happens to your faith? What happens, so that God sustains and strengthens you? Well, there's two illustrations I'd like to give you. The first comes from our national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner." Have you ever seen Fort McHenry or heard the story about Fort McHenry? What happened was, on September 13th, 1814, Francis Scott Key was standing on the bridge of a British ship. He'd been temporarily held. It was an envoy, and they were holding him through the night, and he was observing the pounding of Fort McHenry through a naval blockade, and a pounding. And all night long, as the bombs were bursting, and the rockets... He could see that the American flag was still flying over Fort McHenry. And when the dawn came up, and the sun came up... Have you ever pulled apart the first verse of our national... It's a long sentence, a question and another sentence, something like that. It's this long thing, but the whole point is, the flag's still there after all of the pounding, and all the trials, and all the difficulty, and all the rockets, and the bombs. It's still there. God has raised a banner in your life, and there is nothing that's going to take it down. It doesn't matter how much bombing goes on. It doesn't matter how much Satan attacks. It doesn't matter how much trouble comes in. The flag's still going to fly, because nothing can take it down. How does it happen though? We're so weak and frail. It seems, at times, like any trial will just knock us over. Well, the second illustration came from the Berlin airlift. Do you remember the Berlin airlift? Some of you maybe do remember from history. After World War II, Eastern and Western Europe were divided. The Allies, and then Soviet Russia. And then in Eastern Germany, there was Berlin, and Berlin itself was divided among the Allies and the communists. The part of Berlin that was controlled by the Allies, at one point, June 24th, 1948, they blockaded and they couldn't get in. The Russians wouldn't let anyone in. And so the Allies decided to airlift supplies in there, and they just started to airlift, and airlift, and airlift, and it went on for about 15 months, the Berlin airlift. On one day, the day before Easter, April 16th, 1949, there were 14,000 air flights into Berlin, almost 13,000 tons of food and supplies. The Russians gave up. They couldn't squelch the city. They couldn't starve the city. They were eating better inside, than the others were eating outside. They couldn't quench it. And that's what happens to you, when you go through trials. Satan pouring on all…and God sustaining in the back, giving you what you need to survive the trial. The Berlin airlift. He's airlifting you everything you need, so that you can survive that trial. And in the end, you get proven character. You look at me and you say, "I'm real. I'm genuine. I'm not a sham Christian. I'm not like one of those seeds that fell on the rocky soil, and the sun came up, and as soon as it got a little tough, I fell away. I'm still here and I still love Jesus." Proven character. And then, in the end, Paul says, "That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, and insults, and hardships, and persecutions, and in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." A Christian actually rejoices, because of the trial, not just despite of or during the trial. We're glad for it. Now, how do we go through it? Not like robots. You're like, "Oh, this is wonderful, isn't it? Praise God." No, we're real people. Yeah, we cry. We get our friends over, they cry with us. We hurt, but in the heart, we know God is doing something good. He's sustaining us. Our faith is being tested. And in the end, it's going to prove genuine, and real, and I'm a Christian. And in the end, that hope that you get, it doesn't disappoint. Verse 5, "And hope does not disappoint, because God has poured out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit." IV. Assurance Poured Out in the Heart And that is the third and final form of assurance. I told you I wasn't going to touch with it today. There's no way I can do it in just... I want to dedicate a whole sermon to this. And why? Because it's so important. This is the Holy Spirit pouring out the love of God into your hearts directly. Not through a reasoning process of the mind, not through seeing things in your life, but directly into your heart, telling you, "You are a child of God." Romans 8:16, "The Spirit testifies with our spirit, that we are," what? "Children of God." Next time. And you're saying, "What is the swoosh?" Next time, okay? The Spirit can do things that you would just not believe. And any of you know what I'm talking about, the elevation of the Spirit, the way that He can pour out, so that you just say, "I don't know what happened, but Heaven was open that day. I've never had a day like that, never had one since." Those of you who know what I'm talking about, will you pray with me for the next week, that God would do something mighty in this congregation? What would happen here, if God did that? Unbelievable. We'll talk about it next week. But that's the third form of assurance, poured out into the heart by the Holy Spirit. Next time. V. Application: Do You Know This Love?? My closing question to you is simply, do you know this love? Have you reasoned out, from the basis of Scripture, that God loves you? That He's made some promises to you, just like Abraham, you believe those promises and you know you're going to see God? That all your sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ, do you know that? Can you say, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Promises, to me, He's made. On His Word, my trust has stayed." Can you say that? What about the second? Do you see it in a changed life? Have you seen transformation in your heart? Do you see the battle with sin and do you see yourself succeeding? Not every time, but you hate it. You hate the sin and you want to grow. You see that power in you. Do you see the perseverance through trials? Do you see this? Do you see the changes? Action fruit and attitude fruit, do you see it? "Jesus loves me, this I know, for His power has changed me so. Every day, He transforms me, so that I may glorious be." And what about the third? We'll talk about it next time, but have you ever felt poured out into your heart, a direct testimony of the Holy Spirit, that you're a child of God? "Jesus loves me, there's no doubt, for the Spirit pours it out. He has testified to me, I shall live eternally." Those three are the solid, firm, biblical basis for assurance. If you don't find yourself in there, it may very well be that you are not a Christian. Wouldn't it be better to know now? Wouldn't it be better to trust Christ now, than to have Him say, "Away from me, I never knew you?" In a moment, we're going to close with this hymn. We're going to sing it. The words are printed in your bulletin. They're not in the hymnal, not yet. But they're in the bulletin, so just open it up, and read it, and sing along. And if God has moved in your heart, and you want to talk to me about eternal life, if you're not sure that you're justified, you're not sure your sins have been forgiven, come and talk to me. Don't put it off. Come forward and talk to me. A lot of people here, that would be eager to pray with you, and explain to you anything that you need to know. Let's come to Christ. Why don't you close with me in prayer? Father, we thank you that, you, through the Scripture, have labored with us, that we might have a sure and certain assurance of salvation. Father, that we can reason it out in our minds, based on the promises of Scripture. This kind of how much more language, we can understand it, we can reason it out. And Father, we can see it working out in our lives, as you change us gradually by the Holy Spirit. And we can feel it poured out into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom you have given us. Oh, Lord, I pray for my brother and sisters here, who are already assured in this way, that they would grow in their assurance, and so that they might be able to bear good fruit for you. And Father, for those that have no such assurance, Father, I pray that they would humble themselves, and in a broken-hearted way, come to the cross, and trust in you, Jesus, for their atonement. In Jesus' name, I pray, Amen.

I. Review: Making the Case for the Gospel Please open your scriptures this morning to Romans Chapter 3. We'll be looking at verses 9-18. Paul is completing his work of laying out before every single person on the face of the earth, their need for grace in Christ. And if I were to lead any searcher, anybody who's thinking about Christianity that's struggling with the issue of whether they are sinful or whether they really need this grace, or lead them anywhere would be at the verses we're going to look at today. It couldn't be clearer. Now last week's verses are among the most complicated and difficult to follow. There is nothing complicated and difficult to follow in these verses. It is plain what God is saying to us in Romans 3:9-18, that every single last one of us is a sinner and need of God's grace. Now as we look at these verses, I'm mindful of the responsibility that I have as a minister of the Gospel to avoid ministerial malpractice. Now we live in a city of medicine, and many of you are even involved in that and you know the danger of malpractice. Malpractice occurs when a physician fails to give the treatment that he or she knows is needed, or through negligence, or through a variety of things that the patient dies or is not healed when they could have been. And as I think about these passages and this Scripture in particular, I think about the incredible temptation to sugarcoat the truth. Kind of make it palatable, make it comfortable, make it easy to read. But in order to do that, I have to rewrite the verses I'm going to preach on today, because there's nothing comfortable about this doctrine. There's nothing comfortable about total depravity. But I'm mindful of the fact that someday, I'm going to have to present this sermon to Jesus Christ. I'm going to have to give it to Him and say, "Was I faithful to these verses?" And furthermore, I believe that all scripture is useful for our healing, for our transformation, and perhaps none more than this because it tells us the truth. Now imagine if you would, a doctor who was tired, it's the end of the day, it was Friday, maybe looking forward to a long weekend. And he have one more case and he got the report on that case and looked through it and there was no question about it. The report on the woman he was about to see was dire. The report came back and she had cancer, and she was going to need the most extensive chemotherapy, the full treatment. He also knew that this woman tended to be emotional, tended to shriek and scream and get upset at things. He just happened to know this about her, and she was sitting out there in his room waiting for him. And he said, "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Why do I have to bring this message?" So he goes in there and he says in his heart, he says, "I'm just not going to do it. I'm just not going to do it. I've seen this scene too many times. It's been played too many times. I'm not going to do it." And so he comes in there and she says, "Doctor, tell me. What's the matter with me? Why have I been in such pain? Why am I feeling the way I'm feeling? Why am I lacking energy? What's going on?" And he says, "The problem is you're not getting enough vitamins in your diet. You're basically healthy, but you need some more vitamins in your diet. You need some more variety, some more green vegetables, some more exercise. Give it six months, it's going to take a while, but give it six months and you'll be fine. Come back and see me in six months." What would you think of a doctor like that? Well, I know what a malpractice board would think about a doctor like that. The person didn't tell the truth. Now, let's look at it spiritually. Did Jesus ever do that? Did He ever look at you and say, "You're basically all right. You just need a few life adjustments and then you'll be fine." Did the Apostle Paul do that? I don't think so. But there is a category of minister that will do that. Jeremiah described it in Jeremiah 6:13-14. This is what he said, "Prophets and priests alike all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people lightly." They dress the wound of my people lightly. That means they put a bandaid on cancer. And putting a bandaid on cancer does nothing. Actually hastens death because then the person doesn't seek the treatment they really need. "They dress the wound of my people lightly. Peace, peace they say when there is no peace." But there is peace, brothers and sisters. There is peace. The peace is available through faith in Jesus Christ, but it's not available unless you believe the message that I'm about to preach, namely that you need it, that you need it. Listen to these words from the apostle Paul, "What should we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all, for we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God, that all have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, the poison of vipers is on their lips, their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways and the way of peace, they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes." II. The Universality of Sin: Paul Completes His Case Paul concludes his case with a couple of questions. What shall we conclude then as we've been through Romans 1 and Romans 2 and now we're in Romans 3, what should we conclude then? What have we found? And then he ask another question. Are we any better? Now, who's the "we" he's talking about here? We Jews, perhaps? Paul's a Jew. Maybe he's thinking about himself as a Jew. We Christians, is he saying that? Are we Christians any better? We apostles? I don't really know, but I know this. We includes Paul. And Paul knows what he's about to say. Don't you hate a self-righteous preacher who's not under his own message? But Paul saw that he was under his own message, "I'm a sinner like I'm about to describe to you. This is me. It's true of me too." I don't really need to decide who the "we" is, because the answer already is no. Regardless of who the "we" is, the answer is no. We are not any better. There's no "we" that's any better. There's no grouping of people whether national, or racial, or linguistic, or religious that's any better. There is no "we" that's any better. If better means not needing the grace of God available through Jesus Christ. There is no "we" like that. We are not any better. We have already made the charge Paul says, that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. Now, what is this charge that he's making? There's a judicial word that he brings out here. It's a charge as in a court of law. You get the same picture in Matthew 27:37, crucifixion scene, and it says, "Above Jesus' head they placed a written charge against him." And this was the common manner in crucifixion. They would write the charge out and put it over their head so the passers by could see why this man was on the cross. Now, what could they put for Jesus other than this man, this is the King of the Jews? Beause he had done no sin, committed no evil, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. But what charge is Paul putting over our head? "Under sin" he says. It's over us. Every single one of us. We're all alike, all under sin, Jews and gentiles alike. Now what is under sin mean? It gives a sense of bondage, doesn't it? A sense of compulsion. Now, I tell you this, I have never met anyone who didn't mind admitting that they sinned from time to time. Everybody will say that, quickly followed by such phrases as, "Well, we're all sinful. We're only human," this kind of thing. "We're only human." These are the minimizing statements that we bring in. "Everybody sins. Nobody's perfect," this kind of thing. So everybody will admit that they commit sin, but nobody wants to admit that they're under sin. That's a different matter. It's a matter of slavery, a matter of bondage and compulsion. We will say, "We have free will, and can stop anytime we choose." Stop then. Stop. Stop sinning. Can you do it? Do you have free will in this matter of sin? Any of you who have been living long enough to know that you need to drop your stones when Jesus said, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone," was the oldest people that dropped the sin first, you know, you can't stop, because you don't have free will in this matter. Turns out that your will is a slave to your nature. Your will is a slave to who you are. It's lackey that just acts out who you are in your heart and your character. And this is a kind of offensive message that Jesus preached to the Jews you remember, when Jesus talked about slavery to the Jews, and they said in John 8, "We've never been slaves to anyone," they said, do you remember? And do you remember what Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin, but if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." Who wants to be free indeed here? I want to be free indeed. I want the Son to make me free indeed, truly free from sin. And in order for that to happen, I need to hear this message fully. I need to hear how bad it is or else I will not be free indeed. I'll be lying to myself. I'll be dealing with the problem slightly or lightly. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. So set us free Lord Jesus. III. Human Character Apart From Grace: Scripture Diagnoses the Sinful Heart And you know what his instrumentality is? It's scripture. Look at the very next thing that Paul says, "As it is written." You can just underline that in your Bible. As it is written. As you get close to scripture, you start to see yourself properly. You need to get close to the word of God. The further you drift away from the Bible, the more you feel that you're basically a good person. The further you get away from the words of the Scripture, the more that you feel that, "I'm alright. You know what? Yeah, occasionally, I do things, but I'm not that bad." But when you get into the Scripture, it tells you the truth. It's not going to do malpractice, son. It's going to tell you the truth. As it is written. In this way James in Chapter 1 of James likens the law to a mirror. As we look into the perfect law that gives freedom, we see a good reflection of ourselves. It's accurate. It looks like what we really look like. And we need to be told the truth. There was a Scottish man a little while ago walking through a park in Scotland. He was carrying his Bible in a leather carrying case. And that was the days when those Instamatic cameras and the Polaroid cameras were popular where you can get a picture out immediately, and it turned out that his Bible looked like one of those carrying cases for those cameras and some of the boys came up, they were playing and they said, "Take a picture of us, take a picture." So they stood next to one another like they were posing for a portrait, while all he had with him was a Bible. So being creative, and being like spirit filled man of God, he opened up his Bible to Romans 3:9-18 and said, "I already have your picture, it's right here." And he read Romans 3:9-18, and he used it as an opportunity to preach the Gospel. This is a portrait of us. It's a portrait of you and me. It's not pretty though, is it? All I can tell you is that this is where you start with the Gospel of God's graces, it's not where you finish. This is the beginning point, and it isn't pretty, it's ugly. Here the Apostle Paul cites five Psalms and one reading from Isaiah. Five Psalms and one reading from Isaiah. Now, all of it put together gives a clear picture of humanity and no one escapes the string of verses. Psalm 14:1-3 says, "There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away they've together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one." That's Psalm 14:1-3. Psalm 5:9 testifies this way, "They're throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit." And then Paul reaches out for Psalm 140:3, "The poison of vipers is on their lips." And then he pulls in Psalm 10:7, "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." And then he reaches for a word from Isaiah 59:7-8, "They're feet are swift to shed blood, ruin in mystery, mark their ways in the way of peace, they do not know." And then to conclude, he pulls in Psalm 36:1, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." So it's the montage of Scriptures that he's putting together here. And he puts together a united portrait of humanity but it also gives us a problem. There's an interpreters problem in here. And maybe you didn't see it, what you have to do is go back and read these verses in context in the old testament. And as you do you begin to notice something that Paul left out and it could get to troubling you. Let's take Psalm 14 for example. Psalm 14:1 it says, "There is no one righteous, not even one." But then, later on it says in versea 4-5, "Will evil doers never learn? Those who devour my people as men eat bread. God is present in the company of the righteous." And you left that out, Paul. It seems Paul you're just lifting verses out of context and you're neglecting things that don't prove your point. Anybody can do that. Prove texting, put something together the way you want. You're trying to prove Paul that everyone is unrighteous. Well, I disagree. Right here in verse 5 of Psalm 14 that talks about God present in the company of the righteous. And there's all kinds of Psalms and Proverbs like that. There's the righteous and the wicked, the righteous and the wicked, all over the place in the old testament. Job was a righteous man. So what it this, "There is no one righteous, not even one"? There's a problem here. What is the solution? Well first of all, let's understand who we're talking about. Did the apostle Paul not know his Scripture? Did he not know Psalm 14? Of course, he did. Of course he knew that there was the righteous and the wicked. The question then comes where do the righteous come from? How did they get to be righteous? And he already answered that back in Romans 1:16-17, "I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, because in the Gospel there's 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. A righteousness that is from faith to faith, just as it is written. The righteous will live by faith." So we could ask Paul, "Well, Paul, you've got a righteous person in your writing here. There's a righteous person who's living by faith." He's aware of the righteous and the wicked. But what he would say is they didn't start that way. They didn't start righteous, they started wicked. Well, he gets to it in Romans four Verse Three. In Romans 4:3 it says, "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." It was a gift. Abraham, this righteous Jew needed a gift of righteousness or he wouldn't be righteous. It was credited to him as a gift. And then even better. These five Psalms, who wrote them? All five Psalms, they all come from the same author, who is it? It's David. David wrote them. Now David, are you righteous? Are you righteous, David? Well, depends what you mean. It depends what you mean. For Psalm 32 says this, "Blessed is the man who's transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him, and in whose spirit is no deceit." David's talking about a blessedness that comes as a gift. The forgiveness of sins. And it comes to the man and to the woman in whose spirit is no trickery, no deceit. Well, what are you going to deceive yourself about? That you don't need this grace, that you don't need this forgiveness, that you don't need the gift of righteousness. And then at the end of Psalm 32 he says, "Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous. Sing all you who are upright in hearts." See, he's got the righteous right there in Psalm 32. They didn't start that way though, did they? The beginning of the Psalm, they're looking for forgiveness from sin. By the end of the Psalm, they're righteous. Is there a contradiction here? Not at all. Not all. 'Cause there is a righteousness available. It's just not available naturally. You're not going to find it by looking within. The answer isn't there, it comes as a gift. Problem resolved. Because David said in Psalm 5:7, "But I, by your great mercy will come into your house." Is that precious to you? "But I, by your great mercy will come into your house." There is a righteousness available, and an invitation right into the very presence of God, right into His house, but it's only by His mercy, His great mercy. And who is it that needs great mercy? Great sinners. Sinners like here in verses 9-18. Also notice the centrality of God in all this. When people say, "I'm basically a good person." You know what they mean by that? They tend to look at it this way. "Well, I give money to charity. I help people, I speak kindly to people. I treat people well, I look after my mother. I deal with people well, I speak to my neighbor when I go and get the mail. I'm not one of those people that's gruff and walks away from them. And I'm certainly not like those people you read about in the newspaper that do those awful things. I've never done any of those awful things." Do you notice what's happening in that whole discussion? It's all horizontal. It's all human to human, human to human, human to human. Even if it were all true it's still all horizontal and it isn't all true, by the way. But it's all horizontal, what about God? Where does He fit into that? He's at the beginning and the end here. Right at the start, it says, "There's no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God." That's what it means to be righteous, that's what it means to understand. It means to seek God, to want Him above all things. That's the start of the list. What about the finish? There is no fear of God before their eyes. The real problem with sin is that it ruptures your relationship with God. Its the vertical that's in view here, and then the horizontal. Not to say the horizontal isn't important, but it's the vertical that's in view and that's what sin ruptures beyond repair. If God doesn't fix it, it can't be fixed. The Doctrine of Total Depravity We are not basically a good person. We do not love God with all of our heart and our soul, and our mind, and our strength. And that is called in theological language, total depravity. Total depravity. Now it's not a pretty term but it's not a pretty thing. We shouldn't have pretty terms for ugly things. Total depravity describes accurately the natural human heart. Now the word "total" means every person in every area, that's what the word "total" means. "Depravity" means wicked, wickedness, twisted-ness, perversion. Total depravity. Every person in every area. Not in every single action, that's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying there's no bastion in you. There's no part of you that's free from sin. Are your emotions free from sin? Are they pure and pristine? Or do they have a twist to them? How about your mind? Maybe your mind is a citadel of purity and uprightness, is it true? How about your heart, your will? Is there any part of you not touch by sin? Total is its touch. Depravity of Character And what about every person? Well verse 10 it says, "No not one." Verse 12 it says "No not one." Does anyone escape? No. Paul includes himself. Remember he say, "We've already made the charge that we alike are all under sin. We are not any better. Everybody's under it." What kind of depravity is he discussing here? Well, depravity of character, depravity of conversation, depravity of conduct. That's pretty total, isn't it? It covers everything. Lets start with the character, depravity of character he says "There is no one righteous. No, not one." What that mean is on Judgement Day, you will not have the very thing that God will ask you for, namely righteousness. You will have none to give. Its not available. You will not find it in yourself. If it doesn't come from another source you will not have it. There's is no one righteous, no, not one. Now realize that God's righteousness is the foundation of his throne. It is the scepter of his kingdom and he will not allow you into heaven without it. And he's saying, "You don't have it, it doesn't belong to you." Depravity of Mind And then there's the depravity of mind, depraved minds, it says, "There is no one who understands." Understands what? Understands God. Naturally no one understands God. Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, he says, "Since through the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God. God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save him who had believe." What that says is you can't search out God by technological means, by philosophy, by thinking, you won't find Him because you don't understand and you never will unless God gives you the understanding. All our technological knowledge will avail us nothing at all on the great day because we haven't understood God. And that's so tragic isn't it? God sent his son Jesus Christ, and Jesus at the end of his life, he prayed the night before he was crucified and this is what came from his heart. It was a cry and he said in John 17:25, "Righteous Father, the world has not known you." The world doesn't know you God. And to God the son that's a tragedy. All that horizontal stuff is thrown out the window because we don't know God, we don't understand Him, we don't know who He is. Depraved minds. Depravity of Desire Depraved desires. It says, "No one who seeks God." What do you seek? It's the thing you want. What do you really want? Write it down. What do you really want in life? Is God on the list? If God's on the list you're already a child of grace. Because no one seeks God naturally. If you want God today you're already been moved on by grace. It's already happening in you. Because naturally you don't want God. You don't want anything to do with God. No one seeks God. Do you understand how important this is, theologically? Do you understand how important this statement is, "No one seeks God naturally." Well I'll show you, Jeremiah 29:13 says, "You will seek me and find me, when you look for me with all your heart." But Jeremiah, no one's looking. No one's looking, okay? Isaiah 55:6 what a great chapter, "Seek the Lord while He may be found." But Isaiah, no one is seeking. They're not looking. No one. No, not one. It's very important. But what are they seeking? They're seeking something else. It isn't God that they're seeking. Philippians 3:19 says, "Their God is their stomach and their glory is in their shame." What does it mean that, "Your God is your stomach"? It means your earthly appetites, you're seeking something here on Earth. That's what you're seeking, something Earth bound, or you're seeking an idol. Some false construction of your own imagination, that's what you're seeking. But it isn't God. Depraved desire is also depraved response to God. When God confronts you through his prophet through His word, when God confronts you, you turn away. Verse 12: "All have turned away." All have turned away. The word is usually used of an army which comes and is confronted with a greater army and turns in terror and runs from the field. It means, to avoid at all cost, like you would if you were walking along and saw a viper on the road, you would turn and avoid it at all cost. That's what the word means in the Greek. And what it means, if we do that with God, when we're confronted with God, we avoid at all costs. We don't want to hear. We don't want to know. We avoid God at all cost. That's our natural habitat. And because of that, we have depraved value. They have together become worthless. Worthless. Now, misery loves company. They do it together. They do it all together and together they become worthless. What is worthless mean? That kinda hurts a little bit. I've always thought of myself as worth a lot. Well, I know that we're worth a lot. We're created in an image of God. God sent His son to die on the cross for us. The precious blood of Christ is what redeemed us. But this verse still says worthless. We need to understand what that means. There's a picture in Jeremiah's ministry. God commanded Jeremiah, "Go buy a brand new linen belt, a clean white linen belt. And I want you to take that belt and use it to hold your tunic in, use it for awhile." And then, after he'd used it for awhile, he commanded him to take off the linen belt and go down by the river and dig a hole near the river in the mud and put the linen belt down there and cover it up and leave it there for awhile. Now, when I was getting ready to preach, I prepared my sermons in advance so that I can do these kinds of things. I was thinking of doing it with a necktie and wearing the necktie today. What would it look like, a necktie dug in the ground and filled in with dirt for four or five weeks? Well, that's about what the linen belt look like when Jeremiah was commanded to dig it up. And this is what God says about that linen belt. These wicked people who refused to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other Gods to serve, and worship them will be like this belt, completely useless. What are you going to use a belt like that for? Falling apart, rotten and muddy. That's what I think of when I think of this word worthless. Now remember we don't stay there but this is where we start. Depravity of Deeds God created us for a purpose and everyday we turn away from that purpose. Depraved action is also. Verse 12: "There is no one who does good, not even one." Now wait a minute, Paul. I do good things all the time. I do them all the time. You reach in your pocket and you bring out your bobbles with your muddy hands and you say, "See. Look, here's all my good things. Hold on to them for judgement day and produce them then. Use them for your sin to explain yourself to God." Will he accept them? Will they be valuable and precious to him on that day? There is no one who does good. No, not one." It's a shocking assessment to people who help old ladies across the street and give to UNICEF and other things. It's a shocking assessment. There's no one who does good, not even one. There was a time in Jesus' ministry when someone came up to him and said, "Good teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" That's the double good question. Good teacher and good thing. Okay. "Good teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" Jesus picked up on the word "good". He said, "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Or, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." Did you hear what Jesus just said? "No one is good but God alone." Well, no one is good but God alone and me. I'm basically a good person. No, Jesus didn't say that. He said, "No one is good but God alone." Jesus said, "I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." "It's not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick. I'm the physician of the soul. If you need a physician, come to me. But if you're healthy, don't bother, don't come. You don't need me." No one is good but God alone. Depraved actions come from a depraved heart. "Make a tree good," said Jesus, "And its fruit will be good. Make a tree bad, and its fruit will be bad. For a tree is known by its fruit." Depraved character. Depravity of Speech In verse 12-14, he talks about depraved conversation. "Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues, they keep on deceiving." There's a continual deceiving here. "The poison of vipers is under their lips and their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." Do you see the death in this verse? Death, death, death. Graves, deceit, poison, cursing, death when you open your mouth and speak. Now what does it mean when it says, their throat is an open grave. Well, what would it be like in Palestine if you buried Lazarus and came back four days later but you never did close up the tomb. Just been open the whole time. What a stench would come. "Their throat is an open grave." says Paul. What comes out of there, it isn't good. And deceit and poison is under their lips is the literal translation. The poison of viper is under the lips. What this is talking about is that secret damage that the lips do, gossip, slander, character assassination, the secret things. And then the picture is of a vile serpent. Can you tame a serpent? There's a story recently of a boy who saw a baby rattle snake just coming out of an egg and he figured he'd take it home for a pet. Now of course the full grown rattle snake you don't want to mess with. But maybe if you take it home just out of the egg and treat it real nice, feed it well, care for it, it can be a good pet. And so, he did and he cared for it, and took care of it and I don't know what he did. I don't want to know what he did with that snake. But I know this, at one point he came to the cage and it had escaped. By this point, it was much larger, and he looked around for it, and he heard the faint rattling and it was behind the couch and he reached down to get it. What do you think happened when he reached down to get it? Well, it bit him. Oh, I know what it was, it didn't recognize that it was his hand. If it had only known it was the hand of the one who had cared for it all that time. You can't tame a snake. You can't change its basic nature. James 3:8, "No man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison." That's the tongue. Would you like to have a transcript of everything you've said in the last month? Just to sit and read it. Just look at the things you've said. Bring out a highlighter and highlight the things that glorified God and those things that didn't tend toward God's glory. It's hard to tame the tongue, isn't it? So there's that deceit, the poison under the lips. And then, there's cursing and bitterness, which is the open attack, the verbal barrage, open hatred, the full guns blazing. So you've got the secret approach, gossip and slander then you've got the open attack. And knowing we all do this, it's so tragic because that's not what the tongue is for. The tongue is for praising God. And instead, we curse. And therefore, the tongue becomes a major source of our judgment. Jesus says, "I tell you that man will have to give an account on judgment day for every careless word that they have spoken. For by your words, you will be acquitted and by your words, you will be condemned." The tongue. Depravity of conversation, Depravity of Conduct Finally, depravity of conduct, verse 15-17. "Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace, they do not know." Now, feet traveling on a path relates to lifestyle. It's your everyday life, how you carry yourself, your conduct, the journey you travel. What are your feet doing? Christianity, early on, was called the way. Probably after Jesus saying, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," etcetera. And so, there's a journey marked before. But what journey are you traveling naturally? Where are you heading? And it says here, "The feet are eager and zealous to kill." "Oh now, here I've got you, Paul. I've never killed anybody. I've never killed anybody." Now I have two answers to that. First of all, why haven't you killed anybody? Is it because you never wanted to? And if you did want to, what stopped you? Well, there's this little thing called the law and police, and electric chairs, prison, those kinds of things. Why is it when all those things are removed in a time of anarchy, murder goes right up? It's because people finally have a chance to do the thing they wanted to do all along. They say, "I'm not like that." Okay, well Jesus dealt with that in the sermon on the mount. What is the root of murder? Anger. And he says that anger itself is enough to condemn someone. Feet are swift to shed blood. And then it says, "Ruin and misery mark their ways." The word "ruin" means shattering. If you can imagine a beautiful piece of pottery like a Chinese vase. Okay, it's not a vase, it's a vase, very valuable. And you take that and you throw it down on a marble floor. Shattered. That's what this word means. They're ruin and misery, shattering and misery is characteristic of their way. It's a shattered life. Do you see what sin does to a life? What does sin do to a life? It shatters it. Sin is your biggest enemy. It shatters your life. And it says, "Misery marks the way." Ask somebody who's strung out on dope, "Are you happy? Do you enjoy your life?" "No, my life is miserable. It hurts. And I'd give anything to come out of it." Ruin and misery marks their ways. And the way of peace, they do not know. Peace is totally foreign to them. "The wicked," says Isaiah in Isaiah 57, "are like tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast out mire and mud. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked." They don't know how to have peace with themselves. They don't know how to have peace with their neighbors and they certainly don't know how to have peace with God. And the root of the whole thing, there is no fear of God before their eyes, verse 18. No fear of consequences, no judgment day. They don't think about it. That's a picture of total depravity. Depravity in character, depravity in conversation, depravity in conduct, total. And it's true of everyone. There is no one righteous, no, not one. We're all under the same thing. Paul was under it. He said, "We, all of us alike are all under sin." IV. The Staggering Implications Of This Doctrine Well, what are the implications of this doctrine? Well, they're staggering. Absolutely staggering. First of all, there is no such thing as native righteousness. There's nothing inside you to present on judgment day. It's not there. You will look in vain for it. You must forsake looking because you will not find it. You need a righteousness that comes from another place. You need the righteousness, which God bought through the blood of Jesus Christ. You need to put it on and stand in it on judgment day. You need to stop looking for your own righteousness and realize that if you want it, if you're hungry for it, if you're thirsty for that righteousness, even that's not coming from yourself. The wanting wasn't there either, was it? There is no one who seeks God. So if you want it, if you're yearning for it, if you're hungry for the righteousness, which only God can give, guess what? Grace is already at work in you. No one suddenly decides to follow Jesus. They had years to do that and they never did it. Jesus said this in John 6:44, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, draws him," and he will come. That also means that every Godward impulse in us, every Godward impulse has come from grace. Any word which is pleasing to God, any action which is pleasing to God, anything at all that comes that is pleasing to God came from his grace. Another implication, "Where then is boasting?" It is out the door. It's gone forever. We don't boast in anything we do. But instead we say with the apostle Paul with joy in our hearts we say, "By the grace of God I am what I am." Can you say that? "By the grace of God I am what I am. By the grace of God I love His word. By the grace of God I love to pray. By the grace of God I want to go to heaven and see him forever and ever. By the grace of God and by the grace of God alone I will be saved. There's no other solution there's no other salvation." Read these verses for yourself. When you're saved, when you're saved by grace and someone else isn't and you're looking over that person, and you're looking at yourself, and you're trying to decide what's the difference. Was it anything in you that made you different than that other person? Anything at all? Is there any difference? There is no difference. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now I want to do something that's not in this passage. I've been waiting for this moment this entire sermon. I'd like you to take your pen if you would and on the back of my sermon outline I have each of these phrases here. And what I'm going to do to finish up today is I'm going to give you a Bible verse, a Bible verse which reverses each of these statements and shows that each one of them is reverse by the Gospel of Grace in the life of a Christian. Everyone of them. V. The Great Reversal of the Gospel So we have total depravity but we also have total salvation from the depravity. The first one says, "There is no one righteous. No, not one." What shall we put under that? Write "Romans 3:21" or you could write "Romans 1:17." Romans 3:21. "But now, a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe." Romans 3:21. Alright, how about this one? "There is no one who understands." Romans 15:21 says, Romans 15:21, "Those who were not told about 'em will see and those who have not heard will understand." You could also write Luke 24:45. "Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the scriptures." Isn't that great? Alright, how about this one, "There is no one who seeks God." What did Jesus say? Mathew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied." Where does the hunger come from? Where does the thirst come from? God puts it there. For also Hebrews 11:6. Hebrews 11:6, "Without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him." Where does that come? It comes by faith. Alright, all have turned away. Turning away from God is a mark of rebellion right? Jews and Gentiles alike have turned away from God. Well, here's the Jew verse, 2 Corinthians 3:16, "But whenever anyone turns to the Lord the veil is removed." So there's the Jewish people turning to Jesus Christ. Alright we need a Gentile verse. 1 Thessalonians 1:9, "They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." You've got the Jewish verse and the Gentile verse, both have turned to God. Alright, how about this? "They have together become worthless." That word that stung so much. Alright. Now Revelation 3:4, Revelation 3:4, "They will walk with me dressed in white for they are worthy." They are worthy. Who? People who believe in Jesus. "There is no one who does good. Not even one?" Ephesians 2:10, "we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus…" to do what? Good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. "Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, the poison of vipers is on their lips, their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." Take them all together and write over it Proverbs 10:11. "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life." Isn't that great? We've got death over here, now the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. "Their feet are swift to shed blood." Bloody feet. Won't you rather have beautiful feet? Romans 10:15, "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news." Those are gospel proclaimers. All of a sudden instead of going to kill you're going to bring eternal life. Shattering in misery mark their ways. The brokenness of sin, what does Jesus say? Luke 4:18, "The Lord has sent me to bind up the broken hearted." Can Jesus do that? Can he take all those broken pieces and put them back together? The Lord has sent me to do it. I can bind up the broken hearted. Luke 4:18. "The way of peace they do not know." They don't know the way. They don't know the way. John 14:4, "You know the way, to where I'm going." John 14:6, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." you do know the way and his name is Jesus Christ. And then finally, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." 2 Corinthians 7:1. It says that Christians are perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Do you see the total reversal of our total depravity? All of it available through faith in Jesus Christ. Let's close in prayer.