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Collierville First Baptist Church
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Alright, take your Bible, turn to Romans chapter 8 You ought to just open there automatically, right? Romans chapter 8
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Again, I want to welcome you to church on this Palm Sunday Christians all over the world are going to gather in their churches today to celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus Well, just how important is that triumphal entry?
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Well, I think we get a clue as to how important that is Because it's recorded in all four of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
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It marks the beginning of the most important week in the life of our blessed Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ It will culminate with His death on the cross on Good Friday
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And then it will include the resurrection on Sunday morning The celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Now, I want to say this to you, if you're here today and you're a guest I want to invite you to come Friday, Friday evening at 6.15 We're going to have a Good Friday service And we're going to focus on the cross I'm going to preach about the cross We're going to sing about the cross And then we're going to conclude our Good Friday service by observing the Lord's Supper So I want to encourage you to be here Friday at 6.15 And then Sunday morning, it's already been mentioned, but we're going to celebrate Easter, amen We're going to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ We will have an 8.45 service and a 10.45 service And you just pick which one you want to come and let's gather together And celebrate the resurrection of Jesus as a church Now, let me say this, as we think about this important week Our Lord knew exactly what would happen this week
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He knew exactly how it would end
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He knew that He would go to the cross
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In fact, in Luke chapter 19 verse 10, Jesus made this statement He said, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost"
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Our Lord's destiny was predetermined before the foundation of the world And was written into the Word of God from Genesis all the way to Revelation In Acts 4.12, Peter made this amazing statement
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He said, "And there is salvation in no one else For there is no other name under heaven that's been given among men by which we must be saved"
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Now, last week, we jumped into the deep end of the theological pool We're taking this word, salvation
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And we're going to make sure that we understand exactly what that word means And exactly how God created salvation for the sinful human race Now, I had a man tell me this week that he's going to come with goggles, a snorkel, and flippers So I don't see him out here with those kind of things on But maybe you feel like that, maybe you feel like, "Pastor, this is pretty deep stuff" Well, it's not the shallow end of the theological pool Let me remind you of that, we're in the deep end But it pays for us to stay in the deep end and look at this term, salvation And catch the rich meaning that God intends for us to catch
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Now, last week, we made a statement, God is the author of salvation I want you to know, if you're a born again believer in this room, you contributed nothing to your salvation You'd say, "Well, I came to church"
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Well, you're not saved because you came to church You'd say, "Well, I was baptized"
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Well, you're not saved by being baptized
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You were saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, period God is the author of salvation We talked about the golden chain of salvation And we're looking at five big doctrinal words that explain salvation They sort of emphasize and explain Romans 8.28 for us And those five words are foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification Those are very important words And so we want to make sure that we understand those words and get a grasp of what God means when he uses this word "salvation" in the Bible Now, let's do a little review first Last week, we looked at two of those words
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We looked at God's foreknowledge and God's predestination
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In God's foreknowledge, the Bible says in Romans 8.29, "For those whom he foreknew"
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Now, in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 and 4, the Bible says, it sort of explains this foreknowledge of God "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him
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In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will"
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You know what? I'm so glad that God chose me in Christ before I got to this age in my life Because if He waited this long, He may not have chosen me Think about it, think about the stuff you've gone through in your life, the stuff that you've done to dishonor the Lord I'm so glad that He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that's what it means by foreknowledge Now, before the world was created, God knew us intimately And He made a free sovereign choice to love us and to save us in Christ Jesus
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That blows my mind And then the second word we looked at last week was God's predestination
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And I know that when you hear that word, it scares you to death, but there's nothing to be scared about this word The Bible says in Romans 8-29, "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son"
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Now this verb, "predestined" by the way, all five of these words are verbs, they're action words
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And they're all in the past tense, they're not in the present tense or the future tense, they're in the past tense So this verb means to decide upon beforehand In the present context that we're looking at in Romans 8, I want you to notice that God pre-determined What He would do with those whom He chose in Christ Jesus And He predestined that believers would be conformed to the image of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ Think about this, before God ever saved you, He knew exactly what He wanted to do with you Before God created the world, He knew exactly what He wanted to do with you I quoted a verse last week that means the world to me and sort of explains this in Ephesians 2-10 It says, "For we are His workmanship," or work of art, it really means, "We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works Which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in then" God knew what He wanted to do with you, and I want to tell you, if you're a born again believer in this room, I can tell you what God's will is for your life Now I can't tell you where you're supposed to live, or where you're supposed to work, but I can tell you this God intends for you to become like His Son Jesus, to be conformed to the image of Jesus Now there's a physical aspect to that, and there is a spiritual aspect to being conformed to the image of Jesus But I tell you, it is truly a supernatural transformation that God has planned for every single born again believer Hey God is the author of salvation Now we've reviewed God's foreknowledge in His predestination Now we're going to look at three words that we didn't look at last week
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And we're going to move from verse 29 to verse 30 of Romans chapter 8 I want you to know number three, the third big word as it relates to salvation is God's calling God's calling The Bible says in verse 30, "And these whom He predestined He also called"
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Now the call of God is a historical application of His eternal foreknowledge and His eternal predestination God initiates salvation through the ministry of the Holy Spirit who takes the gospel and uses it to turn people's hearts to Christ In John 644, Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day" I never would forget I was coaching and I was ministering to a young football player
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And he was sort of sowing his wild oats, so to speak And I shared the gospel with him and he was really in a bad spot
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And I said, "Jeff, will you give your heart to Jesus? Will you repent of your sin and place your faith in Jesus?" Here's what he said to me He said, "Pastor, I'm too young. I've got a lot of living to do" And here's what I said to him I said, "Jeff, you don't get saved when you want to. You get saved when the Holy Spirit of God draws you to Jesus and brings you the gospel into your heart That's when you get saved" I said, "I hope and pray that you live long enough for that to happen in your life and your heart" Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day" In John 16, verses 7 and 8, Jesus explained the ministry of the Holy Spirit to his disciples, the apostles He said, "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away" I want you to imagine those apostles in the upper room Jesus had told them that he was going to die They were heartbroken They couldn't imagine living life without the physical presence of Jesus around them
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And he said, "It is to your advantage that I go away" And I'm sure they're talking to each other and thinking about, "Well how in the world is it our advantage for Jesus to go away?" Now when he said, "Go away" he was talking about the fact that he would ascend back to heaven after the death, burial and resurrection So here we are, he said, "It is to your advantage that I go away" "For if I do not go away, the Helper, the Holy Spirit will not come to you" "But if I go, I will send him to you"
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And he, when he comes, when the Holy Spirit comes, and he will come on the Day of Pentecost When he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment That's the ministry of the Holy Spirit
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The Holy Spirit comes into the heart of a lost person, a sinner And convicts them of sin, righteousness and judgment And brings them to a place of deep conviction, of contrition, of confession And hopefully to a place where they are converted and they are consecrated to Christ for the rest of their lives
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That's the ministry of the Holy Spirit
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Now one thing you need to understand about this calling, there is a general call and there is a specific call For instance, in John chapter 7, Jesus issued a general call Let me share this with you, it's the last part of chapter 7, verse 37 "Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, Now there was a large crowd there that day, it was probably bigger than any crowd Billy Graham's ever had
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He said, Jesus said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink"
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Now that is a general call to a large crowd "He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water
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For this he spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given Because Jesus was not yet glorified"
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That's a general call But there is also such a thing as a specific call to salvation There is a good example for us in Acts chapter 16
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Paul and Silas had been called by the Holy Spirit to move and take the gospel into Europe for the first time
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And they were in Philippi And the Bible says this in Acts chapter 16 verses 13 to 15 "And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to a riverside, where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer
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And we sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a cellar of purple fabric" She was a business woman A worshipper of God, she believed in God But she had not heard the gospel to this point And she was listening to Paul as he explained the gospel, the death barrel and resurrection of Christ
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Listen to this "And the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul"
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Now that is a specific call The Holy Spirit took the gospel Pride opened the cold dead, spiritually dead heart of Lydia And brought her to saving faith in Christ alone And then when the Bible says in verse 15 "When she and her household had been baptized, she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay and she prevailed upon us" Notice what happened They believed, her and her whole house believed in Jesus
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And then they were baptized You realize in the book of Acts, it's very clear the order that we're to follow First we believe in Jesus and then we're baptized That order is never reversed in the New Testament, ever We're not baptized and then we believe later on No, we believe and then we are baptized That's what Suzanne did She believed before and today she was baptized to the glory of Christ
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Now Grudem, in his systematic theology book Wrote this and I quote He said, "effective calling is an act of God the Father Speaking through the human proclamation of the gospel In which he summons people to himself in such a way that they respond in saving faith We must always insist Now listen to this very carefully
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We must always insist that this response still has to be a voluntary willing response In which the individual person puts his or her trust in Christ
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I hope you heard that
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The call of God on our lives is purposeful and powerful Are you a believer here today? Are you a born again believer? If you are, there came a time in your life when somebody witnessed you I remember Eric There's no telling how many times I shared the gospel with Eric
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But I never will forget 10 years ago At Perkins on an early in the morning we were having breakfast together And I shared the gospel with Eric again And I'm telling you the Holy Spirit of God took the gospel Helped him to understand it, drew him to the Lord Jesus and saved his soul I tell you, there came a time, if you're a believer, there came a time in your life when somebody Crossed your path and shared the gospel with you Or maybe you were given a gospel tract
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And you took that gospel tract home
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And you read it, and the Holy Spirit took the gospel and opened your heart Your spiritually dead heart and brought you to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ Or maybe, maybe you heard a sermon Somebody drug you to church, you didn't want to go But somebody drug you to church And you heard the gospel and the Holy Spirit opened your heart just the way it did Lydia's And you believed in Jesus and you received him as your Lord and Savior Or maybe you just picked up a Bible for the first time and you began to read the Bible And the Holy Spirit took the words of the Bible And used them like a sharp two edged sword to convict you of sin, righteousness, and judgment And to show you that there was a hope for you in the gospel And you believed in Jesus as your Lord and Savior And I never forget, I was 20 years old at Mississippi State
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And you know how God got my heart? You know how he opened my heart?
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There was a Billy Graham film at Dorman Hall on the campus of Mississippi State It was entitled "The Road to Armageddon" about the second coming of Christ And I had some guys come by my dorm room and they said "Chuck, will you go with us to this film at Dorman Hall?"
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And I said "Yes" and I went and I'm telling you as God as my witness I sat in that Dorman Hall that night, I watched that Billy Graham film And it was like nobody was in that place except me and the Holy Spirit And the Holy Spirit wore me out, convicted me of sin Showing me that Jesus was my only hope And I went back to my room that night, I fell on my knees before the Lord I confessed my sin and I asked him to forgive me and I've never been the same He caused me to be born again, I'm a new person in Christ Because of the gospel, because the Holy Spirit drew me to Jesus So if you're a born again believer, something like that happened in your life
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Now you may be here today and you say "Well pastor, nothing like that's ever happened in my life"
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Listen to me very carefully, he may be calling you today Right here today, he may give you that specific call To repent of your sin, to receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord by faith Hey I want to remind you, if that happens to you and your life today Do not hesitate, do not hesitate At the end of this service, we're going to have our staff down front We're going to bring our worship team back, we're going to worship the Lord And you'll have a chance to repent of your sin and receive Jesus as your Savior and your Lord today And you can be saved today
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You know, think about this, God is the author of salvation That means he designed the plan of salvation
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Before the foundation of the world, he designed the plan of salvation That also means that he designed the path of salvation In other words, you can't pick out the way you want to be saved There's only one way to be saved Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life" No man comes to the Father but through me There's only one way to be saved and it's through Jesus And he's also designed the promise of salvation
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And God promises every person who will repent of their sin and place their faith in Jesus That he will forgive their sins He will cleanse their hearts And he will give them the gift of abundant life here and now And eternal life with him forever in heaven God is the author of salvation We don't get to remake God's plan and God's path and God's promise It's a golden chain of salvation But there's a fourth link to that chain of salvation I want to show you Number four is God's justification It's in verse 29
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"And these whom he called, he also justified"
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Now this word justified means to declare as righteous It's a legal term
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It means to justify as a judicial act Well who does the justification?
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You don't justify yourself Your mama can't justify you Your spouse can't justify you Your parents can't justify you Only the God of heaven can justify you and declare you as being righteous, free, and acquitted from all guilt in your life The Bible talks about it quite a bit in the book of Romans In Romans chapter 3 verses 23 to 26 Paul wrote, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"
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Being justified, look at this Being justified as a, what does it say? As a gift It's a gift from God "By his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus
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whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith this was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed For the demonstration I say of his righteousness at the present time so that he wouldn't" Look at this now "so that he" the living God would be both just righteous and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ
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In Romans chapter 5 verse 1 Paul mentions this idea of justification again He said, "Therefore, have he been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" So how are we justified? Are we justified by making sure that we keep most of the Ten Commandments? No Are we justified by being religious and by coming to church? No, that doesn't justify us We're justified through the power of the resurrection and the atoning death of Christ on the cross of Calvary
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In Romans 5, 8 and 9 the Bible says, "But God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" Do you realize that Jesus went to the cross of Calvary to die for your sins because he had no sins?
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The Bible says that God the Father took all of your sins from the moment you were born until the moment you die All of your sins and placed them upon his son Jesus and then God the Father poured out his wrath against his son not because of anything he had done wrong but because of what you and I had done wrong because of all of our sins and Jesus spilled his blood The Bible says in verse 9, "Much more then have he been justified by his blood" You're justified through the blood of Jesus "We shall be saved from the wrath of God through him" Aren't you glad of that? Aren't you glad that the Holy Spirit worked in your heart? Whether it was a gospel track, you picked up your Bible, a sermon Somehow you heard the gospel, the Spirit of God used that gospel to work in your heart and to open your heart the way it did Lydia's heart and you believed in Jesus and you are saved, look at that, you are saved from the wrath of God You never have to fear the wrath of God
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That's why in Romans chapter 8 verse 1 the Bible says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus No condemnation now, no condemnation in eternity
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John Stock commented on this great word justification He said justification is more than forgiveness or acquittal or even acceptance
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It is a declaration that we sinners are now righteous in God's sight
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because of his conferment upon us of a righteous status which is indeed the righteousness of Christ himself Don't miss this, don't miss this point He became sin with our sin, that's Jesus Jesus became sin with our sin so that we might become righteous with his righteousness Do you realize that if you have repented of your sin and received Jesus as your Savior and Lord by faith because the Holy Spirit helped you to understand the gospel and drew you to Christ and you received him by faith If that's true in your heart I want you to know that when God the Father looks at you from heaven today He sees not one single sin you've ever committed You know what he sees? He sees the perfect righteousness of his Son Jesus I don't know about you, but I sure am glad of that I am so glad of the fact that God does not see all of my sorry stuff that I've done in my life but he sees the perfect righteousness of his Son Jesus Salvation is a work of God alone
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He's the author of salvation, he foreknew you, he predestined you, he called you, he justified you Now we come to the fifth and final link of the golden chain of salvation I love this one, God's glorification
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Look at this, verse 30 "And these whom he justified, he also glorified"
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Now here's the climax of God's eternal purpose for our lives
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It involves the ultimate and complete conformity of the believer to the image of Christ In Colossians chapter 1, verses 25-27 "Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God"
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That's what Eric's going to be doing at Hickory Grove Baptist Church Verse 26, that is the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations but has now been manifested to his saints Verse 27, "To whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles" Don't miss this last part of this verse "Which is Christ in you the hope of glory"
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Oh man, in Colossians chapter 3, verse 4 The Bible says, "When Christ who is our life is revealed" When he comes again, "then you also will be revealed with him in glory" In the Shekinah glory of God
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Now Paul used this now in glory several times in the book of Romans
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In verse 23 of chapter 3 it says, "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" We've all fallen short
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And then in chapter 5 verse 2, let me read it to you Chapter 5 verse 2 of Romans, listen to it "Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" "Through whom" That's Jesus
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"Also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand and we exalt" "We look forward to the hope of the glory of God" My goodness And then verse 18 of chapter 8 "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us" "We share in his sufferings"
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One day, dear friend, I've got good news for you We're going to share in the Shekinah glory of the Lord Jesus Christ himself When we are glorified Now our destiny as believers is to be given new bodies in a new world one day
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I look so forward to that This old body I got right now It's hurting in places it never hurt before
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I notice that sometimes I grunt and groan when I get up or when I sit down
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I praise God that one day at the great glorification which God has promised to me I'm going to be with Jesus and I'm going to have a body just like his body, a perfect body No sickness, no pain, no hurt, nothing No death forever and ever and ever in the presence of our Lord Jesus promises his disciples
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He said, "I'm going to prepare a place for you"
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"If I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive to myself that where I am there you may be also"
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Oh, I look forward to that, don't you?
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Now look Our destiny as believers is to be given new bodies in a new world Now in our text In these two verses 29 and 30 of Romans chapter 8 God is pictured as moving irresistibly
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from an eternal foreknowledge and predestination through a historical call and justification to a final glorification of his people in a future eternity Can I tell you this?
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God does not lose anybody along the way I shared last week what J. Vernon McGee said He said if God begins with a hundred people
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and he foreknows them
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and he predestines them and he calls them and he justifies them He will glorify them and all one hundred people will make it through the whole process God will never lose anybody along the way, aren't you glad of that?
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Boy, it's this truth in your heart God is the author of salvation Now you and I
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We begin a project and some of the projects we never complete or we start reading a book and we get about a fourth of the way through and we put it up and we never pick it up and finish the book Okay? We're good at starting stuff but sometimes we're not so good at finishing stuff I'm so glad to tell you today on the authority of the inerrant, inspired, infallible, worthy of God God finishes everything he starts
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and he'll finish your salvation Listen, if you're a born again believer today you are eternally secure in Christ Now let me say this to you The Spirit of God did not inspire Paul to write Romans 8, 29 and 30, verses 29 and 30 so we would sit around and endlessly debate Calvinism verses Arminianism That's not why this is included in scripture
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Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to include these verses to save sinners just like us and to give sinners just like us confidence in Christ and joy unspeakable and full of glory Hallelujah! What a Savior we have A pastor wants to ask a dying man
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"My friend, what persuasion are you?"
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The man replied, "I am of Paul's persuasion"
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The pastor said, "I'm afraid you didn't understand me" "of what persuasion are you?"
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The man answered, "Oh, I understood you"
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"I am of Paul's persuasion"
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The pastor then said, "I'm afraid I don't understand you"
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"There is a Methodist persuasion"
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"There is a Lutheran persuasion" "There is a Presbyterian persuasion" "A Nazarene persuasion" "But what do you mean by Paul's persuasion?"
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The man smiled and then quoted the Apostle Paul's words in 2 Timothy 1, verse 12 where Paul wrote this "I am not ashamed"
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"For I know whom I have believed"
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"and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day" "I don't know about you, but I like Paul's persuasion better than the Baptist persuasion" "The Methodist persuasion, the Presbyterian persuasion" "The Roman Catholic persuasion or any other persuasion"
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"That's the kind of persuasion that helps you to lay your head on a pillow at night" "and go to sleep" "That's the kind of persuasion that injects joy into your heart as you follow Christ" "as you read the Bible and as he reveals himself to you through the word of the living God" "I like Paul's persuasion"
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So let me ask you a question
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Have you believed in Jesus?
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Notice I didn't ask you
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Have you been foreknown and predestined? I didn't ask you that
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Look at that, I can tell you this If you're foreknown and predestined, you will believe in Jesus You will put your faith and trust in Christ as your Savior and your Lord So I'm going to invite you today So right now, the Holy Spirit is calling some of you to salvation He's calling you to believe the gospel to repent of your sin and place your faith in Christ
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Do not resist the wooing of the Holy Spirit Do not resist it
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In just a moment, on the first note of the song that we sing I want you to come to one of our staff members and tell them that you want to be saved today You want to put your faith and trust in Jesus I'm going to ask our staff to come, our worship team to come And this is your opportunity Look, if you're a born again believer here today
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I hope and pray that the Holy Spirit of God
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will do a deep work in your heart and that you will overflow with joy at what God has made available to you through the Lord Jesus Christ You can come to this altar and pray If I were you, if I had a lost church family member A family member who's never been saved I would come to this altar and I would cry out to God in heaven to save them
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Now why do we do that?
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Because we know that only God can save them
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You can't save them, but God can save them Why is it that we thank God for our salvation because we know that only God saved us
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Let me pray, Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus
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Work in our hearts, work in our hearts Lord Save souls today in Jesus name, Amen Let's stand and worship in you, come