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Collierville First Baptist Church
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I want you to take your Bible and turn to Romans chapter eight.
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Romans chapter eight.
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I do believe that Romans chapter eight is my favorite chapter in the Bible.
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It is a wonderful chapter written by the apostle Paul.
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And today we're gonna focus our attention on the first four verses,
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a sermon that I've entitled "Totally Secure."
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Now, security is a big issue in our world today. I'm sure that many of you have security systems in your home.
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I'm sure that you have the ring doorbell. You have simply saved. You've got all of these security systems. You've got security systems in your vehicles. We've got security systems everywhere.
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Well, this church has security systems and cameras and we have security here that are designed to protect us and to provide a safe place for us to worship.
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But I wanna ask you a question.
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Do you know for sure that you are eternally secure?
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Second question, how can you really know for sure?
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So many believers live defeated and dejected lives. It's like they're on a spiritual roller coaster.
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They're up and they're down. They're down and they're up. They're up and they're down over and over again.
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Dr. Don Wilton put it like this in his book, "Totally Secure." He said this, I quote, "At times they feel safe.
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"At times all is well. "At times all is well.
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"Life is good. "The preacher's on track, stocks are up. "The kids are growing well. "The sun is shining. "How easy in a sense to feel saved "when you feel this good."
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But here's a problem.
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Life is not one continuous mountaintop experience.
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Few people genuinely stay happy all the time. Yet many believe that anything less than a happy smile all day is evidence of ingratitude towards God, perhaps even somewhat unchristian. If simply feeling good and smiling all day long was enough to guarantee my eternal security, Dr. Wilton said, "I would be in serious trouble.
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"It is well not impossible to feel good all the time
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"and let alone to smile all the day long." You would break your face if you smiled all day long.
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Now when we fail to live like we should,
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the enemy unleashes a barrage of flaming arrows directed right at our hearts.
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His ultimate goal is to rip to shreds any sense of security that we have and to make us ineffective for the kingdom of God.
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Living with spiritual insecurity introduces a lot of nasty stuff into our lives.
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It introduces doubt, guilt, inadequacy, discouragement, depression, fear, worry.
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But there is a truth that you need to lock away in your heart and you need to remember this truth at all times, especially when things are not going well.
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Here it is.
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Believers, are you a believer? Are you a believer? Believers are secure in Christ.
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Christ is our security. The stock market is not our security.
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Relationships with individuals, not our security. Our security is in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
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Now, I want to point out to you today, out of Romans chapter eight, verses one through four, four blessings that the Lord has made available to us that enhances our security.
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The first one is this, a persuasive affirmation.
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Number one, a persuasive affirmation. In Romans chapter eight, verse one,
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"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
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I got saved when I was about 20 years old at Mississippi State.
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And to be honest with you, for the first part of my salvation life, I dealt with guilt,
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guilt over the things I had done, the things I had not done, sins of omission, sins of commission.
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And I had a friend at Mississippi State that pulled me aside and he said, "Chuck, I want you to memorize Romans chapter eight, verse one."
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And I did. And I'm telling you, it made a huge difference in my life
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because I have here the blessing of a persuasive affirmation.
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Well, let's just break this verse down for just a moment. The word therefore indicates that Paul is summarizing what he's been talking about and writing about in chapters one through seven.
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Now, these great truths can be summed up with these succinct statements. In chapter one, verse one, to chapter three, verse 21, "The whole human race is under the condemnation of God because we're sinners."
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All humans everywhere are sinners in need of a savior.
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Secondly, God sent Jesus to die for our sins so we could be justified
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and receive our Lord's perfect righteousness.
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That's Romans 3 22 to 5 21.
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And then our sins are pardoned, they're forgiven,
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and the power of sin over our lives is broken. That's Romans chapter six.
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And then in Romans chapter seven, we see that conflict is inevitable in the believer's life. While Paul, even Paul had this to say, he said in verse 24 of chapter seven, "Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this dead? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then on one hand I myself with my mind
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am serving the law of God, but on the other with my flesh the law of sin."
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Earlier in that chapter, Paul said, "The things I want to do I end up not doing. The things I don't want to do I end up doing."
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Have you ever been there before as a believer?
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Listen, conflict ups and downs are a part of what it means to be a believer. But now look at the next part of this verse, verse one.
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"There is therefore now no condemnation."
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Condemnation is a word that pictures a judicial setting.
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It carries the idea of a guilty verdict.
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But look, don't miss this. There's a word before condemnation. What's that word?
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No.
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No condemnation.
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Now I can tell you if you're a born again believer,
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all the things that you beat yourself up about concerning your past, all the things you wish you had done, you wish you hadn't done, you need to be set free from that today. And this is a blessing that the Holy Spirit is laying on the banquet table before you to set you free from guilt. "There is therefore now," right now, "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." That refers to those who have repented of their sin. They placed their faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. They are born again. They are a part of the family of God.
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And they are absolutely freed from any condemnation.
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When you sin as a true believer, and we do sin as believers, don't we? Is there a perfect believer in the room? I don't think so.
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When we sin as a believer, the devil will seek to heap guilt on you. He'll remind you of everything you've ever done in your life.
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He'll remind you that you are no good for anything.
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He'll remind you that you don't deserve salvation. He'll remind you that you're a loser. That's what the devil will do.
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And he will do this to make you ineffective and dejected and depressed. Now listen to me very carefully. At this point, when the devil comes after you, you need to retrieve this blessing of a persuasive affirmation from Romans 8, verse 1, and preach it to yourself.
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Preach it to yourself. It's okay. You can be a preacher and preach it to yourself and remind you that you are free. You're free. There's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Believers are secure in Christ. And the first blessing that gives us this kind of security is the blessing of a persuasive affirmation. But secondly, there's another blessing here.
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It's a blessing of permanent liberation.
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Permanent liberation. In Romans chapter 8, verse 2, Paul went on to say, "For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death."
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Now, Paul introduces here in verse 2 two contrasting laws.
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The first is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
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You know what's interesting?
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In chapters 1 through 7 of Romans, the Holy Spirit is only mentioned two times.
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But when you come to Romans chapter 8,
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the Holy Spirit is mentioned 20 times.
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20 times. You think Paul's trying to drive some... You think the Spirit of God is trying to drive something home to our hearts.
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The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus
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has set you free from the law of sin and death. Now, two of the ministries of the Holy Spirit are very plain and evident in the New Testament.
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The two ministries are life and liberation.
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In 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 5 and 6, the Bible says, "Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, for the letter killed." But look at this now. Don't miss it. "But the Spirit gives life."
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Life.
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Eternal life.
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Abundant life.
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Look at 2 Corinthians 3, 17.
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"Now the Lord is the Spirit that speaks of the deity of the Holy Spirit."
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Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
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There's liberty and life through the Holy Spirit of God. Listen, the moment you repented of your sin and placed your faith in Jesus, you received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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Now the Holy Spirit wasn't given to the New Testament believers until Jesus ascended back to heaven.
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And when Jesus got to heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost to indwell every born again believer. And I'm going to tell you, the moment you believed in Jesus, you were indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit who gives life and liberty lives within you. Your body has become his temple, and he loves to give you liberty and life.
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Now the second law here in this verse is the law of sin and death.
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Now being born into the human race means that by nature and by choice,
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we are all sinners who fall short of God's glory.
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As a result, we are subject to the wrath of a holy mighty creator God.
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The best description of the unredeemed condition that I found in the New Testament is Ephesians chapter two verses one to three. Let me read it for you.
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Paul wrote, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience," speaking of the devil, "among them too you all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest."
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Now as a result of the law of sin and death, the life of an unbeliever, we're not talking about a believer here, the life of an unbeliever is empty and pointless.
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Empty and pointless. You may be here today.
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And you've never received Jesus as your savior and your Lord.
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And you're missing something. I promise you, you're missing something that would bless your socks off. You're missing the life and the liberty that the Holy Spirit of God can bring to you and pour out in your life abundantly.
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The law of sin and death, not only does the law of sin and death leave an unbeliever empty and pointless,
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but it reminds them of their future and it haunts them that awaiting them on the other side of death or on the other side of the coming of Christ is an eternity separated from God in a devil's hell.
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Now keep this in mind.
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For one law to be rendered inoperable, another law must take its place. Okay? Think of it like this. An airplane sitting on a runway cannot get off the ground because of the law of gravity.
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But when the law of aerodynamics takes over, the law of aerodynamics replaces the law of gravity, and the plane can fly.
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And I want to tell you, it's God's will that you as a born again believer fly
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and that you serve Jesus with passion and power and joy for the rest of your life. That's God's will for you.
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God is not a cosmic killjoy. I promise you that.
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God wants you to have abundant life.
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And God applies the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus to set us free from the law of sin and death.
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This is why there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I remind you of the point that I want you to remember and I want you to take home and I want you to talk about it around your table. Believers are secure in Christ.
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I tell you, it's a wonderful thing to feel secure. I remember when I was a little boy,
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my granddad and grandmother lived right across the street. My dad and mom had gone to visit some friends and my sister and I were staying with my grandmother and my grandfather, and it came a tornado. And they had a little old storm house down underneath and it leaked all the time.
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I'm telling you, you would go down there and the thing would be that deep in water and you just knew there were snakes.
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And my granddad would go down and he'd turn the sump pump on, get all the water out. Then he would call my grandmother Shorty. Shorty?
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Let's go to the storm house and she was stubborn as a mule.
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I mean, there were many times that she absolutely refused to go to the storm house. Maybe it was snakes, I don't know.
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But that particular night, I'll never forget it,
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a tornado came and granddaddy had taken some blocks and he turned them where you could see out a few of them
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and he held me up and he said, "Look Chuck, the barn is gone.
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The tornado wiped his barn out. But you know what?
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I felt so secure with my granddaddy and grandmother.
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I wasn't afraid.
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That's a great feeling, I'm telling you. Like the song said, "Jesus will never fail you. He loves you and your security is found only in Christ."
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Now, the first blessing we looked at is the blessing of a persuasive affirmation. The second blessing is a blessing of a permanent liberation and the third blessing is a perfect compensation. Look at verse 3, "For what the law," and he's talking about the Jewish law there.
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The Jewish law, the Old Testament law. "For what the law could not do weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh."
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Now, God made all this possible by doing for us what we could never do for ourselves.
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Self-righteousness, self-effort could never produce the consistent security that we find in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.
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Notice he said, "For what the law could not do weak as it was through the flesh." You see the law, the Jewish law was powerless.
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The Jewish law could tell a man what to do and what not to do, but the Jewish law did not have the power to help him do it or not do it. It was not there.
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That's how Paul described the Jewish law. God never intended for any person to depend upon his or her ability to keep the law in order to produce justification or sanctification.
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Look at Romans 3, 19 and 20. Paul wrote, "Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God." Can I tell you that all the world is accountable to the living and true God? We learned that last week in the last sermon in our series on prophecy.
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Look at this, verse 20, "Because by the works of the law,
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no flesh will be justified in its sight." Let me tell you this.
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You could keep all the 10 commandments, but you can't, but say you could.
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If you were to keep all the 10 commandments, you still would not be justified before a holy and righteous God.
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For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. That's the purpose of the law.
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God gave the law not to save the Jews, but to show the Jews they needed a savior.
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And the same is true for us.
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Now notice this, I like the statement here, "God did." What the law cannot do, weak as it was, through the flesh, God did. What did God do?
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Well, He put in motion a plan whereby the human race could be justified before a holy and righteous God.
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And the human race could be sanctified through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Say, I want you to understand that it is Jesus who justifies us before God, who declares us to be not guilty before God, and it is a Holy Spirit who sanctifies us and conforms us to the image of Jesus.
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That's what God did for us. He did it for you. He did it for me.
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And He says, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of human flesh.
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What did God do? He sent Jesus 2,000 years ago in the likeness of human flesh. It speaks of the humanity of Jesus.
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There's a lot of people who say, well, Jesus was God, but He wasn't human. Or they say He was human, but He was not God. Can I tell you Jesus was 100% human and He was 100% God, fully God and fully man. I'll tell you what a price God the Father was willing to pay to redeem our souls, to redeem the human race.
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This statement underscores the power of God and the desire of God to save souls and to change lives.
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And then he goes on to say, as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.
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This refers to the sacrificial nature of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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He came to be the perfect sin offering. See all the lambs, all the goats, all the sacrificial animals that were sacrificed under the old covenant, not a one of them could remove sin. None of them. None of them could justify a person before a holy and righteous God. In 1 Peter 2, 24, I love this verse. One of my favorite verses. The Bible says He Himself, Jesus, bore our sins and His body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, for by His wounds you were healed.
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Jesus took your sin.
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He took my sin and He bore our sins to Calvary.
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And God the Father unleashed the fury of His wrath upon His precious Holy Son who was dying in our place as our Savior.
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He paid the penalty for your sins.
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That's why when a person repents of their sin and places their faith in Him, they are forgiven of all sins, past, present, and future.
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The true believer, the true believer never has to fear the condemnation of God. You know, sometimes in my quiet time, I just have some special moments
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where the Holy Spirit gives me Scripture that I'm reading and just lifts it off the page and marches it into my heart and reminds me of some of the great blessings of being a follower of Christ.
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Many times He's reminded me that when I stand before God in judgment one day,
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my Heavenly Father will not call out one single sin that I've done, not a one. You know why?
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Because Jesus has already paid the penalty for my sins.
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I am free. No condemnation now or forever.
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That is a wonderful, wonderful blessing.
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What a Savior we have.
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Oh, listen, believers are secure in Christ.
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As a result, we've been blessed by a persuasive affirmation, a permanent liberation, a perfect compensation. And then finally, I want you to see, there's one more blessing I want you to see.
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And it is a personal transformation.
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In Romans chapter eight, verse four, "So that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."
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If Jesus had not lived a perfect life, if Jesus had been incarnated, had become a human being, and had committed one single sin, it would have disqualified him from being our Savior. It would have disqualified the effectiveness of the cross on our behalf.
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But I tell you, Jesus came to this earth, lived for 33 years, and never committed one single solitary sin, not one.
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And God put our sin on Jesus, who died on the cross and paid our penalty.
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And He also, listen to this, He also put Christ's righteousness into us.
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That blows my mind.
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Let me read you a scripture.
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Second Corinthians 5.21,
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"He made him who knew no sin to be sent on our behalf,
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so that we might become the righteousness of God in him."
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God the Father took all of our sin that we would ever commit in our lives and laid our sin on the broad shoulders of His Son, the perfect Lord Jesus Christ.
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And Jesus suffered unspeakable torture and agony, not only physical but spiritual and emotional, as He died for our sins on the cross.
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And then when Jesus said, "It is finished," you know what it means? Paid in full.
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Jesus paid for our sin. Jesus paid it all.
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All to Him we owe sin and left a crimson stain, but He washed it white as snow. Listen, I want you to understand something this morning.
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God sent His Son to die for us.
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He sent His Spirit to change us, to transform us, so that we will please Him in all we say and all we do. Glory to God.
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I ask you a question.
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Are you secure in Christ today?
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Have you repented of your sin and placed your faith in Jesus? If you are, I don't care what you feel,
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I don't care if you feel like you're saved or not.
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I'm telling you, if you have received Jesus as your Savior and your Lord, you are saved. You are eternally secure in Christ because your feelings have nothing to do with it. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.
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You know what? When God looks at our lives as believers,
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He doesn't see our failures.
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He doesn't see those times that you didn't love your spouse the way you should love your spouse.
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He doesn't see those times that you said something you shouldn't have said or did something you shouldn't have done. You know what He sees?
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He sees the perfect, spotless righteousness of His Son
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because He gave us the righteousness of Christ when He took away our sin and placed it upon Jesus.
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I tell you, that's a great spot for an Amen.
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I'm telling you. Listen, there are four blessings in this text that you need to understand and you need to preach to yourself on a regular basis.
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A persuasive affirmation, a permanent liberation,
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a perfect compensation, and a personal transformation.
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Just flip over just a moment to Romans 12.
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Romans 12.
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In verses 1 and 2, we read about this personal transformation.
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Paul wrote, "Therefore I urge you brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which is our spiritual service of worship and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed
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by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the will of God is that which is good and acceptable and perfect." I tell you, it is God's will for every single born again believer to be transformed from the inside out.
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Are you being transformed?
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Are you becoming more like Jesus with each passing day?
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I hope and pray that you are. So let me close by asking a couple of questions.
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Question number one, are you in Christ? Now last week we talked about the sheep and goat judgment. And we said everybody in the world falls into two categories, just two.
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Not multiple categories, just two.
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Either you're a sheep or a goat.
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And using Paul's terminology, either you are in Christ, in fact he used that phrase about 119 times in his epistles.
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Are you in Christ or are you outside of Christ?
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Are you saved or you lost? Are you a sheep or you a goat? Are you a weed or are you a tare?
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Now I can't answer that for you, but I want you to understand something.
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That your chances every day you live and every day that you ignore what the Holy Spirit's trying to say to you about repenting of your sin and placing your faith in Jesus is one less day that you have to be saved.
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Time's running out folks.
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Time's running out.
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I invite you to leave your seat in just a moment. We're going to worship again. And I'm going to invite you to come to one of our staff members. You come, worship team, you come.
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And we're going to respond to what we've heard today.
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I pray that if you're in this room and you're outside of Christ
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that you will come and take the hand of one of our staff members and just say to them, I want to be saved today. I want to be in Christ.
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I want to be a sheep, not a goat, a weed, not a tare.
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You come to Christ today. But here's a second question.
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If you're a born again believer in this room today,
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are you taking advantage of these four blessings?
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They're four blessings that God wants every believer to appropriate.
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Oh, I encourage you. I encourage you. Don't let the devil have a heyday in your life.
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Don't let the devil lie to you.
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Believe the truth.
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Act on the truth.
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Take these blessings and preach them to yourself and gain victory. It's just like that airplane.
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That airplane is grounded by gravity.
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When the law of aerodynamics takes over, that plane flies. And I pray that there'll be believers in this room who will start flying in their Christian lives for the glory of Jesus. Amen.
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