The Seed of Commitment | He Pursues, We Respond | Abundant Life Church | Pastor Erin Thomas
The Seed of Commitment | He Pursues, We Respond | Abundant Life Church | Pastor Erin Thomas
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Speaker 1
Hey, everyone. Pastor Sean here, and I wanna thank you for subscribing to our podcast. I'm excited to get into today's message. And remember this, God is a good God. He loves you, and he wants to bless you.
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We've been in this season of learning about seed, and it's been really, really amazing. So, I have been thinking about this
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message of seed because it's not just about finance, although that's that can be a big part of it. It's about everything that we do. And so, as I was praying and preparing for this, the thing that the Lord was was bringing me to was He was highlighting this cycle. I decided to do Bible in ninety days, which is, yeah, it's crazy. It's going to be like ninety five days right now. But he's told me to do, so I started doing this thing where I'm going through the Bible, and it's like 10 chapters a day, and it's a lot.
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But he began to highlight some really beautiful things about His love for us, and this cycle that we have with the Lord of how we behave toward Him. So, it's basically like God pursues us.
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We turn to Him and give Him our love. And then we turn away from Him, and we go away. And we do whatever it is that we feel like for the moment.
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But then something bad happens, or we remember like, hey, my life was really good when I was going to church or serving the Lord. So, then we turn back to God. Because the whole time He's actually been whispering in our ear in our ears like, hey, come back to me. So then, he's pursuing us, and we say, okay, we'll turn back to you, but then we only have a moment of focusing on God before we turn away again.
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And the cycle continues like this over and over again. You don't have to raise your hand, but I know pretty much everybody in this room has experienced a cycle like this. Maybe you're presently experiencing that cycle where you're turning away from the Lord and then turning back, you're not alone.
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But I want to help us get a little stronger so that the cycles become a little less frequent and a little less,
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atom bomb y on our lives. Okay?
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Because you know when you're outside of the presence and the will of the Lord, things get wrong.
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Things go bad.
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We hurt our relationships.
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Our lives blow up. We make bad decisions. We spend all our money. We get into things that we shouldn't be into.
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We return to addiction and old ways of life that we tried to walk away from and then before you know it, we're right back there. Why? Because we're not prioritizing our relationship with the Lord.
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And God doesn't want us to live that way. And guess what? We don't have to. So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna walk through the Bible because the Bible is a story about God's love for us.
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The whole thing is a story about how much God loves us. So, we have to understand first that there is a reason why we serve him. When we come to church on Sundays, right, we we grow up kinda, like depending on the household that you were born into, like some of us are like you go to church because that's what you're supposed to do, and then you do that thing but it really doesn't matter that much. Others of us like just try just try a little bit of church, and others of us, you know, we understand the importance of church and whatever.
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But we have to understand in order to break this cycle of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with the Lord, is we have to understand who God is, who Jesus is, and why we serve him. So I'm gonna go real quick through a whole load of scriptures because I want you to I wanna lay a groundwork.
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So if you're taking notes, write down the write down the addresses, and then after today, go back and take some time and really look at them. Because this the scriptures that I'm gonna go over briefly in just a moment, they are foundational to understanding how God sees us, how he loves us, and how he wants to interact with us. So number one, God pursues us. He comes after us. I already said that. Jeremiah thirty one three says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you. I have pulled you in is what that means. I have pulled you closer.
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This is not just a grouping of words on a page folks.
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This is God's heart for us.
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It is God's heart for you and for me. It is God's heart that you understand how much He loves you.
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Don't don't put up a wall like God's mad at me or God doesn't want it's not that. It's just a thing. Don't don't keep it at arm's length. God loves you. Hosea eleven eight says, how can I give you up?
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How can I hand you over?
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My heart churns within me. He's talking about his people right before they were taken into captivity by another nation because they had turned away from God. And God's heart is broken because he knows what's about to happen and they've they've dug this grave for themselves. And he's saying, my heart is breaking. My heart is churning inside me because I know what you've done. I know where you're going now.
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His heart yearns. His heart breaks for us when we step away. Luke 15.
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Wait, this is a super familiar story.
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When he was still when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. This is the story of the prodigal son.
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He had been gone. He took all his inheritance.
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He basically said, see you later to his family. I don't need you anymore. I don't care for you. I don't care about you. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna do my thing. And then, when he came back, his his dad didn't tell him all the things that he did wrong. His dad just ran to him and celebrated his return.
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Because that's what God does when we do that. When we turn back to him and we say, God, I'm here for you. I'm sorry. Whatever. We repent. We turn around. We turn. We change the way that we're doing our life.
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That's his response to us.
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It is not, again, it is not just words on a page. His his response to us is come home.
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His response to us is welcome home. I love you. I've missed you. This is God.
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Now listen, He He set up the whole thing.
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I have so many other scriptures, but I'm afraid I won't be able to get through them all. He set up this whole thing, right, for us.
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Because from the beginning of time, He was trying to have relationship with us. In Genesis, when He created people, He said let us create them in our in man and woman in our image. He created man and woman in the image of God. Why?
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So that he could have relationship with us.
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Not that he could be entertained by us to see what we do or what we were gonna, how we're gonna handle things or whatever, so he could stand down and look over the earth and see what happens, but because he wants to know us.
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And he wants us to know him.
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So, He created us. But see, immediately, this cycle began.
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It was the cycle of introducing sin because God wants a relationship with us, but He wants it to be true and genuine.
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He does not want it to be compulsory.
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He does not want it to be because we have to, or that's the only way that I'm gonna get blessed in my life is to serve God, so now I have to. He wants us to have a choice, so he put in the garden a tree
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to give people, to give Adam and Eve a choice.
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And they chose sin.
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And so, immediately, God wants to restore relationships.
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So, what do we see God do? He gave a sacrifice.
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He sacrificed some animal, and he gave them clothing. He moved them out of the garden because they could no longer be in his presence because now sin has been introduced and God can't be around sin. That thing will die, whatever has sin will die in the presence of God without the presence of a sacrifice.
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So, He gives them clothing and they go. And over time, we see the same thing with the patriarchs, we see the same thing with Abraham, you're gonna have a son. Well, I didn't see it fast enough, so I'm gonna create Ishmael.
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And so he went and had it. He didn't believe that God was who he says he was. He didn't see the timing, so he created Ishmael.
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Turned away from God. God brought him back.
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Over time, this keeps happening again and again and again. Fast forward to to Exodus and Egypt when the slaves when the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, and God said I want to bring my people out. I want to gather them back together, and Moses is supposed to go in and bring them out. Right? Well, he does.
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Spoiler alert.
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He brings them out of Egypt, and immediately, they start complaining.
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They complain about the food.
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They complain about the water.
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They complain about their leadership.
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They complain about every single thing that they can possibly complain about. And guess what? They turn and they look and they say, well, our leader's not here, so he's been gone for like fifteen minutes. So, they started making idols to worship.
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Interestingly, they made this gold, this idol and Aaron. It's I always think it's so funny when you actually read it in the bible because it reads like a joke like, I threw the gold in there and this calf came out like he didn't fashion it. It's the funniest thing. You should check it out. Anyway,
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they had zero patience with the Lord, and so every single time something shiny was dangling in their face, or every single time they didn't have anything, any any collective focus on the Lord, they turned away.
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They focused on their their their physical satisfaction. They focused on the things that they didn't have. They actually looked at their past life in slavery and said we should go back to that.
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And it was through this time, it was happening so often that God established the need for forgiveness.
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And how he did that was he established the sacrifice of animals in the tabernacle.
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So basically, every time you did something wrong or at various times throughout the year, you would bring an animal to the temp or to the tabernacle and the priest would sacrifice it for you as atonement for your sin and it would cover you for a certain amount of time.
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So, that's how it began,
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but it continued.
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I want to read this. This is from Leviticus.
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I know you probably won't read it on your no, I'm kidding. You should read Leviticus.
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I had to confess to my husband the other day because like I said, I'm doing the bible in ninety days so it's a lot. And when I hit Leviticus, I'm like, babe, I gotta confess. Like, I was just kinda letting it play.
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So, Leviticus. But when it but like when you read the whole thing, like everything makes sense.
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So, I encourage you like all of it. Like how specific the orders of how things were supposed to be done. There's all reason for it. So, Leviticus seventeen eleven says, God is telling giving the Israelites basically a list of rules that they're supposed to follow. He says, for the for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls. Now listen to this. For it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. So, I want you to remember that I that I this scripture as we're going through this. It is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Okay. So, they start they start doing the temple worship. They they start sacrificing on the regular because they have to constantly be taken in and they start to go into the promised land. And what happens in the promised land? Well, they start to win battles but immediately their second battle, like you see, sin start to take over the hearts of the people. And the one guy, he takes stuff and he like hides it and all this terrible stuff happen as a result of that. This is the process of them turning away even though they're beginning to finally walk in the promise that God has for their lives.
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They start to turn away again.
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So, they take the promised land, but God says when you take the promised land guys, get all the people out.
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Kill them, get rid of all their stuff, burn their villages, get them out. Why? Because God does not want to allow any mixture, right? He doesn't, he wants to protect them from intermingling, intermarrying and living around people that serve other gods. Why? Because mixture contaminates.
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But guess what?
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They did not do that. They allowed people to stay that weren't supposed to stay.
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They didn't consult the Lord when they made agreements with groups of people that that said, okay, we're gonna fight for you. And they were they were not Hebrew and it wasn't supposed to happen, but they ended up getting tricked.
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There's a series of things that continue to happen. So, there's no leader. We have the period of the judges, and the judges are like prophets and leaders. And during this time, it's like one person, during this time, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
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This is how the Hebrews lived.
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So, they weren't necessarily following the law though some of them were. They weren't necessarily celebrating the festivals though some of them were. Everyone was doing the things that they were they thought were right. They had no standard of holiness. So, what happens? We have a final judge that comes and his name was Samuel. I know you guys know this guy. He's the speak Lord, your servant is listening guy when he's a little kid. Right? So he's serving the house of the Lord. He's the first priest in a or first servant of the Lord in a long time that's actually pure.
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Because if you remember, he was serving a a priest that was allowing the defilement of the temple at the time. And they weren't treating the offerings properly.
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And they were sleeping with the women and and taking mistreating the sacrifices in various ways that was making it not actually according to what God had established. Okay?
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So, he says, okay, I'm going to step in. I'm help going you guys out here. So, he's the final judge.
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But the people start saying to him, hey, we want a king. And that's when we see King Saul get installed into the position.
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And then we see King David. But guess what?
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King David loved God.
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So, what do you think the people did when King David was over the land?
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They loved God too because He set the standard and He was the leader of the people. And so, when the people when this people follow the leader, then then what happens?
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They do what He does.
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So, we see that the land of of the Israelites was like blessed and it was going really good, but then Solomon, his son, he intermarried.
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His problem was that he loved women, and so he intermarried and he brought in women of other faiths. And what happened as a result? Well, we have two kingdoms now because the two kingdoms split at his death.
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The Israel split up into two kingdoms. So, one kingdom, the Northern Kingdom, they never served God.
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Hebrews, people that knew what they were supposed to do, They never had a king that served the Lord.
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Then they got taken into captivity. That's where that Hosea Scripture comes from.
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The Southern Kingdom, they had, they were like, I like to call these guys like the church folks, because they kind of knew.
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And so, a lot of times they did, but then if they got a bad leader, they would stop serving the Lord. So, they would go for a couple of generations kind of serving the Lord, but then they would come back and they would give up. And then, they would get distracted and something else would happen or there was a bad king that raised his kids wrong or whatever. And the whole time they're fighting with this mixture.
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So, he allowed them, God, he being God, allowed them to be taken captive as well. Now listen, I'm going through the whole Old Testament right here. So, that's what just happened. We basically just went through the whole Old Testament. So, good job. Everybody look at your neighbor and say good job.
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So, we see the return of the Israelites to their land after seventy years of captivity, okay?
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But guess what?
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They stopped serving the Lord again.
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They came back. They tried to reestablish temple worship. They built the foundation, and then they got distracted.
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And then they came back, and they finished the temple. And then they got distracted, And they started doing other things, serving other gods. And God was exhausted.
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Wouldn't you be?
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Last book of the Old Testament is the book of Malachi.
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And these are God's final words through prophet before he basically went silent.
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Says, behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold he is coming says the Lord of hosts.
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This scripture speaks of Jesus.
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Right?
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You see, God is seeing now that no matter what he does, the people are gonna continually go back and serve other gods and do other things and become distracted and get off track.
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And so God has to do something significant.
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God has to make a a serious move. For four hundred years, there was no word from the Lord.
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Four hundred years. And in that time, the Hebrews came up with hundreds of more rules to live by, more laws to follow.
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But God didn't wanna do this anymore.
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So he sent Jesus to live among us.
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And Jesus was going to set the record straight.
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He was gonna be the one that was going to be the final sacrifice.
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He was fully man, and He was fully God.
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He was in heaven.
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Okay?
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In heaven.
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He came down.
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He was born as a human was born.
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He grew as a human grew.
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He learned things as a human learns things all while being God.
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And Jesus came
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with them to a place called Gethsemane And said to the disciples, sit here while I go and pray over there.
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You see, God, Jesus knew what was happening this whole time that he was on earth. He knew the whole time as a human being. So, experiencing human feelings and experiencing the human stress of how we experience things.
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He's walking out this life.
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So, we see it's about to happen. He's about to be the sacrifice once and for all. Jesus is about to be that.
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When I say, and I want you to hear this, once and for all.
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We say that all the time, but I want you to think about and recognize what the significance of once and for all is.
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One time, one final sacrifice, one man's blood shed covers all the sin for all time. Now I want to read this to you. He became to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.
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And he said, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death.
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Stay here and watch with me.
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These are the emotions that God, that Jesus Himself is feeling when He is facing the cross.
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He is God.
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He chose to be here in this position, and yet He's experiencing this and He's still moving forward.
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He went and prayed a second time.
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He said, not my will, but yours be done.
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A third time, he prayed the same words.
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And when Jesus finally died, the scripture says he he yelled out and he yielded his spirit.
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His spirit was not taken from him because this had to be his choice. He yielded.
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He surrendered.
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He gave it up for us, for me, for you. He gave it. He made that choice. He said, I give it up. He yielded it because he knew that this was his whole purpose.
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That he was God's checkmate for sin in the world.
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And with this choice, we would now have access to God's presence at all times. Because he yielded.
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He was God on the cross and he stayed there.
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He was God on the cross. He was God being beaten and made fun of and he stayed.
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He could have shown them His glory right then, but His purpose would have been incomplete.
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He had to go up and yield His spirit so that the final sacrifice could be made.
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Hebrews twelve one says, therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run this race with endurance that looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame. That means not caring about it. That's not that means like, I don't care. Like, I'm I'm gonna do it anyway. And and has sat, listen to this, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
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For the joy that was set before Him. This is why we did why He did what He did. So, you see that God sowed His final seed, the one seed of sacrifice that was going to make it right for all time. And we read in first Peter, it says, since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again not of a corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the word of God which lives and abides forever.
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Corruptible versus incorruptible.
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Jesus was the incorruptible seed. What does that mean? It means that He was immune to death and decay.
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So, God won the the battle against sin and death with the seed in the incorruptible seed of Jesus because Jesus died on the cross and won when he was risen from the dead. Are you with me?
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Okay. Let's talk about it.
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Means not subject to ruin. Now usually, this word right here for seed, it's spora and it's the only time that it's used in the New Testament. Okay? It was used just this once, and it means the act or source of the planting.
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Okay? So, Jesus, the incorruptible seed against sin and death. So, the enemy, when he was allowing, when he set up this whole thing for Jesus to be killed, it was his the last move. Right? He was taking God and he was having him murdered.
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But first Corinthians two eight says, had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
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Colossians two fifteen says, having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle spectacle of them triumphing over them in it. So again, once and for all,
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into Jesus was sown
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into the earth for us.
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And yet,
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we continue on this cycle of sometimes we serve Him, and sometimes we don't.
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Sometimes we serve Him, and sometimes we don't.
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And sometimes we serve Him, and sometimes we don't. And then we don't realize the significance of what has been done for us.
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In the beginning, it says in John one, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. That He loves us. He has pursued us. He loves us with an everlasting love. He has drawn us to Him, and yet we turn away.
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And I I wanna suggest that the reason why we turn away is that we fail to mature in the things of the Lord.
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We fail to grow.
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God's been pretty clear. I mean I mean this this this shows this tells us everything we need to know.
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And it sits on our shelves.
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Or it sits at our bedside and reminds us that we're not reading it.
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Or we pray at dinner time and that's it.
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Or we pray before we go to bed and that's great, but then we fall asleep.
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And we we don't I mean, that's fine. I fall asleep all the time while I'm praying. But we don't engage in prayer that grows us.
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God makes it pretty clear in the word how we're supposed to grow.
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Gotta read our Bibles, we gotta know Him.
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We have to pray, we have to worship, we have to study.
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So, this is the thing I want to talk to you guys about today, and I know that was like a super long introduction, but now you know about how we came what's in here on this side.
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Sorry, that's upside down. This side.
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We don't grow the way that we he wants us to when we're all on our own.
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We need the church.
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We need each other.
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We need a place where we go where we can grow.
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You see the church is intended to grow us. It says in the book of Hebrews, we need to gather consistently.
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It says, and let us consider one another in order. Okay. Listen to this. Listen to all these words.
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In order to stir up love and good works. Okay? Things we need to do for Jesus.
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Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as in the manner of some, but exhorting one another so much more so much the more as you see the day approaching. That means like as we know that we're getting closer to the time where Jesus is coming back, that we need to be around each other. So, why? So, we can encourage one another. Okay? That's what that says. The church equips believers for ministry.
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Ephesians four verse 11, it says, and he came and he himself gave to be some gave some to be apostles, prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God to a perfect man.
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So, in this set of scripture, if you read on to verse 16, in this set of scripture, it makes it clear. The the church is available is in existence to equip believers for ministry, to build up Christ's body. Right? That's us. That's one another. To produce unity, to develop spiritual maturity, to protect believers from false teaching, to create an environment where the truth is spoken in love, to give every believer a place to contribute.
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Okay?
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That's what the church is for.
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The church is for all of those reasons, and that's not an exhaustive list. But here's what this is saying is that we need the church in order to grow.
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The church church protects and proclaims the truth. Right? So, the church is the standard of truth.
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You can check out first Timothy three fifteen for that one.
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Believers teach and correct one another. That means it doesn't just have to come from a higher up. That's you guys living together and you guys encouraging one another, but also checking each other if we're going out on a left, taking a hard left turn.
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That's in our beliefs, that's in our church attendance, that's in our development.
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If we're coming in the same way we come out every week, week in and week out, your church family are the ones that are supposed to tell you, hey, you alright?
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Everything okay? Because I see you've been angry or I see your heart.
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They're the ones that are supposed to check you when you see a billboard that says sell all your stuff and go become a missionary. And then you're like, I'm gonna sell all my stuff and become a missionary. And then you're like, well wait, your church family is supposed to be like, did you hear that from God or did you read it on the billboard?
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Guys, this stuff happens all the time.
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We think we hear something from God and it's not bad, so we just jump dive in head first and we uproot our entire lives.
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And actually, we're not supposed to be doing that.
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But we guard these words that we get from the Lord as if they're they're the they're the gospel in itself, and we won't listen to anybody around us.
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But that's what the church is for. It says it right here. It says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. That means that admonishing means to warn or caution, to correct someone's thinking, to counsel toward right behavior, to remind someone of the truth that they may be neglecting.
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So the church is a place that we come to grow and mature.
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That means the church should not be comfortable.
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When I was church shopping many years ago, I knew I knew, we all did it. I mean, maybe not you, but we all did it, maybe not you.
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We've all done it at one point or another.
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I knew where I would be nice and comfy.
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I knew where I could settle into the pew and do my church thing and then leave, and then nobody would be looking for me.
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Nobody would be asking where I was if I didn't come a couple of weeks in a row. No one would be asking me how I was changing or the things that I was doing in my life to become a better servant of the Lord because I that's the purpose.
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I walked out of a bunch of churches because I knew I wasn't going to grow there.
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I knew I wasn't going to be challenged there.
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So, we come to church looking for that, and I hope you're looking for that.
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If you're not, it's not going to be comfortable here.
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I'm sorry.
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So, the church is supposed to be like a marriage. It's supposed to be like a family.
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I'm gonna say it. Y'all pray for me.
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You shouldn't be jumping from church to church based on how you feel.
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You need to put roots into one place.
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And when you hear something you don't like, that is okay. Ask about it.
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Even if you you know what? What if you disagree?
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Ask about it.
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It will be okay. Do you know that Bishop and I don't agree about the translation of a couple of different words from the Greek and the Hebrew?
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But I'm not going to stand up here and be like, I disagree with what Bishop said.
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Or, I disagree with what my husband says because that definitely happens a lot more. I'm like, I don't I don't know if you heard from the Lord on that one.
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Hear me.
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Where you attend the church is more important than where you work. It's more important than the career that you choose. It is more important than the town that you live in.
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That means we are not free. Oh Lord.
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We are not free to move to a place where we wanna have better weather because we don't like the heat.
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We're not free to do that because our purpose and our calling will only be achieved through our connection to our local church.
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It is our family.
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It is where we are supposed to grow from a little babies up into mature adults.
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From devouring the milk and desiring the milk to eating the meat.
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And we don't get to choose y'all.
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If God is telling you to go to a different church, and listen, the church, as much as I hate to say it, it's a it's a rotating door. People are in.
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People are out.
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People are in. People are out.
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People are in.
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People are out.
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And the ones that are supposed to be here will be here.
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And I'm okay with that.
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But if you're being told to leave a church and you don't have another ministry that you are already connected to and you know that God has something specific for you to do there, you're leaving prematurely.
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Hear it.
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Hear it.
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Hear it. I'm sorry.
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It's it's better that I do this instead of you because I don't get this microphone all the time.
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If you're called to be here, be here with your whole heart.
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Because we don't get strong and more mature by going from different places or being transplanted into a new environment every couple of months.
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That's not how you get stronger. Can you imagine if you do that with your plants?
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You pluck them up, you put them somewhere else, now they have to die. Now, they die a little bit, and they get uncomfortable, and maybe they keep living, but they have to reestablish their roots. But you know what? Something happened,
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and I'm gonna transplant it again.
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And then something else happens, and something else happens. It's not about what makes us strong, or it's not about what makes us weak. Those are the things that make us weak. What makes us strong is the perseverance through a difficult season. What makes us strong is adversity or facing, going, coming face to face with somebody that maybe you don't like that much.
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And God, you asking the Lord to stir up the love of God in you for that person, not quitting the team that you volunteer on because you don't like so and so.
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It's adversity that strengthens us.
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It's dealing with tough things.
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What makes us strong is sticking it out when our flesh says go.
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We we watch this show called Alone. It's great. I won't go into it, but basically you got to live alone in the woods by yourself for like ninety days or something and it's great.
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And there was this kid and he's like got all this knowledge. He's like 24 years old. He's got all this knowledge. I'm like super impressed with what he's doing and what he's building. He's catching, I mean he's a great hunter, whatever. He's there for like ten days, and all of a sudden, he just crumbles.
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Why? Because he was not mature.
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He wasn't mentally ready to take on something like that.
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We have to stay in one place for a long time so that we can put down roots and grow strong.
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So that when things get hard, when it gets really cold, whatever, our roots are so deep that we don't pick up and go. And then restart what the Lord is trying to do in us. What
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makes us strong? Ask questions for things that you don't understand.
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Don't just get mad.
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Have tough conversations, guys.
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Nobody likes a tough conversation.
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I don't mind it because I know on the other side of that, there is gonna be reconciliation.
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I will I will make sure that whatever happens, there will be reconciliation. If I have to say I'm wrong, when maybe I don't even necessarily think that I'm wrong, I will say that I'm wrong.
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The church is supposed to be a safe place where we can have hard conversations.
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We have to be okay with disagreement, guys.
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It's okay if we disagree about stuff.
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As long as it's not a theological challenge to to truth of the Bible, we're gonna disagree.
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And my being right or wrong does not determine whether or not you you come you keep coming to church.
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The things that make us weak, not sticking it through challenges, not sticking at not keeping it together when we face hard things.
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When maybe something happened and and people are gonna people know like maybe you maybe you had, need restoration and you have to sit down for ministry for a little bit. Maybe, and that's hard because people wonder why you're not serving anymore. But that's, but how are you gonna get your restoration if you uproot yourself and go somewhere else? You're going somewhere else and you're gonna be broken in that place. And so, your wound is actually never gonna get truly healed because the place that was supposed to restore you, you left behind.
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I say all this. I'm saying this stuff guys because we've gotta be stronger.
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We cannot be playing this game of back and forth. And sometimes I serve the Lord and sometimes I don't. And sometimes I love him and sometimes I don't. And sometimes I'll pray for people, and sometimes I won't because I don't know if God is going do what He says He's going to do. We have got to be stronger than that.
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We who who is the world looking to?
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He's looking to you. He's looking to me. It's looking to me.
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We keep living this way.
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We're we're no better than the world.
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We
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stunt our spiritual growth and we hit a point and we can't grow past it.
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But we allow offense, confusion,
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people, what people fake
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To determine where you're gonna go to church.
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Where you're gonna develop spiritually.
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And guys, this should not be.
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Because God has called us all to a place. And if abundant life is not your place, that's okay. It doesn't have to be. But, the ones that are called to this place like, let's be here.
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Like, let's be here.
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Let's be the church in here so that when we go out there, we can be even more of the church. And, people that see us will see something different in us, and we can live differently before people, and our lives will not look like the world.
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But, when you get offended by every small thing that happens and you decide to uproot your life, then the world sees that too.
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Pray for me guys. I'm gonna I'm gonna read one last scripture. Hebrews thirteen seventeen.
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Obey those who rule over you and be submissive for they watch out for your souls as those who must give account.
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Let them do so with joy and not with grief for that would be unprofitable for you. I love that last part. Now, I wanna walk you through because sometimes when you at the first reading, this is like this kinda makes you tense up. Right? Makes you a little uncomfortable. Obey, submit. Nobody likes those words. That might be part of what's wrong with society today.
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But obey.
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The Greek word here is pitho and I'm probably saying that wrong, so you don't need to correct me. I know that it's not I know that it's wrong and whatever.
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It means to persuade.
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And the middle voice as it's being used there is to be persuaded, to let yourself be won over, to trust and so to follow or comply.
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Now, it shares its roots with the word pistis which is the Greek word for faith.
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So, obeying and trusting run run-in the same lane. Right? Pretty close together.
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Now, let yourselves be persuaded by your leaders. That's basically saying the obedience or listening to your leaders, it comes out of a place of trust not force.
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Okay?
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Ephesians six one says, children, obey your parents.
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Totally different word than what's being used here in Hebrews 13.
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Okay?
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It describes a response to someone rather than obey by force. Okay?
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Be submissive.
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That's a hypokite or hypico.
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This is the only time that this word is used in the New Testament and it means to yield, to give way, or to defer.
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In classical Greek, it described backing down in a contest, making way for someone, or not insisting on your own position. Now, the usual word for the word submit is hypotaso that's used a bunch in the New Testament, but, and it's a military term that describes taking your place in your ranks, but that's not what's used here, and the writer of Hebrews was very specific in the wording that he used Because is about position and order. Is about your attitude, your willingness to yield instead of pushing back.
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So, Hebrews thirteen seventeen actually describes a congregation that trusts its leaders enough to be persuaded by them and defers to them instead of digging in.
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Says leaders, watch out for your souls.
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And that word agripneo means to stay see sleepless.
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For they watch out for their your souls. They we stay sleepless, thinking of what we can do to make sure that our church community grows and continues to develop their relationship with the Lord.
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We stay sleepless making plans and planning events and planning outreaches and planning time and planning messages that hopefully will uplift and and and help people get tools in their hands where they can know the Lord better and as a result become a better disciple of Jesus.
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We stay seep sleepless with those things. We stay sleepless with those things. And when I say that, I mean that.
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We live our lives, this is what our calling, this is myself and pastor Sean's calling and our staff's calling and our our leadership's calling to make the right decisions so that our church family can grow.
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And we so deeply desire your trust because when we have your trust, then you can grow.
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So let's go back to where we started.
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God pursues us.
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We respond, we run, and God pursues us again.
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So from the Garden of Eden to the golden calf to all the evil kings
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to the four hundred years of brand new rules.
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God kept pursuing us.
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Then he sent the final answer, the incorruptible seed.
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Not subject to death or decay.
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He won the battle. He sacrificed.
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He yielded his life.
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Jesus was sown into the earth once and for all.
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God did did his part and he did it completely, but a seed still needs a gardener who shows up.
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And that's our part.
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That's our responsibility.
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That's the seed that we sow.
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We don't sow the seed of salvation.
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Jesus already did that.
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We sow the seed
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of effort and we sow the seed of commitment
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because that's what God asks of us.
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That means we pick up the Bible when we don't feel like it.
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That means we pray when it feels like no one is listening.
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And it means that we stay planted even when we want to run.
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Even when we want to run.
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This is what breaks the cycle.
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It's not the behavior modification, it's a person who's rooted. And who remembers 2024, our word for the year, it was those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.
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You don't flourish because you're planted, you flourish because you stayed planted.
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You flourish because you stayed planted.
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You flourish because you stayed planted. And here's the thing about yielding.
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When Jesus was in the garden, he said not my will but your will.
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He yielded his choice.
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On the cross, he yielded his spirit.
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No one took it. He chose to give it. So Jesus is our model in that. In the way that we're supposed to live our lives. He's God and he had every right to say this shouldn't happen to me.
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I just loved people.
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He yielded anyway because that's what we needed.
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We needed the incorruptible seed sown.
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So when we talk about leadership and trusting leadership and letting our letting yourselves be guided and directed. It's not about something that Jesus didn't do in the first place.
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He's our model. He's the one that we follow.
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And the same posture that took him to the cross is the posture that grows us,
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that matures us.
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As I spoke last week at the Limitless Conference news.
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Somebody said that to me after. She's like, you know, it's so great, you know, what you said. She's like, you live this life that you wanna be used by God and you wanna, you know, die more and more to yourself. And she's like, most people don't feel that way.
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And I was like, what do you mean?
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Because as Christ followers, we have to say yes to what Jesus wants us to do.
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And the life of following Jesus is a constant no to ourselves.
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Yeah.
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When Jesus talked about he told his disciples in Matthew, I think it was 18.
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Anyone who wants to follow me has to pick up their cross and carry it. Now, he says this while he was alive.
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Before the cross was associated with him.
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So, we have to think about it from this point of view because Jesus and the cross they were not synonymous at this point. He had not died. And in fact, he had just just a few lines before was the first time that Jesus exposed that he was gonna have to die and be resurrected.
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So, is the first that his disciples are hearing this.
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And he says, if you want to come after me, you have to pick up your cross and follow me.
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And people left him because the meaning that what he said, the meaning that carried was you have to pick up your form of execution.
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If you want to get in line behind me and follow me,
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you have to die.
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You have to die to your desires, to your wants, to your plans, to where you want to go, to who you want to be with.
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Because the life lived unto Jesus is a selfless life.
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And only when we are completely selfless in this can he fully use us.
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And I know that this is not a popular thing to say.
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But the only kind of life that I want to live is one where I don't matter because that's what Jesus asked me to do.
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And that's what he asked our true followers, his true followers to do.
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To pick up that thing that will kill you. Your calling walking in your true calling it will kill you.
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But I wanna ask you, is it too much?
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Is it too much to ask
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for the one that has loved you with an everlasting love?
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Who has placed your sins as far as the East is from the West with his death, with his yielding?
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There is a life that we are called to live and it is the narrow way.
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Again, I know.
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I know.
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It's not popular.
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But it is the best life that you could possibly have.
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Honoring and glorifying Jesus.
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There's a there's a song that talks about how when we come back, when Jesus comes back, all of our goals are gonna be exposed as worthless idols.
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These things that take our time up over spending time with the Lord.
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Desiring things that we're not supposed to be desiring.
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Because it's not in the cards for us.
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Because Jesus has something better.
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But as long as we hold on to it, we can never see where Jesus wants to take us.
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Thanks again for listening to today's podcast. We trust that it has touched your heart and blessed your life. Listen to support the ministry, you can go to our website, abundantlife.tv.
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And remember, we are better