In this lesson, David finishes his discussion on the Holy Spirit (NOTE: this is lesson 3. Lesson 2 was not recorded).
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Alright.
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Let the record show again. Thank you, David, for that reminder. Last week, we did not get to finish the lesson on the community of the Holy Spirit. And so we’re gonna finish that. I’m calling it part two, which means, of course, that the next lesson has to be in part as well. So we’re gonna finish one today and then start a new topic as well, is the plan. Before we do that, I think likely every week, I’ll just review the class description, both as a reminder to those
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attended and if it’s your first time just to give you the scope of the class. We’re calling it the fundamentals of the faith or the Bible basics but the point is to think of these topics in a way in mind of how would they be received from our neighbors who perhaps are non-believers at all or perhaps perhaps have some religious associations perhaps even know Jesus in some way how would we think about these topics to communicate with them and in doing so I’m looking now at the class description on page one we’re going to review
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rendered in proof texts, though of course we’re going to ground our study in the Bible. I have a few handouts here. And then as I just said, we’re going to think about these in terms of how they might be received or thought about from people with different religious experiences and backgrounds.
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I’m being honest, I’m not equipping you for debate. So if you’re hoping to leave today with, I keep saying like, lay it down like a Uno card or a Domino, you can slap that on the table and win. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not giving you that one verse, as I said last week, that’s gonna win over your Baptist uncle, okay, that you’ve been arguing with for 20 years, all right? It’s helpful to acknowledge.
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that believers in other religious groups are smart. They know their faith often. They have background. And then also, they’re sincere. And the reason that I know it’s important to think that is that we can be certain that somewhere somebody is thinking of us that way, that we might not be sincere, we might not be knowledgeable, and we wouldn’t want that either. And so that leads into this other thought that I’ll read word for word. It almost always leads to pain and alien
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when we assign bad motives to people in their beliefs, such as they disregard Scripture, they refuse to acknowledge the Scripture, they don’t want to submit to God’s authority, they haven’t studied the Bible enough, etc. Now, that said, even given that, folks can still not know and act on the truth. And a phrase I repeat to myself often for my own life is, sincerity does not substitute for truth. And then finally…
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If after nine weeks you don’t remember anything in this class, of course in addition to the scripture, but if you don’t remember anything else, it’s this idea. When we’re talking with folks of different experiences and backgrounds about biblical topics, I would urge you that your first step is to seek to understand rather than to persuade. Seek to understand rather than to persuade. All right, given those, it’s kind of the bedrock of our study, we’ll jump back into part two.
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community, and if you want to use the word fellowship or group, that’s fine, but I’m using the word community. The word elects can be substituted for the word chooses just fine. And that the community he now chooses, as opposed to his previous covenant, are those in Christ. So we established that. That’s our first idea. Last week, we established that the community God chooses is united in the Holy Spirit. So we talked about how the
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Spirit works in the individual Christian and how the Holy Spirit works communally in our group in the church both locally and universally. And then if you remember, if not we’re going to post it on the web, I provided a huge table that listed 15 ways the Holy Spirit is active now. The New Testament describes the Holy Spirit being active in our lives and in the church. And so the one thing that the topic that I thought it was important to
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especially when we’re talking with folks of other religious experiences and backgrounds, is more reference. Alright, so, we’ll do a brief review of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to miracles. So, now I’m at, I just restated the important ideas from last lesson. I took out the things we discussed underneath, but the first idea we covered in Part 1 was the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Remember, it worked really hard to establish an action.
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in the New Testament between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And you’ll have some great ideas about why that’s important. Important idea number two that we established last week that the Spirit of Christ, that is the Holy Spirit, is the life of the body of Christ, the life of the church, our community of faith.
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And then third is the Holy Spirit lives in both the individual Christian and the corporate church. Corporate meaning the whole body. Alright? And then I gave you a phrase. You won’t find this phrase as it’s written exactly in the New Testament. I’m being honest about that. But it comes from Dr. Hartman, previous minister here, full disclosure, my father-in-law, who says the phrase he uses to describe his view of the Holy Spirit, the one that I’m presenting here as well, is non-miraculous personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
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I use that phrase sometimes when talking with people of different faith backgrounds and regarding miracles. So if you’ll turn to page two, we’ll get into the new stuff for this week. And we’ll be thinking about why, again, why we want to make sure we have an understanding of this topic as we talk with our neighbors who don’t know Christ or only know Him a little bit. So here’s important idea number four.
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Miracles have been one way the spirit is observed among God’s people. Miracles came at particular times in biblical history to point to God’s saving activity and confirm his revelation. So we’ll just be point blank. Miracles are not happening now.
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And I know that’s hard, like that’s hard for me even to voice because of a whole host of implications. But that’s the truth that Scripture teaches. So we’ll move through why we might think that’s the case, and with the Scripture as the bedrock of course. So I’m looking at the first bullet point under the important idea, and the first is that the list of activities of the Spirit in the Church represents what the Spirit does for all believers.
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Everybody has access, every believer in Christ, everybody has access to that, every work on that table. And it’s an impressive list. The Holy Spirit is busy. The Holy Spirit is active. And so that’s a place that I start sometimes when I talk with folks regarding this topic is the Holy Spirit is not dormant. That is not the claim at all. And the Holy Spirit is active in our lives and in our church.
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The central, so if you review the New Testament, the primary discussion of the Holy Spirit focuses on those spiritual qualities, those activities in you. But the human view, right, right, the natural human nature, the tendency, we’re drawn to spectacle, right? We’re drawn to the amazing, the miraculous, literally, of course, as some translations call it, signs and wonders, right, we’re drawn to that.
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It’s hard to, I don’t want to be, I wanna maintain the same spirit of respect and dignity that I talked about at the very beginning when talking about our religious friends who perpetuate the idea of miracles, right? You can watch TV, that presentation speaks for itself, right, the selling of the cloth, the people falling down with the palms on their heads, things like that. Again, I wanna be respectful and kind and gentle when referring to those things, so I won’t spend a lot of time there.
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But the point is, I think we can all accept human nature, even ours, we want to focus on the miraculous, the spectacular. How’s the spirit doing that, those things. So, if you look at the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you can, when we focus on it and we talk about it together, even to children, it’s, you might take away the belief that the book, the Bible is a book of miracles, right? That’s fair. That’s what it is. But,
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The study I’m doing with Dr. Ferguson’s book makes it clear that biblical miracles cluster. They happen in particular times in biblical history. So I listed four here. Let’s look at those. The time of the Exodus and the subsequent wilderness, wandering, conquest of Canaan. The point is, it’s when Israel’s delivered and the law of Moses is revealed. Okay, that’s a crucial time in God revealing himself to his people. The next time…
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The Crisis for Israel, presented by Canaanite veil worship. Elisha and Elijah, they’re doing miracles left and right, not to be cavalier. Then of course, the brief public ministry of Jesus. Three years, his public ministry happens and it’s miracle upon miracle. The Gospel of John says there are so many, they would fill books and libraries beyond our comprehension. And then finally, the Book of Acts records…
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miracles as the church grows and expands. Now what we want to ask is, is there a pattern among those times? What’s the purpose of miracles? Because we’re operating from this, it’s not an assumption, it’s in the Bible and we’re going to see that here in Hebrews. The miracles are not miracles for their own sake. They’re not miracles for spectacle, just to prove that God is a circus leader. He’s not there just for
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to show off. I really like this phrase from Dr. Ferguson’s book. He says, there’s a divine economy, right? The way that God has ordered the world. And he says, the miracles don’t call attention to themselves, but pointed to God’s saving activity as word of revelation. So it’s a fair question. And when I’ve discussed this topic with the teens, they ask me, like, David, don’t we still need that? Don’t we still need affirmation of?
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God’s saving activity in his word of revelation? And the answer, of course, is no, because everything that’s sufficient has already been provided. The revelation of Jesus is complete. So that’s sufficient. Let’s read Hebrews two, one through four. Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable,
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and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was, that’s the salvation, right, the gospel, it was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard again, salvation, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will.
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So you’ll notice it’s past tense and it referred to what God did to affirm the gospel, to certify as a witness to its truth. That’s been accomplished. That’s why miracles have ceased.
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So, four quick bullet points here to help you provide a way to think about this as you converse with others. The miracles and distributions of the Holy Spirit served as God’s personal testimony. That’s not in the scriptures, but when it says in Hebrew, God bore witness, that’s a different way to rephrase that. Attesting both the messenger, Christ, and the message, the gospel. The miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit function to confirm the word of salvation.
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spoken by the Lord and then in the book of Acts by his apostles. So here’s where it’s crucial what the Bible doesn’t offer. There is no New Testament promise that these miraculous gifts would endure. Rather faith, hope, and love will endure to the second coming. And again, which is important I think to finish, even though that’s the truth, the Spirit is still active and present in our lives and in the life of the Lord’s Church.
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So that’s, that’s really good. Yes? I’m in construction. In construction, I was told an example of how the first century church was built. You have to build the scaffolding around the outside of the building to build the building. Once the building’s done, the scaffolding comes down. The scaffold being miraculous works and the things that the first century Christians had those miraculous gifts and abilities to build the church.
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establish it and that’s what we have today. We have the established built church, the miracles being the scaffolding that had eventually come down in order to create that structure. That’s a really helpful analogy Joe. I mean that’s why we have Bible class. I’ve been doing this a while, I’ve never heard that and that’s wonderful. That’s a wonderful illustration. Thank you for sharing that.
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So let’s pause here because I think it’s important to acknowledge the emotional impact of this discussion, especially because we’re thinking about sharing this with people who are living real-world lives full of suffering, right? Who have a host of experiences that they bring to this truth, right? First,
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I’ll just tell you my experience discussing this with the teens presenting this to them. We focused on one part for them That’s that I think this group’s probably much more settled in there’s this whole idea That the reason there aren’t miracles in your life is because you don’t have enough faith, right? And that’s a really damaging awful teaching and there’s heresy. It’s just not true. And so I Got to work with the teens and teach them that I think it’s really important to understand that from a young age even before you Take on Christ and become his follower
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would not have a miracle. The second thing is the students ask the kids upstairs they ask me, David why do we pray? There’s no miracle, why do we pray? Well and it’s important to be able to clarify for them, God is still active, God is still intervening. I mean listen to our prayer to start today. I asked God to restore and heal several people.
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So what we get at is a discussion for another time and perhaps its own quarter or year or lifetime of study and that is what is a miracle.
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When I studied this at OC with Dr. Jim Baird, that’s where we started. We defined what a miracle is, right? So I’ll be brief with this because we’ve got other things to get to. Y’all have heard the miracle of life, right? Like holding my newborn daughter in the hospital, I mean that word came to my lips. But that’s a natural process. God designed that. That is not a supernatural moment. Now, did it feel heavenly, right? Was it a taste of the kind of joy and celebration of the life to come? Small, of course, right?
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I remember my high school English teacher who was a Baptist minister, he was at my wedding and before it started he pulled me aside and he said, Dave, I think weddings are a little taste of what heaven can be like. I don’t know if the Bible teaches that, but it was the point being we can have those moments that feel uniquely special and connected to God. That’s not a miracle. A miracle is supernatural.
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Meaning it is an intervention against the laws of nature that are here present on earth right someone’s raised from the dead Okay, that’s that’s a miracle their heart quit beating and now it beats okay, so again we could spend weeks talking about this I’m trying to reduce a really complex idea down to about 17 minutes okay, so I appreciate y’all’s grace and patience in that but the point I want to again I’ll return where I started there. I got to tell the students the children upstairs of course
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intervene, but the question becomes what is a miracle? His supernatural intervention is not expected to occur, but God is sovereign. I rest on that. God is sovereign. That’s a fancy way of saying God’s in charge. Here’s the third thing I would offer, especially as we think about evangelism.
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And that is, I’m really proud of this group and the way I’ve gotten to know so many of you. Because I think there’s a genuine, sincere sensitivity here that I probably don’t even have to make this point. But just in case, I’m going to say it. When we talk to people who are suffering, it is not the time to talk about the existence or lack thereof in miracles. So I’m going to tell a really sensitive story, try to be brief. I worked with a gentleman, a faithful, devout Catholic his whole life. The term that he uses is Craio-Catholic, right?
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born into their faith. He lost a child to cancer, a nine-year-old girl. And I knew him in his 50s and 60s. He was a devout, pious man. We believed a lot differently, of course, but the point is, good man, we talked a lot. And he told the group one day, he brought some kind of holy water he had had.
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from Lordus. Anyway, the point being he brought a material object and he said when his child was sick he prayed for a miracle for her healing. And he said the miracle didn’t come for her but he was healed. That’s powerful. Again, that’s not the time to talk about the doctrine of miracles. Right? And again, that’s why I’m applauding this group. I don’t think I need to say that.
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But even still, I think it’s important to acknowledge there’s an emotional part that comes in people’s experiences that we have to acknowledge, that we have to think about when we share these ideas. So perhaps the best place is when we can afford to have some intellectual distance, right? Some emotional distance from the time. I think that’s my practical advice today. Yes, David. Just thoughts.
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I heard a story of a gentleman that had cancer on his, there was a tumor on his brain and
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What they did, he had researched everything and everything. Well, what happened is they even went through the step of, and I think it’s James that talks about, hey, if somebody’s in need of healing, gather the elders, have the elders lay their hands on the prey for them. Well, supposedly they did that and
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hand on his head and directly asked, hey, God, please remove this tumor. Well, he goes into the doctor and has it and the doctor is looking at everything and he says, you know, I see where the tumor had been there, but it’s not there now. And I guess, I don’t know, but I guess there’s two pieces that it goes like to that where
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A, we weren’t there so you can’t confirm or dispute it. But B, I don’t know, it happens. When you say it’s a miracle, what do you think about that type of thing? You know, I’m gonna-
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I’m going to be honest with y’all, I’m going to take the coward’s way out and just say we don’t have enough time. I’m just going to say it this way, David. That question demands so much more attention. Number one, that I can give it here. And to be super honest with y’all, number two, that I’m equipped to give. Okay? So, yes ma’am? Well, actually…
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answer on that, but I’m going to wait.
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And I think miracles are not dead through people and signs and wonders like this.
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But to me, it’s very possible that two moments there and God said, you know what? You’re clean, you’re healed. And that is a miracle. Right. But I don’t think we can look for miracles.
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people and people go through us like he did. But God is everywhere. He is, he can do absolutely anything he wants. And I don’t think we should ever, ever, ever discount what he’s working on and what he can do, what he is doing. That’s a really important, I think that’s a, again, I’m just gonna take the privilege of the teacher and say that’s a good.
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finish to that conversation because I think I agree with everything you said. I think everything you said lines up with God’s character in the scriptures. Far be it for me to… I’ll finish with this kind of example.
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You may know someone, our own brother, Jeremy Saylor, is open about how his life has radically changed because of Jesus, right? If somebody wants to call that a miracle, I’m not gonna argue with them over that. Goodness, there’s too much work to be done. The Holy Spirit is active in so many ways. We’re just gonna still have unity, which is a segue into idea number five. Thank you, Michelle.
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So if we’re going to be the community of the Holy Spirit, if that’s what the church is, then that has some implications. I list four of them. I ask you here, are there others that you can think of, that you’ve observed, that you’ve experienced? If it’s true that God has chosen a community and that community is united in the Holy Spirit, what does that mean for how we live together, right? For the people in this room, for the universal church? Well, I’ve got four, here they are. One is…
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There’s an emphasis on unity. If we have the community of the Holy Spirit, we are unified spiritually. The second is this really unique idea, I think what makes the church pretty special in many ways of course, is that the individual is equipped.
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and the Holy Spirit is active in the individual’s life for the good of the whole. So that the church focuses neither on the sin and temptations of individualism, the idea that I’m my own man, I’m my own woman. That’s a lie. But also the sin of, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, I don’t know. Not community. I had it on my head and it’s not in my notes. I’m sorry. But the idea, oh, a collective, that we lose our identity in the whole. That’s not true either.
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loves us uniquely each individual is made in the image of God. So the point is the church is special because the Holy Spirit says the service of the individual is for the good of the whole. If that’s not what the gift is doing, then it’s not a gift of the Holy Spirit. The third implication is equality of believers. We are all the same in the community of the Holy Spirit. And then finally, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our community means that we should prioritize spiritual things over material things. Now we acknowledge the reality of material things. People get hungry.
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miracles included reproducing bread and fish. Okay, but the priority of the community of the Holy Spirit is, of course, spiritual things. So we’ve got a few minutes. If you’d like to tell me or share with the group, what are the implications of being the community of the Holy Spirit that you’ve observed or experienced?
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One of the things we sometimes will rely on as an eldership is the fact that each elder has a different background and a different work situation. But sometimes situations arise and so we can boy one another up because we have some experience that we can share.
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when your father-in-law was serving as an elder here, that was very much evident because he would take his hat off. He says, I’m not the preacher now. I’m serving as the elder. Then he put his preacher hat back on. And so we would share those things. So that would reinforce, like the eldership does now, is we have input from each one that helps come to a decision. And I think that’s where the wisdom and understanding helps us group, too.
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better than one so to speak. Thank you Ron. Thank you. Very thoughtful answer. Others?
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One we just observed with David and Michelle’s comments about miracles, right? Like the opportunity to focus on the truth and to ask hard questions, right? Because we rest in the truth revealed by the Holy Spirit. We can do that. We don’t have to hide from them. Tracy. Thinking about Joe’s comments when he talked about the scalpel, I think it’s interesting.
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Especially for kids, we’re driving by a big construction site. We think about when the Devon Tower was being constructed downtown. You have these massive cranes, and the kids look at the big machinery, and they think that’s all really cool. And the construction is really neat to drive by and look at the building going up. But when all of that is gone.
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Now the building is there and whether you think the Devon Tower is beautiful or not, you think about other structures. You think about some of the buildings in DC or other magnificent structures around the world. They still stand in the church, the community of believers. Once the miracles are gone, once the amazing works are gone, the community of believers in the spirit are still standing there as something that’s been constructed and strong and durable
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see if the world can come into for whatever services or purpose that that building has been constructed for. So here we are in the world today. And that’s our role is to be God’s kingdom and example and service to this world. Thank you Tracy for that very thoughtful answer. Yes sir.
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was Mount Zion, the city on the hill, that shone across the world for all peoples to come to. And that today is the building, the church. And that’s what we have today. It should be. I mean, it should be the shining example for everybody. And all of us that are here belong in that building. And that’s what we need to show.
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Thank you for that reminder.
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Yes, David.
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I’ll give you one. Whenever we’re together and singing praises to God, I don’t know, for me whenever we’re singing together and I enjoy hearing all the voices mixing together and you know that feels like a special connection to me at least. Almost a unifying force I guess.
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Thank you David for that. We’re going to talk about worship in the weeks to come. We are going to talk about that. I appreciate you pinpointing those different voices, right? The church is unique in unity and diversity at the same time. It’s pretty powerful. I think I’d say the biggest thing that I’ve seen is kind of your discussion question is in the loss of a loved one. I think it seems like everybody goes to some…
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faith-based organization even if they’re not to help and that’s how the Christian nation or the Christian community helps outside as How the community the Holy Spirit is A lot. I mean that’s what I think is the most frequent sign of how Community the Holy Spirit helps society. Thank you David. Appreciate that
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Okay, thank you all. That will conclude that lesson. We’re going to shift gears here. It’s the same date, but now we’re going to talk about the title is The Church and Her Savior, Salvation and Church Membership. And by church membership, I don’t mean filling out the address card, but rather being included in the church, right? Becoming a part of that community. So, again, what I try to do here to begin is just outline my thinking to make it explicit, so there’s no question about where we’re headed and why we’re headed there with our aims.
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So two weeks ago again, we established that God chooses or elects a community, and the community He chooses now are those in Christ. Last week in this, we established that the community God chooses is united in the Holy Spirit. So I think it’s a fair question, and somebody asked me that, David, why do we start there? Why not start with how you get into Christ, right? Start with the unbeliever and how they get into Christ. Well, number one, that’s not how the book I’m using did it. So I’m going to go in there.
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going to try to explain here is that we started with the nature of the church, right? Like what is the church? And the answer to that of course is the nature of the church is informed completely and entirely by Jesus himself, right? Like the nature of Jesus. And so then becoming part of Christ answers the question of church membership. Those are the exact same thing. Being in Christ is being a member of the church. And so it’s fair to ask now, of course, what is involved in
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This room is full of, I don’t know everybody’s situation, and I look forward to meeting you all individually, but most folks in here I know you’re in Christ. So you know the answer to this. We’re going to talk about it in a way I hope that reveals a few important things and also equips you to talk about it with your neighbor. Okay? So a new phrase we’re going to use, the church may be defined as a community, not just of the Holy Spirit, but of the saved. We’re going to use that phrase. The church may be defined as the community of the saved. The scholar who wrote the book,
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I’m using Dr. Ferguson said, quite simply, the church is the people who are saved.
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And where does that come from? Well, fortunately for us, Jesus in the gospel is very clear. He’s crystal clear about his mission. He says over and over again, directly, it’s unequivocal, right? His mission, Jesus said, is to seek and save the lost. That’s what he’s about. That’s his business from the beginning of his ministry. And so because, again, we are Christ’s church, we get our identity from him. We were lost.
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Now we’re safe. All right, so I put a hat in here, our thought process for these first few lessons, and I just made these handy little arrows just to show you one thought to the next. I won’t read all over that, but if you lose track of where we are, just say, whisper to your neighbor, David’s getting kinda crazy. Okay, you just go back to there and you read that, all right? So here’s the question we’re gonna start with today. Why do people need to be saved? That’s fair, what are we saved from, right? And so the question,
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super important. It requires us to describe sin and the human condition. So let’s do that. All right. I’m under the top of page four. There’s a box there.
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And we really, I put it in a box just in case we had to skip it for the sake of time. But I told you all a couple weeks ago that the book that we’re basing this study on, it’s a really good book if you’re having a hard time falling asleep at night. I’m proud of that joke, y’all. But I put this box because this box woke me up. I mean, it was just, it tugged at my heart. I got emotional reading it because Dr. Ferguson got at the heart of what it feels
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to be a creation of God sometimes. And so I’ll let you read over that. The basic point is he says human existence can be a paradox and there’s this dual nature that we have. And he says what’s really profound is the biblical doctrine of creation and fall that is being of God but also people who sin. He says that’s the one that’s the only really worldview that really describes that dual nature we experience. So that was compelling to me. You can take time with that box maybe between services or however.
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however you want to stick it on your fridge, line your birdcage, whatever. So we’re gonna be in Genesis three, if you wanna flip there, I’m gonna be back and forth in some verses of Genesis three. But we’re gonna outline, again, why we need to be saved. To answer that question, we gotta talk about sin and the human condition. So we have time here to discuss four realities of human nature. These are things that Genesis three makes clear that after the fall, or as part of the fall, now all humans experience, okay?
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of human nature is temptation. If you are human, you are going to be tempted at some point. Okay? And so, what’s really interesting, if you want to circle those three verses stacked on top of each other, those three passages, Genesis 3, 6, 1 John 2, 16, and Luke 4, 3 through 12, which is the temptations of Jesus. All three of those. They each of them outline three sort of fundamental temptations.
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Some scholars think this is intentional, that Luke was thinking of Eve’s temptation when he wrote 4th, Luke 4, and that John was thinking of Luke and Eve when he wrote 1 John 2, 16. Some scholars think that.
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Dr. Ferguson does not. He thinks it’s just a pattern revealed that it’s not intentional. I’ll leave it up to you, my friends. The point is, it’s a powerful pattern. And what it is is the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride of life. Those are the three common temptations.
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Dr. Ferguson calls them pleasures, possessions, prestige of the world. Three P’s there, handy mnemonic. But we’re going to land on the last bullet point under temptation, which is this. Genesis 3, when Eve makes the decision to, makes the choice to take the, prove the tree of life, the knowledge of good and evil.
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This is the temptation. We want to be our own God. We want to decide what is good and evil. So that’s what’s going on in Genesis 3. That’s what we can really boil it down to. So that’s the first reality, is temptation. The second reality of human experience, of human nature, is sin. I really liked the way Dr. Ferguson said this. He said, if you look at my first bullet point under sin, the experience of Eve and Adam is everyone’s experience.
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Every man is his own Adam. Every woman is her own Eve. Romans makes clear, literally all have sinned. Paul gets into a really thoughtful discussion of the nature of sin in Romans one, and he says the root of sin is the failure to acknowledge God as God. John is gonna say this about sin, and I think this is where we’re gonna, again, this is the fundamental. Sin is disobedience. Disobedience of who? God.
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So temptation is to be our own God. Sin is to disobey God. And then what’s really interesting is that when you look at what Adam and Eve did when they sinned, they tried to hide, they tried to blame it on somebody else. Man, I’m right there with them. Amen. I could lay it out for y’all. If y’all wanted to test the money right now, we could be here a while, okay? In all seriousness.
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That’s a common experience. So, temptation, sin, and the next reality is punishment. Scripture makes clear that punishment for sin is inescapable. And this is clear in Genesis for Eve and Adam. Now, I bolded these phrases. They’re really important here, especially if this is your first time thinking about this passage.
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The curse for Eve is this, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe. With painful labor you will give birth to children. So I’m going to be super clear, the curse, the punishment is not childbearing. It’s the pain in childbearing. Childbearing is still a gift. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s the pain that goes with it. Same for Adam in Genesis 3. Through painful toil you will eat food from it in the ground. All the days of your life by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food.
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The punishment is not the work. Work is noble and good. Okay, it’s fruitful. The punishment is the pain and the sweat that are exacted from it. The point being, nonetheless, punishment is a reality. We can’t escape it. If you turn the page to page five, two more punishments revealed in Genesis three, expulsion from the garden, from the tree of life, and then of course the ultimate punishment for sin is death. You are dust.
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to dust you shall return. Now I’m not a great you know I’m not some emotional preacher but if the story ended there it would be truly sad but we have redemption and that’s the fourth reality of the human condition. Okay so verse 15 in Genesis 3 there’s the
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the revelation that the offspring of the woman, okay, some of the descendant of the woman, will strike the serpent’s head and the serpent will strike the offspring’s heel, okay. Pause here real quick. I’ve heard this taught, a lot of folks teach that this is a messianic prophecy, right, this is the first time that the Bible talks about Jesus. Dr. Ferguson, the scholar I’m reading, he says that’s not right.
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This is about animals, it’s about a snake. So, scholars debate. The point is, it alludes to Jesus. Paul thinks that the same way, if you wanna go read Romans 16, there’s a reference to the snake. Anyway, the point being, redemption. Humanity will triumph over temptation, sin, and punishment through one man Jesus, the offspring of woman. Christ will be bruised by the strikes of Satan, but Christ will crush the head of his foe.
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One way to say it might be that human beings will triumph over evil through the new Adam, the perfect man. Let’s read Romans 5, 15-17 here. I’m going to skip 16. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if many died by the trespass of one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many?
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For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Amen. So here’s how…
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I hope that these realities will help you as you think about your neighbors. And it’s in this discussion question right here. Was that the end of class? Wow, I’m committed to letting you all go. So just think about those four realities in it. The last part.
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You’d probably be better served to read about original sin on your own. I was going to address that a little bit, but some of your friends and neighbors will believe that. But anyway, there’s a little bit about original sin and why it’s a false doctrine. Thank you all for a great class today. Really appreciate you. I’ll see you next week as we pick up on Christ’s membership in his church.
Alright.
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Let the record show again. Thank you, David, for that reminder. Last week, we did not get to finish the lesson on the community of the Holy Spirit. And so we’re gonna finish that. I’m calling it part two, which means, of course, that the next lesson has to be in part as well. So we’re gonna finish one today and then start a new topic as well, is the plan. Before we do that, I think likely every week, I’ll just review the class description, both as a reminder to those
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attended and if it’s your first time just to give you the scope of the class. We’re calling it the fundamentals of the faith or the Bible basics but the point is to think of these topics in a way in mind of how would they be received from our neighbors who perhaps are non-believers at all or perhaps perhaps have some religious associations perhaps even know Jesus in some way how would we think about these topics to communicate with them and in doing so I’m looking now at the class description on page one we’re going to review
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rendered in proof texts, though of course we’re going to ground our study in the Bible. I have a few handouts here. And then as I just said, we’re going to think about these in terms of how they might be received or thought about from people with different religious experiences and backgrounds.
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I’m being honest, I’m not equipping you for debate. So if you’re hoping to leave today with, I keep saying like, lay it down like a Uno card or a Domino, you can slap that on the table and win. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not giving you that one verse, as I said last week, that’s gonna win over your Baptist uncle, okay, that you’ve been arguing with for 20 years, all right? It’s helpful to acknowledge.
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that believers in other religious groups are smart. They know their faith often. They have background. And then also, they’re sincere. And the reason that I know it’s important to think that is that we can be certain that somewhere somebody is thinking of us that way, that we might not be sincere, we might not be knowledgeable, and we wouldn’t want that either. And so that leads into this other thought that I’ll read word for word. It almost always leads to pain and alien
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when we assign bad motives to people in their beliefs, such as they disregard Scripture, they refuse to acknowledge the Scripture, they don’t want to submit to God’s authority, they haven’t studied the Bible enough, etc. Now, that said, even given that, folks can still not know and act on the truth. And a phrase I repeat to myself often for my own life is, sincerity does not substitute for truth. And then finally…
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If after nine weeks you don’t remember anything in this class, of course in addition to the scripture, but if you don’t remember anything else, it’s this idea. When we’re talking with folks of different experiences and backgrounds about biblical topics, I would urge you that your first step is to seek to understand rather than to persuade. Seek to understand rather than to persuade. All right, given those, it’s kind of the bedrock of our study, we’ll jump back into part two.
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community, and if you want to use the word fellowship or group, that’s fine, but I’m using the word community. The word elects can be substituted for the word chooses just fine. And that the community he now chooses, as opposed to his previous covenant, are those in Christ. So we established that. That’s our first idea. Last week, we established that the community God chooses is united in the Holy Spirit. So we talked about how the
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Spirit works in the individual Christian and how the Holy Spirit works communally in our group in the church both locally and universally. And then if you remember, if not we’re going to post it on the web, I provided a huge table that listed 15 ways the Holy Spirit is active now. The New Testament describes the Holy Spirit being active in our lives and in the church. And so the one thing that the topic that I thought it was important to
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especially when we’re talking with folks of other religious experiences and backgrounds, is more reference. Alright, so, we’ll do a brief review of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to miracles. So, now I’m at, I just restated the important ideas from last lesson. I took out the things we discussed underneath, but the first idea we covered in Part 1 was the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Remember, it worked really hard to establish an action.
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in the New Testament between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And you’ll have some great ideas about why that’s important. Important idea number two that we established last week that the Spirit of Christ, that is the Holy Spirit, is the life of the body of Christ, the life of the church, our community of faith.
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And then third is the Holy Spirit lives in both the individual Christian and the corporate church. Corporate meaning the whole body. Alright? And then I gave you a phrase. You won’t find this phrase as it’s written exactly in the New Testament. I’m being honest about that. But it comes from Dr. Hartman, previous minister here, full disclosure, my father-in-law, who says the phrase he uses to describe his view of the Holy Spirit, the one that I’m presenting here as well, is non-miraculous personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
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I use that phrase sometimes when talking with people of different faith backgrounds and regarding miracles. So if you’ll turn to page two, we’ll get into the new stuff for this week. And we’ll be thinking about why, again, why we want to make sure we have an understanding of this topic as we talk with our neighbors who don’t know Christ or only know Him a little bit. So here’s important idea number four.
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Miracles have been one way the spirit is observed among God’s people. Miracles came at particular times in biblical history to point to God’s saving activity and confirm his revelation. So we’ll just be point blank. Miracles are not happening now.
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And I know that’s hard, like that’s hard for me even to voice because of a whole host of implications. But that’s the truth that Scripture teaches. So we’ll move through why we might think that’s the case, and with the Scripture as the bedrock of course. So I’m looking at the first bullet point under the important idea, and the first is that the list of activities of the Spirit in the Church represents what the Spirit does for all believers.
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Everybody has access, every believer in Christ, everybody has access to that, every work on that table. And it’s an impressive list. The Holy Spirit is busy. The Holy Spirit is active. And so that’s a place that I start sometimes when I talk with folks regarding this topic is the Holy Spirit is not dormant. That is not the claim at all. And the Holy Spirit is active in our lives and in our church.
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The central, so if you review the New Testament, the primary discussion of the Holy Spirit focuses on those spiritual qualities, those activities in you. But the human view, right, right, the natural human nature, the tendency, we’re drawn to spectacle, right? We’re drawn to the amazing, the miraculous, literally, of course, as some translations call it, signs and wonders, right, we’re drawn to that.
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It’s hard to, I don’t want to be, I wanna maintain the same spirit of respect and dignity that I talked about at the very beginning when talking about our religious friends who perpetuate the idea of miracles, right? You can watch TV, that presentation speaks for itself, right, the selling of the cloth, the people falling down with the palms on their heads, things like that. Again, I wanna be respectful and kind and gentle when referring to those things, so I won’t spend a lot of time there.
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But the point is, I think we can all accept human nature, even ours, we want to focus on the miraculous, the spectacular. How’s the spirit doing that, those things. So, if you look at the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you can, when we focus on it and we talk about it together, even to children, it’s, you might take away the belief that the book, the Bible is a book of miracles, right? That’s fair. That’s what it is. But,
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The study I’m doing with Dr. Ferguson’s book makes it clear that biblical miracles cluster. They happen in particular times in biblical history. So I listed four here. Let’s look at those. The time of the Exodus and the subsequent wilderness, wandering, conquest of Canaan. The point is, it’s when Israel’s delivered and the law of Moses is revealed. Okay, that’s a crucial time in God revealing himself to his people. The next time…
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The Crisis for Israel, presented by Canaanite veil worship. Elisha and Elijah, they’re doing miracles left and right, not to be cavalier. Then of course, the brief public ministry of Jesus. Three years, his public ministry happens and it’s miracle upon miracle. The Gospel of John says there are so many, they would fill books and libraries beyond our comprehension. And then finally, the Book of Acts records…
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miracles as the church grows and expands. Now what we want to ask is, is there a pattern among those times? What’s the purpose of miracles? Because we’re operating from this, it’s not an assumption, it’s in the Bible and we’re going to see that here in Hebrews. The miracles are not miracles for their own sake. They’re not miracles for spectacle, just to prove that God is a circus leader. He’s not there just for
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to show off. I really like this phrase from Dr. Ferguson’s book. He says, there’s a divine economy, right? The way that God has ordered the world. And he says, the miracles don’t call attention to themselves, but pointed to God’s saving activity as word of revelation. So it’s a fair question. And when I’ve discussed this topic with the teens, they ask me, like, David, don’t we still need that? Don’t we still need affirmation of?
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God’s saving activity in his word of revelation? And the answer, of course, is no, because everything that’s sufficient has already been provided. The revelation of Jesus is complete. So that’s sufficient. Let’s read Hebrews two, one through four. Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable,
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and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was, that’s the salvation, right, the gospel, it was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard again, salvation, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will.
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So you’ll notice it’s past tense and it referred to what God did to affirm the gospel, to certify as a witness to its truth. That’s been accomplished. That’s why miracles have ceased.
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So, four quick bullet points here to help you provide a way to think about this as you converse with others. The miracles and distributions of the Holy Spirit served as God’s personal testimony. That’s not in the scriptures, but when it says in Hebrew, God bore witness, that’s a different way to rephrase that. Attesting both the messenger, Christ, and the message, the gospel. The miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit function to confirm the word of salvation.
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spoken by the Lord and then in the book of Acts by his apostles. So here’s where it’s crucial what the Bible doesn’t offer. There is no New Testament promise that these miraculous gifts would endure. Rather faith, hope, and love will endure to the second coming. And again, which is important I think to finish, even though that’s the truth, the Spirit is still active and present in our lives and in the life of the Lord’s Church.
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So that’s, that’s really good. Yes? I’m in construction. In construction, I was told an example of how the first century church was built. You have to build the scaffolding around the outside of the building to build the building. Once the building’s done, the scaffolding comes down. The scaffold being miraculous works and the things that the first century Christians had those miraculous gifts and abilities to build the church.
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establish it and that’s what we have today. We have the established built church, the miracles being the scaffolding that had eventually come down in order to create that structure. That’s a really helpful analogy Joe. I mean that’s why we have Bible class. I’ve been doing this a while, I’ve never heard that and that’s wonderful. That’s a wonderful illustration. Thank you for sharing that.
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So let’s pause here because I think it’s important to acknowledge the emotional impact of this discussion, especially because we’re thinking about sharing this with people who are living real-world lives full of suffering, right? Who have a host of experiences that they bring to this truth, right? First,
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I’ll just tell you my experience discussing this with the teens presenting this to them. We focused on one part for them That’s that I think this group’s probably much more settled in there’s this whole idea That the reason there aren’t miracles in your life is because you don’t have enough faith, right? And that’s a really damaging awful teaching and there’s heresy. It’s just not true. And so I Got to work with the teens and teach them that I think it’s really important to understand that from a young age even before you Take on Christ and become his follower
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would not have a miracle. The second thing is the students ask the kids upstairs they ask me, David why do we pray? There’s no miracle, why do we pray? Well and it’s important to be able to clarify for them, God is still active, God is still intervening. I mean listen to our prayer to start today. I asked God to restore and heal several people.
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So what we get at is a discussion for another time and perhaps its own quarter or year or lifetime of study and that is what is a miracle.
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When I studied this at OC with Dr. Jim Baird, that’s where we started. We defined what a miracle is, right? So I’ll be brief with this because we’ve got other things to get to. Y’all have heard the miracle of life, right? Like holding my newborn daughter in the hospital, I mean that word came to my lips. But that’s a natural process. God designed that. That is not a supernatural moment. Now, did it feel heavenly, right? Was it a taste of the kind of joy and celebration of the life to come? Small, of course, right?
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I remember my high school English teacher who was a Baptist minister, he was at my wedding and before it started he pulled me aside and he said, Dave, I think weddings are a little taste of what heaven can be like. I don’t know if the Bible teaches that, but it was the point being we can have those moments that feel uniquely special and connected to God. That’s not a miracle. A miracle is supernatural.
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Meaning it is an intervention against the laws of nature that are here present on earth right someone’s raised from the dead Okay, that’s that’s a miracle their heart quit beating and now it beats okay, so again we could spend weeks talking about this I’m trying to reduce a really complex idea down to about 17 minutes okay, so I appreciate y’all’s grace and patience in that but the point I want to again I’ll return where I started there. I got to tell the students the children upstairs of course
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intervene, but the question becomes what is a miracle? His supernatural intervention is not expected to occur, but God is sovereign. I rest on that. God is sovereign. That’s a fancy way of saying God’s in charge. Here’s the third thing I would offer, especially as we think about evangelism.
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And that is, I’m really proud of this group and the way I’ve gotten to know so many of you. Because I think there’s a genuine, sincere sensitivity here that I probably don’t even have to make this point. But just in case, I’m going to say it. When we talk to people who are suffering, it is not the time to talk about the existence or lack thereof in miracles. So I’m going to tell a really sensitive story, try to be brief. I worked with a gentleman, a faithful, devout Catholic his whole life. The term that he uses is Craio-Catholic, right?
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born into their faith. He lost a child to cancer, a nine-year-old girl. And I knew him in his 50s and 60s. He was a devout, pious man. We believed a lot differently, of course, but the point is, good man, we talked a lot. And he told the group one day, he brought some kind of holy water he had had.
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from Lordus. Anyway, the point being he brought a material object and he said when his child was sick he prayed for a miracle for her healing. And he said the miracle didn’t come for her but he was healed. That’s powerful. Again, that’s not the time to talk about the doctrine of miracles. Right? And again, that’s why I’m applauding this group. I don’t think I need to say that.
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But even still, I think it’s important to acknowledge there’s an emotional part that comes in people’s experiences that we have to acknowledge, that we have to think about when we share these ideas. So perhaps the best place is when we can afford to have some intellectual distance, right? Some emotional distance from the time. I think that’s my practical advice today. Yes, David. Just thoughts.
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I heard a story of a gentleman that had cancer on his, there was a tumor on his brain and
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What they did, he had researched everything and everything. Well, what happened is they even went through the step of, and I think it’s James that talks about, hey, if somebody’s in need of healing, gather the elders, have the elders lay their hands on the prey for them. Well, supposedly they did that and
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hand on his head and directly asked, hey, God, please remove this tumor. Well, he goes into the doctor and has it and the doctor is looking at everything and he says, you know, I see where the tumor had been there, but it’s not there now. And I guess, I don’t know, but I guess there’s two pieces that it goes like to that where
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A, we weren’t there so you can’t confirm or dispute it. But B, I don’t know, it happens. When you say it’s a miracle, what do you think about that type of thing? You know, I’m gonna-
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I’m going to be honest with y’all, I’m going to take the coward’s way out and just say we don’t have enough time. I’m just going to say it this way, David. That question demands so much more attention. Number one, that I can give it here. And to be super honest with y’all, number two, that I’m equipped to give. Okay? So, yes ma’am? Well, actually…
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answer on that, but I’m going to wait.
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And I think miracles are not dead through people and signs and wonders like this.
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But to me, it’s very possible that two moments there and God said, you know what? You’re clean, you’re healed. And that is a miracle. Right. But I don’t think we can look for miracles.
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people and people go through us like he did. But God is everywhere. He is, he can do absolutely anything he wants. And I don’t think we should ever, ever, ever discount what he’s working on and what he can do, what he is doing. That’s a really important, I think that’s a, again, I’m just gonna take the privilege of the teacher and say that’s a good.
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finish to that conversation because I think I agree with everything you said. I think everything you said lines up with God’s character in the scriptures. Far be it for me to… I’ll finish with this kind of example.
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You may know someone, our own brother, Jeremy Saylor, is open about how his life has radically changed because of Jesus, right? If somebody wants to call that a miracle, I’m not gonna argue with them over that. Goodness, there’s too much work to be done. The Holy Spirit is active in so many ways. We’re just gonna still have unity, which is a segue into idea number five. Thank you, Michelle.
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So if we’re going to be the community of the Holy Spirit, if that’s what the church is, then that has some implications. I list four of them. I ask you here, are there others that you can think of, that you’ve observed, that you’ve experienced? If it’s true that God has chosen a community and that community is united in the Holy Spirit, what does that mean for how we live together, right? For the people in this room, for the universal church? Well, I’ve got four, here they are. One is…
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There’s an emphasis on unity. If we have the community of the Holy Spirit, we are unified spiritually. The second is this really unique idea, I think what makes the church pretty special in many ways of course, is that the individual is equipped.
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and the Holy Spirit is active in the individual’s life for the good of the whole. So that the church focuses neither on the sin and temptations of individualism, the idea that I’m my own man, I’m my own woman. That’s a lie. But also the sin of, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, I don’t know. Not community. I had it on my head and it’s not in my notes. I’m sorry. But the idea, oh, a collective, that we lose our identity in the whole. That’s not true either.
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loves us uniquely each individual is made in the image of God. So the point is the church is special because the Holy Spirit says the service of the individual is for the good of the whole. If that’s not what the gift is doing, then it’s not a gift of the Holy Spirit. The third implication is equality of believers. We are all the same in the community of the Holy Spirit. And then finally, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our community means that we should prioritize spiritual things over material things. Now we acknowledge the reality of material things. People get hungry.
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miracles included reproducing bread and fish. Okay, but the priority of the community of the Holy Spirit is, of course, spiritual things. So we’ve got a few minutes. If you’d like to tell me or share with the group, what are the implications of being the community of the Holy Spirit that you’ve observed or experienced?
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One of the things we sometimes will rely on as an eldership is the fact that each elder has a different background and a different work situation. But sometimes situations arise and so we can boy one another up because we have some experience that we can share.
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when your father-in-law was serving as an elder here, that was very much evident because he would take his hat off. He says, I’m not the preacher now. I’m serving as the elder. Then he put his preacher hat back on. And so we would share those things. So that would reinforce, like the eldership does now, is we have input from each one that helps come to a decision. And I think that’s where the wisdom and understanding helps us group, too.
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better than one so to speak. Thank you Ron. Thank you. Very thoughtful answer. Others?
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One we just observed with David and Michelle’s comments about miracles, right? Like the opportunity to focus on the truth and to ask hard questions, right? Because we rest in the truth revealed by the Holy Spirit. We can do that. We don’t have to hide from them. Tracy. Thinking about Joe’s comments when he talked about the scalpel, I think it’s interesting.
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Especially for kids, we’re driving by a big construction site. We think about when the Devon Tower was being constructed downtown. You have these massive cranes, and the kids look at the big machinery, and they think that’s all really cool. And the construction is really neat to drive by and look at the building going up. But when all of that is gone.
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Now the building is there and whether you think the Devon Tower is beautiful or not, you think about other structures. You think about some of the buildings in DC or other magnificent structures around the world. They still stand in the church, the community of believers. Once the miracles are gone, once the amazing works are gone, the community of believers in the spirit are still standing there as something that’s been constructed and strong and durable
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see if the world can come into for whatever services or purpose that that building has been constructed for. So here we are in the world today. And that’s our role is to be God’s kingdom and example and service to this world. Thank you Tracy for that very thoughtful answer. Yes sir.
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was Mount Zion, the city on the hill, that shone across the world for all peoples to come to. And that today is the building, the church. And that’s what we have today. It should be. I mean, it should be the shining example for everybody. And all of us that are here belong in that building. And that’s what we need to show.
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Thank you for that reminder.
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Yes, David.
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I’ll give you one. Whenever we’re together and singing praises to God, I don’t know, for me whenever we’re singing together and I enjoy hearing all the voices mixing together and you know that feels like a special connection to me at least. Almost a unifying force I guess.
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Thank you David for that. We’re going to talk about worship in the weeks to come. We are going to talk about that. I appreciate you pinpointing those different voices, right? The church is unique in unity and diversity at the same time. It’s pretty powerful. I think I’d say the biggest thing that I’ve seen is kind of your discussion question is in the loss of a loved one. I think it seems like everybody goes to some…
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faith-based organization even if they’re not to help and that’s how the Christian nation or the Christian community helps outside as How the community the Holy Spirit is A lot. I mean that’s what I think is the most frequent sign of how Community the Holy Spirit helps society. Thank you David. Appreciate that
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Okay, thank you all. That will conclude that lesson. We’re going to shift gears here. It’s the same date, but now we’re going to talk about the title is The Church and Her Savior, Salvation and Church Membership. And by church membership, I don’t mean filling out the address card, but rather being included in the church, right? Becoming a part of that community. So, again, what I try to do here to begin is just outline my thinking to make it explicit, so there’s no question about where we’re headed and why we’re headed there with our aims.
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So two weeks ago again, we established that God chooses or elects a community, and the community He chooses now are those in Christ. Last week in this, we established that the community God chooses is united in the Holy Spirit. So I think it’s a fair question, and somebody asked me that, David, why do we start there? Why not start with how you get into Christ, right? Start with the unbeliever and how they get into Christ. Well, number one, that’s not how the book I’m using did it. So I’m going to go in there.
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going to try to explain here is that we started with the nature of the church, right? Like what is the church? And the answer to that of course is the nature of the church is informed completely and entirely by Jesus himself, right? Like the nature of Jesus. And so then becoming part of Christ answers the question of church membership. Those are the exact same thing. Being in Christ is being a member of the church. And so it’s fair to ask now, of course, what is involved in
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This room is full of, I don’t know everybody’s situation, and I look forward to meeting you all individually, but most folks in here I know you’re in Christ. So you know the answer to this. We’re going to talk about it in a way I hope that reveals a few important things and also equips you to talk about it with your neighbor. Okay? So a new phrase we’re going to use, the church may be defined as a community, not just of the Holy Spirit, but of the saved. We’re going to use that phrase. The church may be defined as the community of the saved. The scholar who wrote the book,
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I’m using Dr. Ferguson said, quite simply, the church is the people who are saved.
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And where does that come from? Well, fortunately for us, Jesus in the gospel is very clear. He’s crystal clear about his mission. He says over and over again, directly, it’s unequivocal, right? His mission, Jesus said, is to seek and save the lost. That’s what he’s about. That’s his business from the beginning of his ministry. And so because, again, we are Christ’s church, we get our identity from him. We were lost.
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Now we’re safe. All right, so I put a hat in here, our thought process for these first few lessons, and I just made these handy little arrows just to show you one thought to the next. I won’t read all over that, but if you lose track of where we are, just say, whisper to your neighbor, David’s getting kinda crazy. Okay, you just go back to there and you read that, all right? So here’s the question we’re gonna start with today. Why do people need to be saved? That’s fair, what are we saved from, right? And so the question,
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super important. It requires us to describe sin and the human condition. So let’s do that. All right. I’m under the top of page four. There’s a box there.
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And we really, I put it in a box just in case we had to skip it for the sake of time. But I told you all a couple weeks ago that the book that we’re basing this study on, it’s a really good book if you’re having a hard time falling asleep at night. I’m proud of that joke, y’all. But I put this box because this box woke me up. I mean, it was just, it tugged at my heart. I got emotional reading it because Dr. Ferguson got at the heart of what it feels
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to be a creation of God sometimes. And so I’ll let you read over that. The basic point is he says human existence can be a paradox and there’s this dual nature that we have. And he says what’s really profound is the biblical doctrine of creation and fall that is being of God but also people who sin. He says that’s the one that’s the only really worldview that really describes that dual nature we experience. So that was compelling to me. You can take time with that box maybe between services or however.
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however you want to stick it on your fridge, line your birdcage, whatever. So we’re gonna be in Genesis three, if you wanna flip there, I’m gonna be back and forth in some verses of Genesis three. But we’re gonna outline, again, why we need to be saved. To answer that question, we gotta talk about sin and the human condition. So we have time here to discuss four realities of human nature. These are things that Genesis three makes clear that after the fall, or as part of the fall, now all humans experience, okay?
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of human nature is temptation. If you are human, you are going to be tempted at some point. Okay? And so, what’s really interesting, if you want to circle those three verses stacked on top of each other, those three passages, Genesis 3, 6, 1 John 2, 16, and Luke 4, 3 through 12, which is the temptations of Jesus. All three of those. They each of them outline three sort of fundamental temptations.
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Some scholars think this is intentional, that Luke was thinking of Eve’s temptation when he wrote 4th, Luke 4, and that John was thinking of Luke and Eve when he wrote 1 John 2, 16. Some scholars think that.
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Dr. Ferguson does not. He thinks it’s just a pattern revealed that it’s not intentional. I’ll leave it up to you, my friends. The point is, it’s a powerful pattern. And what it is is the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride of life. Those are the three common temptations.
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Dr. Ferguson calls them pleasures, possessions, prestige of the world. Three P’s there, handy mnemonic. But we’re going to land on the last bullet point under temptation, which is this. Genesis 3, when Eve makes the decision to, makes the choice to take the, prove the tree of life, the knowledge of good and evil.
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This is the temptation. We want to be our own God. We want to decide what is good and evil. So that’s what’s going on in Genesis 3. That’s what we can really boil it down to. So that’s the first reality, is temptation. The second reality of human experience, of human nature, is sin. I really liked the way Dr. Ferguson said this. He said, if you look at my first bullet point under sin, the experience of Eve and Adam is everyone’s experience.
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Every man is his own Adam. Every woman is her own Eve. Romans makes clear, literally all have sinned. Paul gets into a really thoughtful discussion of the nature of sin in Romans one, and he says the root of sin is the failure to acknowledge God as God. John is gonna say this about sin, and I think this is where we’re gonna, again, this is the fundamental. Sin is disobedience. Disobedience of who? God.
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So temptation is to be our own God. Sin is to disobey God. And then what’s really interesting is that when you look at what Adam and Eve did when they sinned, they tried to hide, they tried to blame it on somebody else. Man, I’m right there with them. Amen. I could lay it out for y’all. If y’all wanted to test the money right now, we could be here a while, okay? In all seriousness.
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That’s a common experience. So, temptation, sin, and the next reality is punishment. Scripture makes clear that punishment for sin is inescapable. And this is clear in Genesis for Eve and Adam. Now, I bolded these phrases. They’re really important here, especially if this is your first time thinking about this passage.
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The curse for Eve is this, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe. With painful labor you will give birth to children. So I’m going to be super clear, the curse, the punishment is not childbearing. It’s the pain in childbearing. Childbearing is still a gift. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s the pain that goes with it. Same for Adam in Genesis 3. Through painful toil you will eat food from it in the ground. All the days of your life by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food.
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The punishment is not the work. Work is noble and good. Okay, it’s fruitful. The punishment is the pain and the sweat that are exacted from it. The point being, nonetheless, punishment is a reality. We can’t escape it. If you turn the page to page five, two more punishments revealed in Genesis three, expulsion from the garden, from the tree of life, and then of course the ultimate punishment for sin is death. You are dust.
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to dust you shall return. Now I’m not a great you know I’m not some emotional preacher but if the story ended there it would be truly sad but we have redemption and that’s the fourth reality of the human condition. Okay so verse 15 in Genesis 3 there’s the
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the revelation that the offspring of the woman, okay, some of the descendant of the woman, will strike the serpent’s head and the serpent will strike the offspring’s heel, okay. Pause here real quick. I’ve heard this taught, a lot of folks teach that this is a messianic prophecy, right, this is the first time that the Bible talks about Jesus. Dr. Ferguson, the scholar I’m reading, he says that’s not right.
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This is about animals, it’s about a snake. So, scholars debate. The point is, it alludes to Jesus. Paul thinks that the same way, if you wanna go read Romans 16, there’s a reference to the snake. Anyway, the point being, redemption. Humanity will triumph over temptation, sin, and punishment through one man Jesus, the offspring of woman. Christ will be bruised by the strikes of Satan, but Christ will crush the head of his foe.
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One way to say it might be that human beings will triumph over evil through the new Adam, the perfect man. Let’s read Romans 5, 15-17 here. I’m going to skip 16. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if many died by the trespass of one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many?
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For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Amen. So here’s how…
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I hope that these realities will help you as you think about your neighbors. And it’s in this discussion question right here. Was that the end of class? Wow, I’m committed to letting you all go. So just think about those four realities in it. The last part.
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You’d probably be better served to read about original sin on your own. I was going to address that a little bit, but some of your friends and neighbors will believe that. But anyway, there’s a little bit about original sin and why it’s a false doctrine. Thank you all for a great class today. Really appreciate you. I’ll see you next week as we pick up on Christ’s membership in his church.
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