Transcript
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How many of you are righteous and have rights standing with God?
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Let me see your hand.
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You have it right now.
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You are saved right now because faith says I have it now.
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Hope says hope is great, but hope is in the future, hope is for tomorrow.
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But now faith says I have it now.
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So you say I believe in Jesus, I believe that he died on the cross for my salvation.
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You're saved now.
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Welcome to the City Light Church podcast.
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Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's Word and discover the hope and truth that he has for us.
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If you want to connect with City Light Church, feel free to visit us at CityLightNYCcom.
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That's CityLightNYCcom.
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Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is already working in our hearts and minds.
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As you listen to today's teaching, remember that you are deeply loved by God, that you are surrounded by His grace and that he has a real hope and a future for you.
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We're in the middle of a series on Galatians.
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We don't often do a series here, but when we do, it's usually on Galatians.
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And here we are right now in the middle.
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We're in chapter five.
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So let me do a brief recap for the benefit of everyone, including the first-time guest and those of you who've been here for every single service of this series.
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We call it the Clash of the Covenants, the clash between the Old Covenant system of God's law and the New Covenant system of God's grace.
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And you'll see, throughout the New Testament you'll see clashes of it, but nowhere like in the book of Galatians, where that's the primary thing, over and over and over again.
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That's addressed and there's such benefits to really understanding the New Covenant of God's grace and actually living there, as opposed to what we too often find, which is a mixing of the two different systems.
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And Paul says that if you mix, you actually get nothing.
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You have now nullified and frustrated the grace of God, and if there's mixture in your life, you're actually not mixing, but you're living under the Old Covenant system of the law.
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You might say what's so bad about that?
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Well, I'll define the Old Covenant system of God's law for you.
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It is a system I use that word system because that's one of the definitions for dispensation a system of order.
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It's a way in which we would relate to God, and it was based on our ability to keep God's law.
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Hint, we didn't have any.
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We constantly, under the system of law, kept falling and coming up short.
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And so, under the Old Covenant system of law, you endeavored and attempted to be approved onto God, based on your own lawkeeping, based on your own holiness, based on your own strength and effort.
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It really was a system designed to show us up.
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That was the pretty definition.
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Here's a more vernacular definition, just kind of off the cup it's a system meant to show you up and cure you of your pride, where you would keep falling and realize that you're not all.
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That.
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That's it.
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It's a system where you realize you're not all, that You're stripped of your pride.
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You realize that there is a holy standard that's imposed upon you, but you are not giving any ability to meet and rise up to that holy standard, and so it forces you to look to a Savior, it forces you to look to God, who can now do for you on this side of the cross.
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He can do for you what you could never do for yourself.
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Under the new Covenant system you're already past tense.
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There's a rest in ED, past tense, completed, finished.
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Under the new Covenant system you already past tense are totally approved unto God.
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You're accepted, you're forgiven, not based on what you've done or anything that you could ever do, but based on what he has done for you already.
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Amen.
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And so we just finished Galatians, chapter four, where Paul.
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He talked about Abraham and Abraham's wife Sarah, and how they were given a promise that they were going to have Isaac.
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And Paul himself says Isaac is representative of the new Covenant.
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In fact, isaac's name means laughter because when you fully are living in the new Covenant, you'll have joy.
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Amen, you'll have a lot of laughter.
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This is what the world even notices that whenever there is religion there's no joy.
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And the old Covenant system of the law is religious Religion.
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The very word means back to bondage.
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What's the bondage?
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The bondage is that you have to work, you have to push, you have to try, you have to.
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The burden is on you.
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You have to cross every T and dot every I.
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It's exhausting.
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But Isaac means laughter because under the new Covenant you realize, just like the song we sang, he did all the work for you and passed that victory on to you.
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That brings a ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha.
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That's why I believe the Holy Spirit touches some people to laugh in service.
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By the way, the Holy Spirit wants to touch all people and fill them with joy.
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Some people yield and laugh Amen, because letting you know the new Covenant, it's a completed work.
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He contrasts Sarah, who had Isaac and that's the new Covenant, with Hagar, who had Ishmael.
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That was a product of the flesh, a product of self-effort, and he says that's symbolic of the old Covenant system of the law.
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And then he says you cannot have them live in the tent.
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What was the word back then?
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The word was drive out, cast out.
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Hagar and Ishmael.
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They cannot live together in the same room, in the same house.
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They can't be together in the same tent.
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What's Paul saying?
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He's saying you cannot have the old Covenant system and the new Covenant system in the same tent.
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You cannot have any mixture.
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Pick one and go all in.
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Then, if you want to be approved unto God, based on your own self-effort, based on your holiness, then go all in.
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The only catch is under the system of law if you're guilty of breaking it on not only one area, you're guilty of breaking the entire thing.
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So you have to be perfect forever on this side of heaven, without one slip up.
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Who's ready to take that challenge on?
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Oh well, welcome to the new Covenant then.
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Under the new Covenant, he's already kept the law and its perfection for you and transferred that victory over to you Amen.
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So let's continue on.
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In Galatians, chapter five, he spent all this time describing and illustrating and declaring this great liberty that we have as a result of grace, as a result of the completed work of Jesus under the new Covenant, and his admonition is for us to stand firmly.
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Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
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What's the yoke of bondage?
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It's living under the old system of the law and another place, in Corinthians, he called that system the ministry of death.
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It keeps producing death in you.
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If you're looking at yourself and trusting in yourself and taking on the responsibility of trying to please God, it's going to bring death.
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So what's the solution?
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Shouldn't I be trying to please God?
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You should realize that when you put your faith in Jesus, you already are totally pleasing to him.
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So, even with all my stuff, yes, yes, he sees you through a lens of the blood of Jesus.
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He sees you in Christ.
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There's nothing you could do to cause him to love you anymore.
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There's nothing you could do to add to the already finished work.
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There's nothing you could do to manipulate him into making you more righteous.
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It's done.
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And now out of that now flows fruit, not works, but fruit Fruit, and you look more like Jesus and you act more like Jesus.
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But the motivation is different.
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It's not because you're trying to get God to approve of you more, it's because you're resting that you already are approved.
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Do you see the difference?
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It's a huge difference.
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It'll make a huge difference in your peace.
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It'll make a huge difference in the way you receive prayer.
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Answers to prayer, verse two.
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Indeed, I, paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, christ will profit you nothing.
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Now, here he was dealing with these Judaizers who came in and they told the believing Christians it's nice that you believe in Jesus, but you also have to do something.
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This sounds like church to me.
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Nice that you receive Jesus.
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I feel like in church we do this, this bait and switch tactic.
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We tell people salvation is free, your forgiveness is free and we get them in the door, we get them in the seat and then we do the bait.
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We got them in with the bait, then we do the switch Okay, but now in order to stay saved.
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And then we make them work.
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And we make them work and we put all this law on them to extract more stuff from them more work, more money, more whatever and it produces death in them.
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And they've been guilted and manipulated and their motive is now all off.
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They're trying to add to the finished work of the cross.
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They're working.
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They think that if I do X, Y, z, then God is obligated to do ABC for me.
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And it's this weird transactional relationship.
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It's wrong, it's off, it produces death.
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Amen, Go back, just keep it there.
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Thank you, because a lot of people get hung up with if you become circumcised, christ will profit you nothing, because that was the problem that they were dealing with.
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They were saying you have to also be circumcised.
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Now, that's not the problem.
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Today we don't have any group coming in, thankfully, and telling all the men in the church, but we do have other teachings, other preachers, also the sound of our own head.
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That will always side with the system of the law.
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The way we've been brought up, our fallen nature, our unredeemed mind, will always side with the system of the law, so that we will think we have to add to the completed work when the whole declaration of the new covenant, the declaration that he reiterates over and over again in Galatians, is Jesus plus nothing equals everything, not Jesus plus the stuff that you do, hallelujah.
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Let's keep reading verse three, and I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised, who adds to the finished work of the cross that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.
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You gotta do the whole thing now.
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And if you're living that way, he says you have become in the next verse.
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You've become in the next verse, you've become estranged from Christ.
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The Bible says when you're saved you're married to Jesus.
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But if you turn your eyes onto yourself and your own strength, your own self effort, and you think that you fit into that equation of salvation, he's taking you out of the equation.
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All you have to do is receive.
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That's great news.
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You wanna get all involved Now?
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You're divorced from Christ.
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You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace.
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Look at that phrase fallen from grace.
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Have you ever seen that phrase fallen from grace before?
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Whenever a pastor falls, the next day, the headlines are so and so falls from grace.
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But why don't we let the Bible define the Bible?
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And that's not how the Bible uses that statement.
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Falling from grace never in the Bible means that you fell into sin.
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Look how Paul uses it.
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It means that you're mixing the covenants.
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It means that you're not living under grace.
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That's what it means to fall from grace.
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When we were in Guatemala, we try to go back every year.
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We're going again in February.
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We've partnered with the Guatemala mission since 2009.
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And I would notice some folks lying in the street, totally drunk out of their mind, and I asked the missionary about them and he said oh yeah, the church gave up on them and they told them that they've fallen from grace and maybe you've heard that statement fallen from grace with regard to somebody who fell into sin.
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And I asked about the stories and the stories when something like they went back to alcohol, the church said oh no, you've fallen from grace.
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And then guess where they ended up?
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They ended up drinking more alcohol and they ended up sleeping in the gutter for 16 hours a day.
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And now the church has turned their back and I'm saying, oh, you've fallen from grace.
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If you sin, you don't have to sin, but should you fall, the Bible never says you fell from grace.
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In fact, if you're a Christian and you fall, you fall into the arms of a loving savior.
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He still loves you, you're still forgiven.
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But when you hear the lie that you've fallen from grace, it only forces you into sin even further.
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Falling from grace means that you've turned your back on grace.
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Falling from grace means that you're mixing covenants.
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Falling from grace means you're trusting in yourself.
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I'm so glad God is stable, unlike us.
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God is strong, unlike us.
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I'm so glad he's not moody like us, up and down emotional, like us.
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We talk about these things.
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I know they might not be unrelatable, but a good thing, you know, because circumcision isn't relatable right now.
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No group is going to come in from the outside protesting us, because some men may not be, but all of us.
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I do this inventory of my life on the daily.
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What am I doing where I think I'm scoring points with the big guy?
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What am I doing where I feel that I can maybe get God to look at me more favorably?
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That's mixing the covenants.
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We do this kind of stuff all the time.
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I shared in the first service.
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I'll share it here.
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We were on vacation this summer, went to Montenegro, then went to Bosnia.
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We were in Sarajevo and I just said very frankly when I'm on vacation, my prayer life is very different.
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It's not exactly like I'm waking up in the morning and pressing in for several hours.
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You know, I'm chilling.
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My prayer life is holding my wife's hand and going, oh, hallelujah.
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Oh, you know, lord, this is so beautiful.
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Praise the Lord, get a cappuccino, jesus, I love you and we're just enjoying, you know.
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And we're doing that for days and one night we're going to bed.
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It's midnight in the Sarajevo hotel room and my phone rings and I see that it's my neighbor.
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My stomach just dropped.
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It's my neighbor from New York.
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I pick up the phone.
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I hear hey, man, big flood, lots of rain, your place is totally flooded.
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So is mine.
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I'm across the Atlantic Ocean and the first thing that I hear is because you're not praying like you should be.
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Oh, now you're going to come to God and ask Him to help.
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Now you're going to come and ask for a miracle.
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I heard that.
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This is me, I'm the preacher of grace, but I heard that voice, I heard that satanic.
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Do you think you're going to now just go into prayer mode and you're going to just activate God's?
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No, see, there's people who think like if they were to get a call like that, they think, well, I can't now come to God.
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I'm not in the right place with Him.
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You're in the right place with Him, so they think I need to pay in some way.
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So they go.
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Okay, maybe I'll fast, maybe I'll first warm up with a three hour little prayer session just to show God that I mean business and that I'm serious and that really I just got distracted with Europe.
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But really his heart is mine and mine is his, and I'll show him it's still the same homie and they'll work and they'll work and then at the end they'll go also.
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God, my place flooded and maybe you can come and help me out with that.
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Haven't I showed you how that's mixing you?
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Let some Judaizing something come into your life.
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I'm there at midnight.
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I'm not feeling particularly spiritual.
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I'd baklava all over me, we're on vacay and hotel room hanging out.
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I thought I thought I had that.
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I went.
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No, jesus, you are good Jesus, you are solid, you are stable and you're not relating to me based on my works.
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You're relating to me based on the finished, completed, done work of the cross.
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Do you believe that?
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And I had to just do a reship, lord, I am as qualified right now to receive answers to prayer as I would be if I was in the middle of a missions trip and a simultaneous 40 day fast.
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Amen.
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If you think differently, it's only because of emotions.
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It's only because of the feelings and the thoughts swirling about in your own head and emotions go up and down.
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You might wake up on a Wednesday.
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You know I don't feel like God is with me, because it's ugly and raining outside and somehow you think God.
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No, his word doesn't change, amen.
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And if you're looking to Jesus, you've not fallen from grace.
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You don't fall from grace by slipping on a sinful banana peel.
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You fall from grace when you make the decision to depart from grace and to allow mixture.
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I keep using that word.
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It's not because I made it up.
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That's the cry of Galatians no mixture, no mixture allowed.
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Get them out of the same tent.
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They can't even live under the same roof.
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Verse five For we, through the spirit, eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
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Remember how many of you are righteous right now and every hand don't make me run around this place how many of you are righteous and have rights standing with God.
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Let me see your hand.
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You have it right now.
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You are saved right now because faith says I have it now.
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Hope says hope is great, but hope is in the future.
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Hope is where tomorrow.
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But now faith says I have it now.
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So you say I believe in Jesus, I believe that he died on the cross for my salvation.
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You're saved now, at the same time it's in the future.
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This is why Paul can say over and over again that the devil has been defeated past tense.
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But then in Romans he says and the God of peace will crush Satan shortly underneath your feet, kind of putting it in the future.