Do you understand?
What’s my part in the kingdom?
- I am responsible to be a Student of the Word of God.
- I am responsible to be a Teacher of the Word of God.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:05
As we conclude our series, Jesus introduces the church.
00:07-00:19
And in Matthew chapter 13, Jesus gives seven parables that describe a period of history that has never before been revealed up to that point.
00:20-00:25
Jesus was describing what life was going to be like during the church age.
00:28-00:33
And Matthew chapter 13 is so important for us to pay attention to because these are the days that we live in.
00:33-00:42
Jesus said, "Here's exactly how it's going to be." So several years ago, I have this guy come into my office, just kind of walked in off the street.
00:42-00:53
He had this canvas bag over his shoulder, and I was about 85% sure there was a body in that bag.
00:53-00:54
It was that big and full.
00:54-00:58
when this guy kind of came in, he was a little unkempt.
00:58-01:04
He came shuffling in with this monstrously huge bag and wanted to talk to me.
01:08-01:10
And we sit down, he puts the bag down.
01:11-01:16
And I gotta tell you the whole time, I'm like looking at this bag out of the corner of my eye, like what's in there, what's in it.
01:17-01:38
So he sits down and he said, you know, I'm the King of Africa." And I said, "Oh." I didn't realize continents had kings, but thank you for gracing me with your presence, your Highness.
01:39-01:55
And he told me this story about how his parents, who would be, thank you, the king and queen of Africa, formerly, how they were murdered by Americans.
01:57-02:07
And he went on for a solid hour and told me how his parents were murdered by the women of America.
02:08-02:19
And after he told me this story, he got up, grabbed his bag and walked out of my office.
02:22-02:23
No surprise, what was I doing?
02:26-02:27
Like, what was that?
02:29-02:31
He didn't ask for money.
02:32-02:33
He didn't ask for a bus ticket.
02:33-02:34
He didn't ask for food.
02:35-02:36
He didn't ask for anything.
02:39-03:04
And I left there, or he left me there sitting my office going, "So what do you want me to do about this?" And I want to encourage you, every time you go to church, you should leave with that mentality. And that what's the application point? I should leave here with something, right?
03:06-03:26
You shouldn't, and to be honest with you, I've failed doing my job if I get up and and you're sitting there like me in my office that day, that you're like, "Why did he tell us all this? There should always be a'so what'." Well, that's what Jesus is getting to here in Matthew chapter 13.
03:26-03:28
We're just going to look at two verses today, okay?
03:29-03:30
We've been going through these parables.
03:36-04:38
Verse 51, Jesus said, "Have you understood all these things?" And they said to him, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore, every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and and what is old. Jesus just wrote out all these stories and some explanations to the disciples about what life would be like after his death and resurrection during the church age and they couldn't walk away with that information going interesting just as we can't walk away from the last several weeks of diving parables, we can't just walk out of the doors and go, "Huh, fascinating stuff.
04:39-05:17
Jesus sure gave us a lot of information. Interesting. I hope that's a Jeopardy category. I'll be all over that." We can't walk out like that. What we need to do is what Jesus called his disciples to here own up. We need to take responsibility for what we know. Right? Now Jesus said, now understand, don't misunderstand what I'm saying. Jesus said, I will build my church, right? But how does he do that?
05:18-05:24
The answer is he does it in you and through you, right?
05:24-05:40
Is that how Jesus is at work in the church? He's working in you and he's working through you. Who is responsible for the growth? Well, Jesus is, but he's doing it in us and then through us. Who is responsible for making disciples?
05:41-05:45
Well, Jesus does it in us, but he does it through us.
05:46-05:51
Who's responsible for making our Sunday morning worship service excellent?
05:52-06:05
Well, Jesus is, because if it's not empowered by him, glorifying him, experiencing his presence, then it's a failure.
06:06-06:08
But he's going to do that how?
06:09-06:27
He's going to do that through us, right? So the question that Jesus asked that I want to ask you, do you understand? And if you're visiting with us for the first time, we've been going through Matthew 13, as I mentioned, for the past several weeks.
06:27-07:01
Go back and read those parables. Jesus said, "Here's what life's going to be like during the church age." But the question, first of all, He asks, that I want to echo. Do you understand? Do you understand the parables? Do you understand that good and evil are going to coexist during the church age? Do you understand that this is going to start small and it's going to grow huge? Do you understand that Jesus Christ is going to influence everything.
07:03-07:12
Do you understand that the only way to become a part of the kingdom is to purchase all that Christ is by giving up everything that you have?
07:17-07:17
Do you see?
07:21-07:23
How there's going to be a separation at the end.
07:25-07:26
Do you understand?
07:29-07:33
Now this is more, please hear me, this is more than a comprehension of facts.
07:34-07:40
Like, yes, yes, yes, I remember there's like a story about a mustard seed and treasure in a field and yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:40-07:44
I understand the facts. This is deeper than the facts.
07:44-07:45
Let's make it more personal.
07:47-07:48
Here's what Jesus is saying.
07:49-07:57
He says, "Do you understand that you can expect rejection from people?" Do you understand that?
07:57-07:59
Remember in the first parable, the parable of the sower?
08:01-08:06
Some people are hard-hearted, some people are shallow-hearted, some people are crowded-hearted.
08:08-08:17
And somehow we're so like shocked that we share the gospel with someone and they don't receive it, or they lash back at us, or we're the religious nut, or whatever.
08:18-08:20
Do you understand that that's going to happen?
08:21-08:23
That's what Jesus is saying here. Do you get that?
08:24-08:24
It's going to happen.
08:25-08:30
You understand that? Do you understand?
08:33-08:38
We're going to be sharing the space here on the earth with people that don't love the Lord.
08:38-08:46
Do you understand that? We're sharing the space you're going to be working with and going to school with and.
08:48-08:52
Maybe even living with as family members, people that don't know and love the Lord.
08:54-08:56
So what do we do? Convert or kill, right?
08:57-09:01
No. That was the whole point of the parable of the wheat and the tares.
09:02-09:08
Jesus said it's not our job to start going around like wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat, tare, kkkkk, wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat, tare, kkkkk.
09:09-09:10
That's not our job.
09:11-10:06
Our job is to love people and to share the covered. That's not our job. Not our job. Everybody say it's not my job. Now, it's not my job either. So do you understand that? Do you understand the power of the kingdom? We talked about how the kingdom started with, oh really, Jesus Christ, and 12 and 11 and 120 and 3000 and boom and compound growth throughout the last couple of thousand years to the point that Christ's influence is spreading over every corner of the globe.
10:08-10:11
And we can even translate that locally.
10:12-10:22
We saw how even what God's doing here started very small and is continuing to grow.
10:23-10:25
Do you understand that that's how it's going to work?
10:27-10:35
That's why, you know, we've never talked about, well, what if the church fails, or what if the church flops, or, you know, statistically, you know, three out of four church plans fail. Did you know that?
10:36-10:37
We've never talked like that.
10:37-10:39
We believe that Christ has called us to this.
10:39-10:44
He's empowering this. So why would we make allowance for failure?
10:45-10:48
Well, okay, you know what? Jesus said the kingdom is going to start small and grow big.
10:49-10:52
And I can see that translating locally. We're going to start small and we're going to grow.
10:54-10:57
You understand that? Do you understand the cost?
10:59-11:02
Do you understand what it means to follow Christ? You don't just add Him.
11:03-11:06
Like, I'm a decent person. I have a good job. I have 2.5 kids.
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You know what? I'll add Jesus to my resume.
11:10-11:11
Jesus said the kingdom isn't like that.
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When you see the value of who Christ is.
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And everything that he stands for and everything that he promises and delivers, you're going to joyfully give up everything you have.
11:27-11:29
To receive Jesus Christ.
11:30-11:31
You understand that?
11:33-11:35
You understand the implications of that?
11:36-11:40
When somebody isn't ready to come to that point, what that means is they haven't understood the value of Christ.
11:44-11:45
Do you understand that?
11:48-12:03
Then last week, do you understand that hell is a real place and that real people really go there?
12:03-12:04
Do you understand that?
12:06-12:08
Do you understand that?
12:11-12:13
And I just wrote down in my notes, urgency.
12:14-12:16
Do you understand how urgent this is?
12:19-12:27
We can't sit around and play Monopoly and entertain each other, not to do anything wrong with Monopoly, but we can't sit around and entertain each other for years on end.
12:28-12:28
Oh, you know what?
12:28-12:31
We ought to think about getting the gospel outside of the doors of this auditorium.
12:33-12:34
Urgency.
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And not just us as a church, you as a disciple.
12:39-12:40
Urgency. Urgency.
12:43-12:49
Lost people are dead, separated from God, and they're heading for an eternity, separated from God.
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You can't save them.
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But you know someone who can.
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And that's why the Bible says God has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation.
13:05-13:10
God says, "I have the eternal gospel of my Son that turns dead people into alive people.
13:10-13:16
Here, I'm giving it to you. Get it out there." But do you understand the urgency?
13:18-13:26
It's not like there's heaven for Christians and then like diet heaven for non-Christians.
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Heaven light, heaven free, sweetened with splendor heaven.
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There is being in God's presence for eternity and there is eternal torment.
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A place of separation, a place of outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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It's a real place, according to Jesus.
13:53-13:59
And I know you got all these people out there now, "Oh, hell's not really a real place." You know what? I'm going to go with Jesus on that one.
13:59-14:02
How about you? How about you? Does that sound good?
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If we're going to pick sides, I'm going with Jesus on that one.
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He says it's real, therefore this is urgent. Do you understand that?
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We're not playing games here.
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Urgency.
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So, what's my part in the kingdom business?
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Let's look back at the text.
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Jesus said, "Have you understood all these things?" They said to him, "Yes." They're like, "We are... we're hearing you." As my brother Dale says, "We're picking up what you're putting down, right?" "We understand what you're saying." Jesus said, "Okay, therefore..." OK, did you get that?
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Contingent on your understanding.
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Because if you don't understand, you won't see the need for what is coming.
14:53-15:08
Therefore, if you understand, every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.
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So two things this morning, you ready?
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Drop this down in the back of your bulletin.
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First of all, you are responsible for what you know.
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I am responsible.
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Here's the first thing Jesus is saying, I am responsible, I am responsible, cut that out of the tape.
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I am responsible to be a student of the word of God.
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I am responsible to be a student of the word of God.
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Jesus said, therefore, every scribe, let's talk about a scribe for a second.
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What is a scribe?
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A scribe is a student of scripture.
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In Jesus' day and prior to, the scribe was known as the theologian and the preacher.
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Famous scribes, can you think of a famous scribe?
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How about Ezra from the Old Testament?
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Ezra was someone who read the law and helped people understand the law.
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Okay, that's what a scribe is.
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I read the word of God, seeking to understand the word of God.
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It starts with being a student.
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You're like, well, this is for preachers, right?
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No, every disciple, every follower of Jesus.
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That's why you go back to verse 36 in Matthew 13.
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The disciples came to Jesus.
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Can you explain that parable to us?
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That's the attitude of a scribe.
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I want to know.
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I need to know.
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I have to understand.
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It's being a student of scripture.
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You see, my job is to preach and to teach, but the end game of my job is for you to get into the word yourself.
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Understand that.
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You need to be a student of the word.
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I'm not here to replace that for you.
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I'm not.
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And if your mindset is, well, that's why I go to church, to learn about the Bible.
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And really that's the only time that I learn about the Bible.
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And I'll wait until next Sunday to learn more about the Bible than I've failed at my job.
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My job is to help and to encourage and to sort of stoke that in you to say, "I'm going to get in God's Word for myself." Everyone in here should be getting in God's Word for yourself.
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I want to know, I want to understand.
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But it's not for the sake of head knowledge.
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Look at the next thing Jesus said.
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scribe who has been trained for the kingdom, trained for the kingdom.
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My question is, what are you doing right now to train? What are you doing right now to train? Now obviously he's directing this at his disciples. This is being directed at saved people. Again, I don't want there to be any misunderstanding like, "Oh, I have to train to become a Christian." No. If you understand if you are a born-again believer, you're in training. And the question is, what are you doing right now to train? What are you doing right now to train? Here's what I want you to do. On your bulletin, on your outline, I want you to just write down what you're doing right now to train. And growing of your knowledge of God's Word.
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What are you doing?
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To train and growing in your knowledge of God's Word.
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What are you doing?
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You see, people train for all kinds of things, don't they?
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People train for a new job.
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People train for the Olympics, right?
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People train if they're going to run a marathon.
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If you went to those people and said, "Hey, what are you doing to train?" Do you think they would look at you with a blank expression going, "What do you mean?
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What are you doing?
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Okay, so you're going to be in the 2012 Olympics in London, right?
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Yeah?
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What are you doing to train?
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Huh?
19:38-19:39
What do you mean?
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What are you doing to train for the Olympics?" Well, I guess I haven't been eating as many Twinkies.
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Like what have you been doing to train?
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Being a disciple is following Jesus.
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It's learning from Jesus.
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It's applying what we learn.
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Being a disciple means you're in the classroom for the rest of your life.
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What was the punchline when I got into ministry?
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Because I don't like school.
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You know what I didn't like about school?
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I didn't like sitting down at a desk and studying, and I hated writing papers.
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Hated it.
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Sitting down, studying, writing, revising, editing, studying, restudying.
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So in Bible college, I turn in my last paper and I walked out of the professor's office, arms raised, I'm done.
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You know what the punchline is?
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I have to do more studying and writing and preparing now than I ever did in Bible college.
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Seriously, I look back at my Bible college days, I'm like, man, that was easy.
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Now I have to do it every week.
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I have to write a paper every week.
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I have to study a different portion of Scripture, what?
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Every week.
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And I'm not complaining, I'm just saying it's a little ironic.
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But, you know, the same is true for you.
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You're always in God's classroom.
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Always.
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Always.
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I haven't met any Christian who's been walking with the Lord for any amount of time saying, "You know, I got it all figured out.
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I don't even read my Bible anymore, I just have it all figured out.
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I don't even go to church.
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Preacher's not going to tell me anything, I don't know.
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You're in the classroom the rest of your life.
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That's why in Harvest Speak, when we talk about being a disciple, we talk about worshipping Christ and walking with Christ and working for Christ.
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How are you doing?
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Are you training for the kingdom?
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Give me some pointers.
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Well, here's some pointers, jot these things down.
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Here's some things you can do to train.
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How about, first of all, church attendance?
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It is important.
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It is important that we come together and worship the Lord together and pray with each other and get in God's word together.
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I think it's important.
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It's important to me.
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Is it important to you?
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It's important to Jesus.
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He died for the church.
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This is important business that we do on a Sunday morning.
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That's why I encourage you, that's part of your training is coming, church attendance, coming early, coming ready to worship, coming Bible in hand, pen in hand.
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I know there's gonna be an outline and I'm gonna take some notes.
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I'm going to be a student.
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I'm going to be a student.
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Also your personal study.
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Do you have a plan?
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Do you have a plan? Personal study in God's Word for yourself.
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And also as we saw the video, we want to see everybody involved in a small group.
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And here's what we've been telling people. You have something to offer people.
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You need to be pouring into people. And there's times that we need people to pour into us, right?
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Look, there's times that I need my brothers in the Lord, that I need to go like, "Hey man, I need you to pray for me right now. I'm having a hard time." That's all part of the training. Training for the kingdom.
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Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven.
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This isn't a passive thing.
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This is, "I'm going to put myself in a position that the Lord's going to be at work in me." That's what it is. You can't do it. He does it.
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But you have a choice to make as to whether you're going to put yourself in a position or not. Right?
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So I'm responsible to be a student of the Word of God.
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Secondly, I'm responsible to be a teacher of the Word of God.
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I'm responsible to be a teacher of the Word of God.
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That's where Jesus said, "Okay, every scribe who's been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like," what?
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A master of a house.
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Some translations might say a householder, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.
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What is the householder?
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Well, in Jesus' day, the most trusted slave of wealthy families would be known as the householder or the house manager, so to speak.
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And it was his job to manage the house's storeroom.
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Do we still use the term pantry?
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Is that still a term?
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Okay, this is like the big rich people's pantry, okay?
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That has all the stuff in it.
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And his job was to manage their stuff.
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The food, the clothing, the things needed to care for people.
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He had to keep it well stocked.
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He had to know how to distribute.
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Now when it says treasure here, Don't think of, you know, a chest full of gold coins.
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What he's talking about is the storehouse, the pantry, the closet, full of things old and new.
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What's this old and new thing about?
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Before Jesus started this teaching, the disciples had the Old Testament.
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They knew of God's law, of God's dealings with Israel.
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They had the law, they had the prophets, the disciples had that.
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That's why we saw in Matthew 13, Jesus said, "I'm going to tell you a mystery." Not like the riddle of the Sphinx or anything.
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The mystery is this is something that has never before been revealed that I'm about to share with you.
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There's a period of time called the church age.
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To the disciples, this would have been brand new.
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That's what Jesus is talking about here.
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You had the old. Now I'm introducing you to the new.
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The other scribes had the Old Testament.
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Now, disciples, you have the mystery of the kingdom.
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But here's the thing, the new truth added makes the old truth fresh.
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Or to put it another way, we really can't understand the New Testament without the Old Testament.
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We really can't have a full understanding of the New Testament without the Old Testament.
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And here's what I mean.
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If I just came up to you and said, "Hey, 2000 years ago, this man died on a cross for you." And you're like, "Okay, history tells us that countless thousands of people have died on crosses, right?
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It was the common form of execution.
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So, why does this one man and this one cross, why does that make any difference versus all of the other ones?
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But you see, it's when you have the understanding of the Old Testament to understand that sin brought death, But God in His love through the Levitical system provided an animal sacrifice to cover over sin.
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And what God was doing was basically taking Israel to kindergarten to say, "I want you to learn something very fundamental.
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The wages of sin is death.
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But because I love you, I'm going to make a provision for a sacrifice for you." And throughout Old Testament history, God kept pounding that message home.
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A sacrifice will cover your sin. A sacrifice can cover your sin.
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It was to prepare for the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus Christ, who didn't merely cover our sin, but what? Take our sin away.
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That's what he's talking about here with the old and the new.
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The new truth added makes the old truth fresh.
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We can't understand the New Testament without the Old Testament.
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That's why, church, that's why we can't be stuck in a form of Old Testament legalism.
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We can't get stuck there.
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And a lot of churches do.
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get stuck in a form of legalism.
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Like, well, you know you can't get a tattoo because Leviticus says that's a sin and complete misunderstanding of the purpose of the Old Testament law.
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Complete misunderstanding.
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But what do we do? We try to introduce that to the church.
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"Oh, you want to be a good Christian? Okay, here's our rules.
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If you're a Christian, you don't play cards.
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If you're a Christian, you don't go to the movies.
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If you're a Christian, you have to wear this, or you can't wear this, or you have to have your hair like this, or you can't have your hair like this.
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And if you don't have hair, I don't know what to tell you because we don't have a rule for that yet.
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And we start introducing all these rules.
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And what we essentially do, church, is we try to make the church like sort of a new Israel.
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Like, okay, if we want God to be happy with us, here's the rules we got to keep.
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That's wrong. The other side of the spectrum that we can't get stuck on is some form of New Testament mysticism, where we completely misunderstand the purpose of the whole counsel of God. It's understanding, being a student so that We can be a teacher.
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What do I mean by this?
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Well, to put it in some other terms, I'm gonna throw a few illustrations out and some of these will resonate with you, I'm sure.
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What does it mean to have the old and the new?
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Well, we have the ABCs and we have Shakespeare at the same time.
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We have two plus two and we have calculus at the same time.
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We have musicians, we have Do Re Mi.
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I can't remember, what's the rest of them?
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Right, that one.
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We have that and we have Beethoven's Fifth at the same time.
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But listen, learning the basics, learning the ABCs, learning the two plus two, learning the Do Re Mis, Learning the basics doesn't have an end goal of just understanding the basics.
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Do you get that?
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You don't teach children the alphabet just so they know the alphabet, do you?
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Why do you teach children the alphabet?
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Anyone?
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Shout it out.
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Why do we teach children the alphabet?
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So they can read, right, and write.
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There's an end goal in mind.
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That's why we teach that to children.
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We don't teach it just so they can sing along when Sesame Street's on.
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There's an end game.
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Why do I need to know this?
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Because having the fundamentals will help you understand the full.
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That's why sometimes we go back to basic grammar, basic math, and basic music.
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Sometimes we go back to those things in those fields so we can understand the fullness.
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Are you still with me?
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Do I need to back up for anybody?
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You're like, "Oh, please no." But this is Jesus' point.
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We have the old, now we have the new.
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New truth added makes the old truth fresh.
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And so much of the Bible is like that.
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For example, under the old covenant, it was tithing.
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the Old Testament tithe was like 20-some percent when you added it all together.
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The purpose of that, the purpose of God teaching tithing in the Old Testament, was the same purpose that we teach children ABCs.
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Did you get that?
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In the Old Testament, we have sacrifice, killing an animal.
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The reason we have Old Testament sacrifice is the same reason that we teach children the ABCs.
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Right?
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In the Old Testament, God actually tells you how to love people.
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for the same reason that we have the ABCs, because now the full has come.
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We learn about God.
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We learn the fundamentals as God was preparing all of history for a season, a future chunk of history which we now live in, where God actually lives in us and through us.
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Radical.
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So the question is, what are you doing with what you have learned?
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You've learned the ABCs, but you've also learned Shakespeare, so to speak.
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We've spent time, haven't we, these past several months, we've been through Jonah, we've gone through some portions in Genesis, and we've been doing Old Testament and New Testament and understanding what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.
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And the question is, what have you done with what you've learned?
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What have you done with that?
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Like the disciples, we can't walk away with eternal spiritual truth and just say, "That's interesting.
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We're responsible for what we know." First of all, you're responsible in your home. In your home.
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Whose job is it to disciple your children?
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A lot of people think that's the church's job.
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It's not.
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That's your job as parents.
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What's our job?
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Our job is to assist you.
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Our job is to come alongside you and help you.
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Yeah, even during worship this morning, the purpose of removing children from the service isn't that, Okay, parents, we got this.
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The end game of that is to help provide a distraction-free environment so you can grow in the knowledge of God's Word.
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Did you know that?
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We don't have the audacity to try to replace you as parents.
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That is not our job.
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What are you doing with what you learned?
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First place you need to look is in your home.
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Are you discipling your children, those of you who have children?
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What are you doing with what you have learned in the church?
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Are you part of a small group?
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Are you looking at, "How can I apply what we've been learning these past several weeks?" What are you doing in your community with what you've learned?
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You know, I got a lot of messages and emails and such from the sermon last week.
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Never a comfortable thing to spend, you know, 40 to 45 minutes talking about hell.
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Got a lot of response to that message.
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And I'm sure there are people who think, "You know what? You're right.
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My neighbor doesn't know the Lord. He's gone to hell." God should really do something about that.
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When God is saying, "Do you know what I did?
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Is I put you next door.
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That's what I'm doing about it." Right? If you're a believer, God's like, "I'm living in you, and I put you right next door to this guy that needs to hear the gospel." You know, the people that I work with, they really need to know the Lord.
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And God says, "You know what? I was thinking the same thing.
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That's why I got you a job there.
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So you can look for the opportunity to share what you've learned.
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You're going to encounter people throughout your week that I'll never meet.
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So whose job is it? Whose responsibility is it to look for that opportunity?
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Point to whose job that is. Point.
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No, not me. I'm pointing for myself. You point at yourself.
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Everybody's like, "It's your job, Jeff." No, it's your job.
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I pray the Lord's at work in the people that cross my path.
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You do the same, okay?
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Responsibility, it has to start with the understanding of the kingdom, understanding what God's done for us in Jesus Christ, and understanding what He's going to do through you.
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a result. So do you understand? You understand? You understand? Then you're a scribe. What are you doing to be a student? Do you understand? Then you're a householder? What are you doing to manage what God has entrusted to you? Who are you pouring into? I want you to write that down on your bulletin too. I meant to mention that earlier. Write down who is in your life right now that you are pouring into. Maybe it is your kids. Maybe there's somebody that you're working Maybe it's somebody here in the church that you've been kind of mentoring or something.
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Write that down.
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Do you understand?
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Well, then let's pay attention in class.
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Because the next time class rolls around, God might have you be the teacher.
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Amen?
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Matthew 13:51-52
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.