Introduction:
Why Didn't the Old Covenant Take Away Guilt? (Hebrews 10:1-4):
- It wasn't Designed to. (Heb 10:1)
- It Reminded you that you ARE Guilty. (Heb 10:2-4)
Once For All: Jesus Takes Away Your Guilt (Hebrews 10:1-18):
- Once for all: You are Sanctified . (Heb 10:10)
- Once for all: Your Sin is gone. (Heb 10:11-13)
- Once for all: You are Secure . (Heb 10:14)
- Once for all: You are Settled . (Heb 10:15-18)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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01:01-01:04
Open up your Bibles with me please to Hebrews chapter 10.
01:05-01:10
And while we're turning, let's just pause and just sort of quiet our hearts before the Lord for a second.
01:11-01:16
And I'm gonna ask that you would pray for me to be faithful, to communicate his word.
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And I will pray for you to have a heart open to receive it.
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Let's pray.
01:26-01:28
Speak through your word today, Lord.
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Give us ears to hear.
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We pray in Jesus' name.
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And all God's people said, "Amen." Today, we are going to talk about, we are going to talk about guilt.
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Welcome to church.
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(congregation laughing)
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Hang on, you're gonna wanna hear this.
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You're definitely gonna wanna hear this.
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What is guilt?
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The guilt is the sense that I am wrong, or the sense that I have done wrong in some way.
02:19-02:21
Let me tell you something else about guilt.
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Guilt is an incredible motivator.
02:27-02:29
Like, well, how do you mean?
02:29-02:32
Well, here's how guilt motivates you.
02:33-02:46
Okay, you have what we're gonna call over here, your actual behavior, right?
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This is your actual behavior.
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This is what you actually do and say and think.
02:51-03:07
and your attitudes, but over here, we're gonna call this, let's just call this your, we'll call this your ideal behavior.
03:09-03:16
Like if you imagine yourself being a perfect person, that's what you aspire to.
03:16-03:27
This is what I think is right and optimal and ultimate And nobody lives that.
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Whatever your ideal is, you don't even live according to your ideal, right?
03:31-03:44
So you could say that there's a gap between your actual behavior and your ideal behavior.
03:48-03:50
And do you know what you find in that gap?
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That's guilt.
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I feel guilty, you see, because I know I'm not this, so I feel guilty, so I've got to sort of do something to fill the gap.
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Think about it.
04:09-04:11
We do this all the time, right?
04:12-04:25
Like, I've been sort of absent at home lately and I realize the kind of father I should be, but I haven't actually been that father, so I feel guilty.
04:25-04:29
So in order to stop feeling guilty, I'm like, "Hey kids, we're going to Kennywood.
04:30-04:31
"I'm trying to fill the gap, right?
04:31-04:38
"Or we do that in our marriages, married people." That you're like, "I realize I've been neglecting my wife.
04:38-04:40
"I haven't been the husband that I should.
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Actually, I've been kind of a bum.
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So there's a gap between who I am and who I should be.
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So I try to take care of that guilt.
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I try to fill the gap by doing things like buying her flowers or whatever.
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So the problem, church, you probably know where I'm going with this, is we bring this mindset to the Lord.
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We bring this mindset to church.
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And we say things like, "Well, I know I'm not a good person.
05:18-05:35
"And I realized that there's a gap between who I am "and who I think God wants me to be." So what does guilt motivate us to do?
05:36-05:38
It motivates us to be religious.
05:40-05:41
That's where religion comes from.
05:43-05:49
What can I do to fill the gap before God between who I am and who I think, who I believe He wants me to be?
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That is religion.
05:54-05:57
We've been talking about this through the book of Hebrews.
05:57-05:59
Religion doesn't work.
06:00-06:10
This effort to earn God's approval, this idea that I need to somehow get all of my good to outweigh my bad, and then God's happy with me.
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Or the belief that I get to perform some sort of religious ritual to appease God.
06:17-06:19
Those things are not biblical anywhere.
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But we all want it though.
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And we all try to on some level, because we think it's inconceivable that my eternal soul is saved and I didn't do anything to contribute to that salvation.
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That's inconceivable.
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The reality is the only thing that you contributed to your salvation was what?
06:52-06:57
The sin that made it necessary, as has been said.
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but we gotta do something.
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I have to, in some way, contribute to the salvation of my soul.
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And the problem with religion is it takes you on one of two paths, usually.
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To fill this gap, one path that we go on is this.
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Like, I gotta keep doing it because it's never enough.
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I gotta keep saying the prayers and saying the chants, and I gotta keep lighting the candles doing the confessionals and doing communion.
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I gotta keep doing whatever the religious work is.
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I gotta keep doing it.
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I did it last week, yeah, but it's a new week, so I gotta keep doing it.
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I'm gonna have to keep doing it because there's a gap between who I am and who I think God wants me to be.
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I gotta keep doing it.
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It's never enough.
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But there's another bad path that religion will take you on.
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And that is the path that religion is all you need.
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In the sense like this, your religion becomes a mindless ritual.
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Like as long as I check the boxes, right?
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Are you good with God?
08:16-08:17
Well, yeah, I'm good with God.
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I went to church.
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I said my prayers.
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I lit the candle.
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I did the chant.
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I repeated the thing out of the book or whatever.
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And so, yeah, I'm good with God.
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And it becomes this mindless ritual.
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As long as I check the boxes, I'm good with God.
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You see, we've been going through the book of Hebrews, talking about the old covenant.
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And in the old covenant, you had to offer a sacrifice through a priest.
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And we talked about the day of atonement and all of that.
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But you see the problem with Israel, and you're gonna see it in the text here in a minute.
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Israel started getting into this mindset, it was as long as you do the work, as long as you offer the sacrifice, we're good, right?
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I offered the sacrifice, I did it mostly how God said to do it, so God and I are good.
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Did nothing for their heart, right?
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It's like worship Baal for six days a week, and then we roll into the temple, we kill our animal, The etch-a-sketch is clean and we're good to go.
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But there was no change in the heart.
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And you're going to see here in the text that even the religious works that some people thought filled the gap, even the religious works that God ordained never took away the guilt.
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So on your outline, Why didn't the old covenant take away guilt?
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Write this down, first of all, letter A, jot this down.
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Why didn't the old covenant take away guilt?
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Well, it wasn't designed to.
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That's a problem.
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If you're thinking that it's going to take this away, it really wasn't designed.
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Like, what do you mean by that?
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Well, look at verse one.
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It says, "For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, Instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.
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Stop there.
10:30-10:31
The Old Covenant was a shadow.
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It was a portrait, but it was not the reality.
10:39-10:45
Show of hands, how many people are planning to host or attend a big Easter dinner today?
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Show of hands.
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Who's heading to a big Easter dinner?
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Okay, most of you.
10:51-11:11
Well, how would you feel if you showed up to Easter dinner and you sit down and your host brings you a cookbook and says, "Here, I just want you to look through this." You're like, "What is this?" and look through it.
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There are some delicious looking recipes in there.
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And that's how you spend Easter.
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You're just all sitting around the table, looking through the cookbook.
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How many instead would rather eat a real meal?
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And you see, that's the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant.
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Now, listen, there's some value in reading a cookbook.
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It's enlightening.
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You get to see the ingredients that go into it and how it's all put together.
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It's very enlightening to read a cookbook.
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I'm gonna tell you something.
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If all you ever do is read cookbooks, you're gonna die.
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Right?
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You're gonna sit there starving to death reading your little Betty Crocker cookbook.
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Why?
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Because that isn't meant to nourish you.
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The real meal is what nourishes you.
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That's the difference between the old covenant and the new.
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But here's the question, as we get to this point in Hebrews, it's like, wait, wait, wait, why didn't the old covenant make people perfect?
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It says here in verse one, "It can never are the same sacrifices "continually offered every year." Look, make perfect those who join you.
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It could never do that.
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You're like, why?
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Okay, so maybe you're like me and you're sort of questioning the practicality of all of this, but why in the world, if the old covenant sacrifices, the killing of animals and sprinkling of blood and the priests and the temple, if that didn't fix the guilt and the sin problem, why did God have people doing that for so long?
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For generations?
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For the history of ancient Israel?
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Why did God make them go through this exercise over and over and over and over if it really didn't solve the problem?
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Has anybody else ever wondered that?
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Well, here's why.
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It's called, in theology terms, it's called progressive revelation.
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Here's all that means.
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You know the story, Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden, don't eat off the one tree, they disobeyed, brought sin into the world.
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You know that story?
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Well, after Adam and Eve sinned, your Bible doesn't say the next day, the day after their transgression, Jesus showed up and was crucified and took their sin away.
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Why didn't Jesus just do that the day after they sinned?
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Why did we get to go through all this old covenant business?
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It's the same reason you don't give textbooks to babies.
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That's why, right?
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There's a lot of babies, little children in this church, and some of them are starting to learn how to read.
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And how do you teach them, parents?
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You gotta teach them the alphabet, right?
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A, B, C, then you teach them simple words, cat, dog, ball, balloon.
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And like we teach them these simple concepts and then we teach them sentences.
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This is how a sentence goes together.
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And then they start learning how to read paragraphs and books and do you realize that's the purpose of the old covenant?
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That was God throughout history showing mankind through Israel, the ABCs.
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Like through the old covenant, God was saying, "Look, you're a sinner, and it requires death, "but here in my grace, I'm going to allow a substitute." But, "You can't offer that substitute yourself.
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"You need a priest to offer that on your behalf." You see, generation after generation after generation, God was teaching that lesson.
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I am guilty of sin.
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I need a blood sacrifice to pay the penalty.
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I need a priest to offer that sacrifice over and over and over.
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What it was doing was preparing the world for Jesus Christ.
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So when Jesus shows up and he is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and he is the high priest who offers himself as the sacrifice, we're like, I get it now because God was painting the picture with the ABCs for generations through Israel.
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That's why Jesus didn't show up the day after Adam and Eve sinned, to offer a sacrifice on the cross.
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So the point is this, the old covenant wasn't designed to take away guilt.
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It was a shadow.
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But letter B, why didn't the old covenant take away guilt?
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Write this down.
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It reminded you that you are guilty.
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Look at verse two, it says, "Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshipers having once been cleansed would no longer have any consciousness of sins." Stop there.
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He's saying if they brought perfection, if these Old Testament sacrifices really made me right before God, they would have stopped, right?
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Like if that's all it took, blood of a bull, blood of a goat, blood of a sheep, me and God are good, then they would have just stopped.
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God's like, okay, we good, see you in heaven.
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But no, it says, did you see that last phrase?
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Consciousness of sins, consciousness of sins, what is that?
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That says here, that's guilt.
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That's the awareness that I did something wrong.
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That guilt comes with sin and the Old Testament, the old covenant never relieved the guilt.
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Like, why not?
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Well, look at verse three.
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It says, "But in these sacrifices, "there is a reminder of sins every year, "for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats "to take away sins." You see, those sacrifices not only didn't take away sin, it was a constant reminder that they didn't take away sin, right?
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You know, think of it this way.
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Let's say that you have a disease that will kill you.
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You have a terminal disease.
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And the doctor says, "Here, I want you to take this medicine." And you take the medicine and it eradicates your disease.
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It's gone forever.
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It's completely gone from your body.
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You are healed, you are cured.
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If that's the case, every time you see this, The medicine, you're gonna think, that's the thing that saved me, right?
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This saved me.
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But what if your disease isn't like that?
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What if you have a disease that requires you to take medication every day just to live?
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That it's never gonna go away.
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It's never gonna be healed.
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But you can keep living so long as you take your daily pill.
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You see, then if that's the case, you wouldn't look at this as this is the thing that made me better.
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You would look at this as your daily reminder, you're still sick, right?
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Every day, I'm sick, I gotta take this or I'm gonna die.
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That's all this does is remind you of that.
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You see, that's what the Hebrew writer is saying about the old covenant sacrifices.
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Every time they showed up the sacrifices, well, I'm a sinner, I'm rotten, I need the blood of an innocent substitute to take my place.
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I'm a sinner and had to keep happening over and over and over and over.
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Sacrifice didn't erase sin, it highlighted it.
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So look at verse five.
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It says, "Consequently, when Christ came into the world." Well, hang on there.
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That, my friends, is what you call a game-changing statement.
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When Christ came into the world, Jesus came to take away God's wrath.
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He came to take away your sin.
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And listen, here's what we're going to see in the text.
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Jesus came to take away your guilt.
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And this is one of the most profound quotes, not just in Hebrews, but in the whole Bible.
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He's quoting here in a second, you're gonna see Psalm 40, verses six through eight.
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And it's Jesus, it's God the Son speaking to God the Father but what's really profound about this is it's like, God the Son is standing on the edge of heaven right before the incarnation.
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Like this is like last words the son says to the father face to face before he comes to the earth.
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That's what's so profound about this.
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Look at verses, the rest of verse five, let's get down to verse seven.
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It says, this is Jesus speaking to God, the father before the incarnation.
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Again, he says, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me?
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and burnt offerings and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure.
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Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.
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Then he gives commentary.
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The Hebrew writer, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives commentary on Psalm 40.
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Look at verse eight.
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He says, when he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burn offerings and sin offerings.
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These are offered according to the law.
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Then he added, behold, I have come to do your will.
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He does away with the first in order to establish the second.
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See his point here is this quote from Psalm 40 was Jesus saying, I'm coming.
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to institute something better.
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I'm coming to establish something better.
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The Old Testament sacrifices couldn't do it.
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You gotta prepare a new body to do the real job.
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And the real job of Jesus Christ was to be the true sacrifice.
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The one that all of the old covenant sacrifices were only a shadow of.
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And when you believe that Jesus Christ is that true sacrifice of God, then you can have assurance that once and for all, you're perfected and you're done with guilt.
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See, back in chapter 14, or I'm sorry, chapter nine, verse 14, excuse me, we said the conscience is purified by the blood of Christ.
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He made that comment.
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and we had a whole message about that.
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Your conscience is purified by the blood of Christ, that when you truly understand what the sacrifice of Jesus accomplished, it cleanses your conscience.
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And at this point, he gets really specific about how the blood of Christ should purify your conscience by taking away your sense of guilt before God.
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Are you ready for this?
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Once for all, Jesus takes away your guilt.
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Look, there's so many Christians walking around with this burden of guilt that isn't from God.
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It's from the enemy.
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And there's people in this room that are struggling with that.
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There's people that are watching this stream that are struggling with that.
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Would you like to be done with that today?
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Would you like to be done walking around feeling guilty before God?
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Would you like to be done with that?
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All right, then let's see what this has to say.
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Once and for all, Jesus takes away your guilt, number one.
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Once for all, you are sanctified.
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Look at verse 10.
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He says, "And by that will," meaning Jesus Christ coming to do the will of the Father.
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"And by that will," look at this, "We have been sanctified "through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ "once for all." Sanctified, what does that word mean?
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It's another way of saying holy.
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It's set apart.
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It's, really it means put to proper use, right?
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A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of sitting in with Dan Thompson and the youth group.
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And Dan has a great illustration about sanctification.
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Dan, can I steal this?
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Please say yes, because if you say no, I don't know what, thank you, I didn't know what I was gonna do for this chunk of the sermon.
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I should have talked to you before this.
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But sanctification, like I said, we think of it as kind of a religious-y word, but really it just means that something has an intended use, right?
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And the illustration that Dan uses is a toothbrush.
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This has one intended use, doesn't it?
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Now show of hands, how many people here would want to borrow this toothbrush from me?
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No, this has an intended use.
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This has one, this literally has one purpose.
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So if I walked into the bathroom and saw Aaron scrubbing the toilet where the tank meets the bowl with this, this isn't sanctified anymore.
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Trust me when I say she is using it for a purpose for which it was not intended.
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This has one use, right?
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One intended use.
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And you see, that's what he's saying here is by the will of God accomplished by Christ, you have been sanctified.
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Would I be taking the analogy too far to say you have become God's toothbrush?
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But you know the sense in which I mean that, God says, no, no, no, you are mine.
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And I have one purpose for you and I'm going to use you for that purpose.
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And you're like, yeah, you know what?
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I hear what you're saying, Pastor Jeff, but sometimes I mess up and I'm not sure that I'm, I'm not sure I'm doing that purpose.
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Look at verse 10 again, please.
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It says, "We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ." What are the last three words?
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Come on, say it.
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Yeah, God's not embarrassed to say it, why are we?
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God says, "Once and for all, you are sanctified.
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You belong to him and there is nothing that can change that if you truly belong to him.
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Because he said it's once for all.
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So once for all you are sanctified.
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And this could be a whole sermon series, but I just gotta say this.
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This so much ties into your identity.
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So many people just struggle with identity issues.
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Yeah, I'm just a worthless sinner.
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I'm just a piece of garbage.
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Not according to God.
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According to God, you are a holy child of his.
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You have been sanctified and set apart.
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Christ made that happen because he took away your sin and he gave you his righteousness.
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So once for all you are sanctified.
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Number two, once for all your sin is gone.
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Once for all your sin is gone.
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Look at verse 11, it says, "But when," how about I look at the right chapter, would that help?
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All in favor of me not reading chapter 9 like I almost did.
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All right, where were we?
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All right, verse 11.
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It says, "And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
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But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God." I think it's pretty obvious contrast here, right?
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The old covenant priest standing, sacrificing daily.
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Jesus Christ offered himself one time, finished the work and sat down.
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You see, the old covenant didn't remove sin, it only covered sin.
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So under the old covenant, sin was atoned for, it wasn't taken away.
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And somebody right now might be like, Well, Jeff, you know, it sounds a bit like semantics to me.
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Atonement, sin taken away.
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Isn't it the same thing?
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Isn't it the same thing to atone for sin and to take away sin?
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Isn't that the same thing?
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Well, imagine a raccoon on the last few moments of his life crawls onto our front porch and dies right on our welcome mat.
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And Aaron would say, "Jeff, I need you to do something "about that raccoon." And I'm like, "I got it." And I go into the kitchen and I get a tea towel.
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And I go out and I cover the raccoon with the tea towel.
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Do you think that's what my wife wanted?
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What's the problem, Stacy?
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It's covered.
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You can't see it.
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Isn't that what she wanted?
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No, what is she going to tell me to do?
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Tell me, what's she gonna tell me to do?
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Get it away.
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Like where?
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I don't care where.
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Get the dead raccoon off of our porch.
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Now do you understand the difference between covering and taking away?
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The old covenant sacrifices, they covered your sin.
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Jesus Christ takes away your sin.
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That was the picture of the scapegoat on the day of atonement to show Israel that sin was symbolically driven away.
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Jesus actually did take it away.
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Like, yeah, that sounds well and good, Jeff, but you know not everybody's on board with this guilt-free living, with this understanding the blood of Christ.
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Not everybody's on board.
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In fact, there's some people against that, namely Satan.
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Right?
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The accuser of the brother, and he's a powerful adversary.
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Like what about him?
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What about him, Pastor Jeff?
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Well, look at verse 13.
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It says, "Jesus sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet." Like, well, what about Satan, Pastor Jeff?
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What about?
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Oh, you mean Jesus' footstool.
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Is that who you're so worried about?
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Hey, you do you, but I'm too busy trusting the victorious Christ than to worry about an Ottoman.
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Don't give Satan too much attention.
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Do you realize that's what we're celebrating today?
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You realize Jesus showed up and Satan threw everything he had at him to the point that Jesus was publicly in the most humiliating way known to man executed.
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Public shame, Jesus was executed.
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And Satan was like, I won.
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Jesus took everything Satan had to offer.
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Three days later, he just walked right out of that grave.
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So listen, this is from the Lord.
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Satan got nothing.
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Okay, so stop giving him attention.
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There's too many Christians so worried about what Satan's doing.
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Let's just worry about what Jesus is doing, right?
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Let's get on board with him.
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Your sin is gone.
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Number three, once for all, you're secure.
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Verse 14, It says, "For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time, those who are being sanctified." See under the old covenant, your sacrifice, your forgiveness of sin, your atonement for sin, I should say, it was only good until your next sin and then you had to sacrifice again, right?
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You know, it's sort of like in some religions where you have to make confession to another person, and that's only good until you sin, then you gotta go do it again.
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It just never ends.
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That's how the old covenant was, by the way.
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But Jesus' sacrifice perfected you.
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It made you righteous in God's eyes for all time, and there's no way that a believer can lose this forever forgiveness, because it's not conditional.
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It's pronounced.
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Notice there's a contrast here.
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In verse 10, we spent time talking about, "You have been sanctified." But look here, he's talking about, "You are being sanctified." You see that?
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For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
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And you're like, "Well, wait a second, Jeff.
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You just said, 'We have been.' So which is it?
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Are we sanctified or are we in the process of being sanctified?
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And the answer is yes.
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Like, well, how does that work?
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Well, it's kind of like the army.
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When you enlist in the army, when you sign your enlistment papers, you are GI.
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You are a soldier.
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You're like, awesome.
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So why are they sending me to bootcamp?
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Why do I gotta go to all this training to make you a soldier?
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You see, you are, and you're becoming.
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And that's how it is with Jesus Christ.
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God says, you are holy, you are perfect.
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So your whole life, you are being sanctified, you are, by God's grace, by God's work, by his Holy Spirit, by his word, he is making you into the person that he's already pronounced you to be.
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There's great security in that, right?
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Kind of like if you were in the army and you woke up some morning and you said, you know what, I don't feel like a soldier today.
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What do you think your commanding officer would say?
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Oh, why don't you go home then?
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Oh, if you don't feel like a soldier, why don't you go home, cupcake?
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Is that what your commanding officer would say?
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I wasn't in the army, so somebody helped me.
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Is that what he would say?
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Or would he say something like, "Oh, you don't feel like a soldier today.
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"That's okay, we are committed to the process here." Right?
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Same with God.
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But we're like, "Oh, gosh, "I don't feel very victorious today.
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"And I've had such a hard week." And God's like, "That's okay, "I'm committed to the process here." Right?
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So once for all you are sanctified, once for all your sin is gone, once for all you are secure.
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Do you see this guilt just kind of fading away?
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There's one more here, once for all you are settled.
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Jesus' death sealed the new covenant.
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And once again, the Hebrew writer goes back to Jeremiah 31 verses 33 and then 34, look at verse 15.
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It says, "And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us.
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"For after saying, 'This is the covenant "'that I will make with them after those days,' "declares the Lord, 'I will put my laws on their hearts "'and write them on their minds.'" Stop there.
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We spent so much time talking about this, so this is just ultra quick review.
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But under the old covenant, I obeyed God out of fear.
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The new covenant in Jesus Christ to obey God out of love.
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Because in the old covenant, God's law was written on tablets of stone.
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And in the new covenant, God wrote his law on your heart.
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So it's a completely different motivation thing.
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That's the transformation that Jesus Christ brings.
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That's the new life that he gives you.
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But look at verse 17, it says, then he adds, "I will remember their sins "and their lawless deeds no more." And you can't miss the contrast here.
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'Cause remember, rewind a few verses, he told us the old covenant sacrifices were this constant reminder that God remembers your sin.
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But under the new covenant, that's changed, hasn't it?
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Now God says, "I will remember your sin no more." Notice he says, "I will not remember." That's different than forgetting.
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It doesn't say God will forget your sin.
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Huge difference.
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You see, forgetting is an involuntary thing, right?
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You can't really choose to forget.
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Oh, that was bad.
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That was a bad memory.
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I'm just gonna choose to wipe that out.
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You can't do that.
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It's involuntary.
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Right?
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And some of us like me who have been hitting the head a lot, you know, this involuntary forgetting is a lot easier.
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There's this lady that she's always reminding me the memory problems that I have, this, what's her name?
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Erin, my wife, yes, she's always telling me, I forget things.
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I'm like, I'm trying to remember too many things.
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And church, my point is this, that's not the sense in which the Lord doesn't remember your sins.
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It's not like you've had so many that God's like, "Well, I can't keep track." It's different.
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It's God saying, "No, you know what?
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"I'm choosing not to remember." That's why verse 18, our last verse today, it says, "Where there's forgiveness of these, "there's no longer any offering for sin." He's saying, "Jesus took away your sin.
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"God declared he's not gonna remember it anymore, "So what else can possibly be done for your sin "when it's not around anymore to be an issue?" You know, many years ago, we were living in a house in Butler, and it's a long story, I'm not gonna bore you with the details, but we had to move out and find a new place to live, we had a tenant who was renting the house and again I'm abbreviating this story for the point but part of the sidewalk sunk in and we were unaware of that and the tenant never told us but it became a it became a police matter which we were also unaware of, because they were sending notices to that house.
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And every time our tenant would get one of these notices in the mail, that was like, you fix the sidewalk, or you're gonna be on an episode of "Cops," every time she'd get one of those pieces of mail, she'd just be like, "Yep, that's not for me." And they kept sending them.
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And she was like, "That's not for me." And they kept sending them.
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They're like, "No, that's not for me." And then finally, after sending many of these things, I don't know if you remember how they eventually, she talked about forgetting.
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I don't remember how they eventually got hold of us.
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They're like, "You gotta fix the sidewalk." And I'm like, "What sidewalk?" Like the one we've been sending you all those notices.
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And now you're looking at fines And oh, by the way, they're like, now you have a court date.
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I'm like, sounds like fun.
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I don't know if they finally did get my address right.
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But I called and said, hey, I didn't know about this.
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And my tenant never told me.
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And so Aaron and I, we went and we repaired the sidewalk.
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Because I called them.
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I was like, look, I'm so sorry.
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But we didn't know.
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My wife and I fixed it.
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It's over.
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And they're like, no, you're going to appear in court.
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And Aaron will tell you, for days, I was like so nervous.
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And I'm like, what am I going to say?
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Because I don't really have a good defense.
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and you can just pin it on the tenant, you know, that's kind of crummy, right?
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You just show up in court and you're like, "Oh yeah, my stupid tenant never gave me the mail." I never go, "Oh, okay, that's fine then." So I was like so nervous about this for days and I kept thinking about, what am I gonna say?
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And what if they say this?
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What am I gonna say in response to that?
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And I remember the day I've got my shirt and tie on.
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much like this, you know, I wanted to look, I wanted to look respectful, respectable, respectful, respectable.
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I wanted to look good.
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So I got my tie on, rehearsing the scenarios, and I'm like, okay, bottom line is this, I'm just gonna have to show up and beg for mercy.
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That's my plan.
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That's where I landed.
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And I show up and I walked into the building where we were supposed to have this, you know, I don't think it's trial or one like OJ or whatever, but I walked into the building and there was like this reception area and there were these two ladies working there and I walk in and I'm sure I was plenty early and they said, "Okay, name." And I'm like, "Miller." So they start going through their paperwork and they're going through the filing cabinets and they come back and they said, "What'd you say your name was?" I'm like, "Miller." "Can you spell it?" Like the beer.
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But they were looking and looking, could not find the paperwork.
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So now I'm really starting to sweat because the one lady says, "You know what?
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"The judge might have his paperwork already." I'm like, "Oh, great!" And I had this picture in my mind that the judge was like sitting in his office He's like, "I can't wait to throw the book at this guy." And like, I just had this whole thing, like I'm like, "Oh, this is, "I'm gonna tell my wife I loved her." And like, I had this whole, well anyways, I'm standing there sweating and they're looking on their desk and the filing cabinets and everything for the paperwork.
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It just so happens the judge walked through the reception area and he was looking at something.
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He had like a paper in his hand or whatever.
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And he was walking through, like I said, and there's me standing there sweating through my suit and everything.
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And they said, "Hey, we can't find some paperwork here." And Judge was like, "What's the name?" And they're like, "Miller." And the judge goes, "Oh, it's been taken care of." And he just kept walking.
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And I'm like, "I'm sorry, what'd he say?" They said, "Oh, the judge said it's been taken care of.
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"You can go." I did back handsprings down Route 8.
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But you know what?
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So should you.
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Because there's a lot of Christians that are living that scenario that I was living in.
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That you're like, what am I gonna say when I stand before God someday?
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Because I know I'm guilty.
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I guess I'm just gonna have to go before God someday and say, God, please show me some mercy.
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But what if God says this?
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They got this whole scenario in their mind.
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And I'm gonna tell you something right now, is you're gonna show up and you're gonna be standing in God's little reception area, and God's gonna come through and he's gonna say, "It's been taken care of." That's what it means when God says, "I will remember their sins no more." It doesn't mean absent-minded old man has things slipping through.
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It means I've chosen to take that paperwork and put it in the shredder, and it's no longer an issue.
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It's been taken care of.
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So you're settled.
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Listen, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven, your sin has been taken away, and there's nothing else that can be done.
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and you can spend the rest of your life trying to fill the gap, and you're wasting your time, because it's been taken care of.
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I can live free of guilt before God, because of His promise in Jesus, because I believe that His blood accomplished the very things that He says right here it accomplished.
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I'm sanctified, my sin is gone, I'm secure.
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Therefore, because all that's true, I can be settled.
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But listen, if you've not received Christ and these promises sound exactly like what you need, I got great news for you.
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Today, today can be the day for you that you can be done with guilt forever.
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not forever, once for all, I believe is the way God put it.
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You can be done with your guilt once for all.
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Will you bow your heads with me, please?
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As the worship team makes their way forward.
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The Father in heaven, It is just a lack of believing your word.
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Maybe sometimes it's just a lack of knowing what your word actually says, but God, even those of us who have believed in Christ have been born again.
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We still walk around with this idea that we're guilty when your word makes it very clear that we are not.
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So Father, I pray that you would Renew our minds.
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Father, give us the ability to think the way you think.
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And yes, we are going to sin.
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And yes, you are still in the process of making us more and more like your son.
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But that sin does nothing to stop the relationship that you've provided.
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The Father, we can live, not trying to do work to fill that gap, not trying to constantly alleviate our guilt.
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We can live knowing that you have pronounced us perfectly righteous because of the work that your Son has accomplished on that cross and through resurrecting from that tomb.
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Father, today I want to pray for those who are sitting here or maybe watching this or listening to this later and they don't know you.
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The Father, they may feel like they could never come to you because they're guilty, when the reality is that taking away guilt, that automatically happens when you take away sin.
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So Father, minister your word and your grace to every heart here.
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That as we celebrate the resurrection of Christ today, let us also celebrate what that accomplished in our lives.
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We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Hebrews 10:1-18
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Why did God ordain the Old Covenant if it couldn’t really take away sin? Why would God allow it to be a constant reminder of sin?
What does it mean to be “sanctified”? How is sanctification both a condition and a process?
Why do you think many Christians struggle with the idea of “once for all” we are saved, sanctified, and secure?
Breakout
Pray for one another.