Latest / Relish: a Christian podcast / Job, Satan, and the Power of Faith: A Deep Dive

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Job, Satan, and the Power of Faith: A Deep Dive · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
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  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or
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  gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what we bring to your table today might
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  add some spice to your life welcome back to another episode of relish i am rowan
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  miller and this is don patterson don how are you doing pretty good pretty good
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  for the shape we're in yep that's sort of fuzzy on top, sort of flat on the bottom.
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  That's the shape we're in. Yeah. Well, we're filming on this foggy Monday morning,
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  but maybe we're a little foggy too. I don't know.
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  Oh, it could be we're a little foggy. Sunday was a big day.
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  Yeah. Yeah. It was good. It was good. It was a big day, but it was good.
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  All right. We'll jump right into the questions here.
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  Why can Satan be in the presence of God if we as humans can't? Oh.
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  Is it because he's like- He is a deity. I mean, he is a heavenly being, if you will.
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  Not a deity as God is a deity, but he's a heavenly being.
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  And you're right. We see him in the presence of God, especially in the book
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  of Job, other places as well.
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  But yeah, he is definitely in the position.
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  I think it might be helpful for us to take that Job scene just the way it is
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  and not diminish it or embellish it either way.
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  Satan in Job chapter one is the accuser and he serves a purpose in the kingdom
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  as being one who can accuse of sin.
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  Okay, if we are sinners and we never understand the fact that we are sinners,
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  I mean, what points out the fact we're sinners?
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  What points out the fact we're sinners? I mean, doesn't Satan sort of have a
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  role in calling us out as sinners?
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  Yeah. And so, in other words, for us to know that we're sinners,
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  don't we need an accuser?
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  And Satan does that role quite well. Yeah. And that's just why when he's talking
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  about in going, he's in God's presence and God asks him where he's been.
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  He says, oh, he's been all over the world.
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  And have you considered my servant Job? It's almost as if God has a little pride there.
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  He's considered my servant Job. And there is nothing, there is no one on earth
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  like him. He is blameless and upright and a man who fears God and shuns evil.
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  And the Satan, the accuser, comes at this argument.
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  Does Job fear God for nothing? Have
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  you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?
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  You've blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.
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  But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has. and surely he will curse you to your face.
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  And so it becomes almost like there's a contest, if you will,
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  in this situation for Job's soul.
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  And it's between God and who Job acknowledges God.
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  Job walks with God. He puts everything before the Lord, even to the point that
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  when his children party.
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  He makes sure he sacrifices and intercedes for them. So he's a very godly man. Yeah.
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  And he's been blessed because of that.
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  So Satan has a case here, if you will, saying, okay, because he's so blessed,
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  no wonder he blesses the Lord.
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  No wonder he keeps his life in order.
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  And so, very well then, the Lord said, you can attack everything that he has,
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  but you cannot lay a finger on the man himself.
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  And so Satan went out of his presence, and in a day's time, Job's world changes.
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  I mean, really changes.
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  So that at verse 20, Job gets up and tears his robe, shaves his head,
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  falls on the ground in worship, and said, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I will depart.
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  The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, may the name of the Lord be praised.
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  And in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
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  So Satan's role in the heavenly realm, if you will be, well, it's the accuser.
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  Now, granted, his pride caused him to fall and he inherited this role,
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  if you will, because it is a contest of souls.
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  Our challenge is not principalities here Ephesians chapter 6 verse 10.
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  Ephesians Ephesians it's right there see I think maybe I need to get my new
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  Bible out because crispy pages turn faster than non-crispy pages,
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  here it is oh and I put something on top of it for our struggle is not against
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  flesh and blood but against the rulers against authorities against the powers
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  of this dark world against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
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  So it acknowledges that Satan is a heavenly force, a spiritual force to be dealt with.
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  So that when the day of evil come, we are able to stand our ground.
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  That's why we put the armor of God on.
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  So yeah, he's able, in one sense, he is able to meet God close to his level,
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  not entirely because ultimately the battle is already done.
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  The victory is already had Satan's already in his place.
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  He just wants to take as many as possible with him to get there.
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  Yeah. So we just won't give him that opportunity.
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  Right guys. Stay strong in the Lord, not give Satan any ground,
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  just like Job. All those things could happen to Job.
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  He didn't. Yeah. He didn't budge. Yeah.
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  The Lord was still God and he worshiped him. I think it's kind of impressive too.
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  Job had a lot. He was wealthy. He had family.
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  But in the New Testament, it's hard for wealthy people to stay faithful.
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  And Jesus says that.
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  But Job was still faithful, even though he had everything, still was thanking
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  God. And there's a key piece in there that I think needs to be acknowledged.
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  What does it do to us spiritually, emotionally, physically, when we have the
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  means to do anything we want done?
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  Trying to just like do it ourselves. We do it ourselves. It takes,
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  we're no longer dependent upon the Lord.
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  There needs to continue to be, even in a mass of our wealth,
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  a dependence on Almighty God.
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  Job acknowledged in that part that the Lord gave him everything.
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  The Lord giveth and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
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  This life circumstance we're living in might be given to us by Almighty God.
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  We might as well acknowledge it's His and we didn't make it.
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  You know, all those really good decisions that made us money had more to do with God than it did us.
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  And so if we maintain our dependence on God and our interaction with God,
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  that's where worship is. That's where worship is.
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  The trouble is, when we start getting means, then we don't tend to think about God as much.
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  Jesus talks about this a lot in Matthew 6, and he talks about,
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  worry about what you're going to wear.
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  Well, God adorns the lilies, and even Solomon in all of his glories was not adorned as one of these.
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  How much do we really believe in the very core of our faith that no matter what,
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  when we understand God and we believe in him, that he will take care of us?
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  I mean, that's basically what Jesus is getting to in that passage,
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  because he ends it with worry.
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  Think about that. So he talks about means, talks about all this stuff, and most of us think,
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  challenge here, most of us think that if we have our 401k in the right place
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  and we've got our future taken care of, then we don't have to worry.
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  But what do we worry about? I mean, most of us tend to have something we're worried about.
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  You're going to be senior this coming year, right? Yeah.
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  No pressure there, right? No pressure. Not that I'm feeling yet.
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  Which school you're going to go to and how's the sports going to go this fall
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  and spring and next summer.
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  No pressure there. Don't worry.
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  Why don't we worry? Because we have Jesus. We have faith in a God who's got this. Yeah.
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  Same situation with Job. So Satan only has power, even though he walks,
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  he has some power on the level of God, not the same as God, as a heavenly being,
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  he still has a lot of influence.
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  We just don't want to give him any more traction.
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  Than possible, especially in our lives. Boy, I sort of took a shotgun to that
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  subject, didn't I? I'm sorry.
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  All over the place. Yeah. Well, when you were reading Job, I just glanced at
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  verse 5, the very bottom it said,
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  Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and
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  purify them, rising early in the morning, to offer burnt offerings for all of them.
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  For Job thought, perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.
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  So he was always. Yeah. Always. He knew it wasn't him, almost like.
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  But he was interceding for his children.
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  Yeah. Taking care of his children, like you said. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Yeah. The person of Job is quite interesting.
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  And by the time you get to 38, 39, 40, you see, while he's really good,
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  he still has a couple things that God points out.
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  In those verses, yeah.
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  All right. But he tried mighty hard. Yeah. What are some of the main issues
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  that Christianity faces today?
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  Main issues that Christianity faces today.
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  I think one, and I come at this time after time after time after time,
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  is biblical illiteracy.
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  Yeah. I remember. We have these, we have these Bible setting on our,
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  on our tables, on our bookshelves, but have we read it beginning to end?
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  Chronological Bible, have nothing against chronological Bible,
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  as long as you can go to things, book, chapter, and verse, when you're talking about a subject.
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  But have we ever read it stem to stern? Out of all of the library books.
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  That is available to us as Christians. There should be absolutely, I don't.
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  There should be absolutely no other book you know better than the Bible.
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  Not even Good Housekeeping's cookbook.
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  It should be known better than the Bible. And I say that because We, as Christians,
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  have lost a lot of credibility by not being able to put the questions that come to us in context.
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  And if you remember correctly, that's exactly what Jesus had to do when Satan
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  brought questions of Scripture to him.
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  And so, what it says in the Bible, doesn't sell.
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  We're under that all day. I mean, really, if you're in the atmosphere of being
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  able to have questions come from unbelievers, they're going to come with questions of Scripture.
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  And we need to know not only where that Scripture sets, the context in which
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  it sets, so that we can answer like Jesus did.
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  So, number one, that's number one. They also might not actually say what the
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  verse actually is. Right.
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  It makes your question sound worse than it actually is. Exactly.
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  And they love to do that because it definitely deals with, okay,
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  it's in your Bible, and if it's in your Bible, then you believe it.
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  But if they've taken it out of context, which is usually what happens,
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  then they can manipulate the surroundings of that question or that comment and that scripture.
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  The second is, I think we need to deal with our faith.
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  What is it we actually believe? And here lately,
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  more often, I'm trying to take our congregations back to like the Apostles'
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  Creed or the Nicene Creed as places to say, okay,
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  do we believe in the one God who's manifest as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
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  Do we actually believe that Christ was born of a Virgin Mary?
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  Do we actually believe that He lived and ultimately died for our sins?
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  Do we understand the place the cross has in our salvation and that turning point
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  that the cross was in our salvation?
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  Those are things that we must have and get down pat.
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  My concern is that so much of the individuals who call themselves Christians
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  don't take the Bible seriously and don't understand what their faith really means.
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  Do they understand? Do we have the same faith? Because I think in some circles,
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  we may not even have the same, may not even have the same faith.
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  You know, well, somebody doesn't believe in creation the same way I do.
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  That's different than somebody who doesn't believe in the cross the same way I do.
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  And if we don't believe in the blood of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, that's pretty major.
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  I remember a conversation years ago, somebody was working on a bloodless atonement
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  model, and it came out of liberation theology and some of those big, heady discussions.
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  And I thought, wait a minute, how can you read the New Testament and believe
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  in an atonement that did not require the sacrifice of blood and that Christ
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  actually made that sacrifice?
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  I never heard that it ever got published or ever actually got any traction,
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  but it got me to thinking, are we really working on that in theology,
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  that there would even be a space for a model of atonement between us and God without blood?
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  Was he trying to cite the Bible?
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  He was trying to cite the Bible and do that. But if we go to Hebrews,
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  it says there is no forgiveness of sins.
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  There is no atonement without the shedding of blood.
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  And I think that is Hebrews chapter 10.
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  You just have to ignore like 99% of Scripture and use like 1%.
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  In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed by blood without the shedding of blood.
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  There is no forgiveness. And then he goes on and talks about the sacrifice.
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  Just as man is destined to die once and after that the judgment,
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  so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people,
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  and he will appear a second time not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to
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  those who are waiting. So that, yeah.
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  Yeah. Maybe it's nine. Yeah. Well, 10 says it's impossible for the blood of
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  bulls and goats to take away sins. Right. So...
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  Seems like there was some place that even says it more blatantly than that.
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  I'll have to look it up for next time.
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  Yeah. But the blood sacrifice has been ever since God had to,
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  basically God got skins for Adam and Eve.
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  So to cover their nakedness at the garden in chapter three.
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  Well, what happened? Those animals, those animals of God's very own creation
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  had to give their lives, were taken,
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  if you will, by God as a sacrifice to cover Adam and Eve.
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  In the same way, our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.
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  Can we imagine? It's very parallel because Christ was willing to go to the cross
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  to cover our sins with his blood.
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  God's still at the center of our sins being covered. Isn't that neat?
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  That is. Beginning to end. Yeah. Well, thank you, Don. I got worded again. I'm sorry.
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  No, that's all good. We like it like that. There's a preacher in me coming out.
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  All right. Well, if you have any more, if Don's wording has brought any more
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  questions, feel free to send them to me.
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  Or Alex. Or Alex. Just don't send them to me. Not to Don.
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  He can't know they're coming. No, he can't know they're coming.
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  And if I know they're coming, I might have a whole sermon on that one.
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  Yeah. He might have several episodes.
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  That's true. That's true. That's the downside. Yeah. Yeah.
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  All right. Well, thank you guys for joining us. We'll see you next time. Lord willing.
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  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
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  ministry by sharing it with others. Our goal is to help each other grow deeper
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  in our understanding of who God is and is calling to us in our daily lives.
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  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.