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What is the Endgame? · Rick Manis Ministries Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Want to talk to us this morning about the end game.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: What's it for?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: What what what even what is our purpose as Christians?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing or trying to do here now that we're born again?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've got eternal security.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and the first thing I think of is uh something I run into is I run into a lot, is I hear people say that now as Christians, what we endeavor to do here is to try to become more Christ-like.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or we uh some would say it this way, we want to get rid of all the sin that's in our lives.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um we want to try to behave in a way that exemplifies Christ and the standard of God's God's living, what God has for the world.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want to read out of Luke 4, and this is this is where Jesus goes at goes to church and they ask him to come up and read a scripture, and he steps up and he looks through the through the Bible, the Old Testament as they had it back then, and he looks through it and he finds in the books a place that he'd been look he was looking for on purpose.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he found a place in the book of Isaiah that was talking about him, and so he wanted to announce and to read to them what God is doing now, why he came, what his purpose is.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he said in verse 18, as he read, and this is New Living Translation, so the words are just close, but not exactly like a King James, but he says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: He sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come, or to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nowhere here does it say that He came to the earth to change our behavior.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've looked all through the book, and I don't see where the purpose of God sending the Son, the Father sending the Son, Jesus coming to us.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see that the end game was because he wanted our behavior to change.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the first thing that a religious mind will say is, well, Rick just don't care how people act.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's here, let's let's let this be made known and put it to bed once and for all if you don't have a clue.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sin is the most horrible, damning, killing thing.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: It destroys.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank the Father.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank the Lord that he came to earth to save us from our sin.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about that.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for him to save us from our sin?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean when John looked at Jesus in John 1.29 and saw Jesus walking by while he was baptizing in the river and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you just said he didn't come to change our behavior.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know I said that.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the same thing.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: However, anybody that knows anything about this knows that a relationship with God, which is which comes because of what Jesus did.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because to those who believed on him, John chapter 1 says, He gave them the right to become the sons of God.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: We can know him, we can be in the family, we can know the Father.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus talked about that a lot.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so, if you know anything about this, you know that knowing God changes you.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Changes you for the better.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It fills your heart with such fullness and such love that you don't need the selfishness, the self-protection, the self-defense.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: That causes every war and conflict and argument, church split and everything else.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: That causes every despicable deed from when Cain killed Abel all the way up to now.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: That it's knowing God that changes those things about a human.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: His end game, if I can go ahead and give it to you, was that he wanted to be with you while we were yet sinners.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted, and and us being sinners, according to the knowledge of good and evil, as it was expressed in the law, us being sinners kept us from the goodness of God, from knowing God, from the blessing of God.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: We were alienated from God because of that, the Bible says, and we were enemies in our minds with God.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: There was a separation.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And throughout thousands of years of the knowledge of good and evil, it never worked to breach the gap between man and God.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so God just did it all himself.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm taking you out of the way.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing every bit of this myself, and that way we can be together whether you're good or not.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: We can be together whether you never change or whether you change everything, we can be together.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what I want.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: God is love and he loves you.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: His end game was to be with you, enjoy you.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, so that where I am, you can be too.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is something that the Lord's been talking with me a lot in recent weeks and months, and um because how many believe that God loves us?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Anywhere I go, I can ask the Christian that, and we'll all agree that God loves us.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus loves me, this I know.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because the Bible tells me so.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's really about as far as it goes.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: But they believe it.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: They believe the Bible.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: They've committed to this truth, this book.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so they do believe that God loves them, but it's interesting that in our ministry and in our travels and in our dealings with Christians, almost all of our ministry, to the troubles that people are having and the struggles that people are having, get down to this one thing of trying to help them believe that God really loves them.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But they'll say, I know God loves me, but but then why is it that they have struggles with faith and trusting God because they don't really believe He loves them?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: They know it in their head.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: They have accepted it because they'll accept what this book says.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's true.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll accept it doctrinally, they'll accept it intellectually.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody asks them, they'll say, Yes, God loves us.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But in their private things, they struggle with the fact that, and I hear this a lot, and they say, but I just struggle with, I don't see how he can sometimes.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or I struggle with, it's hard to actually wrap my mind around the idea that God is as good as you say he is, Rick.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to believe that God would bless me that much unconditionally.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to believe that I have that much favor with God.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem like I do.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they struggle.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's these cup, these veils, these barriers in the way, and really what revelation is doing, what the Spirit of God is opening up to us as we open our heart humbly to hear whatever God has to say, whether we agree with it or not, if we just say, Lord, show me thy truth and open our heart and say, and I give you the right to tell me anything you want to tell me about you, about me, about my situation, about the sociopolitical activities going on.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: I give you the right to tell me anything that you had to say about it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as we do that, see what's happening is he's taking away the veils, if you will, the barriers that keep people from really enjoying this oneness with God and this love of God to where faith, you can't help but believe and trust him because you just know him.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: He is really that good, and he's that good to you.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you feel, you know this is not true because God is just big enough to make everybody feel like that, but somehow, amazingly, he makes you feel like you're his favor, like you're the only one that he loves.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that's not true, but it's that intimate, it's that real, and it's that personal.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one of the great miracles of this new birth, the new covenant, the born-again experience.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And why do people struggle?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that I run into people struggling to accept a love of God that could fill all their heart?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what happens.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how the change happens, here's how the fullness happens.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 3.19 is very good, very clear if you if you if you could accept this.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I pray that you would know the far-reaching aspects of the love of Christ so you can be filled with all the fullness of God.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: What does fullness mean?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: It means you are full, and there's no place in you anymore for any fear, for any hurt, any offense, any doubt.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: The offenses of the world don't hurt you anymore.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're full.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: When you still feel like you need to be filled, then that's gotta change, and she better change, and he better change, and this world better change, and this country better change, and the church better change, and all this gotta change, and God better do something for me to be happy here and for me to be fulfilled, because they and it's all because they don't haven't learned yet that God really loves them and in a way that fills their heart with the love that every human being is looking for, whether they know it or not.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it fills the heart, and that's what God wanted to do.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he knew.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: All he had to do was fill our hearts with the one thing we were longing for: completion, wholeness, that perfect, unconditional love of God with no strings attached that would flood and fill our heart, that had nothing to do with your ugliness.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Even on a personal level, you know this.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Your best friends, your best friends are the ones that know more about you, they know more of your ugly than the casual friend does.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: They've seen you're ugly, they've been with you in your ugly, and they're still with you today.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because they like you in spite of how ugly you can be.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's human.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about God.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: You like them.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're best friends, you like each other, you love each other, and when one of you poops your pants, the other one is there to help and clean it up instead of saying, that's it, I'm done.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking figuratively, not literally.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or literally, I guess, you know, it could be either way.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: But when you don't trust, when you're around people to say an accident like that would happen, and you're around people that you you don't know if they really like you, care about you that way, then you want to hide what you've done.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: You don't feel safe, right?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: You only feel safe with those that you know loves you.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And as we know God, we want to feel totally safe and secure.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how good God is.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: He fills you with that, and you get this sense of it, and it completes you.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know what I'm talking about.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're all growing in it, but it's happening, and it's happened to me.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, John said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go back to the story of Genesis chapter 3.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh just look at these two verses, and I refer to them a lot, but this is they've eaten of the knowledge of good and evil.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: They've chosen that knowledge.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: What man did to get a clear picture was that God made creation, he made us, and the Bible says he made it all good.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was good.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't here's a good answer for it when people say, then why does God do this?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And why does he do that?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: When God made everything, he made it all good.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing but goodness for him to do.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Man made it bad.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And man made the choice.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Man made the choice to say, okay, I know you made it all good.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's all wonderful here, but I'm going to unplug from life and I'm going to plug into me and I'm going to do this now.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be like God.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have the knowledge of good and evil.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I can handle this.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing it myself.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, with this knowledge of good and evil, I might even have a better idea than you do, Father.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And people still struggle with that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's what, with their trust in the Father, I hear it all the time.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, I know what he said, but I still feel like my way might actually be a little better.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's called carnality.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: But so we unplug from life and we plug into ourselves, and we take the knowledge of good and evil.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And verse 7 says, Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew, they knew, they knew that they were naked.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: They knew that they were naked.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: They knew that they were naked.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because they have a knowledge now of good and evil.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now this knowledge of good and evil has brought a shame and has brought an accusation on them that was not there before.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Their condition was the same, but the accusation was not there.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have an enemy that's called the accuser?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: The accuser of the brethren?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's easy for a Christian to just say the devil's doing this, and the devil did that, and the devil, and whatever they have in their mind might be somebody with two horns or something like that.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But and and and whatever.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: But biblically, let's look at this.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: What was it that brought the accusation?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, look down there at verse 11.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because they they hid, they they hid from God, and God said, Why are you hiding?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Well, we were ashamed because we were naked and we were afraid.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And verse 11, God said, Well, who told you you were naked?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you that you shall eat?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now watch this.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see anywhere necessarily the snake talking to them again.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Even though if I had time, I could show you the relationship of that.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: But they didn't need anybody else talking to them.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't need somebody with two horns and a pitchfork coming and telling them that because the knowledge of good and evil told them that.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are y'all here?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: See, I tell people, you don't need some personal devil always attacking you with his pitchfork.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Your own knowledge of good and evil will kill you.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: It'll condemn you, it'll accuse you, it'll cause you to fear, it'll cause you to doubt.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are y'all here?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's the knowledge of goodness.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we got.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now we were tempted by the whisperer.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that word serpent means.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Na Kosh.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: It means to whisper to his, to, to, to whisper a spell.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were the Bible says in the book of James that a man is tempted when he's drawn away of his own desires.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had a desire to be like God's, but not but not just let not not just let God, who created us in his image, just declare to us that we are.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: We want the knowledge of good and evil because we feel like we'll be more secure in this, because here we are.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about this a lot.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: God didn't create us with any armory or protection or or whatever, because he was our covering, he was our protection, he was our provider, all the other beasts of the field, all the other creation, they were equipped with their own protection, their own way of providing that God set in motion.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But with us, it was a relationship.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Us we were said, we were created for a special thing just to be with him.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: He would be our life, he would be our provision, he would be our protection, and that's why Jesus said, Come back to the Father, let him be that again, because we're bringing you back home to the garden where you were naked and not ashamed, no more shame anymore.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: That can only be said, How did you know?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Who told you that you were naked?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have that, and you can't feel that unless you've got the knowledge of good and evil.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Did you eat of that tree?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so what that tells us is this now, this is original sin that we're reading about, right?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: By one man's sin, by one man's offense, by one man's disobedience.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sin came into the world.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, read your Bible and understand something, because in our mind we think of sins, but the Bible speaks more predominantly of sin.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to take away the sin, sin singular, of the world.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: What was the sin?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: That word is hamartia.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hamartia.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Look it up, it means to miss the mark.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: When you look it up in the concordance, Strong's Greek concordance, see it means to miss the mark, to miss the mark so that you do not share in the prize, it means to err.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Paul said in Philippians, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of verses before that, he says, forgetting those things that are behind.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: He says, excuse me, before that, he says, he says, I count all these other things that I was doing before.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he lived, he says, concerning the law, man, I was more zealous of anybody.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was embracing that knowledge of good and evil.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I brought shame on people.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I exposed their shame and I carried my own too.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I was so zealous for it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: But now, counting all those lost, all those lost, I count them all lost for the more excellent thing of knowing him, that I may just know him.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a difference between knowing good and evil and knowing him.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing him is life.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing him is life.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing the other, and a lot of it we get from just gaining facts about Jesus from the Bible, which is true, but people don't know how to rightly divide this thing.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you can have have religious arguments with two people that both believe in the Lord and both believe in the Bible, and they can prove their point, and you can prove yours, and none of you get anywhere because there's a lot of scripture in here, and a lot of them, you know, you can form doctrines from a whole lot of things.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And all you do is go around in argument.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have all these different ideas and all these different beliefs, different denominations.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even within denominations, there's different streams of thought, and even in different in individual churches, they have different streams of thought going on about all this.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And most of them are getting it from gaining the facts that they see here cerebrally, and not knowing the love of God that fills you with the fullness of God.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because he came to give you what only his spirit can give you: love.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Joy.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Peace.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people are, people say, well, I'm all about being saved by grace, too, but let me make this point.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that all of everybody agrees when I ask them, does God love us?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: They all say yes, but in their hearts they struggle with the idea of being filled with the love of God.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because, and and in all my all my Christian life, I can't say that I've ever heard anyone say, any preacher of the Word of God, say, God does not love us.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: They've all said God does love us.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Anywhere I've sat under for any length of time, any church, they they talk, because it's in the word, it's there.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to see.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: They'll tell us God loves us.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: God loves you.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then why is it that with all of these Christian ministers telling us that God loves us, that the hearers still struggle with believing it?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you why.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because with all these preachers that tell us that God loves us, they throw their butt in the way.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because they get scared.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God loves you unconditionally.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: But He still expects us to live right.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And while there's a truth in all that, but what happens is this is why the hero struggles, is because they hear the but, and the but overrides what the first part.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that becomes the major point.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now people are still struggling to try to live right, forgetting that God still loves them unconditionally, and they get the idea that it's when they live right, when they get their ducks in a row, when they get to a certain condition, that everything will be better with them and God.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: But he's still just.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: That means he's got a punishment.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: But God loves you, but if you sin willfully after you've known the truth, but God loves you, but if you want to get blessed, that's the one I wish to hear.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God will love you, but you won't be blessed unless.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: God will love you, but you won't have favor.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: God will love you, but you won't get your prayers answered if you do this.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we didn't even, even though we will say, yeah, our preacher taught us God loves us, we kind of just pushed it off to the side because we remember the butt.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: We live all around the butt there.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to do the butt.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not that they didn't tell us God loves us.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: They told us God loves us, but they added the butt, and that's what got in our way.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And God's unconditional, if you can know, if you want to know the height and breadth and the depth and the length of the love of Christ, then don't throw anybody's butt in there with it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's God loves you, period.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: No conditions.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: He came and died for you, so you don't have to fulfill any conditions.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that what we couldn't do ourselves because our flesh was too weak, God did it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: God did it and he condemned that sin in the flesh, it's been taken care of.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: He ain't got to condemn it no more.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can you hear me on that back row?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: How come you ain't standing up and shouting then?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, so that the righteous requirements of the law, the righteous requirements that it took for you to get blessed, for you to be favored, for you to be happy, for you to have peace, for you to have whatever that thick book of promises gave us, the righteous requirements of all of that would be fulfilled for us in Him.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came and I came to give good news to the poor.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I came to open the sight of those who were, not to change the activity of a blind man, but to open the eyes of a blind man that would change their whole life.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I came not to demand that somebody get out of prison, but to proclaim liberty to a prisoner.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, to say the door's already open, you don't have to do anything else, it's over.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: The end game has already happened with Jesus.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're not working towards an end game.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: God, the Father, had been working towards an end game for thousands of years, ever since the fall of man, and the end game came with Jesus the Son.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Before that, there was work up till the Son came.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: After the Son is Rick Tober.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's harvest.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now we bear fruit.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: We don't work towards any end game.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: The end game has happened and we bear fruit.
• 27:22
  unknown: Whew.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I agree, Rick.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, a Christian, if he's really a Christian, they need to, we need to see some fruit in their lives.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: You ever heard that one?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you're going to be a Christian, if you're going to be a believer, people have told me, said Rick, it's dangerous to tell everybody God loves them unconditionally.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to tell them, we need to tell them if they're expected to bear fruit, too.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what they mean when they say that?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even biblically sound.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: What they mean when they say that is we expect them, if they're smoking, to quit smoking.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: If they're fornicating, quit fornicating.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: If they're drinking, quit drinking.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they're cussing, quit cussing, whatever it is, we expect them to bear fruit.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, while we do expect, we do expect the change because we know the power of it.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit is not the change in behavior that way.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit of being saved, the fruit of the Spirit of God.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit of the Spirit is not that you change how you dress, is not that you quit certain activities.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the fruit of the Spirit.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit of the Spirit is love.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Joy.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is what God wants.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: God wasn't so concerned about you quitting the tobacco and whatever else and all the other things you might do.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Playing them ungodly card games.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember going to a church that, hey, you couldn't do nothing.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they are ungodly.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a godly one back there.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can get that one for Christmas.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: But we what we're talking, we're looking at behavior change, and we think that's the fruit.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit, what God more cared about, because he already knew our activity.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: He knew we were sinners.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: He knew that our activity was bad so much of the time.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, and these people who are doing horrible things that are hurting themselves and other people cannot save themselves.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in spite of how they act, in spite of how they look outwardly, I'm going to put inside them love, joy, peace.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they still do that, Rick, yes, even if they still do that, they can have peace with God because it's not contingent upon behavior.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Either you're liking it and thinking about this, or you're just getting totally ticked.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: See, what the goodness, the grace of God, the love of God, what it does.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: See, people say, people think, well, what it does, it makes it makes too light of sin.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: What it does, if it appears that way, is because it makes so much of Jesus.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: It makes so much of Jesus.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: That sin is not such a big, gigantic foe for mankind anymore.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: There is one thing, one way that behavior can change, one way that the evil can start doing good works.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's one way, and I'm a testimony of that.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because I did a lot of things.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Criminal activity.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Selfish, selfish, horrible, immoral activity.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Me.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: My heart changed, not by the knowledge of good and evil, by knowing the one who loved me and filled my heart that I was trying to do everything else to take care of me.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had plugged into myself and I was all about my own knowledge of good and evil.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And my knowledge of good and evil was what benefited me at the time.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or I thought it would.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I made horrible choices.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: One day I opened my heart to one who would love me no matter what, even like that.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Are y'all hearing me?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they told me, said, It don't matter what you've done, Rick.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Come just as you are.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't care.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: He loves you with no condition.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I believed them, and I came, and they were right.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: He loved me, took me with no conditions.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then after that, they showed me the fine print.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, after this.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: May cause condemnation, accusation, self-righteousness.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you have any of these symptoms, please call a doctor.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: After that, it was, okay, now that you're born again, now that you got saved by grace, now that you came just as you are, and it didn't matter how you were, because God was going to take you and love you anyway, now it's time for you to start changing.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And after six months, when there were certain things that were still hadn't changed, they were like, What's wrong with that?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's time to put some pressure and some condemnation on Rick because you can't still be doing that and be a Christian.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you said that was then, this is now.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's kind of why we got the idea of coming to the altar and just getting saved every month because it was a whole lot easier to get a fresh start again.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Than to try to stay saved from that first time.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: We were in a cycle.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: We were getting dizzy doing that whole thing.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Coming back, coming back, coming back.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Rededicating.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 3 says that if the good news is hidden, if the good news is veiled, if the good news is hard to see, it's veiled to those whom the God of this world has blinded so that they cannot see the glorious, glorious good news of Christ.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: What's the blinders?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's the knowledge of good and evil.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's still holding out, holding on to.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: But we've got to do the right and wrong.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to stand for the good against the evil.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're both the same tree.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: From the same sin.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're both from the same offense, the same missing the mark.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: We were barking up the wrong tree when we did that.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: When John the Baptist was speaking of Jesus, he says, now the axe is laid to the root of that tree.
• 34:05
  unknown: Whew.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes a faith, a humility, and a trust to say, okay, I'm going to count all that loss.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: All that stuff that I counted as something.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: This knowledge of good and evil, this thing that I thought was helping me, this thing that I thought made me right.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Made all the rest of them wrong.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: I count it as loss.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going with this other tree.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to eat of life.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if they tell me I gotta complete these steps first, no, I'm just gonna eat.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna freely eat like you told me to.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: You said freely eat.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you said, if I'm thirsty, freely drink.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't tell me to get my ducks in a row.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't tell me to straighten up first.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't tell me to change my behavior.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: You just said, eat first.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let me let me finish with this.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: With uh, are y'all hearing anything?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus took the Last Supper with his disciples, they were having what the Jews now call a satyr.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was a Passover meal.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in the the traditions of the Passover meal, there were a whole lot of things, but one of the things was that you would take this bread and you would break it.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: The server would break the bread, like Jesus did at the Last Supper.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he was doing.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was the the head of the meal there.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Server.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: You break the bread, and you look at it, and whichever piece is the smaller after you when you break it, you give that to eat, and you and that's called the bread of affliction.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it symbolizes all the affliction of the Jews coming, you know, in Egypt.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the bigger piece is called the Afikomin, which is a dessert.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: You save it for last, and it's the bread of blessing.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the bread of abundance.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't eat it.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: So in that one, they put it, usually they'll wrap it in a napkin and they'll hide it.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: They'll have somebody hide it somewhere in the house because nobody can eat that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the dessert, the offikomen.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's the last thing you can eat.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go through all these other steps first.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have to eat this and eat that, and then you have to sing this song, and then you have to say this, and then you have to say that, and eat this and eat that.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, only after you've done all of these, fulfilled all of these steps of the of the meal, then can you finally, will somebody go and find the bread of abundance and blessing, and then you can eat that.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that Jesus shocked his disciples.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because when he broke the bread, he said, take it and eat it.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't hide it.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't wrap it in the napkin.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't hide it.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: He broke it and he says, Take it and eat it.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is saying, I'm fulfilling all that.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to go through all this anymore.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can have the dessert.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm taking you straight to the end game.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can eat the aphikomen.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now all the other things have been fulfilled.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've fulfilled it all for me.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here, take and eat the bread of blessing and the abundance.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: No more the bread of affliction.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: No more going through the rest of these steps.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's no more something in your future.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I firmly believe, and and I've studied this a whole lot.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And different theologians will argue both sides of it.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I also firmly believe when he took that cup of blessing, that in that dinner, what they did, there was another thing they couldn't partake of either.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: See, there were certain things that could, that was called the cup of Elijah.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that cup of wine was reserved until the time of restoration of all things.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's why in the dessert, when they would take that cup, they would send someone to the door and say, Has Elijah come?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because Malachi promised that Elijah would come before the great day.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: When restoration would come, would happen.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: The disciples asked Jesus about it.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why do the scribes say that Elijah got to come first?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: He said, He did.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: He did.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: He did.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And since he did, Jesus says, take this cup and drink all of it.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: The end game happened with Jesus, not with us.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are y'all here?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Would y'all stand up?