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Are All Sins Equal? · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Music.
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  To flavor, to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
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  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
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  How you doing, Don? I'm doing pretty good for a guy my age.
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  And how are you doing? I'm doing well. Yeah. I'm excited for this. Are you? Okay.
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  Well, that means you might be able to quiet us today, huh?
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  Probably not. Can we stump Don today? Can we stump Don today?
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  Probably Don. Okay. Well, let's give it a running chance.
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  All right. This one's just interesting. Luke 14, 25 to 26.
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  Do we actually have to hate our parents and ourselves?
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  Oh, my. Yeah.
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  Do we have to hate our parents and ourselves because? Because, where does he say this?
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  14, 25, 26.
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  14, 25, 20. Oh, yes. So he's talking to a large crowd.
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  And yeah, this is his shocker. So he's basically getting their attention with this statement.
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  If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife,
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  child, his brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
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  And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
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  Do we have to hate? No. But what he is saying is, we can't let anything,
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  anything, we can't love anything more than him.
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  So he's using the contrary, hate, as the verb, and saying, if you don't come
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  hating father, mother, wife, children,
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  brothers, sisters, I mean, he doesn't want us to hate our wives. No.
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  But what he's saying is he can't be my disciple.
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  In other words, if you put them first, you can't be a disciple.
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  And that's really hard for us to get our head around.
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  But he's saying first him, first the kingdom. him.
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  And Jesus lived that way. If we go to John's gospel, he was always looking for
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  what the Father was doing ahead of him.
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  So it was priority above anything else to see what God wanted.
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  And he would spend time in prayer to find out what God wanted.
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  He's saying the same thing here, but he's talking to a group of people that were.
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  Really excited because of all he was doing, and really willing to follow this
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  guy that was doing all this stuff.
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  In John's gospel, at this point, a lot of people fell away because Jesus was asking him too much.
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  I mean, basically he's saying here, anyone who does not carry his cross,
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  do you know what the cross was like in that time?
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  It was a brutal form of execution.
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  And while it took Jesus just a few hours to die, which would be plenty,
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  the cross was actually the kind of punishment that would take days to die from
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  in most situations, because you basically had to lift yourself up to breathe,
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  and between asphyxiation, when you finally got weak enough, you couldn't lift
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  yourself up to breathe, and the loss of blood from the puncture wounds and the
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  scourging that happened ahead of time.
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  So a lot of people could live for days and days.
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  He's using that illustration that you have to carry that, not somebody else
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  carry it, but you need to realize that death is always at your door by following Jesus.
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  And let's just be really honest. when we have children, a wife and children,
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  we do tend to live for them because they're very important to us.
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  And he moves on and then says, so you got to check this out.
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  Anybody who wants to build a tower, won't he first sit down and estimate the cost?
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  And so to this group of people, Jesus is illustrating, hey if you're going to
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  follow me you need to realize that this event this cross event is coming,
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  and don't follow me unless you're willing to carry your own cross,
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  yeah check out the price ahead of time and then he brings these two perils well
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  with salt that'd be yeah yeah so it's no no we don't need to no in fact love
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  them like jesus would Yeah. Yeah.
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  But Jesus loved them so much that he put his life on the line for them. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
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  And we would have to be willing to do that for him.
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  Exactly. It's a high cost.
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  I don't know as we often think of it in that way in our North American atmosphere.
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  Yeah, not much. Not much.
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  Well, you got that one. Not still next. Yeah. Okay.
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  Next one. Hammer the next one down.
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  Are there different levels of sins? Oh, man.
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  Oh. So, in God's way of thinking, there are not different levels of sin.
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  In our way of thinking, we naturally go there.
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  So, in James chapter 2, he talks to this same thing, and he points out the fact
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  that any of these sins separate us from God.
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  And really, any sin does separate us from God. We need to acknowledge that sin,
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  in any of its forms, separates us from God.
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  But our ancestor, Abraham, was considered righteous for what he did and offered his son at the altar.
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  And he talked about faith and actions and scriptures fulfilled. And credit to him.
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  Oh, where is it? Oh, here, here.
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  You keep the royal law of Scripture, you don't find favoritism. Oh, where is it?
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  For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not commit murder.
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  If you commit adultery, but do commit murder, you're still a lawbreaker.
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  Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom,
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  because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who does not have mercy.
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  And mercy triumphs over judgment. So basically he's saying, James would say,
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  there is not a difference.
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  I mean, if you're not guilty of adultery, but you are of murder,
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  you're still guilty of murder, right?
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  You've broken the law.
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  So they aren't. And what's interesting is the list that Paul puts in place,
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  we start to qualify them and say, well, this one's worse than that one.
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  And of course, we tend to put the sex one. So they get a lot of airtime.
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  But in reality, they're in the same list as gossip.
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  And we don't really have a – we aren't excommunicating people for gossip,
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  but we might if they went out and raped somebody.
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  We might excommunicate them from the church.
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  We aren't excommunicating people for drunkenness, but it's in the same list as some of the others.
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  So Paul doesn't make a lot of difference between them.
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  James doesn't make a difference between them. But for some reason,
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  we think, well, this is a lot worse sin than that.
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  And that's not the way the Bible reads.
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  Yeah. We naturally compare. We naturally compare. Everything.
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  And I think Satan thrives on that.
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  Because then, well, look what he does. A terrible sinner. I don't do anything like that.
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  Of course, I'm talking about him doing it, so I'm gossiping.
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  I mean, we tend to do that and forget the fact that all sin separates us from God.
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  And if we are honest with that, maybe we can come closer to God by confessing all our sins.
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  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is one sin, right,
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  that will never be forgiven.
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  That's blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. Yeah. And so, I notice there's people
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  that take Jesus' name in vain.
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  There's people who take God's name in vain. But you notice nobody takes the
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  Holy Spirit's name in vain.
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  Yeah. That's good. But that's good because that is the kind of sin that,
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  yeah, Jesus says himself is unpardonable.
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  I would sort of take that as gospel. But if it came out of the mouth of Jesus,
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  that's probably unforgivable. Yeah.
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  Especially since he knew the cross was coming.
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  So it's pretty serious business when you're working with that,
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  talking about the Holy Spirit and its work.
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  Yeah. So there isn't a difference, but we like to make one. There isn't a difference.
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  As far as being fallen, all sin takes us down.
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  But we tend to make that.
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  Maybe that's another one of our sins. So we make a difference in those sins that God doesn't make.
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  I mean, sin is basically missing the mark that God has for us.
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  And when we miss the mark, any time we miss the mark, no matter how far,
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  it's still sin. I mean, you don't get a bullseye unless you hit it,
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  and it's the smallest part of the target.
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  So I think we've become comfortable with the outer rings of the target,
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  and God's trying to get us to the bullseye.
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  And we can only make the bullseye in Christ. That's the only way. Yeah.
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  Yeah, you got that one. 0 for 2.
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  0 for 2. Hey, we're getting there. I'm much better than my basketball or my
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  golf score would be. Yeah.
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  Well, I'm 0 for 2. I haven't stumped you. Oh, you. Oh, okay. You're 2 for 2. Okay.
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  Okay, I hear you now. Yeah. And golfing, I guess, a low score is good. It is.
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  Since we just had christmas as like
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  reading through the christmas story and several times
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  and i kind of noticed how it like the
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  star like who could see who all could see the star and like did it go away and
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  because it was like a while since when the wise men actually got to jesus right
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  so was it just was just oh we know a sky the whole time probably happened within those two years,
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  it might have taken them almost all that time to get to Jesus.
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  And we do know that there were astronomical anomalies during that period of
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  time, and the star pretty much is documented astrologically.
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  So we do know there was a star like that. It seemed to be a long-term star as
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  in that maybe up to two years it was visible.
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  It was been visible to everybody, but I don't know if you're sort of like I
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  am. I look up in the sky, yeah, there's stars. Big deal.
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  Big hairy deal. And so I think it was more like that. Everybody saw it and sort
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  of well, that's curious, isn't it?
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  But would not have made the notion of it that the astrologers did.
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  And they made a big case for it.
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  So for the astrologers of the East to see that star and be moved by it, that's pretty major.
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  I mean, it was a major investment to make that kind of travel in that day and
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  age from the East to the West.
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  And they were willing to do that because they had the writings,
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  they had the knowledge that it was indicating something major God was going to do, a king.
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  They specifically somehow knew it was a king because they brought gifts that
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  were indicating royalty.
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  They were gifts of royalty.
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  So somehow they knew by that star. I think it was my dad commented that one
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  of his Bible commentaries had said, like, what the wise men probably did was, like,
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  they probably studied astrology or looked at stars.
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  Right. So, like, they knew that the weather conditions, whatever,
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  like, it doesn't, like, a star like that doesn't just come up.
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  So, they just knew something.
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  It was a, for studying, as long as they studied, to see something like that
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  all of a sudden happen, yeah, they would have noticed.
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  Yeah. It would have been a major indicator to them.
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  Whereas, you know, we look up, stars, yeah, yeah, big deal.
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  Yeah, I was just curious about that one. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one.
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  Yeah. Another, we'll do one more here. Okay.
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  With all the angels appearing in the Christian story, it made me think of this.
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  Do we see angels on earth without knowing?
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  How often is that? I am not sure how often that is, but we had a lady who had
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  a daughter in a car accident not long ago.
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  And all of a sudden, this person was there and helped in the accident.
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  And after the accident, after the emergency personnel came, all of a sudden
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  this person wasn't there. There was no trace of this person around.
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  And yeah, those angel happenings are happening now. So I think we have a hard
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  time putting our finger on them, and we're sort of afraid to.
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  Otherwise, we might be put in a mental institution if we start to say,
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  well, I saw an angel around the corner last night.
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  But they're present with us. I think it's part of that, what's going on in the here and now.
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  Paul talks about it in Ephesians chapter 6, I believe it's after verse 10,
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  10 through 12, that we are in a war with principalities and powers.
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  And that Jesus talked about angels ministering to, I mean, is it John's gospel?
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  It talks about the angels ministering to him on Gethsemane, the night his betrayal, he was betrayed.
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  There's angels that minister to us in our hard times and see us through.
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  As Christians, I think we are probably more prone to see them.
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  I hope we are. But God is trying to work around with us, and he'll use angels.
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  Angels are basically messengers from God that help us. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Help see us through. Sometimes it can just be, I remember meeting a guy
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  on the train as I was coming back from seminary one time and having a deep conversation with him.
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  And the conversation continued by mail over the years after that for a while.
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  But it was just the right person at just the right time. I needed that conversation and he brought it.
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  So, yeah, angels? Sure. They're all over.
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  They're all they might be like like
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  jacob wrestled very real
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  they may wrestle with us and yeah it's
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  good yeah very useful yes there are angels today i believe it well lock me up
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  if you want to yeah well you answered all the questions yet again again okay
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  good well it's been good to be together. God bless you.
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  Rowan, thank you for your questions and your thought behind those questions. Yeah.
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  Thank you guys for joining us. Hope you enjoyed. 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.
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  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
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  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.
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  Music.