Putting off the old and putting on the new

When you have salvation in Christ you have to put off the old life and put on a new life.

Episode Transcript

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Well, hello, my friends. Welcome or welcome back. This is the Legacy Bible podcast. I'm

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your host Marcus Onate. Today, we're going to be bringing you some more legacy audio from
the tape archives of the Fellowship Bible Church in Joliet, Illinois. I hope you liked
the bonus episode. So I'll get somemore on soon. But today, we're going to have a,

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well, I thought we'd take a little rest from the life of David for a while. Maybe do something
new Testament. I think you'll like this one. It's called putting off the old and putting on the new
while having a new life in Christ. So I think you'll like that one. And if you do like it,

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please comment, give it a thumbs up or thumbs down or whatever you like.
Just make sure you do something. I mean, really share it with somebody. I want to see this
podcast growing go out to thousands and thousands of people. And it could happen.

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But now this is when it's from, let's see, 11 22 92. So this one's a few years later than.
The ones that were from 1989 that we've been doing. One thing I've noticed of looking on the list
that most of those from 1989 were about the life of David. So it must have been the life of David

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Year or something. But there's a few others in there that were not the life of David. Most of them
were. But this was from a few years later, 1992. So I think you'll like this one. So okay, so take
it away, Pastor Rains. Here's a verse that many of you know from 2 Corinthians 5 or 17.

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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away,
behold all things have become new. We are his new creation. When we have received Christ,
we are declared to be a new creation. When you receive Christ, the work of God is to make you

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something different than you were before. You know what characterized us before we received Christ?
It was this. We could sin. You say, that's not the whole thing. Yeah, I could sin. Yes, you could
sin, but the one thing you could not do, the Scripture makes very, very clear, you could not do or
practice righteousness. You couldn't. That's hard for people who are not Christians to really understand

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or accept because they know the difference between good and bad, good and evil. Yes, all men do.
Maybe in their early, early years as an infant, they don't, but they come to the place where they
know the difference between good and evil. And many times they believe themselves to be choosing

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to do good and not to do evil. And that's true. We make choices to do good and not to do evil when
we try to help somebody, when you try to feed somebody, when we try to even take them in our homes
and be hospitable. We may help them along the road or we might give them some of our food. We might
just be kind to them. Comfort them, might visit them. The Lord talked about visiting those in prison,

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giving a cup of cold water in His name. You know, you could do a lot of things
that are in themselves good, but because you, the vessel, because you, the person, are not good,
you haven't been changed. You're still that old person you were. The deed is coming from kind of
like a dirty vessel. It's like taking a dirty cup and trying to pour water out of it. You're

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going to get dirty water because the water will pick up the dirt that's in the cup. When it flows
out, it'll carry that dirt with it. And even though you're trying to do a good thing, the fact is,
until you receive Jesus, until you are one of God's children, until you truly let Him come in and
forgive you of your sin, you're a dirty vessel. Even so much that the Scripture says that even the

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good things about you, your righteousnesses are as filthy rags. So you see, a dirty vessel can't
pour forth clean water. You need to be forgiven. You need to be cleansed. Now when you are,
the Scripture declares right there that I read in 2 Corinthians 5, 17 that you are a new creation.

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Old things have passed away. Everything has become new. You're a new creation. In fact,
the work of God to make us new, he wants to go on, showing out that newness. In Ephesians 4,
it says, if indeed, this is verse 21, if indeed you have heard him, this is Christ, him, and have

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been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning your former conduct
the old man, not a scriptural language for talking about the old self, put away from you.
The kind of person that you were and the behavior that went along with that person before,

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the person you were before you trusted Christ, before you trusted him as Savior, before you
believed in him. Once you have done that, once you have trusted Christ as your Savior, the Scripture
said, you're supposed to put away acting like you used to act. Put off the old man, it says,
which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

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Be renewed as an ongoing process. Let God be making that new creation that you are,
show itself. Let that newness of what you are in Christ show itself by the spirit of God,
he does it in your mind and out through your life, and you, and that you put on the new man,

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which was created according to God in righteousness and true holiness. See, when he created you and
made you new creation, it says, you were created according to God in righteousness and true holiness.
You were made, you were recreated in Christ as righteous and truly holy. And now he wants you

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to live that out. Is it possible that one of God's children can live out sin? Yes, God's children can
sin. Yes, in fact, he says that all of his children do sin. It's a terrible, terrible admission for
God to have to make because his children do still have self-willed ways about them. They want to go

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their own way. And Hebrews 12 says that he has never received one of his children that hasn't
sinned because he said to correct them all. And if you think you're a child of God and you've never
been corrected by God, then he says you're not one of his children because he corrects all his
children because all of his children at some time or other go their own way. It's terrible.

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Are you a parent? Or if you intend to ever get married and be a parent,
do you think you're going to have children or are you a parent? And have you had children?
And have you any one of your children have they never sinned?
I can laugh on that one too. Just like I went my own way as a child and I gave my parents a lot

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of grief. I want to stand up here and suggest that I didn't. I did. And I'm sure there were times
when they wished they didn't have to put up with me. They told me that a couple of times in fact.
But I also have had children who have not been perfect. Well, do you know what? God's children

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though they are perfect in Christ, still at times go their own way and have to be chastened.
So God out of love for us gives us instruction in his scriptures about how to live this life
as his children. In Colossians chapter 3 where we are, he says, remember that starting here in

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this chapter 3, it reminds you if then you were raised up with Christ or raised with Christ,
seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind
on things above, not on things on the earth, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

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When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. You have to
thank God for this, that if you have trusted Christ as your Savior, you can read this that
when he does appear, you will appear with him in glory. He is your Savior. If you have trusted
Christ, if you were born again, if you have received him, if you have put your faith in him, if you

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repented of your sin and come to Christ, then when he comes back to this earth, that means when he
appears, and I don't mean when he touches down, I mean when he appears, when he appears in the
clouds to receive us to himself, like 1 Thessalonians 4 says, 15, 16, 17, when he appears, we will appear

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with him in glory. He is going to lift us up and take us to be with him. He is going to make us
like him. In our bodies even, we will have a change of our bodies. If you want a whole chapter on that,
read 1 Corinthians 15. That is the great chapter about the change of the human body.
Change to be like his body. It talks about it all the way through that chapter. The wonderful

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change is going to happen when Jesus in the moment, he says, in the twinkling of an eye,
in a little blink of an eye, he is going to bring about that fantastic and eternal change in our
bodies that will make our bodies like his body and he will capture us away. In an instant, the whole
process is going to take one instant for the dead in Christ to be raised up and for the living in

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Christ to be raised up and to meet him together in the air and to all be changed and be like him.
But even though that is the future, the Bible is very practical and wants you to know
how to live right now. Coming to church and worshiping God and walking through our daily lives,

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God has some instruction for us for now. He has not left you without instruction.
He said, now you are supposed to have a certain attitude about life.
Everybody has an attitude. Some have pretty rotten attitudes.
You know what they look like. You can look at them. You look in their face. They have a chip on their

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shoulder. They are tough. Maybe somebody has an attitude that they can step on anybody. They can
conquer anybody. They can do what they want to do. People all have different attitudes in life.
But there is one attitude that God wants his children to have. By the way, it will do away with all
those self-centered attitudes that I just talked about. It is to have the same attitude that the

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Lord Jesus had. He is your model. He is your example. Have the attitude that he had when he was on this
earth. Think about what he is like. Try my God's help and guidance and buy the power of
God as he yield herself to him to act the way the Lord Jesus had. Years ago, when I was younger,

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we used to talk with teenagers about and even younger kids about using this little test when
they were in doubt about something. We used to tell them, if Jesus was here, would he be pleased
with you doing this or that? That is a good test. But you know, there is one that maybe even

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a little more graphic than that one. It is certainly they are in harmony together. They are really
in agreement and go along. Maybe they are the same test. But it is this question. If Jesus were
here, would he do the very thing you are doing? Would he do that? Can you see your Lord doing the
thing that you are asking the question about? Sometimes that gets confusing too because you can

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do a thing with a good attitude or you can do a thing with a bad attitude. It is not so much the
thing you are doing but with the attitude. You want to examine the attitude. Are you doing it for
yourself or for somebody else? Are you doing it out of joy or because you are bitter? Are you
doing it because you love God or because you are just centered on yourself? This chapter is talking

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about your attitude. Not just what you do but what is going on in your heart and your mind while you
do it. For instance, you know you are not supposed to lie. Not only because it is one of the 10
commandments but because God is truth. Jesus says, I am the way the truth and the life. True,

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you want to be like him in all things. He is made to us righteousness. We are supposed to be righteous.
There is no unrighteousness in him. James in the third chapter tells you your tongue is
supposed to speak forth blessing and not cursing. You know your tongue, every word you say is supposed
to praise and honor God. I say there is somebody that little kid, he says, mother says,

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I see this broken cup on the floor. Did you drop it and break it? He thinks to himself,
if I say I did not break it, then only leaves my sister. Somebody broke it.
If I say I did not, then she is going to get blamed. Of course what happens if she denies it?

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Maybe they will believe her and won't believe me. I might get into complications that way.
If I tell the truth and say yes, I broke it, I am sure to get spanked or sent to the room or at

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least rebuked or maybe I will just get warned. It depends on your family and attitude of this kid.
Should I tell the truth? Now telling the truth, you say that is all that counts. Just tell the truth.
No people, it is not all that counts. If that child tells the truth because merely

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thinks that by telling the truth he can maybe avoid a spanking, I am not saying that is not a good
motivation, but I think there is a better one from the scripture. If he says, well I will tell the truth

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because I have to, then it is not really the best motivation. God wants you to tell the truth because
you want to tell the truth. You really want to do it. You will love to do it and you will take
whatever the consequence is if you do it. What a difference attitude makes if the child says, well,

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I love my mother, I want a pleaser and I know what is going to happen but I just can't lie to her.
I have to tell her the truth and tell the truth that way. It is far different than telling it,
just gritting your teeth and doing it because you are afraid you are going to get punished.

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God wants sinners to know that if they do not trust Christ they are going to get punished.
It is not wrong to tell them that message. God wants them to know that and they do not strike fear in
their hearts. When they cast themselves on the Lord and cry out for His mercy, here is the wonderful
thing. He is a God of mercy and He forgives. Now once you have figured that out, once you know

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that is real, once you have trusted Christ and you know His mercies, you do not have to respond to
God with that fear that He is a God that won't hear your cry and your plea for mercy. He is a
merciful God. You know that if you have trusted Jesus. Now it is time for you to live because
you love Him, you are to live in a way that pleases Him.

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Your Savior is sitting at the right hand of God and you are supposed to set your mind on things
above, not on things on the earth. And on the earth means doing things the way people do them.
For the reasons people do them. Do things the way God would want you to do them while you are on
the earth. But do the kind of things that the Lord would do if He were on the earth. Do the kind of

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things that He would want you to do, that He would love to see you doing when you are on the earth.
He says therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth. Now you say, what are my members
on the earth? Well, you can read the rest of the verse and you will get the general idea. In fact,

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the verses that follow, not just this one. But He names them. What He is talking about. Notice,
fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, covetousness. By the way, do you know all those
words or sexual words? Every one of them. When He dips down to the bottom of the barrel,

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so to speak, and talking about sin, God very often turns to this area of life. You know why?
You wonder why sexual sin is so awful in the eyes of God. You have never heard this before.
I am going to explain it to you. That what God wanted when He looked down through the ages ahead

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for Him, this was an eternally past, He made a decision that He was going to create. He is going
to create a universe, He is going to create an earth and He is going to put mankind on that earth.
What God wanted from that, and we find this revealed in the scripture, what He wanted from that,
was fellowship with those creatures that He was going to make, mankind. He wanted to have a relationship

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where He would be their God and they would be His people. He was going to tell them to put no
other God before them. He was going to tell them that the first and great commandment is this one,
to love your Lord, your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. That was going to be
His first commandment, His most important commandment, His first desire of His heart,

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to have those men, those women, those boys and girls love Him first, because you can't love two
masters. You'll serve the one and hate the other, hate the one and serve that you can't serve God
in the flesh, the money, the power of this earth. Mammon, you can't. You're not made that way. God

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made us so that we are committed in a relationship to one who is exclusive. We are creatures with the
capacity to love but one God. You can't truly love two. He made us that way because He wanted all
of that love for Himself. He wanted to be our God by choice. You can't get any other message

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out of this book. That meant that God's purpose was relationship and when relationship is given
to someone else, when instead of loving God, you go off and love something else as your God. God
calls that idolatry. Now it might not be a carved idol. It might not be something like that but it

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would still be idolatry if it was your God. For instance, it could be money. It could be
position. It could be another person or it could be a carved idol or it could be a combination of
those things. Men fill their hearts with all kinds of things as their gods. In any time,

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we give our love to someone other than God as our God. He calls that idolatry. In fact, in the
Old Testament, that is called spiritual fornication, spiritual adultery. So that's why he talks about
these moral things, these sexual things, right off because the most important thing to God is

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relationship that is intimate and that is exclusive, that is committed to Him in holiness and purity
and where does man violate that most but in his human relationships. God wants us to have pure
human relationships morally because they are a picture of our spiritual relationship with Him.

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Don't go around saying your relationship with God is all right if you have filthy thoughts. Sexual
thoughts that are improper. Don't deceive yourself and say, everything's okay between me and God. I
can have these thoughts. I can read this stuff. I can watch that stuff. I can lust after this person
or that person. You can't people. Something is wrong. God wants us to love Him and our love for Him

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and our relationship of love for Him gives us the base for having right relationships with people.
You won't want to look at somebody and lust after them. You won't want to look at stuff that makes
you lust. You won't want to talk about stuff that makes other people think those thoughts or you
won't want to imagine things that are filthy. You can't love God and that stuff. God wants you to

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to go along thinking as Christ would think and behaving as He would in this moral area. It hits the
very core of the human heart. This is a powerful area. God made us this way. We don't have to be
ashamed of the fact that we are sexual beings. God made us that way. He made us to have strong

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emotions. He made us to have capacities in our bodies for giving ourselves and receiving love from
one another. He made us that way. But He wants it to be used in holiness. He wants it to be used
in commitment that is absolutely exclusive and pure as our commitment of ourselves is to be to

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Him. We are to have one God, one that we give ourselves to completely, to love Him with all our
hearts, minds, soul and strength and we are to love our mate that way. We are not to be involved in
multiple relationships that's filthy in the eyes of God and it undermines us as persons. We need to
learn what it means to give ourselves purely and completely and wholly to Him and to one.

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And to learn what love is and the delicacy and beauty of thinking purely and walking purely in
morality in the area of morality. He says because of these things, the wrath of God is coming on
the sons of disobedience because mankind has given his heart to form relationships and to do these

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things in relationships that are vile in contrary to loving God first and therefore loving others
purely because of that God is going to have to bring eternal judgment on them. In which you also
once walked when you lived in them, you see we all had our past in that stuff. This man can't stand
before you and none of you could stand up here if you were in my place and claim that you had not

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sinned. I don't see how you can get to adulthood and say, well I never lusted. How can you do that?
You can't. In fact it isn't just that you did it. He said you walked in these things. You walked
in thinking like that. That means you practiced it all the day long.

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I wasn't shocked as the young kid in grade school to find out that is, well I didn't think
girls thought that way but at least I knew all the boys thought that filthy kind of stuff and
talked about it all the time. I wasn't amazed when I heard about that being sin.
Of course I realized later that girls sometimes thought that way too and that amazed me. I didn't

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think that about girls but now I understand that we're all of one flesh, men and women alike
and we are all capable of filthy thinking and filthy doing.
But for the believers, for the sons and daughters of God, we're to rule that on our life. But now

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you must put off all these. Now let's get beyond them. We're all the sexual but still with other
things like this anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Now look at all
of that. Primarily it's all expressed with the mouth. I know it all happens in the heart. All sin
does. But you show your anger with your mouth. You can show it with your fists and other parts too.

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Wrath, malice, malice is seeking evil for someone else, hurt to someone else. Blasphemy,
filthy language out of your mouth. You can sin with your sexual being. You can sin with your
oral speech. By the way, the real origin of sexual sin as you know in Matthew 5 is not in the deed

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but in the heart. You can look on a woman lust after in her heart. The Lord Jesus taught. You see,
you can have filthy things going on in your mind. Well, the same thing with the things of the mouth.
You can be angry at somebody and not say anything. That's true. You can think wrathful things against
them and not say it. You can think blasphemy and not speak it. That's true. You can think filthy

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language and not really say the words because it all happens really down in the heart. But if
it gets carried out, it usually would get carried out through the lips. And you can say to God,
oh God, touch my lips like Isaiah. Touch my lips and purge them and make them clean and pure so
that I don't speak such things. Do not lie to one another. Since you have put off the old man with

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his deeds, one thing has to be ruled out is lying. You have to live in truth and have put on the new
man which is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. The image that
you're to bear is the image of Christ. Walk in truth therefore lying has to be put away.

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And it's not just lying that you do because you have to. It's a lying that you do by choice
because you love him. You speak the truth because that's your very nature to speak truth. Because
he has made you a new creation. You are being displayed by the work of the Spirit of God

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according to the image that he has placed within you. You're trying to show out Christ's likeness.
You're trying to show people what Jesus looks like and you're trying to show them that by how
you behave and how you speak and really how you think. Even though they can't see your thoughts,
they can see what your thoughts do. And so the appeal is to God's children and he says, and where

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there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarians, Scythians, slave
nor three free, but Christ is all and in all. None of us sits any better than anyone else.
Doesn't matter what your origin is or what your race is, what your gender is.

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When you have put on Christ, you have been made a perfect being. You've been made righteous and
been created in true holiness and God wants you to behave that way and he has provided the power.
I don't ever want to preach a message and say, do this, do this, live righteously, amen. Let's go

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home. I can't end the message that way because the message is from God is he has not only made
you to be a new creation. In making you to be a new creation, he has come to live in you.
He does supply the power. You don't ever have the excuse. Well, I couldn't. I wanted to do
righteousness, but I couldn't. You're lying against yourself. You're deceiving yourself. If you're a

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child of God, you can do righteousness. You do not have to sin. You are not the slave of sin anymore.
You have been freed from that. You can choose to do righteousness and God will supply the power
if you will yield to him. You can walk in God's Spirit, the Spirit of holiness.

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He has supplied the Spirit to live in you and to give you the power to live godly.
So when you're tempted and you will be tempted, even today, when you're tempted to go your own way
and to think your own thoughts, you can say, thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have given me a full victory

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in your blood. Thank you for the indwelling Holy Spirit of God. I yield myself to you, Holy Spirit,
to do righteousness because I love you, Lord. I'm not going to dwell on this filthy thinking.
I'm not going to use this filthy speech. I am going to do righteousness because I love you

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and I yield myself to you. Now, Lord, make yourself known through me as your instrument. Here I am,
a vessel. Let the clean water flow out of a clean vessel, Lord, so that they can seek Jesus
and so that I can know happiness as you intended me to. That's what this chapter is about.

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Living it out in the practical world, even naming the very things that you're supposed to be doing.
That's as practical as God can get. Even tells you the very things you want to be doing.
I'll go from here next time and we'll talk more practically even about the very roles. He's getting

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more practical. He's going to talk to wives and husbands and children and fathers, parents,
and husbands and wives. He's going to talk to servants. He's going to talk to everyone in
different roles in life and say, I'm going to make this as specific as I can to you, people,
human beings. I want you to live out your roles in life as I have given them to you in here,

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but I want you to know I live in you to make it possible. I don't just give you big examples
and big demands for righteousness and then leave you. I am here to produce this in you
if you will just yield to me and let me walk in you and let me make your minds clean.

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If you yield them to me, you have to be born again first, but all of those who know Christ
can have him doing this in them if they will. He's faithful. We're the ones that fail.
Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for your grace and mercy and dying for us and making it

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possible for us to have victory over every sin in this life, every sin in this world.
Lord, I pray especially in this area of filthy thinking this week that people would gain
victory, get a hold on pure thinking and yield themselves to turn away from the thing that would
lead them astray or conversations that would try to taint them and tease them and try to

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ensnare them in talking wrongly. Lord, might they choose to speak purely in a way that would not
only please you, but would be the kind of speech you would speak if you were here.
Lord, thank you, Lord, for being here in us by your spirit, making the very victory that you've

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won for us real in us. Help us be yielded to him.
No new level of joy and thanksgiving this Thanksgiving week in Jesus' name. Amen.
All righty then. So there we go. Thank you, Pastor Raines, for an inspiring message from the

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Word of God. If you liked it, please comment or, you know, thumbs up or subscribe. I noticed I
haven't had any subscriber yet. There's only one subscriber and that's me. I'm subscribed to my
own podcast. That'd be nice if you subscribe. But believe me, we got plenty of more material.

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So we're going to keep on bringing it every week. I'm going to try every week. And maybe once in
a while, put one of those bonus Cicero Bible Church episodes in there. I think you'll like
those. I mean, I like them. So I'll put them on. We ain't going to run out of material anytime soon.
So thank you for listening and listen in next week. And until then, have a great day.

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And I hope you come back and bring your friends and tell your friends to tell their friends
and bring their friends with you. Okay, thank you. This is Marcus Onate. Thank you. Bye
and see you next time.