Transcript
WEBVTT
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All right.
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I'm gonna do my little intro.
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All right, pull up a chair across the counter.
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Your one-stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity.
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I'm Grant, this is Kevin over here, this is Justin and this is Jed Rabine and this is an Off the Cuff boys, the cuff boys.
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So what's been going on?
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We were talking kind of about our stories, how you thought israel was safer than america, which which blew my mind first of all.
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So I I gotta, I don't know what's going on with that.
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So you want to start at israel?
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I, I do yeah just jumping right in just jump like straight towards it hit it.
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Hit it while it's hot.
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Oh frick.
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Yeah, well, we were just in Israel.
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Kevin and I were in Israel in February.
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We were hanging out with some Jewish believers, met some Arab believers too in the country, and obviously it's a really difficult time right now for that.
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You know that the Israeli people, the Jewish people in general, but the reason why we kind of felt like it was it's actually a safer place is number one from a scriptural perspective.
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We kind of know where God's plan has been revealed, where he's going to be taking the Jewish people, and we know where the story ends.
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You know Jesus comes back.
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He doesn't come back to Chicago, he doesn't come back to Vancouver.
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He actually comes down and puts his feet down on the Mount of Olives, according to the prophet Zechariah, and the angels in the book of Acts are looking.
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You know, the disciples are looking around like Jesus just ascends from the Mount of Olives and they're like, you know, blown away that he's kind of ascending and the angels are like why are you so amazed?
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He's going to come back, just like you saw him go up.
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He's going to come back.
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So this is in Acts, chapter one, and so you know when you think about the prophetic destiny of that land and that people.
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We know where that's going to go scripturally.
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So we know that there's a plan and a purpose of God versus other nations.
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You know, like America, we just not sure, from an eschatological perspective, what's going to be taking place in the days ahead.
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So there was just a, and I would just say this for us personally I don't know how you feel, kevin, and I'll turn the mic over to you, but we felt like God had ordained for us to be there in that time to just worship him in the land and to connect with the body of Messiah and spend some time with some brothers and sisters, and so, when you're sent, there's a peace that is like this is where God wants us for this time.
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It doesn't really matter what the temporal pressures are around us.
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Um, we knew that God had called us to be there for that that season.
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So what do you think, bro?
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Yeah, I think, to use a cliche, the safest place to be is where he wants you to be.
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And he we met on New Year's and I felt like he invited me to go and I was like sounds like fun and I went and it did feel safer than America.
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Like there's a lot of uncertainty here, there's a lot of disunity, especially in the south.
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There's a lot of people toting guns and there they know who the enemy is and they're unified, they're working together, they're they have a big problem.
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There's people trying to come across the border and they've come together and they're helping each other.
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And that I think, even though there was a war going on and it was dangerous, it felt different on the inside because there was collaboration instead of disunity and the food was delicious, but it was.
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I mean, I think the closest missile that landed inside the border was like 50 miles away and they missed.
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We had a good time.
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Dude, that is closer than any missile has ever been to me.
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That's all I'm saying, justin.
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What you got, man, you know them through house, church and through stuff like that, I believe.
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So what do you have to say about, as far as, like, israel and all that jazz, the prophetic destiny of Israel?
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Nothing I'd like to learn from Jed Robine and Kevin, but I met Kevin in.
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Was it Italy?
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No, we reconnected in Italy, but for the past couple of years, we've been having conversations about Jesus and life, and more recently, I don't know if you would agree, but they've become more about the overall purpose, right here, right now, as a son of God, full of the Holy Spirit, embracing everything the Father has for me.
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Today, what am I doing?
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What is worth doing?
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I want to do what I see my Father doing.
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I want to see what he's seeing, hear what he's hearing.
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This is the message Jed and his wife Nicole brought to us when they first came into town heavy duty, vertical bonding, being in the presence of the Lord, full of the Holy Spirit, with your brothers and sisters, just gazing upon the beauty of the Lord, listening, not having a bunch of petitions and things to say though there are times for that as well but a specific time where the brothers and sisters are unified and anything can happen.
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The room can shake, the earth can shake, gifts are given to one another, prophecies, tongues, interpretations, everything, and so I think Kevin and I have been discussing that a lot.
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Jed and Nicole have been working with our spiritual family on just getting rid of the things that are not of the Lord or from Him and clearing the floor for experiencing His presence and receiving everything that he has for us today.
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I know that's vague talk, but I think that's kind of what we've been discussing and I think that's pretty easy to expound on from Jed and Kevin.
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So I'll speak more vague and then you guys can take it away.
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When I met Justin, reconnected with Justin two years ago, I was heavy deconstructing, kind of like deciding whether I wanted to hang on to Jesus by the thread that was still left, and I think Justin saw like a purity of heart.
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He saw that I, like, I truly wanted to, to know the truth, that I wasn't like rejecting it, but I didn't know which way to go.
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And I met Jed five months ago, on New Year's Eve, and I felt like the things that we were talking about on New Year's Eve.
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It was just a 30 minute conversation.
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He gave me permission to deconstruct in front of him where most of the time when you bring that up inside of the church your doubts, your fears, where you're at with Jesus if you're not happy with him, you kind of get hushed and fed 10 Bible verses and shunned.
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And Jed prepared the way for me.
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He invited me in.
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He, I think, started the conversation.
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I heard peculiar things come out of an older man's mouth that you don't normally hear from someone who does missionary things and I had to hear more.
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You can retort that if you'd like.
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Jed I'm good and old.
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Apparently, it is what it is, yeah just wear it.
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He's our local Gandalf.
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But what happened in Israel?
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It was just like a quiet invitation.
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I felt like the Lord presented the option for me to go.
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I've been curious about it for years, being of Hebrew descent, and someone who I wanted to learn from invited me to go.
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I'm like, well, let's see what this is all about.
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And the invitation was come, sit in Arnie's living room for 10 days and listen to the Lord.
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And this is like for years.
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This is what I've been dying to do.
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I was involved in missions in YWAM.
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I've been involved in church my whole life and I have sat in the room many times, grieved by my heart.
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Grieved because I feel like we're saying Jesus and we're saying things that are true, and we're reading the Bible and doing all these good things, but I feel like he's not in the room.
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I feel like he doesn't care about what we're saying and we're just creating a religion or participating in a religion.
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And I didn't know exactly what to expect in Arnie's living room.
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But I'm finding that is how you should follow God you shouldn't know what to expect when you show up and you should come to listen, because you are not smarter than him.
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I'm not.
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You can be, but not me.
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Well, when you think about the, you know the pursuit of Christianity it's not a religion.
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Jesus came to open the way for a relationship to be restored with the Father, and it's through faith in Him.
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And so, when you boil Christianity down, it's the pursuit of Jesus and His presence, which you look at like John 15 when he talks about abiding in the vine, remain in me, that my word would remain in you, my love would remain in you.
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And so he says apart from me, you can do nothing.
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Dude.
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He is making eye contact with me.
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And I cannot hang.
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I'm going to look at you for now on, I'm sorry.
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I feel like a dude in like third grade.
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I'll see myself out.
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Continue to.
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We sound wise, but we're just middle schoolers here.
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All right, go ahead.
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No, it's, I'm trying.
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I needed to focus.
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Well, so at the end of the day, you know, to pursue the pursuit in Christianity, the chief pursuit is his presence.
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And that was true even in Moses' day, where he said you know, we're not going to go unless you go with us, lord.
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Or in Adam's day he walked, he and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day, with God in the cool of the day.
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And so why did Jesus go through and submit to the most horrific treatment and physical punishment a man could endure, let alone the anguish of soul of taking on the sins of humanity.
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Why did he do that?
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Because God is looking for a dwelling place.
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He's looking for a.
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He wants to be with his people.
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And when you read at the end of the story in the book of Revelation, which Revelation is all about the revelation of Jesus Christ, it's not a revelation of the Antichrist.
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He has a moment on the stage Jesus.
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All of history is formed around the birth, the death, the resurrection and the return of this transcendent spiritual leader.
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But at the end of the story, god is dwelling in the New Jerusalem with humanity.
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Again, we don't need a sun or a moon or stars anymore.
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He's our light, he will be our God and we will be his people.
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That's what God's after, is this place of harmony and relationship, oneness, which you read about in John 17, when Jesus is praying his high priestly prayer oh, this is right before he goes to the cross.
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One thing is really on his mind.
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He keeps repeating it, father that they would be one, as you and I are one, that we would be one together, all being perfected in oneness.
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And this is his chief desire is that we would be one with him.
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Which blows my mind, I mean Jesus, john 17,.
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Verse 22 actually says that they all who would ever believe in me, that they would know that you, the Father, love them as much as you love me.
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I mean to think about I don't know if you bros have thought about that, but the Father loves you as much as he loves Jesus.
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That is a mother load of revelation to kind of marinate in, because everything in our own heart, everything the world has told us, everything that humans have told us, is that we're not worth that kind of love.
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And yet that's exactly the kind of love that's at the very root system of what we call Christianity.
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But he's a person You're grafted into the way, the truth and the life, and so we need his presence.
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That's my point, is that this is an experience of his presence in our life as we walk out, work, family, of his presence in our life as we walk out, work, family, calling, identity.
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It's all about his presence and you could go your whole life and not tap into that love, that oneness, totally and, like many people do, like the world shouts at you that you're not worthy, that you're a piece of shit, that you're not good enough, you're not going to make it, you're going to be poor, and his love is like.
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It's the answer to all of that and once you meet him, it's the key to unlock all of those things.
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What does the Bible say about that, justin?
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I don't know.
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No, it's important.
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I think it's beautiful because when Jesus came out of the water, he's being baptized.
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Comes out of the water.
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This whole scene is the father stops everything and says this is my beloved Son, with whom I'm well pleased.
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I mean, that's what's, and it was that event that preceded Jesus picking people he would pour his love out onto.
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We know them as the disciples, people he would eat with and hang out with, have a good time with and take them along on the journey.
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He was on when the kingdom was breaking into the setting.
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You know Matthew 4, 17,.
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The message is repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come.
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And that came after love was poured onto Jesus from his dad.
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So the identity was there, goes into the wilderness, is comforted by the Holy Spirit through great distress, overcomes the evil.
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One resists the evil, one demonstrates all that for us.
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But it was rooted in a place of the father is just madly in love with his son and the son knows that.
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So I think it's not just a good point, it's absolutely essential to a walk with Jesus is does the Father love me as much as he loves Jesus or not?
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That's absolutely essential.
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Yeah, I'll tell you what John 17 is huge, like the high priestly prayer or whatever, like just it says, like that we all be one as him and the Father are one, so that he like, basically, so that we know that Jesus is the Son of God, right, like we are so perfectly one that you know that it was God who sent Jesus.
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Yeah, which is crazy to think about.
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First of all because in the church you know, this is how I interpret, this is now just interpretation the church sees, it says, hey, those people treat each other and us so differently.
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So just, they're just caring for each other, they're sharing each other's you know resources, they're loving one another and the only way that that's freaking possible is that Jesus is the Son of God.
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That's right.
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So that is going to be my segue, because all of y'all are house church fellas.
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So how are you doing that in your house church Bang?
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Well before can I just say one thing about what you just said, Absolutely About this love, this oneness, because it goes back to what Jesus John 13 through 17 are all one time period.
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It's right before he's preparing his disciples, right before he goes to the crucifixion.
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So it's all that.
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Last supper, the Passover meal.
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He's washing their feet and he's giving him his, really his last kind of commander's intent, so to speak.
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To put it in military terms his heart for them.
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They're about to go through some really disorienting, confusing, painful, challenging times.
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But he says in John 13, 34, 35, he says the world will know you're my disciples by your love and it's you know.
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So love is the, it's the bullseye, it's the power current of the kingdom, it's God's love being released through us.
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And there's a intention.
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He says as you have been loved, now love one another.
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This command I give you.
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So what's interesting?
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Just to circle back to what we're talking about, israel, you know, I know right now there's the, the most challenging geopolitical.
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At a human level, things look impossible, but in 2019, I was in Jerusalem with a handful of leaders about 120, 130 of us, from all different nations, and it wasn't a hey, come and listen to my awesome teaching conference.
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It wasn't a buy my CD or book conference.
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It was a family meeting with leaders from all over the world and it was really a conversation between.
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It was the nations coming to bless Israel, but there were Christian, arabs and Jewish believers, because of the love of Jesus Grant.
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I've seen them cry on each other's neck and embrace because of the love of God, despite seeing things maybe differently from a political perspective.
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The love of God bringing human hearts together in reconciliation, that is the stamp of approval on what's the solution to all of the problems of the world.
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His name is Jesus and that's why he's coming back.
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This world is becoming more and more hostile to his leadership and his ways, like Psalm 2 talks about.
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Why do the nations rage and cast off restraint?
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The Lord says he's anointed his anointed one and installed him on Mount Zion, you know?
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And so the nations, not just humans, but principalities and powers and dominions and thrones, these are demonic forces that are raging against the leadership of God and leading humanity into rebellion spiritually against his leadership of God, and leading humanity into rebellion spiritually against His leadership.
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And so this love, this oneness, is the heart of the gospel, this reconciliation.
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Every tribe and tongue is going to be around the glassy sea in Revelation 7.
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There's a place for a remnant from every tribe and every tongue to be united by our shared faith in Christ, and that's the invitation of the gospel.
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So love ends up being the calling card, the stamp of approval, and I've seen it in Jerusalem.
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So I don't think there are ethnic divisions that can't be reconciled by that same love.
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I've seen Christian, arab and Jewish believer reconcile the shed blood of Jesus and love.
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So I believe there is no ethnic division that it can't conquer.
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His love will conquer every divide if we put our faith in him.
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That's so good, dang it.
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Oh man, I love that man.
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So you have seen like an Israeli, arab and Christian all crying on one another's shoulder, yeah.
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Jewish believers and Christian Arabs yeah, yes, I've seen them reconciled.
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That's beautiful man.
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That's beautiful, but that's the love of God.
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You can't do that apart from His presence.
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You can't do that without His love first changing you.
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Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's just such a, just a very vivid picture of His love, for sure of just being able to see that of his love, for sure of just being able to see that, just like you saw it vividly, like in that moment where you're just like man.
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God is good, amen, okay.
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Rock and roll, here we go, mic swap.
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So how do we get there?
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How do we get the world to love?
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each other.
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It starts with the family of God.
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It starts with us relating to him.
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You know, the Bible says we love because he first loved us.
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So it's the command is as I have loved, you, now love one another.
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You first have to understand that you are beloved.
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Like to Justin's point, you can't walk with Jesus without a full understanding of the Father's love for you.
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So it starts with you actually receiving divine love and grace and forgiveness for your sins.
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You receive that love.
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It's transformative, it changes you.
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As Paul puts it, look, the old is gone and the new has come.
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The old has disappeared.
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You're a new creation in Christ because of his love.
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From that point, as we love one another, there's a.
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You know Paul talks about actually Jew and Gentile being reconciled in Ephesians 2 and chapter, in Ephesians, chapter 3.
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And he says in Ephesians 3, verse 10, he says God's purpose.
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He.
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Well, let me say this back up in Ephesians 3, verse 10, he says God's purpose.
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Well, let me say this back up In Ephesians 2, beginning in verse 11 and following to about verse 17 or 18, paul starts talking about God's purpose between reconciling Jew and Gentile by the blood of Jesus.
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He's brought the two groups together to make one new man out of the two groups, and the wall of hostility and enmity has been torn down.
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And so when you look at what he says in Ephesians 3.10, he says God's purpose in this unity is to declare his manifold wisdom to the heavenly realms, and they will see this when the church is one.
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So our oneness is first and foremost not about loving one another.
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There's a vertical declaration to the heavenly realms.
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Now, who are the heavenly realms?
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Well, paul talks about them in Ephesians 1 and in Ephesians chapter 6.
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You don't wrestle against flesh and blood.
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Primarily, your wrestle is against powers, spiritual powers in the high places, spiritual wickedness, thrones, dominions.
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So that's why you got to put the armor on.
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That's what Paul's saying in Ephesians 6.
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So this love, this reconciled love, declares God's wisdom.
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I believe it's like an electromagnetic pulse in the spiritual realm.
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It disables demonic resistance to the gospel.
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Our love for one another declares God's wisdom.
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Something happens in the spirit and the Holy Spirit can come in more power, more grace.
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The gospel of the kingdom is more effective when love is being displayed and it's a breakthrough when you see people reconciled.
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There's something that just breaks in the Spirit, like people start to weep, people start to cry.
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Yeah, generosity of Spirit, hearts open to one another, there's healing.
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Love is a game changer and we first receive it from God and then we begin to walk it out together.
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Then things begin to change and the heart for the lost is God wants the prodigals to come home, but they're coming home to a family.
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He wants that family to be a functional family, not a dysfunctional family.
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He wants them to come into a family that's loving one another well, that sees one another, that honors each other.
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And that's why Paul goes to great lengths when he's chastising the congregations for breaking faith and having disunity and discord and strife.
