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[ Silence ] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

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♪ Oh, God, take away ♪ ♪ And come again ♪ ♪ Oh, God, take away ♪ ♪ And all the burdens of the world ♪

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♪ Oh, greater the Lord has made of man ♪ ♪ Come a long way home ♪ ♪ A mighty long way ♪ ♪ I've been in the valley ♪

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♪ And I've prayed and I've prayed ♪ ♪ I've been in the valley ♪ ♪ I am brave, I am brave ♪ ♪ I live in the fire and breathe your name ♪

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♪ And I know the Lord has made a way ♪ ♪ And I'll always be home ♪ ♪ Almighty Lord, praise ♪ They've come a long way before, a mighty long way.

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They've come a long way before, a mighty long way. ♪ And all my heart burns in the heat of the day ♪ ♪ But we know the Lord has made a way ♪ ♪ And come a long way home ♪

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♪ A mighty long way ♪ - Amen. - Amen. Once again, good morning. And I invite your attention to turn with me, please, to the 137th number of the Psalms.

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And if you would, repeat after me the first through the fourth verses. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

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For there, they that carried us away, Captive required of us a song. Captive required of us a song. And there they that wasted us--

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And there they that wasted us-- --required of us mirth. --required of us mirth. Sing us--

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Sing us-- --one of the songs of Zion. --one of the songs of Zion. And how shall we sing?

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And how shall we sing? The Lord's song. The Lord's song. in a strange land.

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- Praise the Lord. - By the rivers of Babylon. There we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.

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We hanged our harps upon the willows thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive required of us a song, and they that wasted us required of us mirth,

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saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. And how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? Pray with me for just a few moments on this topic. Don't leave home without it.

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Don't leave home without him. And no doubt most of you recognize this green card, this small piece of plastic which we call an American Express card. We have heard the familiar voice of Carl Malden tell us over and over again, don't leave home

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without it. They tell us that it's good in over 19 countries, wherever we may go, that it will instantly be recognized. Even if they don't know you, they'll

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know your American Express card, whether it's in Macau, Bangladesh, Cairo, or Dimebox. They know the card better than they know you. So don't leave home without it.

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The card affords us instant credibility and respect. The green card, we know that you got green backs laid back. If you got a gold card, we know that you got green backs laid back way back.

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And should you have a platinum card, We know that you've got greenbacks, laidback, stackback. We get instant assurance against anonymity and won't.

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This card gives us instant accessibility in an emergency and self-gratification to our lusts and desires. The managers of AMAX and MasterCard companies

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have waxed rich, capitalizing on the fear of people, for they understand all too well the complex, fear-fraught psychology of that hairy homo sapien called man. We fear the unexpected.

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We fear want. And we find solstice in the accumulation of material wealth and the marriage of capital and power, which so often gives birth to prestige and favor among men.

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We love this American Express card, and seldom do we ever leave home without it. But the children of Israel never had an American Express card. They did not know what an American Express card was.

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But rather, they had a promise from God, a covenant with him. He had told them that you will be my people and I will be your God. I will bless those that bless thee

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and curse those that curse thee. And whatsoever your needs were, I'll supply them. That was God's American Express card. his personal voucher for payment for whatever their needs were.

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So they had the first American Express card. But in this particular passage, I believe Israel left home without him. You see, we must acknowledge the fact

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that God is an omnipresent being. But it is voluntary whether or not we men recognize his divine presence. The heathen too often denies God exists.

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And too many times, the redeemed ignore his existence. You see, he stands at the door and knocks. If-- a big if, not a little if-- If we open the door and let him in, he'll come in.

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If we let him in, he will come in and rest. If we let him in, he will come in and rule and abide, if. But that is a voluntary if. So if we let him come in, then we have Jesus.

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But if we do not let him in, if we fail to recognize his divine presence, then we leave home without him. This particular scripture evokes a lot of theological debate.

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They argue about the interpretation of it, what it really meant. Many people like to say that this represents the constancy of the Jews in captivity

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and symbolizes unwavering faith. And it's on one end of the seesaw. But then there are others who claims that this is a perfect example of the lowest

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form of human selfishness and abject human savagery, where the Jews wish that God would be their own personal exterminator on other people. And we get theories that range all the way

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in between those two extremes. But I say that Israel simply left home without it. For you see, when you have God's Amex, you will always have something to sing about.

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It's pretty easy for us to be sympathetic with Israel when we realize what shape she was in after the exile of the captives, for we have been suffered, we have suffered, we have been exploited, we have been disfranchised,

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we also have been dispossessed, disinherited, exiled, and transported across foreign seas. So we can easily identify with the particular form of dejection and utter loneliness

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that these captives must have felt when they coined the words of this song. But there's a difference. These were special exiles.

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For King Hezekiah, during a particular Cold War with the Assyrian country, had sent the favorites of his court, his best singers, his best musicians.

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He sent his Deshaun Boyd, sent his Beulah Agnes, sent the favorites of his choir, and said, you all go to Sennacherib's court and sing for him, represent Israel, represent the chosen people of God.

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So these particular exiles were the best of the musicians, and they went with a special purpose in mind. They were to be ambassadors of goodwill, ambassadors of the Holy One of Israel.

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So they had a job to sing. But we find this morning that they were sitting down on the job by the rivers of Babylon that we sat down.

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They had hung their harps, thrown their harps, you might as well say, into the water and refused to sing. For the situation was so bad, they had heard that the walls of the holy temple

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had been torn down. They heard that the city had been set on fire. And the beautiful windows-- it's like us getting the news that Ebenezer had been destroyed,

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that they had set fire to the church and come in and transgress the temple and set fire to the sanctuary that we worship in every day. And when the news reached them, they said, we can't sing.

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We have nothing to sing about. They sat down on the job. But Christians must always keep a concrete realization of the transitory events in our everyday lives.

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You see, sometimes we're up, sometimes we're down. Sometimes it seems like our life is more than impossible. But if you have God's Amex card, there's always something to sing about.

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Oh, I think if their transgressors were being cruel, they should have sung in defiance. If their transgressors were being curious, then they should have sung to inform.

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If they were frightened, they should have sung to comfort. And if they were mistreating them out of anger, they should have sung their songs to pacify. For Israel had a whole lot to sing about.

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She could have picked the 127th Psalm or the 27th song and said, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? She could have sang the psalm that Moses had written

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some 300 or 400 years ago that said, "O Lord." But she refused to sing. She refused to sing. She refused to sing even though she knew

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that God had brought her out of the Exodus. even though she knew that one day she had been a slave down in Egypt land, that there was a time when she worked for her breakfast, worked for her lunch,

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and even for her supper. All she could look forward to was more work. But she knew that God had delivered her from under the heavy hand of hard-hearted Pharaoh.

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They had that to sing about. They could have sung about how he led them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night and how God had taught the sea to stand up on its tiptoes

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so they could cross over on dry land. Oh, Israel had a lot to sing about. If only they would have sung. I think that's the difference between blacks and Jews.

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For even when we wouldn't fight, and when we couldn't read, we never failed to sing. And when they stopped us from singing, we'd moan for a while.

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I love the Lord. He heard my cry. There was so much that they could have done, but they refused to sing because they said that they

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were in a strange land. They failed to realize, though, that what is strange to us is old stomping grounds to God. You see, if God is omnipresent, and he is omnipresent,

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than he is, has been, and was everywhere. Any place that we can go, God has been there. Any circumstance we can experience, God has experienced. Any pain we can experience, God has experienced.

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Wherever we could go in the realm of our life, God has already been there. So what is strange to us is old stomping grounds to God. The same God that existed in Jerusalem, in the tabernacle,

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and in the temple of Solomon was the same God which was in Babylon. So fanatic about them and about Moses were they that they forgot what Moses had said in his Psalms,

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that Lord, thou has been our dwelling place in ages past. Even before the mountains were formed, Moses gave credit to God for being the sanctuary of Israel. But it seems as if they forgot that.

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They said, this is a strange land. It's unclean. And we would be unclean and profane to sing God's songs in this foreign land.

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But I think that that was more patriotism and more national fervor than religious fervor. For you notice that in this psalm, they only mention God once, and even then it's

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as a curse on their enemy. They never said that we miss serving God. They said we miss Jerusalem, if we ever forget Jerusalem, if we forget the lifestyle that we had in Jerusalem,

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how we carried ourselves in Jerusalem, and when we went to the temple, the 5,000 bullocks that we used to slay, the 3,000 lambs that we would sacrifice on the altar, and all of the gold that adorned the temple.

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They missed all that. They missed the genealogy of their father. They missed their homeland. But you see, they still forgot the divine presence

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that God was with them. they went off and left and did not take God with them. But you see, we must realize the fact that Israel had left God before they ever left home.

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For after Hezekiah's reign, they had entered into a period of degeneracy to where they had defiled the temple before the Assyrians ever approached the country.

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The king had replaced the altars of God with the altars of Baal and were using the sacred serving dishes of the temple to worship other gods. So Israel had left God before she ever left home.

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That was why she had to leave home in the first place. After that, when we realize that she was practicing churchianity and not Christianity, then can we realize the hatred expressed in the ninth verse

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when she wishes that someone would take the children of Assyria and dash them against the stones. For when we worship church and not Christ, how often we become disillusioned,

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filled with rage and violence, and misplace spiritual fervor. You can tell that she left home without it. And then we can tell by the fact that she fell

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in an opportunity to witness for God. If God gives us a mission to do, if he gives us someone to witness to, we must never fail to do it. Like Paul with the lesson of the nets, we must realize that we cannot judge something

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unclean if God would make it clean. We must witness to the needy, to the unlovely, to the uneducated, and we must show our best face, our best smile, we must be courageous not so much to our friends, but to our enemies, which are the powers of darkness and the workers of iniquity.

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When they besiege us, we must give them our very best smile. Smile knowing that all is well in our world if God has given his credit card to us. Some say that home is where the heart is. And some people even joke that home is wherever they lay their hats.

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To some, home is family and friends. Home is warmth and security and a unique sense of identity and worth. But to me, to me, home is with Jesus. You see, my house is not my home.

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Austin is not my home. Ebenezer, as much as we may like her, she's not our home. This old body that decays day by day really ain't our home. And even Earth is not our home.

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Our home should be with Jesus. I don't think some of you believe it. But to those who are saved, our home is really with Jesus. And to those who are not saved in the pardon of their sin,

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they have a home too. So we all have a home that we're traveling to, either to be with Jesus or to be with Satan. So none of us are at home.

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We're all going to home. So my advice to you, since you're not at home, is to always take God with you. You see, God is better than the American Express card,

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because he has a well that never can run dry. If I were you, I wouldn't leave home without him. He's better than a Visa card. Because they can recognize the Visa card

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before they don't recognize you. Satan knows him. The demons know him. The angels know him.

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Death knows him. Heaven and Earth knows him, even if they don't know you. So if I were you, I wouldn't leave home without him. Always take God with you.

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Because if you take God with you, he'll make you to lie down in green pastures. If you take God with you, he'll lead you beside the still waters.

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If you take God with you, he'll restore your soul. He'll lead you in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. If only you won't leave home without him.

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If you take God with you, he'll prepare a table before you in the presence of your enemies. And if you take God with you, he'll let you sing the song, we've come a long way, Lord, a mighty long way.

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We've borne our burdens in the heat of the day, the burdens of oppression, the burdens of depressions, The burdens of worry, the burdens of alcoholism, the burdens of age, the burdens of death,

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the burdens of misfortune. But you can say we've come a long way, Lord, a mighty long way. My advice to you is not to leave home without him.

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Stay close to God because you will find that God is like Coca-Cola. He's the real thing. And God is like Pepsi-Cola.

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He's got a lot to give. God is like United Airlines. He'll make the going great. But most of all, God is like a Band-Aid.

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If you stick close to him, he'll stick close to you. [MUSIC - "THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER"] Amen. Amen.

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Amen. The doors of the church are open. Is there one who would come? is there someone who is searching for home,

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who knows that they are not really at home with Christ and with their relationship with him? If so, this is your opportunity to come. [MUSIC]

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♪ Just to take the eye of His eye ♪ ♪ Just to press upon His brow ♪ ♪ Just to know the strength of God ♪ ♪ Jesus, Jesus, our God ♪

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♪ Christ was born ♪ ♪ In a world of war ♪ ♪ Jesus, Jesus ♪ ♪ Righteous Jesus ♪

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♪ All the nations ♪ ♪ To trust him ♪ ♪ Oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus ♪ ♪ Just to trust His blessing love ♪

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♪ Just this year, I'll thank you, my dear ♪ ♪ Jesus, Jesus, our trusty ♪ ♪ Our true devoted Lord ♪ ♪ Jesus, Jesus, who took away the sins of the world ♪

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♪ Oh, dear Lord, Lord ♪ ♪ Jesus, Jesus ♪ ♪ Precious Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh, how nice to trust in God ♪

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- Let's all say amen. - Amen. We thank God for this message that he has sent through Brother Green. [ Silence ]