Reasoning With the World | Sermon 04/02/2023 | James R. White

Apologia Utah

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Well, good afternoon, everybody. It's great to be with you here in Utah. I'm hoping that when we're finished and I look out the windows, we don't have a whiteout outside.

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It's actually supposed to rain first, so I suppose that's good. But I've had to extend my stay in Salt Lake.

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I will be hunkered down in the KOA up on North Temple and not doing anything.

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I'll just be there. We'll do some dividing lines from up there and stuff like that.

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But I'm from Phoenix, and this snow thing is just, how does that even work?

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Do you have like a broken irrigation over you all or something? I don't know how that works, but I'm looking forward to it.

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But I'm going to have to delay getting out and then I'll do a long trip down to Vegas and hopefully get back in time to at least make the

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Saturday Easter pageant down in Mesa. I was up here during Easter pageant last year too, and so I have yet to have the opportunity of being out there with my grandkids.

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But last year, I was sent a picture from Easter pageant with Clementine, witnessing to an

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LDS cop. It was at the corner of Main and Hobson where I've spent half my life anyways.

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There used to be an Arby's there that we would bleed a lot of money to during the

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Easter pageant. As I was looking at that picture, I did some mental calculations and realized that she was only 12 years younger than I was when

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I first did the same thing. So long, long ago in the 1980s, early 1980s.

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I would like to have a chance to get out there with all the grandkids and even little Ransom.

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I'm sure he'll probably be out there one night and do that type of work. Just before we go to the word,

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I was informed this morning that Pastor Wallace has some contact with one of the two speakers, the younger of the two speakers last evening from the atheist side.

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I don't know if you weren't there, I don't want to ruin anything, but let's just say it would have been a very different debate if the younger of the two speakers had done more of the speaking.

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He seemed to be significantly more engaging and able to engage.

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Dr. Chatterjee, I'll just be honest with you, there was an illustration of what happens in the academy, what happens in academia.

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He clearly had never even examined any meaningful claims of the

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Christian faith before and just couldn't even begin to hear what we were saying. We could ask him very direct questions and it just, now those of you who were there by the way,

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I'm really hoping that the video that we took will be much easier to understand than the bad speakers in that room at the

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University of Utah. Because Dr. Chatterjee was wearing the same, might have been this microphone, who knows,

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I don't know, but was wearing a microphone just like this and so should be much more understandable in the video than actually during the debate, which is strange, but that's how it worked out.

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But it was a wonderful evening and some of you might know on the

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Apology of Church page that Pastor Durbin, Jeff, headed out very early this morning, heading back to Phoenix.

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His mother is not doing well at all. She had had a lung collapse the night before the debate.

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She has COVID pneumonia and the scans of her lungs are not encouraging at all.

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So it was very impressive that Jeff was able to be as focused as he was, and he certainly was.

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I noticed right as literally as Pastor Wallace was closing the debate and saying goodnight to everybody,

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I looked over and saw Jeff's phone was ringing and it was his sister. So I knew just all sorts of stuff going on there.

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So continue to pray for him in that situation. His parents, ironically, are only a few years older than I am, which

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I'm sure Luke really likes to remind me of. If you've ever noticed how often

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Luke makes references to my age, I just can't wait till stuff starts breaking down on him.

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So I can go, oh, would you like some advice on how to handle that too? Okay, yeah, all right.

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But I am definitely the elderly elder. So anyway, so please pray for the

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Durbins as they face this challenging situation. If you turn with me to Acts chapter 24,

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I just want to share some thoughts with you from the word today.

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I cannot help but think that most of us are in the same situation.

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Certainly, we had stuff, I've had stuff going on this week, but overshadowing all of that was what took place on Monday in Nashville.

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And as I've looked at those pictures of those precious young children, how do you aim a gun at a nine -year -old child and shoot them dead in a school you went to?

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I'm very, very certain that this woman, and it was a woman, knew those children, certainly knew the pastor's daughter.

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There's no question about that. And it's one thing to think about the level of evil that can exist in the heart of an individual.

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You know, we think about... Some of the things you see online,

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I'm not sure if we should see online, the very next day, I think, the next day or the day after, there was a video of a man who was stabbed in a

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Starbucks in, I believe it was Toronto, Canada, if I recall correctly.

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By a man. And obviously struck a major artery and he collapsed and died and bled out right there in the middle of everything.

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And the man who stabbed him stayed in line. And in the video, you see this man collapsing, and there's blood everywhere.

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And over in the corner, not only are people videotaping everything, they're all thinking what they're going to get on YouTube for this, but there's a guy sitting over in the corner and he just continues sipping his latte.

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He's literally sitting there in the corner, he's looking over, this man is face down in his own blood, not more than 10 feet away, and he's just...

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And, like I said, the killer just stood there. He's still in line. And that's one kind of evil that you just...

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Sort of like the Gadarian Demoniac type guy, you know, just this rage.

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It's very different than what we saw at the school, where you have a perversity that has taken root deep within the heart of someone.

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But then what really struck me is what has happened in the days since then. Did you see what happened in the

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Tennessee House? I think there's been a couple of different legislatures and state houses where people have broken in.

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Isn't that an insurrection? Oh, no, that only happens in Washington on January 6th. Have broken into these places and, you know, they're vile chanting and stuff like that, but the one that caught me were the people, and I don't remember if it was

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Tennessee or Texas, were holding up seven fingers. Seven fingers.

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Did you see that? Did anybody else see that? No, no one? Sort of like that, yeah, yeah, sort of like that.

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Seven fingers, and you're going, what's that about for the seven victims? They were insisting that the shooter was the seventh victim.

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Even though she killed the other six, because she's transgender, then she, he, they would say, is the seventh victim, the victim of the bigotry of our society that does not embrace transgenderism.

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And I watched these people, and the natural,

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I think, the natural response of a human soul that has sought to be formed in a mature way in morality and ethics is to be revolted at how anyone can be so twisted as to come to this conclusion and act in this fashion.

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I'm not talking about a shooter. I'm talking about the people holding up seven fingers. But the idea of moral formation and maturity is no longer something that's even, it's even a goal in our society at all.

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And so when you ponder that, and as I thought about this weekend and what we'd have the opportunity of speaking about,

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I think all of us are regularly going, how are you to be light in a society that has been given over to this level of darkness?

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Now, most of you in here are real young. This morning when I was at the OPC, there were a bunch of old dudes like me.

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And so I could use illustrations about stuff from back in our day, and they're all sitting there going,

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I can't do that here. I'm looking around here.

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Yep, I'm definitely the oldest dude in the room. So I have to be a little bit careful, but I can just simply tell you that when

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I was in, let's say when I started high school in the middle 1970s, even the guys we called the stoners, the guys that were always smoking marijuana out back and that kind of thing, even the stoners had some type of moral formation that would have recognized how utterly disgusting the activities going on in our society today would be.

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There just simply wasn't anybody that would have gone, you know, it's a good thing for us to have drag queens dancing around in the

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Minnesota legislature like we had this past week, and having everybody celebrating this kind of debauchery.

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There has been such a rapid and massive decline, and I combine all of this with a brief little segment

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I saw where they did a comparison of the material that they allow on TikTok in China with what they allow on TikTok in the

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United States. And TikTok in China is primarily educational videos, engineering, mathematics, history, and in the

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United States, it's sexual perversion, pornography, twerking, homosexuality, and everything else.

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You think that the Chinese aren't behind that? Do you think they don't realize what they're doing to our society, what our society is doing to itself, but you keep doing that because it's not going to be long, and we're going to own you.

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We already do own you, really, but we're going to run you, and it's going to happen very, very quickly because a society of people raised on that kind of content is not going to be a society that has any cohesion, any ability to even defend itself or any reason to defend itself, to be honest with you.

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This is where we have been called to serve, and it's going to be a time of massive change, and so where do we...

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We hopefully have been putting down roots for a long time. Hopefully we're not walking into this, you know, my generation didn't see most of this stuff coming.

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We've been behind the curve for a long, long time. We didn't talk about sexual ethics or anything like that because that's not stuff that you talked about in polite company, and so we were always just having to catch up with where the society was.

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We weren't ahead of the curve preparing our people. We were just trying to catch up eventually, but now it's happening so fast, so quickly.

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How do we be a prophetic voice? How do we be a voice of light in this deep, deep darkness?

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And my mind was brought to an unusual text that I've never spoken on until this morning anyways in Acts chapter 24, and the context of it is, of course,

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Paul has been arrested, and the Jews have been doing everything they can to get rid of him, and he is in custody now, and he has reported to Felix what had brought about the disruption when he had stood before the

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Sanhedrin and things like that. And after Paul reports on what he has done, verse 22 says, but Felix, having a more accurate knowledge about the way, put them off, saying, when

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Lysias, the commander, comes down, I will decide your case. And he gave orders to the centurion for him to be kept in custody and yet have some rest and not to prevent any of his friends from ministering to him.

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And so, here's Paul, and he's under arrest, but in a sense, at least he's safe.

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The Jews can't get to him where he is now. And it's not like he's in a dungeon.

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He's not chained to a smelly Roman soldier all the time and so on and so forth.

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His friends are able to come and minister to him, but he's just sort of in limbo.

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He doesn't really know what the future is going to be. It's interesting that it says of Felix that having a more accurate knowledge about the way.

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And I've always wondered, why is it, I wonder? The only group called the way that I know of is a cult.

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It still exists out there somewhere. There's not many of them. It was Victor Paul Werewolf's group.

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It sort of blew up in the 70s. I read a bunch of his books and things back in those days.

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I've often wondered why we don't use that term more often. It's called the way more often than we're called

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Christians in the New Testament. And I think we'd actually have a fairly decent copyright claim on Disney for stealing the way.

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You know, this is the way. No, we had that before you did. And we don't have to wear a helmet all day long either. We should get that one back.

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I like that. In fact, when I was a kid, we had a living Bible that was called the way.

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And on the front, it said the way. And inside the letters were pictures of people's faces.

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Young people's faces. And it was meant for young people. I was once young, believe it or not.

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Someone needs to inform Pastor Luke of that. I was once young and had hair. I had more hair than Luke has, in fact.

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But it was not to stay there. All good men come out on top. And grass doesn't grow on a busy street.

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So just... Those are all the things my dad used to say to me. And I'd always respond, yeah, it doesn't grow through cement either.

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But anyway, my parents didn't really like that Bible because some of the young people in the pictures, their hair was too long.

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So I was raised in a very fundamentalist context. Anyway, it's called the way.

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And so Felix has some knowledge of the Christian faith. And notice what it says in verse 24.

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But some days later, Felix arrived with Drusilla, his wife, who was a

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Jewess, and summoned Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus.

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So it's interesting. Felix has knowledge of the way. And then he has a wife who is a

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Jewess, which means probably, in some fashion, he had some exposure to the scriptures that existed at that point, because there is no

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New Testament yet, obviously. So he has some knowledge of the teachings of Christ, the way, this group.

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And then he has some access to the scriptures. And this gives Paul a foundation for being able to speak to Felix.

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And he summoned Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. So let's notice the first thing.

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And that is, when Paul is given the opportunity, he is summoned. It's not up to him. He's under arrest.

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But when he is summoned, Felix knows what he's going to hear. And Paul does not miss the opportunity to speak about faith in Christ Jesus.

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And so Felix is not going to be surprised. This is what he is expecting to hear.

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He wants to learn more. He has some interest in whatever this movement is. And here's one of the leaders, one of the more famous people now.

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And Paul speaks about faith in Christ Jesus. And you all know that Apologia for years has done things like, has done things like go to the city council meetings in Phoenix and things like that.

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And so you know that we have never been shy in speaking about faith in Christ Jesus.

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But you know what it's like. Any of you was that long ago enough that you were still down there when we did that?

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It must have been. Yes? Okay, yeah. She's saying yes, so I trust her. What are you just going, huh?

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Talking about what? A year? I don't know. Guys don't remember things like that. I don't know. But you could just sense when your timer started and you started speaking in the

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Phoenix City Council, you could just sense the first time you used a religious word.

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You talked about Jesus. You talked about the Lord, whatever it is. You could just sense from the people in the room, oh, oh, oh no, here we go again.

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Just the veil coming down. We're not supposed to be talking. This is a government meeting.

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We're not supposed to be talking about things like this. And here's Paul talking to a governmental leader.

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And he's talking to him about faith in Christ Jesus. When we have the opportunity of speaking to those in power, it should be absolutely a given that what they're going to hear about is faith in Christ Jesus in some way, shape, or form.

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Now, you only had, what, was it three minutes I think we had before the council if I recall correctly?

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It wasn't long. It wasn't long. I got mine done with about six seconds left if I recall correctly.

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But you don't have much time. And I'm sure Paul had a whole lot more time.

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But what he's going to be talking about is faith in Christ Jesus. And we can't let that disapproving look of the secularist in the world to cause us to be quiet, to be silent, to not speak about what needs to be spoken about.

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They heard from, he heard from Paul and heard about faith in Christ Jesus. But then verse 25, but as he was discussing righteousness, self control, and the judgment to come,

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Felix became frightened and answered, go away for the present and when I find time

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I will call for you. At the same time, he was also hoping that money would be given to him by Paul.

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Therefore he also used to summon for him quite often and converse with him. But after two years had passed,

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Felix was succeeded by Portius Festus and wishing to do the Jews a favor, Felix left

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Paul imprisoned. You can't say a whole lot positive about Felix because even after standing before a man who is opening the word of God to him, speaking to him the truth, he leaves him imprisoned for two years and even when he is replaced which happened very frequently in the

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Roman Empire, maybe he crossed somebody in Rome or whatever, somebody offered more money for the position who knows, he is replaced and he leaves

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Paul languishing in arrest to simply wishing to do the

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Jews a favor. Now was that because of his wife? Don't know. Was he hoping for some money from them?

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I don't know, it doesn't say. But you can't say a whole lot positive about Felix if after two years of hearing someone speaking the truth, they acted in this fashion.

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But I want you to focus in on what Paul was discussing in that first conversation.

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Three things, righteousness, self -control, and the judgment to come.

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Righteousness, self -control, and the judgment to come. Now we're going to look at each one of those, but notice what the result of this is.

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Felix became frightened. Felix became frightened.

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So no matter how Paul addressed these issues, the one thing he didn't do was sugarcoat anything.

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And he obviously presented these topics in such a fashion that given the last one is the judgment to come, we can understand why

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Felix would become frightened. If he doesn't have the righteousness that is being spoken of, if he recognizes his own lack of self -control, and he recognizes the reality of the judgment to come, but he is unwilling to do what he needs to do, because I can assure you

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Paul told him what he needed to do. He's already told him about faith in Christ Jesus. Then when you hear these truths, including the judgment to come, the proper response is to be afraid.

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To fear. If you're going to be called into judgment and you're not ready to stand to judgment, then any rational person is going to experience fear.

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I don't know if any of you caught it last evening, but if you were there, if you weren't there, you couldn't have, but you will.

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Dr. Chatterjee at one point said that dogma, Dr. Chatterjee's big thing,

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Dr. Chatterjee's dogma was that you can't live by dogma. He didn't seem to recognize that it was his dogma that you can't live by dogma.

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There wasn't much self -reflection on his part about his own position, but he insisted that teaching

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Christianity produces fear and shame.

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Fear and shame. He says, these are unhealthy things. Well, if you're going to stand before a thrice -holy

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God, fear and shame are really important and good things, but not from his worldview, because there is no judgment.

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There will never be any judgment, and that is one of the most important aspects of what

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I've been thinking about as I see what's happening in our society right now. The only way that this kind of thinking can take root and start growing and destroy people the way we are seeing people destroyed,

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I don't know how many detransitioner videos I've seen now. These poor young women, primarily, standing there with deep manly voices, because they've been on testosterone for a few years, their bodies mutilated.

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They will never have children. They will never be mothers. They will never nurse a child, and their bodies are breaking down.

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That is one thing that just astonishes me that we're doing this, because once you start down that road, you are condemning any person to a lifetime of being a medical patient.

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They will never have health. They will never have wholeness. They will never function as God designed them to function.

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They will not live nearly as long, and they will live in pain. And so you listen to these people, and the regret that they are expressing.

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And how did it all start? It all starts in a society where there is no thought of judgment any longer.

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Our legal system came from the English common law, which was deeply influenced by the

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Bible. And it was recognized... When you talk about innocent until proven guilty, isn't that a wonderful concept?

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There are many nations in the world where you're guilty until you have to prove your own innocence. And we've recognized that's a horrible thing.

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And I've seen people commenting just this week in regards to a certain indictment that has been handed down.

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That basically, they're operating on that level now. Guilty until proven innocent. I literally saw an elected official saying, well, he will have the opportunity to prove his innocence.

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That is not how our system works. At least, it's not how it used to work. And where did that come from?

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Where did that idea come from? Why was it that in the old system, the state had to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the guilt of someone?

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Because if you use that standard, guess what's going to happen? There are some guilty people who are going to get away with their crimes.

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Because when you think of the standard that God's law provides of two or three witnesses, there are a lot of things that people can do.

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There aren't going to be any witnesses at all. Now, I still think, by the way, that's a vitally important element of law to maintain.

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Especially today. A couple weeks ago, I was scrolling through Twitter and a picture of me came up.

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That's not unusual. Half the time it's friends, half the time it's not friends at all.

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And there was an audio behind it. My mouth wasn't moving, but it was an audio.

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And it was my voice. But I could not remember ever having said what

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I was hearing myself say. And I thought, well, that's strange.

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But then again, I am getting old, so okay, alright. I wonder what program that was.

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I don't remember what the context was. All that kind of stuff. A little while later I'm scrolling through and I find another video.

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It's the same words that now Joe Biden is saying. It was

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AI. There are websites now where you can upload if you upload a number of hours of someone speaking, the computer will be able to reproduce someone's voice so much so you won't even be able to recognize the difference.

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And it's your own voice. And they can make you say anything. And the video technology is right behind it.

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You know that. And so anymore what you're watching, what you're seeing with your own eyes, you can't.

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If it's on a screen, you can't know whether that's real or not. Whether what you're hearing is real or not.

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And so there's never been a time when the biblical standard was more important. Because framing people unjustly, that's sinful and it's the most effective way of destroying justice in a society and it can be done very easily now.

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And so you think about those issues of justice and what's happened is in the olden days we recognized yep, some people will get away with it in this life.

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But they won't get away with it before the judgment bar of God. And you see,

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God has created us to have a desire for justice. We want to see justice done. Have you noticed how they're still they just last year arrested a 97 year old in Germany for having had something to do with one of the death camps.

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97 years old! That is the God instilled desire to see justice done.

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I think that's a really good example of the existence of God because ugly bags of mostly water don't care about justice.

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It doesn't matter. But we have that desire. But here's the problem.

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If you don't believe that God is going to judge and the reason you decide that God's not going to judge is because you do not want to have to face that righteous standard.

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God has not spoken. There is no objective standard of morality and ethics by which to be judged.

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That's what last night was all about. Once you reject that there is going to be that final day.

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I remember in my opening statement I quote from Acts chapter 17 verse 31. The last words that Paul utters on the

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Areopagus. God has fixed a day where he will judge the inhabited world by a man whom he has chosen and he has provided evidence to everyone of that coming day of judgment by raising him from the dead.

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The resurrection is given as proof of something else and that something else is that coming day of judgment.

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Once you reject that then you have to do justice now in this life.

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You can't go well justice will be done. Maybe not in this life but it will be done.

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You can't. Now you've got to do it now. And that's why during the

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Kavanaugh hearings for example just a few years ago you could literally hear people in our society saying hey it doesn't matter whether they can prove it or not we can't let anyone get away with anything like this and if a few innocent people have to end up in jail over it that's okay.

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That's what we've devolved to. That's what happens when creatures made in the image of God stop believing that God is going to judge them.

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They turn on each other. It's self destructive and that's what we are looking at.

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And so Paul speaks to Felix about the judgment to come and Felix becomes frightened because Felix wasn't a secularist.

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Felix didn't have Darwin to give him the escape route because that's what Darwin is.

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You need to understand that's what Darwin is. That's what we heard last night. I hope all the rest of you had the same feeling

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I did looking at Jared Anderson former Mormon had written in defense of Joseph Smith goes to Chapel Hill studies under Bart Ehrman and becomes an atheist.

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He's never known the truth. He was given a lie by Mormonism and now has been given a lie by Bart Ehrman.

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And he seems like a really nice guy. He seems like he really wants to help people but he was the biggest walking bag of self contradiction that's ever come along.

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And he couldn't help it. At least he was honest about it. But both

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Jeff and I pressed him on that. And he kept using our language. He kept borrowing from our capital and he couldn't help it.

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He wants to help people who are dying. Why? From his world view what's the real foundation for that?

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What's the driving force for that? How is the evolution of mankind helped by you investing your time and effort in those individuals who are dying?

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Get them out of the way so they're not using society's resources. That's how evolution takes place, right? And they just I just really felt for him that here's someone who's being faced with his own creatureliness and the categories of his world view just they don't have any place to put this.

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But he can't get away with it. What did Jeff say? He's oozing the image of God all over the place. And that's right.

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He was. And Felix hears about the judgment and as any rational person when he recognizes that's a necessary thing.

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If God created this universe then there has to be a judgment. That's why Darwin comes along and provides a way for mankind to commit spiritual suicide.

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To get rid of God. To get rid of judgment. And to no longer have to seek to have peace with God.

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That was the big issue of the Reformation. What was the material principle?

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How do you have peace with God? And everybody was thinking about it. Because you'd walk down any city in the early 16th century and you would have seen dead bodies.

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There was so much disease. So much death. The plague would come in and out. In and out. You would know everyday your own mortality.

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I've often commented as a former hospital chaplain how often we hide death from our children.

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Until just a few generations ago everybody saw death. Grandma and Grandpa died in your house.

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You saw them decline. You saw them get sick. You saw their dead corpse. You helped dig the hole to bury them.

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And you could not help in seeing those things to realize that's going to happen to me.

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That's going to happen to me. And given child mortality very often you buried your siblings.

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And so you knew that death could happen to you at any point. The vast majority of people live in our society.

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They do everything in their power. I'm convinced that one of the reasons that the younger generations always have something stuck in their ear is so there's never a time for that silence wherein you have to contemplate your own mortality.

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Always being distracted by something. Something to look at. To be entertained by. Something to not have to think about who you really are in the passage of time.

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We used to see it. We used to live in it. And that raised the issue of judgment.

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But once you've got Darwin you've got the escape route but the cost is all value and meaning is gone.

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I didn't get a chance to do it. I was going to ask this question but those

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Q &A portions go really fast. But I asked a question of an atheist in fact

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Jeff mentioned Dan Barker who's the head of the Freedom for Religion Foundation. First time that kicked on I was like okay the roof's falling in.

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You all are probably used to it now but the first time you hear it it's strange. I debated

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Dan Barker twice. The first time was at the University of Illinois on the existence of God.

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I asked him a question during the Q &A. Dan Barker's a really smart guy but he thinks he's a much much smarter guy than he actually is.

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He's very proud of being in Mensa and all this kind of stuff. But he's not nearly as bright as he thinks he is.

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But he's a bright guy. He's a concert pianist. And after the debate he even gave me one of his

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CDs. And he's very very good. But I asked him a question during the

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Q &A. I said Dan when you die is your music still going to be beautiful 10 minutes after you're gone?

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And I think that was the first time anyone had ever asked him a question like that. He's been through so many debates.

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He's debated Doug Wilson and just everybody. He's probably done more debates than I have. And I don't think anyone had ever used his music as a mechanism of getting him to think.

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Because you see if his music has an objective element of beauty to it, it will still be beautiful after his brain has stopped functioning.

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But he has no way of affirming that. He has no way to say that. Because once his brain stops functioning there is no such thing as beauty anyways.

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Because it's just a construct of his mind. He struggled with that. He really struggled with that.

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And I was going to ask that question last night. Because I get the feeling that I don't believe

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Dr. Chatterjee would have really understood the categories. But Mr. Anderson I think would have.

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And I think he would have struggled because he wants to say that there is beauty. He wants to say that the conversation we're having is beautiful.

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Well why? And they don't have an answer for the why.

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They just hold on to it. And Darwin stole the beauty of music. People can't understand why that is.

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But he did. He stole the beauty of music and art. The beauty of the sunset.

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Because it now can be all random. But Felix didn't have a Darwin. So Felix believes that there is a judgment.

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And that judgment is coming. And so what are the three things? Righteousness, self -control, and the judgment to come.

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Righteousness. Now, there's the very, very necessary discussion of what that means before God.

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The righteousness that is ours in Christ Jesus. He made him who knew no sin to be sin in our place.

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That we might be made the righteousness of God in him. There is the fact that Christ lives a perfect life in obedience to the

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Father. We have his active and passive obedience. He actively does what the

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Father requires in his giving of his life. He passively has done everything the law has required of him so that he can give a perfect sacrifice upon the cross.

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And hence the righteousness that is imputed to us is a perfect righteousness.

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We cannot add anything to it. But just because that's vitally important to differentiate from sanctification so we can understand the message of Romans, still, very clearly, there is a context of righteousness and just action that has everything to do with moral deeds.

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How you live your life. And so there is discussion by Paul with Felix of what righteousness is and clearly what

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Felix doesn't have as far as righteousness is concerned. And upon what basis could he have done this?

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What could he have brought to bear? Well, we know Felix knows something about the way and his wife is a

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Jewess. So don't you think Paul's opening the Hebrew Scriptures to Felix and bringing them to bear upon him?

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You might say, well, but he wasn't Jewish. Yeah, he wasn't. But what's clear, and this is what's missing in most evangelical theology, is the fact that what you have in God's law is meant for mankind.

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Yes, there are specific things for the Jewish people. Ceremonial laws. Get that. But you can't miss the fact that when you read the prophets, they are condemning the nations around Israel, not just for not being

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Israel, but for the sinful things they're doing, the idolatry that is theirs.

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Where do you learn about that? Well, in God's law. So Paul's bringing God's law to bear upon Felix and he's doing it from the

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Hebrew Scriptures. Righteousness. Felix, you don't have it. And that's what you're going to need to stand before a holy

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God. Self -control. Self -control. There are a couple terms.

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Sophronismos, the term that's found here. These are some of my favorite terms in the

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New Testament because they are the terms that, sadly, we are no longer hearing in our society.

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If you are an ugly bag of mostly water, if you are just molecules bouncing around, then why should you be self -disciplined?

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Why should you have self -control? When I was a young person, even in the public schools, you were taught that self -control and discipline were things that you should strive for.

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That's what makes you a better person. There was still enough of a consensus for that kind of stuff to make sense.

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The message today is the exact opposite of that. Have no self -control.

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If you are autonomous, that means you are self -law. Then you can't have self -control.

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There's no control outside that you can then look to as a guide. You have to be the only source of what your control is going to be.

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Your own lusts, your own desires. No society can survive that. No society can survive having the majority of its people thinking and living in that way because you just put yourself first in everything.

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I don't know if you saw it, but there was a video that I saw, just happened to catch last night. A purse snatcher in California.

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Did you catch that? There was a purse snatcher in California. At least they didn't kill anybody. Well, they came close to it.

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They jumped in a car and the video picks up with them trying to get away in this car.

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They run into a building. They back up, almost run people over. They must have hit like six or seven cars.

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The door gets ripped off the car and eventually gets so trashed that it can't go any place anymore.

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The person, a woman, jumps out and a number of the people whose cars got trashed in the process also jumped out.

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Let's just say she was a little worse for the wearer by the time I think they got done with her, but they got her down and they put their arms behind her back and they're using zip ties and their call 911 and everything else.

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Here's a person first of all decides to steal and then decides to start risking everyone's life, everyone's property.

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They're completely self -centered, completely focused upon themselves and that's what we see in our society right now.

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No self -control because there's no basis why you should have self -control.

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We engage in self -discipline so that we might become mature and we might help to serve others.

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There's no basis for that in the secular world and so it's just simply disappearing in our society.

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This idea of self autonomy, I can define who I am. No, God defined you when he created you and for Christians especially this should be a major theme, especially in teaching our children.

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It's one thing to teach your children self -control because you want them to behave in your house so you don't have a bunch of noise all the time.

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But if we really want something that they take in and understand why, then we need to explain to them the reason you are to be self -controlled is because this is how you glorify

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God. The scripture tells us that we are to work so as to present to God a heart of wisdom.

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How many of us start off our day thinking like that? God may you work in my life this day in such a fashion that by the end of this day

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I will have a wiser heart to present to you. Interesting enough, the same context is where we're told to number our days so that we may present to God a heart of wisdom.

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When you recognize how short life really is, how precious time is, you won't be wasting it all the time because you want to present to God a heart of wisdom.

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So let's make application. Felix becomes frightened when the judgment to come is announced to him.

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That judgment is something we cannot we cannot in our day shrink back.

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I know the society says, you know, the picture is always of the guy with the sandwich sign.

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And this has been this way for a long, long time. The end is near! He's always some crazy, wild, wacky person.

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We don't want to be the crazy, wild, wacky person. So we don't want to talk to people about judgment. You have to.

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If you don't understand how judgment is intimately related to that cross or if you try to preach the cross without explaining that what you're seeing, you've heard me say it over and over and over again.

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When you look at the cross, if you do not see the wrath of God as well as the love of God, then you're not seeing the whole cross.

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You're not seeing the depth of that love. So often we reduce the cross to this sticky sentimentality.

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It wasn't a sentimental love there. It was a sacrificial love there that met the need of the broken law.

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And you can't talk to people without explaining to them the coming judgment that they must deal with.

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That they will stand before. And that they may be much closer to than they ever thought.

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Every one of us is going to get into a multi -thousand pound vehicle when we leave this building.

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And when you get that thing up to 70 miles per hour, the potential energy is amazing.

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And if it runs into an unmoving object, which it could, your body basically explodes.

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And we do that every day. We don't even give it a second thought. We don't even give it a second thought. We just don't think about our own mortality.

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And certainly the people of the world don't. And hence that judgment is right around the corner. So Felix became frightened.

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And what that means is this. Let's make application because I don't want to be Jeff Durbin. And go too much longer.

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You'll notice that I went first in each one of our segments because I knew when

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I was going to get done. And I figured if Jeff went first, I wasn't getting a word in edgewise. So that's why we did it in that particular way.

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For those of you who have not been to Apologia and Mesa, let's just say that Pastor Durbin preaches longer than I do.

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He has ruined me. I used to preach much shorter before I came to Apologia, but now, oh well. Anyway, let's make application.

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When we speak to the rulers of this age, what must we do? We cannot shrink back from doing what

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Paul did. We cannot shrink back. All these things he discussed, he knew.

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Here is a guy who could set him free. And yet he told him what he needed to hear. Think about that.

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Paul didn't think about himself first. He didn't think about his situation. He didn't try to sort of grease the skids.

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He told Felix what Felix needed to hear. And we have to do the same thing even if it costs us.

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Even if we know this judge is going to thereby unjustly, as Felix did, unjustly rule against us.

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We have no choice. If we are to be light, this is what we must do. This is what we must do.

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We've been given the content in God's word. We cannot be ashamed of it.

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And we must recognize that they, that person we're speaking to, will stand before God someday.

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Will we be the one that told them the truth? Or did we shrink back out of fear?

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Did we shrink back out of fear? I'll close with this story.

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Remember the old Jack Chick tracks? Most people don't. Does anyone here...

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Well, that's because they wrote some about you guys. So yeah, that's true. Y 'all say hello to my friend

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Chris after the service is over. Anyway, Jack Chick tracks are the cartoon tracks where one of the main things that Jack Chick would focus on was judgment.

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In fact, he must have put out millions of this one track called This Was Your Life. Where it's about a guy who dies and then he's judged and there's this big old jumbotron where you play everything that's everybody did in their life and it's all about how to avoid ending up in hell when the judgment takes place.

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And that focus upon judgment wasn't wrong. It was just sort of the way

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I think that Jack Chick did it. And of course, Jack Chick was a big King James only guy. And so I got in trouble in second grade.

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I almost never got in trouble. I'm the guy. I hate to tell you, I'm the guy. I was never late to class in high school.

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I never got a demerit. I never got a B. Not because I got all C's either. Because I got all A's. I was class valedictorian in junior high school.

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I was class valedictorian in high school. I'm that guy. So, to be sent to the principal for me was a very traumatic experience.

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But Mrs. Gamble, my second grade teacher, sent me to the principal. You know why?

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Because I was passing out Jack Chick tracks on the playground. And so she gave me her note.

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You had to take your note to the principal as to why you were going to the principal's office. And I walk into the office and what are you going to do?

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I walked up to this desk and gave him a track too. Now, she gave me two

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C's in second grade that in tears she admitted to my mom

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I did not deserve but she would not change them. She hated Christianity for some reason.

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That was a long time ago too. This was in the 1960s, early 1970s. Anyway, those

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Jack Chick tracks Oh, and by the way, before Jack Chick died,

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I wrote the King James Only Controversy. And so before he died, he identified me as the

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Antichrist. So I thought that was really ironic that you go from passing out Jack Chick tracks to being identified as the

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Antichrist. Did you know I've been identified as the Antichrist? Now you know. Laughter So, anyway, the focus on judgment, however, is an appropriate focus.

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We don't want to be Jack Chick. We want to be people who recognize that we were judged in Christ and it's only

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His righteousness. By His righteousness, we have peace with God. So we have to be the redeemed people we are.

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We're not better than someone else. We don't have some better position than someone else.

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We have the righteousness of Christ and they can have that righteousness too by faith in Him. That's the only way to avoid the kind of attitude that some people have that seem to enjoy talking about the judgment that's coming for you but not for me.

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What we have to always think is that judgment would be righteously mine if it were not for the grace of God.

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That can protect our hearts from the kind of hardness that unfortunately, very often, we do see in people.

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But we cannot, we cannot in any way not tell people what they need to hear no matter what it costs us.

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It cost Felix, it cost Paul two more years sitting around twiddling his thumbs but he did the right thing and we need to do the right thing as well.

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Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to once again open your word but especially now in this nation, in this culture, at this time.

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Lord, there is such darkness. You've given us light. You've given us the opportunity to speak your truth.

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The command to be a prophetic voice. Father, in every opportunity we are given, big or small, may we be those who do not shrink back.

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May we speak your truth in grace, in love, but with the firmness that communicates the importance of the subject.

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We thank you that you have broken through our darkness and have made us light. Father, we pray that you will indeed give us these opportunities to speak to those in charge and Father, bring repentance to our land.