Pastor Addresses Riots

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Good evening, everyone. We're coming on the air with the latest on the wave of protests and unrest taking place at this hour across the country, outrage at the death of George Floyd, an

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African American man while in police custody in Minneapolis nearly a week ago. In city after American city tonight, thousands of people have once again taken to the streets to express their anger, frustration and solidarity with others among them with different agendas seeking to perhaps hijack the demonstrations, engaging in violence, vandalism and looting.

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We all saw the terrible injustice perpetrated upon an image bearer of God, a man at the hand of a police officer, a man named

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George Floyd. He was murdered. He was killed. A lot of us saw that and we're sickened by it.

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We're angry at the injustice. We were grieving over it. And that makes sense.

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It makes sense to grieve over the senseless killing, an unjustified killing of a human being, any image bearer of God.

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It makes sense to grieve with a Christian worldview. It makes sense to see all human beings as valuable, as worthy of respect and honor.

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It makes sense to call police officers to the preservation of life according to the

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Christian worldview. We're angry. We're upset. We're angry at the hatred for another human being.

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Racism is a real thing. There are people who hate other people on the basis of the color of their skin.

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Now according to the Christian worldview, it's not racism that's the problem. It's tribalism because the

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Bible teaches that we are all from the same blood. Every one of us, we're brothers and sisters in humanity, in the human story.

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All of us are unique creations of the same God. All of us have the same parents ultimately.

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And so yes, tribalism is a problem. There are people who hate brother on the basis of skin color and racism to that effect is a wicked abomination and it ought to be repudiated by all of us.

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But an interesting thing has happened over the course of the last week in particular as we all saw the injustice upon George Floyd.

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It began to expose something underneath the surface of our culture and that is the problem of our worldview.

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You see, over the last generation or so, we've taught our children that they're nothing but cosmic accidents, that they're no more beautiful or meaningful than any other product of evolutionary time and chance acting on matter.

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We've told people that morally speaking, anything goes. Your truth is your truth. My truth is my truth.

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We've sold our children the evolutionary model that talks about speciation and changing from one thing to another and evolving.

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And we've essentially given people a reason to believe that perhaps their tribe or their group is better than the other.

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We've taught people that anything goes and there is no ultimate truth. There's nothing transcendent.

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There's just what is. We've sold our children the idea of chaos. And that's ultimately what this conflict comes down to.

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Chaos or Christ. Chaos and an unbelieving worldview or Christ and the

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Christian worldview. You see, there are consequences to what we actually believe and teach others. When you teach people that they're cosmic accidents in a world where there is no ultimate

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God, there's no transcendent meaning or truth or justice, then they'll act accordingly.

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And it's amazing because image bearers of God can't help reflecting God and we can't avoid the knowledge of God.

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And we have to, if we're not in a relationship with God, hold down the truth of God our whole lives, only it's going to come out.

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It's inescapable in a moment where all of us, whether we're black or white or brown or yellow or orange or whatever color we are, we all see the injustice perpetrated upon an image bearer of God and we revolt against it.

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We can't avoid the knowledge of God. We can't avoid the beauty of God and the glory of God.

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And in a moment that we were in where we all saw this injustice, there's a way to respond.

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One way is in accordance with God's truth and His Word to see that every human being is related, that we're all descended from the same blood, that all of our colors and our cultures really actually make this whole experience more beautiful.

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All of us, if we looked at it according to a Christian worldview, would see an image bearer of God subdued with his hands behind his back, begging for his life, and another image bearer of God refusing to help and actually provoking more and more.

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All of us would be able to look at that and say, what's necessary is justice, not the kind of social justice that's talked about by the neo -Marxist, not the kind of social justice that's coordinated with intersectionality and all of these different unbelieving in root worldviews.

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All of us know that there's this sense of justice, this ultimate sense of justice that we should be calling out for, crying out for.

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But the question is, what justice? By what standard? You see, the Christian worldview gave to us so many blessings in terms of justice, in terms of law and righteous statutes that were just in the atmosphere when this particular nation was founded.

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It's happened in Christian nations throughout the history of the church, issues of justice in terms of witnesses, cross -examination, court, the assumption of innocence of every person accused, a right to a trial, the right for the victim to have speedy justice.

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All of that matters in God's law, and God's law gives you a foundation for justice.

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The Christian worldview and seeing George Floyd's death through Christian eyes sees the abuse of an image -bearer of God, and we demand

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God's justice, God's truth to be upheld, a standard given to us by divine revelation.

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Of course, you can look at it through secular eyes, humanist eyes, unbelieving eyes, neo -Marxist eyes, and what you'll see is something very different.

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You'll see an emphasis on color and not necessarily justice. And even with the cries of justice that come from the heart of every image -bearer of God, whether you're submitted to Jesus or not, when you cry for justice, the question is, what kind?

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What justice? Should it be a justice that's based upon skin color, or should it be a justice that is transcendent, a justice that is true anyway, a justice that applies to every image -bearer of God, no matter the color of their suit, as my wonderful black

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Christian sister says, the color of their suits. You see, looking at it through different eyes, you'll respond in different ways because beliefs matter.

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And if you see what happened to George Floyd as a Christian, you'll be horrified because an image -bearer of God was killed unjustly.

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You'll be horrified, and you'll demand justice, justice that actually comes from God, speedy justice, real justice.

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But if you look at it through secular eyes or unbelieving eyes, it's a world of chaos.

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It brings chaos because ultimately people will say, well, what should we be mad about? What ultimately can we do to fix this thing?

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It's not Jesus, it's not God's law, it's not God's truth. Maybe what we need to do is we need to punish society.

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Maybe we need to punish other black store owners, loot their businesses, destroy them.

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Maybe we need to come to malls like this one and just throw rocks into windows of innocent business owners, steal their stuff.

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Maybe we need to essentially express the chaos that is our world because there is no

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God. Maybe that's the answer. And so what I wanted to say is, the other night

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I was watching live when this mall was broken into, looted, when all of these innocent victims, these business owners, were deprived of their property, were violated.

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And for what reason? You see, God's law says justice matters. God's very concerned with justice, very concerned.

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And God's law would want the person who's guilty to be punished, and to be punished in a just way.

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When we avoid God's law in our culture, we come to a place like this and just express the chaos that exists within our hearts and our minds and in our world view.

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We destroy things. We create victims. We say that we're concerned with justice over one victim, and so we create one million more victims of a variety of colors, whether it's a black retired police officer, whether it's white shop owners, whether it's

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Hispanics, Asians, whatever the case may be. We say justice, but we don't know what it means because we refuse to come to God and to submit to His truth and we begin to violate so many other image bearers of God.

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You see, the answer to this problem is not skin color. The answer to this problem is not some nebulous idea of social justice.

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The answer to the problem we see all around us is our sin and our need for salvation.

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You see, the answer is ultimately this. God is holy. We are sinners. Our hearts are corrupt, desperately wicked.

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Who can understand them? And given an opportunity, because of our fallen hearts, given an opportunity, human beings will express that fallenness in a variety of ways.

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They'll do it on a subdued man, handcuffed, begging for his life, and they'll do it on subdued business owners, innocent victims, destroying their property, killing people in the streets.

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You see, our response to this matters because the gospel matters, the good news.

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You see, the Bible says that God is holy and we are sinners. Our hearts are depraved and fallen. We don't seek

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God. We're not good. We're not righteous. We are by nature, the Bible says, children of wrath, and if you didn't believe that before the last week, hopefully watching the news over the last week has changed your minds.

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We are rebels against God. And the answer is not going to be on putting band -aids around society and trying to fix the outside of it, the appearance of it.

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We have to go down to the heart level. What drives people to hate other people on the basis of the color of their skin?

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What drives people to come and destroy the lives and property of their neighbors?

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The answer is sin. So how do we escape from this problem of sin that we all have, no matter your color?

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The answer is, in that same holy God we've offended, He in the person of Jesus took on flesh and entered into this place of injustice, this place of rebellion, this place of hatred of brother, and He took on flesh, condescended and humbled

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Himself to do what? To chase down the looters, to save them.

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To chase down the murderers to save them. To chase down the racists to save them.

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To change their mind, to change their heart, to forgive them of their sin.

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God becomes a man in Jesus, takes on flesh, lives the perfect life and none of these looters, none of the murderers, none of the liars, none of the haters and not even me, none of us have lived.

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He lived perfectly and obedient. He was the source of justice. He lived justly.

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He was perfectly obedient to the Father in the way that we clearly are not, ever.

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And He took a death penalty, a judicial sentence that His people deserved.

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He took it in their place. And He conquered death, our great enemy, rose again from the dead.

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He is ascended and He is seated. And the call of the Good News is to be reconciled to God, come to God for peace, for life, for forgiveness, eternal life in Jesus.

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And it's only through faith in Him, turning to Him in faith. You see, this is interesting because maybe you've heard the story of Jesus before and you're like, yeah,

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I affirm all those things are true. You know, mentally I agree with that. But the question is, have you turned to Jesus to save you from sin?

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Not as Jesus just an aspect of your life, but are you wholly submitted to His Lordship?

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Is He your King? Is He your God? Is He your Savior? Are you trusting in Him and Him alone for forgiveness and salvation?

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You see, the call of the Gospel is come to be saved from sin, to be given the gift of eternal life.

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And this is an interesting aspect. The Gospel is called the Gospel of the Kingdom. It's Good News of the

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Kingdom. Jesus is ruling and reigning now on His throne. He's the ruler of the kings of the earth.

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He's the King of kings and the Lord of lords today. And the Bible says He has all authority in heaven and on earth today.

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And the prayer that He tells us to pray to the Father is that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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There's a way to that. And that's first and foremost through reconciliation and peace with God through Jesus and Jesus alone.

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He's the only way to salvation. And what happens is, is when looters and rioters and murderers and haters and adulterers and every other kind of sin, when they come to Jesus and experience peace with Him, they are saved and forgiven and given new hearts and they desire justice.

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What justice? The kind of justice God's already described in His Word. The true justice.

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The certain justice that God describes that's in accordance with His own character. The kind of justice that sees every image bearer of God exactly the same.

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The kind of justice that demands we preserve human life. The kind of justice that demands that we execute people by the state who would dare take the life of another image bearer of God unjustly.

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True justice. The kind of justice described in God's law. I want to encourage you to come to Christ for life today for the free gift of eternal life.

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And I want to encourage everyone to know there is a standard of justice, of true justice.

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It's given to us by revelation from God and we have it in God's Holy Word. Go read

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Deuteronomy chapter 4 and see what God says about His righteous law and statutes.

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Let's pray for our nation. Let's pray for peace. But that peace that we need to pray for is first and foremost the peace that's found only in Jesus Christ as people who are made in God's image, whatever their color, turn from sin to trust in Jesus for forgiveness and salvation.