The Sermon That Can Change A Nation- Part 3

But my name's Luke. I'm actually a discipleship pastor at Apologia Church, along with Jeff. And we launched End Abortion Now about a year ago, just over a year ago, where we brought Zach on. But I am honored to be here.

Hopefully, I don't need to translate. I've learned something this week that us Americans talk extremely slow and lazy, I think. So you guys will probably understand me better than I can understand you.

But that being said, I mentioned we're honored. And I mean that, what I mean by that is that we understand the heritage you guys have here, especially coming from the RP Church. And we feel extremely blessed to be able to be here.

Your faithfulness to God's word is apparent. There seems like there's a beautiful Presbyterian church in every corner here, which is incredible and amazing. And again, spending time here, I've said this a lot this last week, it's made me realize that there's not a whole lot of cultural heritage at all in Arizona, where we're from.

It's basically like all we have is the Grand Canyon, and we didn't even build that. So we've only been a state for 100 years, 1916, the same as the proclamation in the Republic of Ireland. So anyways, that being said, I've been encouraged to go back to Arizona, and we need some serious Christian heritage here.

I do know you guys trace your spiritual roots back to John Knox, which is amazing. We love John Knox, and we know of his influence on Queen Mary in Scotland. And we've read a lot about his ability to speak truth into the magistrate there, into the government.

We know of his desire to overthrow Catholicism and ultimately replace it with Presbyterianism. And so there's a couple of quotes I'm gonna share of his real quick. One, he said, resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.

Another one he said was, the man who stands with God is always in the majority. And then quickly, I'll share a story of his that I really, really love. I came across as I was preparing for this, and I think it applies wonderfully to this discussion.

So I'll read quickly. It says, the most dramatic interview between Mary and Knox took place on June 4th, 1563. Mary summoned Knox to Holyrood after hearing that he had been preaching against her proposed marriage to Don Carlos, the son of Philip II of Spain.

Mary began by scolding Knox, then she burst into tears. What have ye to do with my marriage, she asked, and what are ye within this commonwealth? John's reply was, a subject born within the same madam.

He noted, though he was not of noble birth, he had the same duty as any subject to warn of dangers to the realm. When Mary started to cry again, he said, madam, in God's presence I speak. I never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures.

Yea, I can scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys, who my own hand corrects, much less can I rejoice in your majesty's weeping. He added that he would rather endure her tears, however, than remain silent and, quote, betray my commonwealth.

At this, Mary ordered him out of the room. So my prayer tonight is that you will be able to endure the tears, not only of the pro-choice supporters that are pushing to legalize abortion here in Ireland, but also even the tears of those within the pro-life movement, which I'll discuss more, rather than betray your commonwealth here in Ireland.

And the key passage I wanna focus on tonight, I shouldn't say focus, we'll get to this actually at the end of this talk, but Proverbs 24, 10 through 12. And this is actually the verses, the section of verses we use for our abortion ministry.

So starting in verse 10, if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Verse 11, rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, behold, we did not know this.

Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay man according to his work? And then before I get started here, I wanna read a quote from my friend and one of my favorite theologians, Joe Boot, as you here would probably say, me mate, Joe Boot.

He's actually from London, so he's kind of similar to you guys, but he's speaking on the hopelessness of the culture, he said, Proverbs 8, 36 is playing concerning the ultimate outcome of a rejection of God's wisdom.

All who sin against me wrong their own souls. All those who hate me love death. Without the sovereign God in their world and the outside of the covenant, men desperately plan their utopias, dreaming of creating cybernetic life and downloading their consciousness into a machine to escape death and wonder how man will avoid the consequences of the evil in his own heart.

Our culture and its restlessness and hopelessness is developing a love affair with death. Hence the current obsession with promoting population control, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide.

Before we go any further, let me pray. Lord, I'm so thankful for this opportunity to be here tonight and to speak to my Irish brothers and sisters, Lord, and I just ask that you would get me out of the way, that you would speak through me, that you'd allow me to be spirit-led, and that you would use this message to glorify you and to expand your kingdom, and hopefully, Lord, to allow Ireland to continue to not allow abortion to be legal in their nation, Lord.

We ask this in Christ's name, amen. So my first point, I said, is why us? Why the Americans? Why listen to us? What do we know? First question, I wanna, if you guys go ahead and feel free to put your hands up, who in here has seen Back to the Future, especially part two?

Rakela has, okay. Mixed crowd, okay. I'll give a brief, I asked that so I know how much detail I got to give here, so a brief synopsis, in Back to the Future Two, in 2015, Marty, who's the main character, from 1985, he goes to the future in 2015, and he finds what's called the Grace Sports Almanac, which essentially was a compilation of sports scores and statistics from 1950 to 2000.

So he fantasizes about taking it back to the past so that he can bet on games then and make money, because it essentially has all the scores for those years. So Doc Brown discourages him, throws it away, but over watching this is old Biff, who overhears and takes the almanac out of the trash.

He then goes back to 1955 and gives the almanac to young Biff, and in the alternate storyline, young Biff uses this almanac to build an empire. So essentially he took the scores, then started betting on all these games, knowing what the scores were gonna be, made a lot of money, built an empire.

So here's why I bring this up. Essentially, we're here from 45 years in the future, as if it was 2063 in Ireland. We have the Gray's Almanac of abortion statistics. So we have 45 years worth of abortion statistics.

We're standing on 60 million plus dead babies, a number that grows by more than 3 ,000 a day in my nation. This is a conservative number of the total deaths from World War II, just to put this into perspective, is there are 50 to 80 million, depending on how you count.

So we're right there in the middle, we're right in the average of that number. Roughly six million Jews were murdered by Hitler. And in the conservative number I saw, to bring it home here, there were 1 ,800 deaths at the hands of the IRA.

So we're at 60 million. But what I want to get across is that we're not here as haughty know-it-alls, but we're here as repentance centers, in sackcloth and ashes. Not to say look at us in a good way, but to look at us as a nation.

Look at us at how we've failed. Look at us at how our nation has failed to end abortion and has allowed us to compile this extremely terrible number of dead babies. We know what works and we know what does not.

We know what has failed, what has resulted in this modern Holocaust in my nation. We also know what it is going to take to win this war. So our hope and our prayer is that you'll heed our advice, that you will employ these effective methods that are working now in our nation, that our nation has failed to use.

And our prayer, again, is that you will be able to prevent this national Holocaust of your own. In some ways, we're very much jealous of where you guys are at as a nation, because you're still at a position where it is illegal and you still protect the lives of the unborn.

So my next point, then, is how has the church failed? And again, this is in my nation. So the simple answer is that the church in the States has failed to assert the authority of Christ in all things.

And again, my prayer is that you will not follow in our footsteps. Let me be clear, I am in no way asserting the failures of the church in my culture onto you. This is simply a warning to not make the same mistakes that we have.

For various reasons, which I won't get into today, the church militant, or the true believers presently alive, forming the Christian church, ultimately has abandoned the culture in my nation. Unlike Knox, we have stopped speaking the truth into the culture.

We have stopped holding the magistrate to biblical standards. We have left the culture to its own devices. The church as a whole, in my culture, has developed what I call a retreatist mentality. So rather than exhibiting biblical influence, we duck and cover.

We deliberately prolong the tying of our shoes. In other words, it's like, oh, there's abortion, I gotta tie my shoe. For 45 years. Still tying it. That's essentially what we've done. I'm of a, personally, fourth generation of ministers of the gospel.

My great-grandparents and my grandparents were missionaries in Africa. And my mom's side of the family, amazing Christians, faithful to God, but like most of the churches in my nation in the last 45 plus years, they've let the culture go.

They've been faithful in their own little areas, in their own bubbles, but they haven't stepped outside of that to speak into the culture. We've essentially given up on the culture. We've retreated into our ecclesiastical bunkers, into what we call Christian ghettos, which has resulted in two major outlooks.

The first one, it's those that are waiting for the rapture. And the second one is those waiting on God to fix things. The former is cowardly and the latter is lazy. Neither take responsibility. As Zach just spoke to us, Christ Jesus, our Lord and King, is now ruling, but we have failed to assert his crown rights over all things.

Christ owns all things. And we've failed to rightly acknowledge this, especially over the issue of abortion. There's a quote from Francis Schaeffer. He says, of every abortion clinic, should have a sign in front of it saying, open by the permission of the church.

And I believe that 100%. The only reason the abortion clinics exist in my nation is because the church has failed to stop it. As a nation that has covenanted with God, the church in my nation is absolutely accountable for the demise of our culture.

So what devices then have we left the culture to? The first one is idolatry. By failing to call the culture to rightful worship of their creator, we have allowed them to create their own idols to worship, and they've done so uninhibited.

Truly, I believe that we become what we worship, and culture is nothing more than worship externalized. And this has led to the formation of two main idols, the first one being death. As I mentioned from the quote from Jobu earlier, the culture has a love affair with death.

Dr. James White, a good friend of ours, actually Jeff and I, our mentor, he says that we live in a culture of death. Simply, the culture worships death. So if we become what we worship, and the culture worships death, what does the culture naturally make?

Murderers. The culture, without restrictions, is willing to sacrifice anything for the next idol. So the second idol then is comfort. And ultimately, the culture worships the God of comfort. So let's look at the reasons why the culture wants what they call safe and legal abortions, things like physical and emotional pain, rape, sickness, disease, money, careers, education, sexual freedom without consequences.

Ultimately, those all boil down to comfort. And the result is that the culture is readily and willingly able to murder their children without remorse. Again, all for the sake of comfort. They know it's a pre-born human.

They know it's a life. They also know that it's murder. They say it to us all the time. Zach mentioned that earlier. Ultimately, they just want to murder their children because their comfort is much more valuable to them.

Again, we become what we worship. They worship comfort. Therefore, their comfort is a far greater worth than their own offspring. The church in my culture has failed to say this for 45 years. They've failed to call abortion murder, which brings me to my next point.

The other reason, the second reason the church has failed is because of the pro-life rhetoric. In other words, the terminology and the rhetoric being used by the pro-life movement for the last 45 years has failed miserably.

Again, to the tune of 60 million plus dead babies in my nation alone. Overall, the pro-life movement has failed to call abortion murder. They've failed to call what it is. They've failed to use God's law as the standard, and they've failed to put legislation into place that agrees.

The pro-life movement has been trying for 45 years to scientifically convince the pro-choicers that our pre-born neighbors are fully human in the womb. Zach touched on this briefly. There's no doubt that a baby is human from conception.

Science proves that. In 1973, the time of Roe v. Wade, they could not yet scientifically show this. But since then, science has overwhelmingly shown that babies are beyond a shadow of a doubt fully human from the moment of conception.

There is no doubt whatsoever that a fetus in the womb of its mother is a life. But the pro-life movement continues to put forth this argument as the primary reason to make abortion illegal. The problem, however, is that abortion supporters know this.

They know it's a human life. They've repeatedly admitted as much, but they simply don't care. They want the right to murder their children because comfort trumps the lives of their offspring. We have footage of people saying this time and time again.

Something else that they say that is heartbreaking that Zach hears all the time, when we're there pleading with the mothers to not go in and kill their babies, we will say, we will adopt your baby. Please give us this.

Please don't do this. We will take your baby. And we have people lined up at our church. I know people across the nation of the U .S. that will adopt those babies in a heartbeat. But time and time again, we've also heard them say, I can never let someone else have my child.

So they'd rather kill it. Again, we become what we worship. So even though pro-choice is willingly call it murder, the pro-life movement as a whole still refuses to call it murder. Or at the very least, calling the mother, the one who has hired an assassin to murder her child, a murderer.

They still stick to a failing rhetoric. I'm sure Jeff will touch on this a little bit after myself. But even this week in Ireland when we were at the pro-life rally, we talked to a number of people who said, a number of pro-life people who said that abortion is murder.

They had signs that said that. But when it came down to it, they refused to call the mother a murderer. They said she's a victim. So why is this? Why does this movement hold on to this language that has been anything but successful?

We believe this to be true for one reason, the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, the same church that teaches the false works-based salvation, a church you are all very familiar with, the same church that recently offered plenary indulgences for attending the 2018 March for Life in Washington, D .C.

Yes, this really happened. We thought it was a joke when we first saw it. So if you don't know what a plenary indulgence is, it frees a person from all temporal punishment due to sin. In other words, if a Catholic properly received the plenary indulgence at the 2000 March for Life and then immediately died, he would go straight to heaven rather than spend time in purgatory.

The normal conditions for a plenary indulgence must be met in order for the March for Life indulgence to be granted. Those wishing to gain the plenary indulgence must be detached from sin, not desiring to sin.

They must make a sacramental confession, receive Holy Communion, and pray for the Pope's intentions within eight days of attending the March for Life events. This came directly from the Pope, and this is what's fueling the pro-life movement.

So the same church that is behind the biggest pro-life groups in my nation, 40 Days for Life, National Right to Life, those are probably the two biggest in our nation. These are the same pro-life groups that are providing much of the funding and rhetoric for the pro-life groups here in Ireland.

So why won't Roman Catholics call abortion murder? Simple answer, their theology won't allow it. They may individually call it murder, but never corporately as a whole. They may even, without hesitation, call an abortion doctor a murderer, but they absolutely will not refer to the mother as anything but a victim.

Their theology will not allow them to see the abortive mother as God sees them, also as a murderer. Let me explain. So there are two types of sin in the Roman Catholic theology. Mortal and benial. So I'm gonna read here the distinction from actually from catholiccatechism .com.

So all sin is an offense against God and a rejection of his perfect love and justice. Yet Jesus makes a distinction between two types of sins. We call the most serious and grave sins mortal sins. Mortal sins destroy the grace of God in the heart of the sinner.

By their very grave nature, a mortal sin cuts our relationship off from God and turns away man from his creator. St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews tells us that if we sin willfully, after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins.

The second type of sin, venial sin, that of less grave matter, does not cut us off from Christ. However, a venial sin does weaken grace in the soul and damages our relationship with God. A person who frequently indulges in venial sin is very likely to collapse into mortal sin if they persist in their evil ways.

Okay, so quickly, mortal sins in Catholic theology must meet three conditions. One, it's a sin of grave matter. Two, it's a sin committed with full knowledge of the sinner. Three, it's a sin committed with deliberate consent of the sinner.

In other words, mortal sins cannot be done on accident. A person who commits a mortal sin is one who knows that their sin is wrong, but still deliberately commits the sin anyway. This means that mortal sins are premeditated by the sinner and thus are truly a rejection of God's law and love.

But doesn't this sound exactly like the mother having an abortion? Isn't she deliberately, with full knowledge, murdering her child? Isn't she committing a premeditated murder? Surely this is no accident, right?

We would say yes, absolutely. The Roman Catholic would, however, say no. They would still call the mother a victim or that she doesn't have full knowledge of what she is doing. Or was at the very least coerced.

And again, as Zach mentioned, we hear time and time again, they know it's a child, they know it's murder, they just want the right to murder their child. So this is very confusing, especially considering the first mortal sin listed is abortion.

And it's defined as direct abortion, that is abortion willed as an end or as a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law. The church imposes the canonical penalty of excommunication for this crime against human life.

And there's your answer as to why the Roman Catholics refuse to call the mother a murderer. This is why they refer to the mother as a victim. Because if they were to do so, they would have to excommunicate a lot of men and women.

So at this point, it essentially becomes a numbers game. And this is also the driving force, again, behind the failing pro-life rhetoric. So bad unbiblical Roman Catholic theology ultimately is the underlying presupposition that has caused the pro-life movement to fail so miserably.

That has resulted again in over 60 million dead babies in my nation, and that number is climbing. And that brings me then to my next point, what is our presupposition? Why the church? Why can abortion only end or be stopped by the church?

First, it starts with our presuppositions. Only we, the church militant, presuppose God's word is truth. That it is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. That only by it do we have any justification for morality whatsoever.

Only by standing on scripture can we call abortion murder. Only we know that there is no neutrality, that you're either for or against Christ. Atheists have no justification, and ultimately neither does the Roman Catholic Church, because their ultimate authority is not the word of God, but the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church itself.

Neither do they have a true gospel, which brings me to my next reason why it has to be the church. Because ultimately, abortion can only be ended by the gospel. The shedding of innocent blood can only be stopped after the hearts of men have been changed.

Even righteous laws, like the ones you already have in place here in Ireland regarding abortion, are ultimately nothing more than a Band-Aid. They do not heal the hearts of men. Until men's hearts are regenerated, until their hearts of stone are replaced with hearts of flesh, they will still desire sin and they will still desire death.

I'm gonna give an example here from the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. I understand that not all of you are from the Republic, but I just wanna make a point here. Third paragraph from the bottom of it states, the Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman.

The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberties, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of its parts, all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government which had divided a minority from the majority in the past.

So just over 100 years ago, the Irish Republic desired to cherish all of the children. They publicly proclaimed it. They even established righteous laws that tangibly flowed through, I'm sorry, followed through on this proclamation.

But now what is happening? Irish people are fighting tooth and nail to overthrow these righteous laws. They no longer cherish all of the children, just the ones they want, just the ones that do not cause them discomfort.

They are clawing and scratching for the right to murder their own children at will with no remorse. Another example, I'm gonna talk about Liam Neeson, who I know is basically Captain Ireland, so hopefully I don't offend anybody here.

But I've seen several things from him on YouTube recently, so I just wanted to point something out. So in a UNICEF video recently on ending violence against children is what it was called, he said, any violence against a child is unacceptable.

Amen to that. And there's another UNICEF video, if you fly Aer Lingus at all, on the flight over they have a video they play where they're collecting change for children. And here in the video Neeson says, together let's continue to save lives.

That's good, that's great. He even claims that birth certificates are fundamental rights. It's a stretch, but okay. But there's another video by Amnesty International Ireland, which Neeson narrates, and he's promoting the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

This hypocrisy is staggering. Neeson desires to end violence against children and to fight to save lives, but only if they're already born, not the pre-born children in the womb. And by promoting a repeal of the Eighth, he's actually promoting violence against children and not saving, but ending lives.

Birth certificates are a fundamental right, but apparently not life itself. So why is all this happening? Again, because they have hearts of stone, because they need the gospel. These righteous laws and proclamations are nothing more than temporary solutions, cultural band-aids.

Please don't misunderstand me, I praise God for them. We praise God for the lives that have been saved because of them. And they need to be protected, they need to be fought for. But as part of the fight, the gospel must be proclaimed.

Without it, the laws and proclamations are meaningless. The gospel must be the driving force that propels the righteous cause. Gospel change must happen one person at a time. It starts at the bottom and it works its way up.

The more Christ's kingdom grows, the more men will love Christ. The more men love Christ, the more men will love their neighbor, including their pre-born neighbor. And this can only occur with the proclamation of the gospel.

The proclamation of the gospel can only come from the living, universal Church of Christ. Again, the church militant. We are actively living and actively fighting. We are the bride of Christ. And naturally, a bride should want to please her husband.

So my next reason then is, what does the church's husband want? What pleases him? Two points I want to make here. One, to love God and love others. In other words, to fulfill the two greatest commandments.

Matthew 22, 36 through 40, we all know this. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And he said to him, you shall love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as your neighbor. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

So loving God and loving your neighbor will naturally lead to the second point, the great commission. So the last thing Jesus told the disciples in Matthew before leaving them, Matthew 28, 18 through 20.

And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. So obviously Christ desires us to go into all the world, preaching the gospel and making disciples. However, there's two statements in the great commission that are commonly overlooked.

And this will be the focus of my last two points. One, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And number two, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded to you. So my next point then is by what authority?

By what authority are we to proclaim the gospel? And by what authority are we to end abortion? Matthew 28, 18 again. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Now go. And Jesus has been given all authority. There's a quote from Abraham Kuyper, actually just heard today, I threw it in my notes real quick. He said, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, mine.

Through the great commission, he transferred this authority to his bride. To go, to make, and to teach in his name with his authority. And this is what I believe to be the missing element. I mentioned earlier that in my culture, the church has failed to assert the authority of Christ in all things.

Christ has commanded us to assert his authority. As a whole, we have failed to do so. We've become fearful, we've become timid, and we've become lazy. We say with our lips that Christ is king, that he is ruler of the universe, but in no way do our actions show that we actually believe this.

In many ways, we talk the talk, but we don't walk the walk. Colossians 1, 15 through 20. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body of the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, then everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

All things were created by Christ and for his glory, both in heaven and on earth. This includes thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. They were created and exist and are upheld through him and for him.

I think the point we so often miss is that Christ is not just concerned with things in heaven. He's also concerned with things here on earth. We become so heaven-minded, and rightly so, that we become not so earthly-minded.

So what is it that Christ is accomplishing? He didn't come simply to make peace with the blood of his cross, but also to reconcile to himself all things. Where? On earth or in heaven. So by asserting the authority of Christ over all things through the gospel, all things on earth can be reconciled to Christ.

We must preach the gospel boldly, with authority, and this includes the areas of government and politics. Your laws and your government exist because Christ allows them to. They're included under thrones, dominions, rulers, and principalities.

Romans 13 teaches us that there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Our governing authorities are literally deacons. That's the word in the Greek. The governing authorities are God's deacons, his servants.

The same passage also refers to them as the ministers of God. They operate as God allows them to. He has all authority, and as his bride, it is our duty to assert that authority. We've come to believe that the government is an absolutely sovereign state, that they themselves are God.

In the states, the government acts as if they are our savior. You guys have all seen Donald Trump, you know. We've come to believe, as a church, believe that and allow that. But ultimately, the sovereignty they truly have comes from the truly sovereign God of the universe.

Your nation, like mine, has a long history of defying tyrants. My nation has already allowed the culture to establish some forms of unrighteous tyranny. Your nation is still in a position to fight against much of that, especially in the areas of abortion and homosexuality.

Now I wanna look at an example in scripture of this. We all know David and Goliath, so we're not gonna spend a lot of time there, but I wanna look at a couple things quickly. There's a couple things that I think we overlook.

So briefly, David first comes to the camp. He sees Goliath for the first time. Goliath is breeding threats against the Israel army. In 1 Samuel 17, 26, it says, this is David's reaction. For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?

Notice David's immediate boldness and courage. While the rest of the Israelite army is hiding, they're shaking in their boots. He's not at all impressed with Goliath. So after David forgoes the armor that was offered to him, he then collects the five smooth stones for his sling, and he approaches Goliath.

Goliath's reaction, 1 Samuel 17, 43. Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks? Come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field. It goes on to say that Goliath actually disdained David and cursed him by his gods.

So here's David's reply. This is what I wanna look at. 1 Samuel 17, 45 through 47. So David says, you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied.

This day, the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down and cut off your head and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into your hand, into our hand.

The point I want to get here is how often do we have the courage that David had? How often do we face the enemy with that much confidence? Goliath is a perfect picture of the culture we're facing, the same spiteful, God-hating attitude we're up against.

When the big, mean, haughty culture bears down, our response should not be to duck and cover or to run and hide. We should not retreat, nor should we stop and tie our shoe. Our response should be, who are you, uncircumcised culture, that you should defy the armies of the living God?

When the culture spits, hurls insults, and threatens us, our response should not be to find the nearest bunker and to wait it out. Our response should be to confront them in the name of the Lord of hosts, to let them know they have defied the God of the armies of Israel.

For what purpose? Again, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and to declare that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. Who here will be your generation's David? Who will admonish the church to take courage because the battle is the Lord's?

Who has enough fortitude to tell the culture, he will give you into our hand? And this brings me to my next point. The imperial gospel. I realize this might sound strange. I know when I first heard it, I was like, oh, the gospel's imperial, what does that mean?

Let me explain. The gospel is imperialistic, and simply, all that really means is that the gospel's designed in such a way as to eliminate all rivals, as to dethrone all idols, as to defeat every area in which sin resides.

I'm gonna do a brief history lesson here, and I'm winding down, I know you guys probably wanna eat, so brief history lesson. The writers of the New Testament were actually not the first to use euangelion, the evangel, the gospel, literally the good news.

This was an imperialistic term already being used primarily for the emperor. Just like the gospel of the kingdom of Christ, it was literally the good news of the emperor or of the king. For an example, the emperor would return in victory from battle, so there would actually be good news bearers that would precede him.

P. Andrew Sandlin says this, the emperor issued good news, his gospel. He himself embodied the good news. He was deemed, in some sense, divine. He healed, he performed other miracles. He was the world's savior.

He, as a god, protected the state. Great signs accompanied his birth and life. His words became sacred writings. He granted great power to humans under his care. No wonder his life and actions and words are all celebrated as gospel.

The emperor himself was good news. So the early Christians were not actually persecuted for their faith in Christ. The Roman Empire actually welcomed all religions. This wasn't why they were hated. They were persecuted because they would not call Caesar Lord.