Being A Godly Troublemaker

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So, praise God, this is an incredible opportunity, and I have to say that we're honored. We have been in Northern Ireland, the

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Republic of Ireland, and now in Scotland, and I want you to hear from me, just very transparent as your brother, how humbled we are by what

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God has granted us the ability and opportunity to do here, and also how sobering this is for us.

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We've learned that, actually, as Christians have wanted to engage the issue of abortion, the culture of death, with the

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Gospel, many Christians have told us in Northern Ireland, in the Republic of Ireland, and people over here, of course, in Scotland, that they've been looking for an explicitly

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Gospel -centered Christian movement to face down the issue of abortion, and they couldn't find it.

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And of course, you have the regular pro -life industry, the pro -life lobby, the pro -life movement from my nation that has really set up camp and shop in your nation, and also in Northern Ireland, in the

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Republic of Ireland, but many Christians are wondering, well, where's the movement of the church? Where's the movement that makes us about the

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Word of God, the Crown Rights of Jesus Christ, and the Gospel itself? Where's that?

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Because the Gospel's the power of God for salvation. It's what God uses to empower, to bring people to life.

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The Spirit of God empowers the message of the Gospel, and He brings dead people to life.

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And all we have in our culture is mine, yours, Northern Ireland, England, all over, all we have is a culture of death.

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Those who hate me love death. That is the inevitable consequence of rebellion against our

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Creator. That's what we know that epic passage says in Romans 1,

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Paul's systematic explanation of the Gospel. People are at war with their Creator.

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They don't want the knowledge of God. They don't want to know God. And so what they end up doing as fallen creatures is exchanging the true

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God, the real God, for some other substandard God. They go for bootleg pleasure rather than real pleasure, real joy, real delight in the true

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God. You see, we are now, your nation, my nation, we are, my nation is a direct result of your people, the

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Covenanters. I mean, the United States of America, for better or for worse, exists because of the theology and the fight in your people.

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Your people, your tradition created my nation. Any good that came over into my nation is as a direct result of your people, your tradition, your history.

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And here I am now, a Reformed Baptist, in your pulpit talking to you about something that we are totally unified in.

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It really is. It's a humbling experience. I have so much to say to you, but we have limited time. So I want you to hear just quickly,

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I mentioned that we come to you not with a position of our own authority or saying we've always done this right, but coming from a place of repentance

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But I want you to hear that briefly, that story of how we came to do what we're doing now, what brought us to Scotland, to your nation.

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You see, we were, of course, pro -life. I was a pastor. I was a minister to God's people.

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I was preaching. I was teaching. And of course, I would say that I was pro -life. Of course, all

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Christians, legitimate Christians that know the word of God, that know what God says about the issue of the pre -born and the murder of children in the womb, we would all say

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I'm pro -life, right? Because that's the two, that's the contrast. We've got the death position. We should be able to murder our children in the womb.

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So there's the death position, the culture of death. And then you have the life position, the culture of life.

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And I think we all assume that the pro -life position is the Christian position, right?

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Because that's life. We're for life. And we just assume that the pro -life industry, the pro -life lobby is essentially

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Christian. So you have Christians, of course, in my nation and in yours and in Northern Ireland and in the

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Republic of Ireland, where we've been over this last week, who will give money and will pray for the pro -life industry in the lobby because we assume those are our people, the pro -life industry.

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They're trying to criminalize and to end abortion. The end goal, we're told or we understand to be, we want to end abortion immediately, correct?

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That's what the Christians, we think that. And what we learned, of course, is that is not the case with the neutral pro -life industry, the pro -life lobby, very important distinction.

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We are truly pro -life. Christians are pro -life. The pro -life lobby, the pro -life industry is not fundamentally

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Christian. As a matter of fact, it explicitly says it is not fundamentally Christian.

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And so, of course, we would say we're pro -life. We had, of course, every year, the sanctity of life

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Sunday in my nation. We have that every year. Roe v. Wade was a court opinion.

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It is not law in my country. It is actually tyranny perpetrated upon my country.

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Texas, Arizona, Idaho, these are states in the United States of America, still have abortion as a criminal act on the books.

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It is still criminal in my state to actually have an abortion. But we've been duped to believe that a court opinion, not a matter of law in my nation, actually swept all that away.

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And so we've been living now, standing on top of 62 plus million dead children in my nation.

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But we have every year the sanctity of life Sunday where the pastor and most evangelical pulpits will stand up, whether you're a foreign

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Baptist or Presbyterian or whatever the case may be, and will generally speak on the issue of abortion.

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It's what God says, image of God in the womb, special creation, value, human dignity, all the rest that will be preached across the pulpits.

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And we'll essentially assume this movement under sort of the general pro -life movement.

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And we have the March for Life at our nation's capital, the 40 Days for Life, Roman Catholic movement.

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And so we sort of assume that this pro -life industry and lobby is essentially representing the Christian interest.

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And so it was about a decade ago that I saw, coming across my social media feed,

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I saw some pictures of a woman that I thought I knew. Her name was Lisa Metzger.

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And I had gone to high school with a girl named Lisa Metzger. So I see her pictures coming up and I think, oh, it's a Lisa Metzger from high school.

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It's probably while we're friends with each other. I'm not in the habit of friending strange women. And so she's on my feed, maybe because she's an old high school friend.

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And I see Lisa at these different locations with different women and different newborn babies.

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And so for a period of maybe a couple of months or weeks or whatever it was, I see her with a baby.

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And then I see the next day her with a different baby, then her at a different location with a different mom and a different baby. And then

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I realized, oh, these are babies that she saved from going out to the abortion mill to preach the gospel.

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So I'm looking through her feed, I'm looking at her stories of all these babies that have been saved, very encouraged by it.

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And we had a very popular radio program that was, of course, international, but also specifically being aired in Arizona, my home state, called

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Apologia Radio. And I messaged Lisa, assuming that I knew her from high school, and I said, hey,

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I have a radio program, love to have you on, would you be willing to do it? She said, yes. And so we're at the radio station.

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My technician was in the back behind the glass. We're really only about 15 or 20 seconds away from starting and going on the air.

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Lisa comes on the line. And I basically said, hey, Lisa, very excited to have you on today. I said, so we know each other from high school.

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She said, no. I said, well, wait,

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I thought we went to high school together. She's like, no, I don't know you. And so, well, how did we become friends?

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I have no idea. So we ended up on each other's Facebook feed somehow, strangely, oddly, she's not in the habit of friending strange men either.

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And so somehow we're on each other's feed, and I saw her things, and now it's show time. We're doing the show now.

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So in the show, she's describing her ministry. She's been doing it for decades. I think she said two decades. And she just goes out to the abortion clinic, and she preaches the gospel.

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She calls women not to murder their children, and she offers to love and to help them. Very simple message.

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And so while she's describing this and all her decades of ministry, she says, and yeah, we saved,

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I think she said, 364 babies. You got to really feel the weight of that.

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I just adopted a little boy named Augustine, or Augustin, however you guys, you strange

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Scottish people say it. We call him August. But his mother actually had an appointment to take him out of state while he was in a room to murder him.

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And by God's grace and in his providence, that didn't happen. That's one life. He's my son. He's almost three months old.

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That's one life. She saved 364 babies. So our jaws are on the table.

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We are in awe of this. And then she says, yeah, last year. That's almost a baby a day, an image bearer of God saved every single day because a

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Christian woman goes out to the abortion clinic to say, please don't murder your baby.

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This is the gospel. Jesus will save you. Repent and believe in Christ. You'll receive the gift of eternal life. We'll help you.

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We'll adopt your baby. And she's saving all of these lives. So that immediately started a movement within our own church body.

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I was a pastor at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility. It's a hospital. And we planted a church, actually,

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I was sent there by another church. And we planted a church at this hospital. All of our church body came to Christ out of drug and alcohol addiction.

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They were on detoxification medication. It was a really rough looking crowd early on.

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If you can get sort of a feel of the room, it was really no bigger than this. The room wasn't really any bigger than this. Cheryl's in the back.

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She can testify to that, Pastor Luke's wife. Very small room and a very rough looking crowd.

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We used to be known in Phoenix, Arizona as, oh, that's that drug church. Because everybody that came to apology, our church was from the drug addiction center.

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And so very new believers, very in love with Jesus, very passionate about the truth.

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They heard this radio program and they said, yes, we have to do something. We need to preach the gospel.

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We need to do this. God will call us to this. We need to be faithful. And the answer was yes. So I'm skipping over some things that are just,

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I think, brilliant and amazing. But basically our very first day as a very small church body, a very small church body with no resources, with no money, we went out to the abortion mill and in the very first day we saved two babies.

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Two babies within, I believe it was the first hour. Two children saved from death.

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As a result of us going out there and just simply saying, please don't murder your baby. There's the truth. There's a law.

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And we gave the gospel. Here's who Christ is. Repent and believe for eternal life. There'll be forgiveness in Christ and then our love.

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We will help you. We'll serve you. We'll adopt your baby. We'll do whatever it takes. Two babies saved.

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And so what happened is early on in the ministry of doing this, we were on the radio. We just started mentioning it. We would have a show planned.

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We would talk about justification. We would talk about eschatological issues. We would talk about the culture.

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And then we just mentioned sort of, oh, hey, by the way, praise God. We saved a baby on Saturday.

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Or we saved, there was two saves on Wednesday. And next thing you know, people are starting to take notice.

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Christians from local bodies under biblical authority started saying, well, how can my church do this?

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And we would start saying, well, you need to do this and do this. And so God started this gospel -centered movement through the ministry of apology of church where Christians under local church authority were going out to the abortion mills to preach the gospel to save children from death.

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Now as time went on, this is where it gets really important and it impacts where you are at right now in a very, very important way.

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You've heard today the importance of why must it be the church from Pastor Luke. You've heard about abortion mill ministry from Pastor Zach.

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And so I encourage you to just consider everything that was said. Listen to them again. They're going to be online. So you'll be able to hear those messages again.

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But I want you to hear really something that will dramatically impact you and you must understand is the core.

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It is the foundational issue. We learned, of course, that the pro -life industry and the pro -life lobby in my country, of which is dramatically impacting your country and others and is taking millions and millions of dollars, is explicitly not

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Christian. Are they impacted by the biblical worldview? Yes. They'll call it the image of God.

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They'll say that there's the sanctity of human life. They'll at times borrow capital from the

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Christian worldview and they'll take that, but they will not go into the public square with it.

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They are not about the gospel. They explicitly say it's not about Christ. So there was a bill in Oklahoma, a state in the

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United States of America, Oklahoma. There's a senator named Joseph Silk who was trying to get a bill passed into a legislature that please hear me on this, is predominantly pro -life, predominantly pro -life as a legislature.

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You would think a bill to abolish or to criminalize abortion would easily pass in a state where it's predominantly pro -life.

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They would win. And in my country, the states have a right to do those sorts of things. We can vote that way.

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And so the state of Oklahoma should have criminalized abortion. It is a consistent bill. It said equality for all humans from conception and it's protected and it's a criminal offense, of course.

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And what we learned was that the pro -life industry nationally and in Oklahoma essentially thwarted the bill in Oklahoma.

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You heard that right. It was not the pro -choice movement. It was the pro -life movement.

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Tony Lowinger, the vice president of National Right to Life, the largest pro -life organization on the planet, millions and millions and millions of dollars from my country, yours, now

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Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, had Tony Lowinger go into the legislature and they said to him, they said,

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Tony, how do you want us to vote on this? And he said, don't pass it. And you might be thinking, why?

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Isn't that what we're working for, pro -life? We're trying to end abortion? He said, if you pass this bill, it'll do away with all of our legislation that we already have in place in Oklahoma.

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And what he meant by that is the pro -life industry focuses on regulating child murder, not abolishing it, not criminalizing it.

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Can I give you some examples, brothers and sisters, of some of those kind of regulations that they work for and they call victories.

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They raise millions of dollars from your people and my people to do these sorts of regulations.

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And my country is touted as a victory for the pro -life lobby. They'll say, hey, we need to raise money for this very important pro -life regulation, this pro -life bill that's going to save lives.

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We need to raise money, raise money, raise money. And they will raise money to the tune of millions of dollars at times.

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And here's the kind of bill that they pass and they'll call it a victory. They'll say the abortionist is no longer allowed to tear the baby apart with forceps.

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So you can't decapitate the baby any longer or tear the arms and legs off or disembowel them with forceps.

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You need to now use suction only. Victory for the pro -life movement. Now you can only kill the child through suction.

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And they'll call it a victory. Can you, brothers and sisters, I want to say this to you humbly. Can you imagine

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Christians standing outside of Auschwitz and trying to bring justice there for those

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Jews who are being slaughtered? And somehow they get regulation passed where the

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Nazis are no longer allowed to beat Jews to death. Now they can only use gas.

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Can you imagine? Everybody would say that's not a victory.

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You're missing the main principle, the main point. And that is that image bearers of God, human beings, are being slaughtered.

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That's the main issue. The pro -life lobby and industry, again, in your nation and mine, very important for you to keep that in mind.

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My country's really impacting yours in this respect. They'll say things like we have a regulation now where the abortion mill hallways have to be a certain width.

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Or they'll say things like we just had a victory. Well, what's the victory? The victory is, or that we're working for, is that every child slaughtered in abortion must receive a proper burial.

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So you're not allowed to throw them in the dumpster anymore out back, which has happened. We have veterans in this movement as Christians who've gone with the gospel out there and they've pulled the dead babies out of the trash can and given them a proper burial.

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But the pro -life movement will say it's a victory that now you have to actually give a proper burial, show the dignity of the human being after an abortion.

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They'll say victory. Brothers and sisters, that is not a victory. It's not. And we had

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Tony Lowinger on our radio program after he was in Oklahoma and he killed the bill to criminalize abortion in Oklahoma.

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We had him on my radio program. When he was leaving the Capitol, we got a phone call into him. He said it'd be on.

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I wanted him to just tell his own story. And he was a Roman Catholic. He said that they wanted to take a backdoor approach as the pro -life movement.

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In other words, not a Christian approach. They didn't want to use language like Jesus, sin, repentance, faith, eternal life.

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He said they didn't want to use the Bible. They wanted to take a backdoor approach. And when I asked him if they believe that women are guilty of murder with abortion, he told us no.

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And then I said, well, how about the abortionist? Are you working so that at least he's shown to be guilty of murder in your legislation?

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He said, well, maybe it's a fine line. But essentially he said no, not even the abortionist is a murderer.

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You see, in America, my country is lying to you. The pro -life industry is lying to you.

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It is lying to Ireland. It's lying to my nation. And then it subverts what God says about abortion.

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And it says this now, fundamentally. It says that women who have abortions are victims.

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Brothers and sisters, if a woman who has an abortion is a victim, that means there is nothing for her to repent of.

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There's no call to Christ in that. There's no call as sin.

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If she's a victim, listen, there's nothing to legislate against. What the pro -life lobby is asking for is that you would legislate our preference.

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And you're not supposed to legislate preferences. You're supposed to legislate morality. What is an ultimate ought?

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And if the pro -life lobby has gutted the gospel out of this issue and it calls women victims, then there is no hope of the gospel and no hope of legislation.

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They will not stand in the word of God. They will not press the crown rights of Jesus Christ.

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They do not see Jesus as king over the legislature, as we do. They do not see

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Jesus as having all authority in heaven and on earth, as we do. You see, the pro -life industry and pro -life lobby of my nation, listen closely, this should be all for us to know.

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They're not Christian, explicitly. They're not about the gospel. They're not like your forebearers, the covenanters, who knew their theology, they knew the gospel, they knew what they were fighting for, and they knew what they were willing to die for.

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Every covenanter in Edinburgh that was put into that prison, and of course would have had a chance to escape and to get out or not have their head cut off, they all understood what they believed and why they were standing in there naked on four ounces of bread a day.

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They knew all they had to confess. They knew all they had to do in terms of bowing and showing allegiance to, but they knew their theology and they said, no,

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Christ is king, ultimate king, nobody's above him, not in the church or the state.

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He's the ultimate, he has all authority. And you see, in my nation, we've lost that, and apparently also in yours.

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And what's amazing here is here we are, Christians, first and foremost, fundamentally, Christians, we're about the

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Lord Jesus Christ, we're about the triune God of the Bible, this holy and inspired word, we're about the gospel.

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What's amazing is that I'm preaching to a room with a tradition that is glorious, covenanters.

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And what's powerful is that you know your tradition, you know your history, you know what those

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Christians and your forebearers, you know what they believed. You know their traditions, and you know why it's important.

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And you and I know, and this is easier for me today, listen, being in your church is humbling and being among your people, you know this better than most.

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I don't think there's a lot of convincing that has to come from a Reformed Baptist to my covenant of brethren, in terms of Jesus has all authority, period.

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His law, his gospel is supreme. And what God calls us to is courage with the truth, with the gospel.

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There's a lot of darkness that's descended upon my land and yours, and there is simply no escape from that darkness without the salt and the light of the church, and please hear me on this.

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It is so easy for us as Christians to hear this often, that Jesus says, you're the salt and you're the light, and we just now have it as a pithy, very pitiful slogan.

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It means really nothing. Example, we say Jesus is the King of kings and the

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Lord of lords. That's universal. The body of Christ says that, right? He's the ruler of the kings of the earth.

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But in a situation like this, we've gotten to the point as Christians in the West where we've lost any comprehension of what that even means practically around us today.

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And we wonder why the darkness, we wonder why the decay all around us.

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Could it be because we are afraid to be that salt and to be that light to preach the gospel?

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I think one final, I'm going to get to a very important section here, a very simple step I have for you today, but I think one important element as to why, why, why is the church in my nation and yours so ineffective?

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We know we're good Calvinists here, we're reformed. We understand, of course, God is sovereign, and if this is on our nation, it's the judgment of God.

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He's in control of it. I understand that, but we also understand that Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, and he told us to go get the nations, to baptize them, and to teach them what he commanded us, all that he commanded us.

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We understand that. So whether our nations are under the judgment of God or not, what we know is the command is to win the nation to Christ, not to allow it to spin off into decay and darkness.

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Our calling, our marching orders, is to win our nations to Jesus. I don't have to do a lot of convincing,

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I hope, to covenanters in this. We understand this. That's the call, all of it, for Christ's crown and covenants.

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Amen? Yes? Okay. I've got some Presbyterians to say amen. Yes. Okay. But here's,

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I think what we're afraid of, if we're honest, and this is me, I'm confessing. I'm not, this is not me standing above, but with my brothers and sisters saying we're afraid to suffer.

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We don't want the persecution. We don't want to be hated and vilified by the world around us.

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We want things to be relatively easy, not so difficult. It's glorious.

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We were in Edinburgh, I got to do the covenanter tour. That's how you guys say it. Covenanter tour. It's like, it just sounds so smooth, so much better than my, by the way,

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I apologize for my accent today. Okay? Okay. First and foremost. Although I went down to the McDonald's a minute ago, and I didn't understand a word any of them were saying.

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Glasgow is very different than Edinburgh, okay? But it's kind of interesting trying to figure it out. But see, we're afraid to be persecuted.

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We're afraid of the difficulty, but when you hear the stories of your forebears, what got you all of this, and all that they fought for, and all that they believed, those are common folk, not superstars, not celebrities.

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Most of those Christians just wanted to live their lives. Farmers, regular people, wives, husbands, children, just wanted to live their lives.

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And when they're captured, and their lives are on the line, and they're dying these gruesome martyrs' deaths, they're doing it as normal people who, just like us, just wanted to live a normal life of peace, and beauty, and joy, and delight with their families, and friends, loved ones.

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And they suffered for the cause of the gospel. They're just like us. We're just like them. Same spirit of God in us that was in them.

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So what's going on with our generation? You see, here's what happens. We've been duped by evangelism, this squishy version of Christianity that is no

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Christianity and no gospel at all, to think that if we preach to our culture, and they don't like us, or they begin to hate us, that we're doing something wrong.

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And it's critical for us to recognize that when the Lord Jesus was in His ministry, He is the master at integrity and the truth in this moment.

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He, at one point in His ministry, you know the story, I won't go to it now, just because you know this story, He's preaching.

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And now we have these massive crowds following the Lord Jesus, massive. And to any human perspective, if we're there, what were the disciples thinking?

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Yes! Finally! This does, it's starting to look like the kingdom of God. The rule of God is supposed to bring

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Jew and Gentile together, all the nations streaming up to God's mount in Isaiah 2. The kingdom of God perspective is that all people of tribes, tongues, nations, languages, they come to serve and worship

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God. It had to start looking like that with all these crowds. It's like, now this is forming together.

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Oh, I do see, I do see how this Palestinian Jew in this remote part of the world, he may be the king, look at this.

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And then Jesus turns, and He says to these crowds, He just, He whittles them down to nothing.

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Tells them that if anyone's going to come to Him, they must hate, and He names everybody closest to you.

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Father, mother, you start getting the list down the line, sister, brother, wife, and then

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Jesus says what? And even, here it is, your life, you're not worthy to be my disciple.

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If you come to Jesus, He says, you have to love your life less in comparison to Him.

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Or He says, and I love the integrity and the truth in this, Jesus doesn't,

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He doesn't flatter us, He doesn't lie to us about the future, He just has integrity.

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He says, you have to love, in comparison to Me, all of this less hate.

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And then He says, count the cost, right? Count the cost. And He says, you must take up your cross and come follow

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Him. Now honestly, we have to confess this, I confess this completely. I wasn't there.

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I don't know what that experience is like, to watch some criminal carrying a heavy cross down a road in public, knowing that that cross bearing only ends one way.

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Like that's how Rome keeps people in check, right? You see. Like we know the story of, of course, even

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Covenanters, like the government taking Covenanters down to the beach side and, and putting them in the ground and like the tides coming in, like that's to cause fear among the people.

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Like look at this death, look, you're going to die like this. Don't harbor anybody.

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Don't listen to these preachers. Don't preach like this will be your end. Governments tend to do that to keep control of people, threaten your life, your livelihood.

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And of course, Jesus uses that and says, take up your cross and follow me.

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That's Jesus inviting people at the start, not midway in intimacy with Him and relationship with Him, not down the line at the start.

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He says, come die or don't come. Do you get it?

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Come die or don't come at all. You see, we recognize that salvation is a gift of God.

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It is. It's through faith, faith alone, apart from any work of law to try to gain righteousness before a holy

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God through your obedience to whatever law or ceremony in any way is ultimately anathema, anathema on any gospel that says it's anything other than faith.

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However, the faith that Jesus describes in coming to be joined to Him is a trusting in Him for salvation and a coming to Him to die and rise again.

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And so Jesus clears the crowds. He clears them. And it's such a glorious thing because he whittles the crowds of thousands down to a handful of very confused disciples.

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And I love this. I love what he says to them. You know, you know the story. Do you also want to go?

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Do you also want to leave? And the response back to the Lord Jesus is, where are we going to go?

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You have the words of eternal life. You see, the true people of God in that moment understood what coming to Jesus meant.

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They knew what it meant. And so when Jesus whittles the crowds down to nearly nothing with his gospel, we have to consider ourselves, what does that mean?

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Because I confess to you, we are calling you to a ministry that could mean your life.

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Confess it. I'm going to have integrity with you right now. I'm not going to lie to you about your future. If you lay your lives down for the sake of these children, you will be vilified by your culture.

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You'll be hated by your culture. You may get injured in this ministry.

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We've had people try to hit our people with vehicles as they're standing there on the road pleading for children. We might save a baby and then five minutes later have to dodge a car running across the curb trying to strike us with a vehicle.

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It's happened so many times with Christians who do this ministry across the country. I don't remember it's happened so much.

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Cars will turn around the corner and purposely try to run us over. We've had people beat up for going to preach the gospel out there at the abortion mill.

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A man was knocked out, and while he was knocked out, face down on the asphalt or concrete, how do you say it in Scotland?

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What's that? The tarmac. There you go. See, I knew it was something different and cool. On the tarmac, he's face down on the tarmac, and while he was down, knocked out, the person stood above him and started beating him while he was knocked out.

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We've had people throw things at us. We've had people threaten us. We've had people try to contact the jobs of people who were out there standing out there pleading for the lives of these children.

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It is a hard ministry, and it's worth all of your life. All of your life.

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I'll end with this on this particular point, and then point you to Matthew 28.

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When you hold these babies in your arms who have been saved from death as a result of you going out faithfully to preach the gospel to lay your life down, greater love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends.

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When you hold these babies in your arms, it will change you. I always communicate this to God's people.

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It will change you forever. One of the first babies we got to hold at Apologia Church, his name is

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Carmelo. And the day,

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I'll never forget the day of his salvation, not eternal salvation, but the day where his life was saved.

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We were on a side of the abortion facility, and it was a surgical abortion day, so they were killing lots of babies that day.

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They can kill up to 30 babies a day in this location. 30 lives are lost, one location, on a

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Sunday morning. They purposefully move their abortions to Sunday morning.

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Why? Because the Christians would be at church. Thank God we have an evening service.

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So we'd go, and we're on the side, and this atheist comes and he's dropping his friend off, and he decides he wants to come and tussle with us, he wants to fight with us.

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So he gets out of his car and he comes over and he's just angry, he's just throwing fits and screaming and yelling, and when

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I pull up, I see that he's wearing some of my church members out. I pull up and I kind of take a glance and watch what's happening.

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I can just see in the face of our people, they're just like exasperated by this guy, they're just worn out. I'm watching the thing go down, so I get out and I start to engage the guy, and I'm challenging his worldview, showing him he's an atheist, he shouldn't be concerned what anybody's doing.

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All of us are the descendants of bacteria, why are you complaining about what anybody's doing at all? You should be doing something more enjoyable than being out here arguing with other bags of protoplasm.

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What's the point? So I'm challenging his worldview, and he's getting exasperated himself now, now he's getting frustrated, and I'm trying to love him and be gracious to him, and I'm trying to take his legs off in terms of take his worldview down and point him to Christ, and I'm calling him to repentance,

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I'm calling him to Christ, and then finally he says to me, he says, you know what? He says, I don't agree with you,

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I don't agree with you at all, he says, but I really like you. Because I was trying to love him while I'm telling him the truth, he says, he really likes me.

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But at this time, Justin, who was a guy who was really, really worn out by this guy, he's so discouraged by what's happening in the abortion mill, and the atheists coming there, and all that's taking place there, it's sucking so much out of you, it's so hard, it's weighing on you.

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I'll just say this, most of the people that go to the abortion facility for the first time, the Christians who go with the gospel,

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I expect it now at this point. They go and they cry. Their first time going is crying, because the weight of it hits you.

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It's no longer theory, there it is. There's the women walking inside, there's the babies dying.

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All of a sudden it overcomes you, this is real, this isn't theory, this is happening, here's the flesh on it right now.

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And so he's having one of those moments, it happens often, and he's worn out, and he starts to walk around to the front of the abortion facility with a sign, and the sign says, please don't hurt your baby, we'll help you.

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Now what he didn't know, and we know now, is inside the abortion facility was a man named

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Chris, and his wife Tina was in pre -op in the back, I mean seconds away from killing her child in pre -op, and so he's in the lobby, and so he's struggling because he's hearing the preaching and he's struggling, and so he prays a prayer to God.

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He says, God, if you want me to stop this, he says, show me a sign.

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And here comes Justin with a sign, and the sign says, please don't hurt your baby, we'll help you, simple.

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And so Chris is like, okay. And so you have to imagine now the scene, there is the parking lot in front of the abortion facility, and then there's a parking lot across the street, and then there's an apartment facility across the way this way, and cars all, there's got to be 200 total cars all around this place.

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And so what he does is he throws on another fleece to God. He says, all right, Lord, okay, there's the sign.

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If you want me to stop this, he says, let that man, right there, Justin, all by himself, let that man be the owner of that van down the street, and just picks a random van.

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And so Chris walks out to the sidewalk towards Justin, and he says, excuse me, sir, Justin's like, yeah.

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He says, is that your van down the street? And Justin looks over and goes, that van right there?

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He goes, yes, he goes, yeah, that's my van. And so Chris tells

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Justin, I was praying to God, and I said, show me a sign, and you were here, and if he wants me to stop it, that's your van?

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And Justin goes, get in there and get your wife right now! And so he runs inside, and Chris goes inside the lobby and tells

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Planned Parenthood, and he says, let me in the back to get my wife. They said, no. He said, let me in right now. I'll kick the door down. They let him in.

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He grabs his wife, pulls her outside. She comes out bawling. He's bawling. We're crying. It was a glorious moment.

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And not long after that, Carmelo was born. And she brought him to our church.

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And this very small church, I'm telling you, about the same size, barely bigger than this church right now, the people gathered in this church building right now, were passing around Carmelo one night.

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This little boy is just covered in our tears, just passing him around, just staring at him, and just having flesh on this now.

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This is not a game. This is not mere theory.

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These aren't hypotheticals. This is flesh. This is you and me. These are other image bearers of God that God commands us in his word to hold back from the slaughter.

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It's not an option. It's a command of God. Hold them back. And you heard it preached to you today in Proverbs 24.

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Go spend time meditating there. Let God's word impact you. Not my words. Let it impact you.

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God says there. I'll summarize. If you say, when they're being led to the slaughter, if you say,

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I didn't know, doesn't he know? Doesn't he weigh the hearts?

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He knows that you know. And the command is to rescue them.

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And here we are today, thousands and thousands and thousands of children have been saved from death.

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They're saved so often that we lose count and we can't even keep up with it. People are announcing constantly from our churches, nearly 500 churches are a part of this gospel -centered movement to preach the gospel, to save these children, to demand an immediate end to abortion.

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There are thousands of children alive just because Christians, local church, Christian context, gospel context, have gone out to preach the gospel.

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And I confess, I readily confess this, I can't fully comprehend it, nor appreciate it.

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But I've held these babies in my arms and it's changed me. And I hope that it changes you.

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The issue here is this. Please hear me. Simplified. I'm going to read it to you.

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You know it. You know it, but please forgive me. I want to challenge all of us in this.

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Knowing this passage in terms of having it heard preached a lot of times or having it memorized is not enough.

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It must impact you as it impacted the believing church in the first century and as it impacted your forebearers, those giants of the faith, those heroes of the faith, the

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Covenanters. Let it impact you like it impacted them. Matthew 28, 18 -20, and Jesus came and spake unto them saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

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You see we hear that and I want to make sure I impress this upon you for you to be changed with.

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We hear it and we go, I believe that. I can pass the theological exam. I can check every box.

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I understand it. But listen to it again. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

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The word there behind there is authority, power. And we tend as Christians to say, yes,

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I agree. Jesus has all power, all authority in heaven. That's where everything yields to him.

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Everything yields to him. All power, all authority in heaven. I totally understand that.

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But it's the next part where Jesus says, and in earth, that we need to be changed by.

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Jesus has all authority, all power on the earth today.

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He says, is given unto me, and the way that that is structured so you understand is, is given unto me now, not will be, but right now is given unto me.

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All authority, all power in heaven and on earth. So the question we have to ask is this, please hear me, and we're almost done here, so please come back, stay with me, embrace this.

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Do you believe that, where's the sign? You don't have it here, the crown rights, right?

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Of the Lord Jesus. For Christ's crown and covenant. Do you believe, do we believe that Jesus Christ is king over Scotland?

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You see, the answer is what? You don't have to wait to respond, amen, yes, okay, so here's my challenge.

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Live like it's true. And you go, I got that, Pastor Jeff, I totally understand, yes,

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I do. I do family worship, I'm a faithful member of this body, and praise

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God for that, praise God. He has all the authority here, I believe he's the king over Scotland, yes, yes, yes, amen, amen, amen.

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But do you know what, do you know what is going to demonstrate that you truly believe this passage?

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Is not merely on this issue, but on any issue, any issue, that attempts to subvert the authority of the

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Lord Jesus Christ in Scotland, you will preach the truth faithfully.

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You will stand, you will lay your life down, you will possibly be martyred, you will be vilified for the cause of Christ and his gospel.

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No more should we complain as Christians when darkness is descending on our cultures and it's spreading, and we're the ones failing to be the salt and the light.

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Jesus says, baptize the nation, and he says, teach them what?

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To observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, all things that I have commanded you.

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The goal is not to get a couple of people to have an intimate, special, romantic relationship with Jesus, and then do

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Bible studies in basements. Jesus came as the ruler of the world to win the nations to God, to bring glory to God through his gospel, good news, the proclamation of it.

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If you listen to the pro -life lobbying industry, they've gutted the gospel from this entire issue.

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What we represent, I want you to hear this, this is not prideful, do not hear this as arrogance, but I want you to hear this with humility.

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What we represent is your brothers from another country, is your brothers and sisters in Christ coming to you saying, it has to be about Christ.

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It has to be about the gospel. You have to preach the truth, you have to tell the truth. What we are suggesting is that the answer is

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Christ and his good news, because the problem is sin. Because the problem is sin.

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And let me just say that we all understand what the end goal is, because the

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Lord Jesus taught us to pray it. I had a whole, by the way, I had a whole other message prepared here to give to you, and I ended up not doing it.

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So this must be what I'm supposed to do. I have a lot of other things

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I wanted to say, but I guess I'm not going to get to them. We know what the

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Lord Jesus calls us to think about and to believe and to pray for, because Jesus actually taught us how to pray.

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He taught us how to pray. And it's amazing, because watch, you can have Christians globally praying this prayer in contexts like Scotland and Northern Ireland and the

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Republic of Ireland. Name the spot where Christianity has impacted the

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West and now it's devolving into darkness and decay. My country. And you have Christians every Sunday reciting the

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Lord's Prayer. Pray like this. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

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Look at it. You know it, right? In your head just now, you were already with me. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

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We all know it, right? Isn't it glorious that prayer is memorized, understood by God's people globally?

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You know what it means? Father, Jesus, pray like this, everyone. Father, hallowed be thy name.

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Your name be hallowed, seen as holy, revered as holy in Canada, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the

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Republic, United States, Mexico, Japan, China, Russia, Israel, name it.

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Do you know what you're asking God for when you pray that? Your name be holied, holied in those places.

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And then it says, what? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, where?

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Here, on earth, as it is in heaven. Have we stopped to consider what we're asking

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God the Father for? That God's will would be done, we all go, in heaven?

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Yeah, because that's where Jesus rules. Certainly, his will is done there. Yes, it is.

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Just how closely and accurately do you think the will of God is being held to in heaven?

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Is it pretty rigorous? The angels, the saints who have gone before us, pretty rigorous commitments of the will of God in heaven.

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All of us go, of course, in heaven, but Jesus says, here's how you pray. You pray that it would be done on earth here, like it is in heaven.

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That's what you're asking the Father for in the prayer. And so we pray that prayer, we get on our knees in the morning and thank

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God that we do, thank God for his grace and his sovereign, free grace that he gives to sinners and his elect.

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We all, yes, I'm there, but we get on our knees, we pray this prayer, hallowed be thy name, your kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and then we get up and we walk past the place they're killing children.

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And we say and we do nothing. We have in our streets, in your nation and mine, people perverting holy and pure sexuality, dancing around, men dressed like women, women dressed like men, doing all manner of perverse things.

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And we go about our day walking past all these places and all this death, and we think to ourselves, it couldn't mean me, it couldn't be me as the means of God's sovereign will and grace for my nation to say and do something about this.

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You look at this room right now and you look around and you say, well, it's not a very large room, we don't have a lot of people, how can we possibly impact this nation for the glory of God?

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It isn't you, it isn't you. I'll finish with this verse because you know it, and it's another one of those verses where you say, do we believe it?

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Here's the verse, and I know it sounds lovely in the authorized version, it's beautiful.

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In Isaiah chapter 9, 6 through 7, it's a wonderful Christmas verse.

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Just kidding, just kidding, I'm watching out for the chairs and everything else to start coming over. Okay, I know your history, okay,

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I'm teasing. Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulder.

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Sounds like all authority, all. And it says, and his name should be called

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Wonderful Counselor, those are names of Yahweh throughout the Old Testament. The mighty God, the word behind there in Hebrew is

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El Gibor, an exclusive name for Yahweh himself in the Bible. So we have God coming as a son and as a child, beautiful.

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There is the incarnation right there in Isaiah chapter 9. And it says, the everlasting

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Father, the Prince of Peace, here it is, of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end.

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Upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth for forever.

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And here's, again, here it is, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

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How's it gonna happen? How's it gonna happen? Is it your power? Is it your strength? Is it your ability to articulate?

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Is it your ability to be a superstar or a celebrity of some sense? No. How does

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God accomplish these transformations in our cultures and societies? He does it through the gospel and the power of it is not in you.

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It says the zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. Did you hear it? It says that God's kingdom of the increase of his government, of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no ends.

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And he establishes it with judgment, please hear this, and justice. Where's the justice? Is Jesus concerned with justice in the new covenant?

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Is he concerned with justice in Scotland? Is he concerned with justice in my nation? Is he concerned with justice in the world?

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The answer is yes and amen. Part of the rule of Christ is he brings righteousness and he brings justice to the nations he saves.

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And God performs this through his own zeal, his own power. But the ultimate aim is to bring all things under the feet of Jesus.

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You want some hope? How about this? How about the hope that we have as the most quoted verse in all of the

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New Testament from the Old Testament or alluded to? So here's what I like to say. I heard it from a friend.

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I think it's great. It captures a lot. Apparently this is God's favorite Bible verse because it's quoted the most in the

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New Testament from the Old Testament. Psalm 110 .1. Do you know it? The Lord said unto my

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Lord, sit on my right hand. Until what? Enemies are a what?

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Footstool for my feet. Where's Scotland going? Under the feet of Jesus.

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Is this a difficult moment? Yes. Yeah. The victory of Jesus ultimately in history doesn't mean that there's not going to be moments of darkness for the church.

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But it does mean that Scotland's going under the feet of the Savior. He will conquer it.

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So is my country. But how? Through his bride. You.

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His church. And if I could just press this on you, don't look at your numbers.

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Don't look at your frail bodies. Don't look at your weaknesses and think that that has anything to do with the ultimate success of the gospel in Scotland in this issue.

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The answer is the gospel that can only come from his church truly. So go tell it.

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Go preach it. Go be faithful. Lay down your lives. Lay down your lives for the sake of the pre -born and your nation.

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Love for God, love for neighbor demands it. It demands it. And yeah, you may cause riots.

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And you may cause collisions and controversies. But if you read the book of Acts, that's all you see.

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There's a famous British bishop that said, he said, everywhere the apostle

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Paul went, there was either revival or a riot. He said, everywhere

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I go, they serve me tea. Godly troublemakers.

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Godly troublemakers. When I was in Edinburgh yesterday and I heard your history, I knew a lot of it.

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But when I heard it and got to see it and breathe the air and touch the grounds, I got to be dramatically impacted by the godly troublemakers before you, who left for you all a deposit of sorts.

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And my question to you is, why are you betraying it? Don't. Be faithful and preach the truth.

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Lay your lives down. If you died already, if you died already coming to Christ, every other day after that is a gift.

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Right? I already died. What are you going to take from me? I already died. What are you going to take?

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I have Christ. Don't fear what this world can do to you.

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Fear the ultimate judge. Fear him. Fear his assessment of you and your labor and your works and your words.

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Fear him. Let's pray. Father, please bless, in Jesus' name, the words that went out for your glory.