The Critical Thing Missing From Evangelical Social Justice Preachers

AD Robles

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All right, well, welcome to a new week. I hope you had a great weekend. I hope you had a good Lord's Day yesterday.

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I had a great Lord's Day. My pastor had great

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Sunday school, great sermon, just very, very encouraging, without pulling punches and all that kind of stuff.

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I just, I love that kind of thing because life is not a pity party, right? And life is not a pity party.

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And we should be, of all people, we should be the people that are most grateful for the things that we have and just the community that we have.

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Brothers, if you don't have a church that's open, for goodness sake, please find a church that is open.

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You need to go to church. You need to have brothers and sisters in the Lord that you can count on, that you can spend time with, and all this kind of stuff.

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I had a chance to spend time with my pastor's family afterwards. We brought them dinner and hung out and talked and all this kind of stuff, and they prayed for us.

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And man, it was great. It was needed, it was great. I hope that you had a good Lord's Day as well.

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But I wanted to talk about just something that I just found so encouraging. And it's directly related to the stuff that I talk about, the social justice stuff.

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In many ways, when you look at social justice rhetoric and you look at, like you read their books, you read their blog posts, you look at their videos and all this kind of stuff, there's one thing that is just missing so much from their content and from their, frankly, from their lifestyle.

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You know what I mean? What they focus on, what they're all about. And it's this idea of gratitude, right?

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It's gratitude. And gratitude is something that Christians ought to make a habit of, ought to make a practice of.

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And it's so easy to fall out of a feeling of gratitude just even myself.

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I've told you on the channel that I've been on an epic losing streak at work.

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Few weeks in a row, just like things falling apart, deals falling apart, all this kind of stuff.

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And I'm okay, so don't worry about it. But even though I'm okay and I have a good attitude about it,

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I can still kind of fall into this pity party where it's like, poor me. I'm just such a victim of circumstance.

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And it's just like, when's my luck gonna change? You just get into these holes of self -absorption and just frustration and all this kind of stuff.

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And frankly, none of it is appropriate. Like God has got you, man. God has taken care of you so many times in the past.

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And you look at the Bible and you read stories of God taking care of his people so many times in the past.

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And yet you allow yourself to be in this pity party where it's like, but not this time. What's gonna happen to me?

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Whoa, it's me, you know what I mean? And it's just, you're always wanting more. You're always, and I don't know, it's just like gratitude is so important because the reality is, as Christians, we know that we're not owed anything, right?

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Like we're not owed anything except death. What does it say in the Bible? The wages of sin is death.

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So the wages, what you're owed, what you agreed to is that when you sin, what you get in return is death.

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And it's like, that really humbles you, right? Like I'm a sinful man and if you're watching this video, there's a very good chance that you know that you're a sinful man or woman and God doesn't owe you diddly.

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You know what I mean? It's like you should be destroyed and yet God has been merciful to you.

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He has been merciful to me. And so what is the response that we ought to have when we understand that God has been merciful to us?

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Even in the Lord's prayer, you know, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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It's like forgive our trespasses, but like we turn around so often, we don't want to forgive those who have trespassed against us.

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It's like you're owed something. You're not owed anything except for death.

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That's what you're owed. But God instead, he exchanges that, right?

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And then Christ died and now you can live. So you died with Christ, you crucified with Christ and now you've raised with Christ.

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See, that's just such an amazing thing. And to have anything but gratitude in that situation makes no sense.

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This was revealed so much to me in our Sunday school on Sunday. We were talking about Acts 2 and I'm just going to read it from the authorized version here, just about what the people that were converted like, what they were like after they were converted to Christ.

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You know, Peter preaches a sermon and a lot of people are converted and baptized and all this kind of stuff.

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Their sins are forgiven and what are they like, right? So here's what it says. It says this in chapter two, verse 42.

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It says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayers and fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles and all that believed were together and had all things in common.

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And they sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need.

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And listen, this is the one that blew my mind. And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.

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I don't know why that just jumped at me. They ate their meat, they took their food, they received their food with gladness and singleness of heart.

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And it's like, they're like, they can enjoy the simple things of life.

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They can enjoy their food and they're just so grateful for it because it's like, yeah, they ate their food before they were converted, right?

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Like, yeah, sure, they had their meat, they had their stuff, all that kind of stuff. But the reality is we know from Ecclesiastes that life is vanity, right?

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We understand that. And so often when before we were converted and even when we're kind of slipping back into these patterns of a lack of gratefulness, like there's no joy in the things of this world where it's just like, yeah, you eat your food, just kind of slop it down and all that kind of stuff.

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But when you're converted to Christ, right? When you realize that that debt, that sin that you've done against a holy

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God has been forgiven and Christ is on your side and Christ loves you and you're one of his and all of that kind of stuff.

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And it's just like, things are different. You know what I mean? You can have gratitude for simple things like a meal, like having a meal or having an omelet even, just like something simple.

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You can be grateful for that because you know that you're not owed anything at all. You're not owed anything at all.

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And so you can be grateful. And when people mistreat you or if they lie to you or if they steal from you, yeah, of course that's frustrating and all that kind of stuff.

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But the reality is you know that you're owed nothing more than what you get.

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And in fact, the stuff that you do get from God, it's like an abundance. It's like overflow.

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It's like a real blessing just knowing how much of a debt that you had against God and yet he still treats you so kindly.

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It's like, it's just an amazing thing. So how dare I be in a state of woe is me knowing that God has taken care of me.

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Not only is he always taken care of me in the past, he's gonna take care of me in the future. And even if he didn't, I would still follow

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God because everything I've gotten up to this point was just grace and it was all grace, grace upon grace.

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I didn't earn any of that stuff. The only thing I earned was a death sentence. You see what

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I'm saying? So it's like, that really puts things in a perspective. Like I should be pursuing this kind of a mentality where I can eat my meat with gladness and I can break bread with my brothers who likewise know that they're not owed anything except a death sentence, right?

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Like all of a sudden, you can really enjoy life. You can really enjoy the things that God has created because God created these things to be enjoyed by his people, right?

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We of all people should be knowing how to enjoy them. And just, you know, listen, if things don't work out the way we had planned, okay, well, we can still enjoy the things that God has given us, whether it's a little bit or a lot of it.

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You know what I mean? Like, I often hear, I was talking to my brother this morning, you know, that guy, Gary Vaynerchuk.

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I find him kind of annoying. A lot of people like him. I find him kind of annoying, but he says some true things.

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And I have to give him credit for that. But like one of the things that I've heard him say, and I don't know the context here, but this strikes me as one of those true things where he's like, he knows that money is not the key to happiness because, you know, he knows plenty of people with tons of money and they're miserable.

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And it's like, true, I completely agree with you. And I think he would agree that, but it's not the money that's the problem.

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The money's not making them miserable. The blessings don't make you miserable.

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It's the fact that you don't know how to enjoy the blessings. And the thing is, if you're in that mindset, that's gonna be you, whether you have two pennies or you have $2 million in the bank account.

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If you don't know how to enjoy those blessings, it's gonna, that's just the, that's the way it is.

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It's not about the amount of stuff that you have. And this is where I think it's connected to the woke church because the reality is that the woke church, their whole game is about covetousness.

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And they feel like they can't enjoy life. So it must be somebody else's problem.

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Like that preacher that I was reviewing last week, Brian Loritz, he's telling you on the one hand that he can't pursue happiness because blacks can't pursue happiness.

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They've never been able to pursue happiness in this country. And then in five minutes later, he's telling you,

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I was golfing at a country club with my rich white friend. And to us, we're like, what is that?

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So you can't pursue happiness yet you're spending your weekends golfing at a country club with your rich white friend.

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How does that connect? And the reality is it doesn't, right? But the point is that Loritz, and this is true of everyone in the woke church movement that pushes this covetousness and this lack of gratitude is what it is.

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It doesn't matter how much you give them, how much they're able to accomplish. They can sit there in front of you with their designer clothes, but they don't have the keys to understanding how to enjoy that.

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My brother said that Doug Wilson said something about this. It's like, imagine someone that really likes peaches and has a thousand cans of peaches, but he doesn't have a can opener.

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It's like, okay, so he's rich. I mean, he's got a bunch of peaches, but he can't open any of them. He can't enjoy the peaches.

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Then imagine a poor person who has one can of peaches, but he has a can opener.

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Who's better off? That poor person's better off because he can actually enjoy the things that God has given him.

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And so the woke church, you know, this is why it's just so preposterous. Like we just laugh at it. Cause it's like, man, like you have so much and yet you're like, you seem miserable.

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Like you really think that more stuff is going to make you happy? No, it won't. Because the reality is they don't have the keys to enjoying the blessings that they do have.

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You see, I get in trouble almost every other month for saying that I thank God for what he did in my family's life.

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He brought my family over from Africa in the slave trade. And now

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I'm here and my family became Christians. And now I'm in the position that I'm in that I would never have been in most likely if had my ancestors remained in Africa.

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And people get, well, how dare you AD? So you're thanking God for slavery? And I'm like, I'm not thanking

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God for slavery in general. I'm thanking God for my situation, which I can understand was better off because of the suffering that my,

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I don't, I'm not glad they suffered, but I'm grateful for the situation that I'm in now due to their suffering.

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And I'm thanking God for the circumstances that led to where I'm at today.

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And it's, I'm just grateful for it. And people get mad at me like, how dare you?

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How dare you? And it's like, well, see, the thing is God has helped me in a, and I'm not there yet, brothers.

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I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it. I want to make it my own. God has helped me to understand and be grateful for the things that I have and grateful for the circumstances that I find myself in.

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I need to press into that a lot more to use an evangelical speak term. I need to press into that a lot more.

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I need to pursue good works. I need to pursue enjoying God's good gifts as much as I can and being grateful for them because lack of gratitude is not a good sign.

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If your life is marked by a lack of gratitude, that's a problem and you need to go to God for that one because if you're not enjoying the gifts that God has given you, no matter how small they might seem, do you really understand the weight of the debt that was forgiven you when you came to Christ?

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I'd argue that you probably don't if you are not grateful for the things that you do have because even if you have a little bit, that is way more than what you're owed because you're owed nothing.

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And I think that if the woke church truly understood that, it was just like the parable of the forgiven servant that just wouldn't forgive his fellow servant even though he had just been forgiven.

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It's like, what does God say about that? What does Christ say about that? That person's gonna be, that person's not saved.

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He's not gonna be, he's gonna be destroyed. But that's how God sees us. Like if we don't forgive others and we're not grateful for the things that we have, like,

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I don't know. I hope that's encouraging, guys. I hope it's encouraging because you're in a situation, some of you are in worse situations than me or better situations than me, but wherever you're at, you need to have gratitude because God has been merciful and good to you no matter where you're at right now.