Would 2020 Be Different if it were 1995?

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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Today is December 30th, 2020 and we are one day away from the end of this very peculiar year.
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And today on the program I want to bring a few things up, a few reminders for you.
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The first thing is if you have questions or you'd like to interview, excuse me, interact with the program, we now have an email address for you to contact and I want to make sure that I remind you of this because I know this is easy to forget, but we do have an email address now so we want to keep this in your mind.
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Hopefully you'll be able to or have a desire to interact with the program, maybe send in questions or something of that nature or provide us feedback.
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We'd love to hear your thoughts.
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But the email address for you to contact the program is CalvinistPodcast at gmail.com.
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That is CalvinistPodcast at gmail.com.
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And speaking of questions, I want to also bring up an event that is coming up on January the 15th.
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This event is being hosted at Sunrise Community Church.
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This is in Atlantic Beach.
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The pastor there is Dr.
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Alan Cagle, he's a very dear friend of mine and this is the second event that I will be participating in.
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This is, the title of the event is Tough Questions, Real Answers and what we do in this event is myself and Dr.
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Cagle and this time we're going to have Dr.
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Richard Lucas from First Baptist Church of Jacksonville.
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Last time we had Tranway Yu who is a friend and at the time was a minister at Grace Community Church in Jacksonville but has now taken over a church in California I believe.
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Anyhow, the point is last time and this time we take tough, difficult questions, difficult subjects that folks deal with, apologetics based questions and we answer them.
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We provide a defense or a response to these difficult questions and Dr.
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Cagle and myself and Dr.
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Lucas have all discussed what questions we're going to deal with because we're going to have some questions that we start with and those starting questions are going to deal with a variety of subjects including, I know that I'm going to be answering a question about Christians and self-defense because this is an area that not only have I studied but I've also taught on for many years and so that's going to be one of the questions that I'm dealing with but also we take questions from the audience.
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After we've done the questions that we start, we use these questions that we know ahead of time as sort of starters but then we begin to take questions from the audience and so my encouragement to you is if you are able to please join us.
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We're going to be having this event on Friday, January 15th at 7 p.m.
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at Sunrise Community Church in Atlantic Beach which this is Jacksonville Beach.
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The address is 298 Aquatic Drive, Atlantic Beach, Florida and 32233.
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If you have questions about the event, feel free, again, email me at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com and I'll be happy to answer those questions for you.
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Those are some things that are coming up and as always I like to also remind you that every week we are having in-person worship services at Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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I realize that because of COVID, not every church meets in-person but we do meet in-person.
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We do not enforce any mandates regarding masks.
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We encourage people to go with their own conscience on that subject so you don't have to wear a mask.
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You can come and worship with us.
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You can sing with us.
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You can study the word with us and so if you do not have a church home this coming Lord's Day, I would like to encourage you to come and visit us, especially if you are anywhere near the north side of Jacksonville, Florida.
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We are located at 13773 North Main Street in Jacksonville and our website is sgfcjax.org.
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That's Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville.
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This week I'm going to be getting back to my series in Genesis.
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I had been preaching through Genesis before COVID hit and I had preached verse by verse through chapters 1, 2, and 3 and I had stopped at the beginning of chapter 4 and COVID hit and a lot of things happened and I began to do some topical teaching and I've taught a lot of topical lessons over the last several months and then during the Advent season I dealt with the Advent themes and we studied in the Psalms during the Advent season and so I'm really looking forward to getting back to a verse by verse exposition of Genesis.
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That is my primary method for preaching and it has been for 15 years is that I will choose a book and try to work through that book verse by verse and so we're going to continue doing that this week and we're going to go back to Genesis.
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We're going to start in Genesis 4.
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We're going to be looking at the two brothers Cain and Abel and I'm still working on the message, still studying, preparing.
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I do that all week as I get ready for Sunday, but I look forward to pointing out some things from the text and hopefully it will be a lesson that is encouraging for believers and will be challenging for believers and unbelievers as well.
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So today on the program, now that I've gone through several minutes of just bringing you up to speed on events and things like that, today on the program I want to begin to draw 2020 to a close by asking you to think about some of the more difficult things that we've had to deal with as believers this year.
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There certainly has been many as I've been sort of taking stock.
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Last week I preached a message.
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I do this every year on the Sunday before New Year's.
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It is my tradition to preach a message, sort of a year-ending message in looking forward to the new year.
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And this year I was looking back on the year 2020 and I was thinking about all the things that have happened and of course this for many of us has been a very odd year.
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Certainly not the worst year in human history, but certainly a very different year.
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So many things have happened this year that it seemed like they could have only happened on this side of the social media bubble, you know, the social media, the advent of social media, you know, which is interesting because if I remember correctly Facebook didn't even start until 2008.
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I remember when YouTube began and I was excited because I used to like to make videos.
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I still do.
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I enjoy making videos.
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I make some for the podcast and it was just fun to be able to get onto YouTube and share videos with other people and it was just a fun avenue to be able to share ideas and to share concepts and to share sometimes humor, sometimes thoughts.
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But now YouTube is, I mean there's a kid who plays with toys on YouTube and makes like $27 million a year.
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He has his products now sold in Walmart.
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It's amazing what has happened on this side of the social media, the advent of social media with Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and Twitter and all of these things.
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And we think about how would 2020 have been different if we didn't have Facebook? How would 2020 be different if we didn't have YouTube, if we didn't have all of these outlets? Because these things which do have some positive benefit also have the very negative benefit of sort of forcing us to, those of us who use Facebook, those of us who use Twitter and different things like that, and I don't personally use Twitter but I do use Facebook, it sort of forces us to see a lot more of what's going on than we ever did in history.
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You know, when I was a kid, you watched the news at night, the 6 o'clock news, because that was how you found out what happened that day.
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And there of course were programs that would come on, weekly programs, 60 minutes and things like that, which were news programs.
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But now we have a constant cycle of news that happens all the time and we get inundated with information and we're constantly having to interpret that information and deal with the interpretation of that information and it seems to be very heavy on the emotions and we add to that the reality that a very serious disease did enter our country this year and we know that a hundred years ago the Spanish flu hit and often COVID is compared to the Spanish flu and as far as numbers go it's really not comparable because the Spanish flu I believe was much worse, but the reality is looking at what we have with COVID, what has exacerbated the COVID issue has been that everyone is able to go on, everyone is able to share their opinions and they are able to know one another's opinions and immediately have responses and some of these responses have been harsh, some of these responses have been very heavy and ugly and I was reminded the other day just how much folks just, we tend to know a lot more about each other than we used to because of Facebook.
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It was so funny because I was talking to somebody from church and I went to tell them a story and they say, oh I know, I already saw it on Facebook, and I was like, oh okay, yeah well I did share about that on Facebook and I thought maybe I ought not to share so much and I do, I tend to reach out, I communicate with people from our church, I communicate with people in ministries that I'm connected with, I communicate with family, share pictures of my family and pictures of things that are going on, but it was a good reminder, it was like yes, this is a real reality, there are a lot of, well, there's just a lot of difference now than there was even when I was a child of how we are taking in information, how we are processing information, how we are going about our day and how we are really enjoying life, and I think one of the questions really on my mind is how would the COVID situation have been different if we weren't constantly being reminded of it on Facebook and Twitter and through social media and all of the things that were going on, and it's just, it just got me thinking today as I was thinking about how to wrap the program up for the year.
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I am going to have one more program tomorrow, but tomorrow my plan is to talk about New Year's resolutions because I think as Christians we need to understand the distinction between resolving to make a change and repenting over something that is sinful, and often that's a distinction I think that people don't often make, and so that's going to be my subject for tomorrow's lesson, but today I just wanted to kind of say to you, think about this past year, think about the negative things that have happened, and you say, well, why would you want to focus on the negative? No, I want you to think about how those things may have been different if we lived in a different time.
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I mean, for those of us who grew up in the 80s and the 90s, what would have happened if COVID would have been in the midst of 1985 or 1995? How would it have been different? How would people have responded differently? And it's an interesting time.
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There's so much, there's so many directions we could go with this conversation.
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We could talk about conspiracy theories.
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We could talk about, and someone might say, well, the good thing about having Facebook and social media and all these other things is that at least now there are more outlets for news that are available to people, so there's less chance that there would be a massive coverup or a massive conspiracy that it wouldn't be, that people would not know.
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But again, just in my mind and in my heart, I want you to think about this.
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How would it have been different? How would things have been different? And would we have treated each other differently? Would we have considered maybe a little bit just a different way of handling these things? There's been so much ugliness in regards to how we are meeting and if we should meet and all of these things.
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And I know that, again, I said earlier, there's still churches that aren't meeting, and our church does meet, and I think there are people that have been offended to know that our church didn't stop meeting.
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We didn't meet for three weeks in the sanctuary, and then we met outside for a few weeks, and then we went right back in the sanctuary.
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Even in the height of all this, we believed that meeting was essential, and we wanted to be together, and that, of course, I'm not saying we're better than anyone else.
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This was just our conviction that we needed to be in corporate worship, not just doing worship through a video.
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But be that as it may, when we look at these things, how would this be different? And would the things that were as bad as they have been have been different if we were in a different time? I just think that's an interesting question, and I do want to leave you with a verse today.
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This verse is on my mind as I'm talking about this, because one of the things that I do see as a result of social media is people being willing to simply just lamb-blast one another for their opinions.
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Like I said, I went to the store the other day, I didn't have my mask, and I went into the store anyway, and other people were wearing masks, and I was getting the most ugly looks, and I wasn't intentionally trying to be opposing.
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I know a lot of people don't wear masks to make a stand.
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I wasn't necessarily making a stand, I literally just didn't have it, and said, you know what, I gotta go in the store, I gotta do what I gotta do.
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Nobody said anything to me, but I certainly got a lot of looks.
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But, there's a verse that comes to my mind often, and I think about it for social media, I think about it with my interactions with people, I think about it when people frustrate me, and the verse is Proverbs 15, verse 1.
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It says, a soft word turns away wrath, but a hard word stirs up anger.
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And, I do think that one of the things that we can all do better is learn how to be kinder with our words, especially on social media, to be kinder with how we address people who disagree with us, and just ultimately to be kinder when people are, when people disagree about things like this.
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Like I said, if you're a mask wearer, and somebody who really believes in it, but you see somebody not wearing a mask, maybe not cut your eyes at them, maybe not be so angry because somebody has a different opinion than you.
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And the same goes the other way.
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If you're a person who doesn't want to wear a mask, but you're going into a business, and the business asks you to wear the mask, and if you have an opportunity to simply do it and not be offensive, maybe that's the way we should take it.
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And I understand there's an argument to be made for not being forced to do something, and that's a conversation for another time.
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Ultimately, what I'm just trying to get around to today is we have had a difficult year.
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And as I said, if we look back on it, we might be able to say, hey, if this were in 1985, it would have been different.
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If this was in 1995, it would have been different.
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But we live in a time where even our president is an avid Twitter user, and we live in a time where people put their lives on Facebook, and often their opinions, as soon as they say something, is excoriated, and we just find ways to tear at one another.
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And maybe we ought to heed the words of Proverbs 15.1 and just learn that sometimes we don't have to use hard words.
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Sometimes the best thing to do is to use a kind word, an encouraging word.
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And that's my word for you today.
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Try to be kinder, and as we go into the new year, maybe make that a goal.
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I know I'm going to try to make it one of my goals, is to try to be kinder and understand that a soft word does indeed turn away wrath.
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So thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist, and I hope it's been an encouragement to you.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
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We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.