Does Our Faith Cost Us Anything?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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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, we're going to be looking at Luke 21.

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So if you want to go ahead and open up your Bibles to Luke 21, you can do that.

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And while you're opening up your Bibles, I want to make a very quick statement.

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This last weekend, we had our Bible Conference at Sovereign Grace Family Church.

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It was the Sovereignty of God Conference, the 2020 Summer Conference at Sovereign Grace Family Church.

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And if you joined us, I want to thank you for being there.

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It was a wonderful day of preaching and fellowship and an opportunity to really invest some time in some of the deeper subjects that often go untalked about in a lot of churches.

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And if you were not able to join us, I want to invite you to go and listen to those messages.

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They're available on our YouTube page.

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All you have to do, it's on the same page as Coffee with a Calvinist.

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Just go over and look for the three messages.

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They are the Sovereignty of God in the Old Testament with Brother Mike Collier, the Sovereignty of God in the New Testament with me, Keith Foskey, and the Sovereignty of God in the Psalms with Brother Andy Montoro.

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And then also, we have the Q&A, which was a special edition of Coffee with a Calvinist.

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We did that as a special edition of the show.

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So please go, take an opportunity to watch that.

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You'll be blessed, and you'll be maybe left with some questions.

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And if you have some questions, feel free to send them to me.

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I'd love to do a special edition of Coffee with a Calvinist, maybe addressing a question that we didn't address during the conference.

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All right, so today we're going to be in Chapter 21 of the Gospel of Luke.

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And there's really two sections here because it begins with the very, very familiar story of the widow's mite, where there was a woman putting only two small copper coins, what we would call two pennies or two mites, into a box.

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And Jesus says, Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she had to live on.

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That, of course, is just an important reference to the fact that when our giving is only out of our abundance, and there's no sacrifice in our giving, then we're not giving really as we ought to do.

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Giving ought to cost us something.

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Giving ought to be something that is not just out of what we have left over, but it really should be something that is, I don't want to say tough or difficult, because the Bible says we shouldn't give under compulsion, but we should be a cheerful giver.

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But what I mean is we should be giving sacrificially, not only giving out of what we have to spare, but considering the fact that when we give to the Lord's work, it's the most valuable thing that we can invest in.

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But then the story, and this, of course, is during Holy Week.

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This is after the triumphal entry of Jesus.

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This is prior to the crucifixion, which we're going to get to that later this week.

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We see Jesus making a statement about the destruction of the temple.

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And I talked about this on Thursday of last week, I think it was, how Jesus referred to the destruction of the temple, and that's an event that happened in AD 70.

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So what we're seeing, beginning at verse 5, is there's going to be some references here to some things that happened in AD 70.

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The fact that he talks about there being no stone left upon another.

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Let's see here.

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I'm looking through.

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It says, And while some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said, As for these things, you see, the days will come when there will be not left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

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Of course, I believe that's a reference to what happened in AD 70.

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Some people believe there's going to be another temple rebuilt one day.

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Their eschatology sort of demands it.

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I don't know.

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I don't know if there's going to be another temple built before Jesus returns.

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My eschatology doesn't demand that that would happen.

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I think it's possible.

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I don't think it's necessary.

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But the part that I want to focus on is the part that's often referenced by people who study end times, and that's eschatology.

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And this is what he says in verse 10.

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Then he said to them, Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom.

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There will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and pestilence, and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.

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But before all this, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake.

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This will be your opportunity to bear witness.

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Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth of wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

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You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death.

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You will be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head will perish.

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By your endurance you will gain your lives.

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Then he says, But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies and you know that its desolation has come near, again, I believe that he's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem.

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We know when that happened.

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So this is a prophetic utterance of Christ.

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This is something that he's prophesying about before.

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But a lot of people take, going back up to verse 10, a lot of people take verse 10 as something that tells us about the end times.

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And I hear people say all the time, Well, nations are rising against nations, kingdom against kingdom.

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This is proof of the end times.

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Nations have always been rising against nations, and there have always been wars, and there have always been battles between warring countries and nations.

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This is a specific battle.

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This is a specific thing Jesus is referring to here, referring, of course, to the destruction of the temple in AD 70, the destruction of Jerusalem being surrounded.

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He mentions that.

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But the part I did want to sort of hone in on, I know I'm sort of all over the map today.

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The part that I wanted to hone in on was, You will be hated by all for my name's sake.

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Verse 17.

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In the first century church, the believers were hated basically from all sides.

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Those who believed in Christ who were Jews and had abandoned their Judaism to become followers of Christ were seen as traitors, and they often lost their familial relationships.

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They often lost their livelihoods.

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It was a difficult time.

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And then you look at those Gentiles who were abandoning paganism and were abandoning false teachings and false belief, and they were following after Christ.

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Same thing.

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The Bible tells us elsewhere that the message of the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.

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And so when we get here to verse 17 and Jesus says, You will be hated by all for my name's sake, that means all in the sense of both Jew and Gentile.

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When you see the word all, oftentimes it's speaking of all, not all without exception but all without distinction.

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And the great distinction we often see in the Bible is the distinction between Jew and Gentile.

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And right here it's saying you're going to be hated by all.

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And the first century church was hated by all.

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But I think that we can make an application to that today because if we look around at the world today, one of the things that is very obvious is that the world still continues to hate believers.

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The world still continues to hate those who follow Christ.

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Now I'm not talking about nominal believers because nominal believers, people who Christ doesn't make much difference in how they live their life, they blend in with the world because they haven't left the world.

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They are still part of the world.

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A nominal believer is most likely an unbeliever.

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But the person whose faith really changes how they live is a person who is going to upset others who do not want them to live differently, who do not want to accept the differences.

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And what's interesting about this is it says, and this again I think this is the primary focus of this was the first century church.

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It says you'll be delivered up by your parents, by your brothers, by your relatives, by your friends, and some will put you to death.

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I think that was a reference to first century church because that did happen.

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But it's still a reality.

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There are people today who if you are known as a Christian, and by that I mean a sincere follower of Christ, not just a nominal Christian, not just by name only, but somebody who is a sincere believer in Christ, they're going to want to not have anything to do with you.

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And sometimes that's even people in your own family.

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And that's when it becomes really tough because we love our families.

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We want our families to, we want to be in relationship with our family.

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And it's very tough when our families are the ones who are not accepting us.

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They're hating us.

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They may even be the ones who are, in this sense, turning against us.

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And I think about, again, and I'm not trying to be prophetic.

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I'm just sort of kind of trying to look with a genuine sort of eye toward the future.

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I could see this becoming very serious very soon for believers when it comes to the issue of standing up for the faith, because right now there are people who their families are divided over whether or not they should wear masks, or whether or not they should gather in groups, or whether or not they should support particular political movements.

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I mean, everybody knows the joke about Thanksgiving and how hard it is to have Thanksgiving with your family because everybody has different political views.

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And one's wearing a Coexist t-shirt and another's wearing a MAGA hat.

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So there's this great divide in families.

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And so there's sort of an argument as to what's the deal.

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So somebody says, well, how does that relate to this? Well, the most important divide and the only divide that really matters in the world is the divide between the believer and the unbeliever, the person who follows Christ and the person who doesn't.

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And if we think there is vitriol between those who have different political opinions, the vitriol that's going to be between those who truly worship Christ, when there's something that it can cost us, then that's the part.

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That's when the rubber's going to meet the road, and we're going to see who we truly are.

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Because for most of us, worshiping Christ hasn't really had that much of a sacrifice involved.

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We sacrifice Sunday morning, and some don't even do that.

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We sacrifice maybe 10% of our income.

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Many don't do that.

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But what's going to happen when it is really something that you have to sacrifice? Real relationships, a job, maybe even your livelihood, maybe your community outside the church, maybe a position in the world.

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I go back to the beginning of this chapter, and I look at that woman who gave the two mites, and what was the purpose and point of that, that she was willing to sacrifice all that she had, not just give out of her abundance.

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For many Christians, all we've ever really given is what we had to spare, especially when it came to Christ.

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How many of us have really sacrificed anything in regard to our faith, really stepped out and demonstrated that we were willing to give all? That's the real thought for today.

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Are we willing to, as the first century church did, be hated by others for the cause of Christ? I know that's a difficult question.

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It's not an easy question to ask.

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And it is something that the Holy Spirit has to empower us to do.

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Jesus said that to the first century church.

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Don't worry about what you're going to say.

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Don't meditate upon it beforehand.

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The Spirit's going to give you the power to do that.

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And if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, I would say pray for that.

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Pray that when the time comes to take a stand, when a sacrifice has to be made, that you're willing to take that stand, make that sacrifice.

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But I think now more than ever we see the real possibilities of those things coming.

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And I would encourage you to pray.

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Pray that we can stand in the evil day.

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That's what the Bible says.

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It says pray that we will be able to stand in the evil day.

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And there are evil days coming.

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So I'll pray for you.

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You pray for me.

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And be encouraged that in this world we will have trouble, but Christ has overcome the world.

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Thank you for watching today.

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I appreciate you continuing to watch.

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Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe on our videos so that we can reach a wider audience.

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Again, my name is Keith Foskey, and I'm a Calvinist.

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May God bless you.