We die.. then what? (Part 1)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

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So I'm going to do something this morning that I've only done once before in my last 15 years, and that is preach the

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Sunday night sermon this morning, and I'll preach 1 Corinthians chapter 12 tonight.

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Why? Well, as I was studying this passage today, I was thinking to myself, everyone needs to hear this message.

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Of course, everyone needs to hear every Bible message. But one day short of Christ's return, you are going to die.

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I'm going to bury you, and then you'll stand and meet your maker. And what will happen then?

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Death is an enemy. Death is horrible. Death is wicked.

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Death is final. It's ugly, it's painful, and God in His goodness and in His grace warns us and tells us things like Psalm 90 and tells us other things so that we respond rightly because there's something actually worse than death.

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And that is meeting God, a holy God, without having your sins forgiven.

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Let's turn our Bibles to Luke chapter 13 this morning as we see Christ respond rightly and trying to get us to respond rightly to tragedies, to death.

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When you see death on the internet, a report of death, news stories, what's your reaction?

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Most people today's reaction is this. How can God be good? How can God be loving and let that happen?

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How can God let all the suffering of the world go on? That's the response that most people have.

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That's the wrong response. That's the unthinking response. That's the sinful response.

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That's the response that thinks about things from the human perspective instead of the divine standpoint.

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And what Jesus does in this passage here today, He just sets everything rightly in our minds.

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Now when you first read the passage, you're going to think that's tough. But as you understand who

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Christ is and what His mission was to seek and to save those who are lost, by His own love, by the

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Father's love, driven by the Spirit, it's the most loving thing you could ever tell someone.

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Now I'm not obsessed with death, but every day, I kid you not, especially the last couple years, when

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I look in the mirror in the morning, I think, warning. Some people say, well, nobody ever told me.

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Nobody ever warned me. Well, God has given you a warning. And the warning is, it's harder to get out of bed.

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I have gray hair. I have hair all over. There's a lot of different ways that God warns us.

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Death ceases all physical life, but then we stand before God. And I ask you this morning, are you ready to meet your maker?

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It's not a scare tactic to say, you could be in a coffin tonight. One day you're going to die, and then what?

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And so as a pastor, as an elder board, we want to make sure you're ready to die. Because I'm not predicting anything, and I can't read any minds, but I just look at a group this large with young people and old people, some of you are playing a game with God.

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And it's going to be judgment day for you, naked and unclothed. You need

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Christ's righteousness. You can't stand before God on your own. It's going to be worse than a nuclear winter for you.

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And so we go to this passage today, and I'm so thankful for Jesus to just tell us the truth. Here is the love of God incarnate on his way to Calvary to die for sinners like us will be raised from the dead.

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And then he tells us the truth. Consider your ways. We all have friends, we all have relatives, and it's just one phone call after another.

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Did you hear about so -and -so just died? Did you get the message that someone's child died? Did you get the message that somebody's grandmother died?

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Oh, that was unexpected. Everyone is going to die. And then what?

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What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own what? Soul.

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I did some research about death. What Paul called an enemy, the last enemy in first Corinthians 15, 150 ,000 people around the world die every day.

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Can you imagine? How many of them were ready to meet God, clothed in Christ's righteousness, forgiven of all their sins because they've looked to what

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God has accomplished? I bet you the answer is not very many, but the answer isn't, the question today isn't how about them?

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What about you? Signs of death. If you are a doctor, they have a variety of different ways to measure death, cessation of breathing, cardiac arrest, palor mortis, which is paleness, liver mortis, which is a settling of blood in the lower portion of your body, algor mortis, your temperature reduces to what the room temperature is, rigor mortis, the corpse becomes stiff, and then decomposition.

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Now studies might say that the cause of death in America leads off with heart disease, then cancer, respiratory diseases, stroke, accidents, diabetes, influenza, and something

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I thought they named wrongly, but you can tell our society today they called it intentional self -harm, suicide.

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That might be true from the perspective of organic chemistry, but the cause of death is sin.

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Sin, when you do an autopsy, and I've seen a couple autopsies in Los Angeles, and they stick with you, 30 years later you still think about them.

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And when they open up the body, they look, why did the person die, what happened, they take little samples and slices and test tubes and at the end of the day, people die because Adam's sin is credited to our account.

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And consequently, we have a sin nature, and consequently, we sin, and so the reason people die is sin.

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Death is the common denominator for everyone because the wages of sin is what, death.

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But there's something worse than death, and most people know it in their hearts, in their consciences, no wonder we have this whole subculture called life extension.

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Now it can be easy for you to get vitamins and work out a little bit, but they have a whole group of people, biomedical gerontologists, who try to make your life extended and you have this longevity factor so you basically can live forever.

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Why do people want to live forever? I submit to you that underneath it all, there is a fear of death, and you know what, there should be.

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You should be very afraid to die. Matter of fact, if you're not a Christian today, it should be the king of terrors in your life.

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It should keep you up at night. I hope it does keep you up at night. And of course, many of you here today are

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Christians. God has saved you. You are born again. But I'm positive there are some who aren't. And every one of you, grandpas is going to die, grandmas, and the newborns we just had at this church, and everybody in between are all going to die.

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And God in his goodness and his kindness has warned us, has told us to tell us to get ready for death.

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If I meet someone and they're on their deathbed, what do I help them with? Well, I help them with, is your estate settled?

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How about proxy? How about any kind of insurance things? Do you have to fill out any forms at work?

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What about your 401k? Does that have your wife's name on it? There's a variety of things that I can help them with.

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Have you picked out a cemetery? Do you want to be buried, cremated? But I am the worst pastor in the world if I don't help them with, are you prepared to meet

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God? Do you know for sure when you close your eyes and that last death breath gasp happens, that you're going to stand before God clothed in Christ's righteousness, accepted, because you're forgiven, because you've realized

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I'm sinful and I can't save myself. I have to look for another to save me, the Savior, the only

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Savior, Christ Jesus. They have something on the internet called deathclock .com

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and you type in body index. I kind of hedged a little bit on that one.

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You type in, are you a smoker, et cetera, and then it tells you when you're going to die.

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And so I typed it in the other day and my death day is Tuesday. Well, not this

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Tuesday, I hope, but you never know, Tuesday, February 21st, 2034.

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I have 685 ,000 seconds left. Now the thing is,

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I might live longer, my grandparents lived to be in their 90s, but I might not live that long because I'm 52, my dad died at 55 and my mom died at 65.

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No one knows. I read a story just last night about a lady, 50 years old, she went to a missions trip in Congo.

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She was afraid that she might get hurt, so she wrote some letters to all her kids, open these letters if I die.

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And then she got home from the Congo, she was safe, she laid down to go to bed, her cat woke her up, she let the cat out, she laid back down, dead.

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You don't have to go to the Congo to die, you can die in your own bedroom. Matter of fact, many of you will. So when we come to the passage today in Luke chapter 13, it stems from this kind of attitude where God in his kindness warns us, this isn't downer, oh it's a big downer if you die in your sins, but there's relief and assurance and hope and happiness.

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I don't really want to die, but I'm not afraid of what happens afterwards. How can you take the worst enemy in the world, the king of terrors, and turn it into something that's fangless?

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Only God can do that, and we'll see in our passage today, as Jesus deals with this question,

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Jesus deals with when you see someone die, or you learn of a tragedy, it is absolutely categorically wrong to go, why do bad things happen to good people?

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Now, it would be a better question to ask, as R .C. Sproul said, why do good things happen to bad people?

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Think about what we deserve and what God has given us. But there's a better question that Jesus wants you to ask, and that is not, what happened?

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Why did it happen? Here's the question Jesus wants you to ask, am I ready to die because I'm going to die too?

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And quite frankly, how long you live is the irrelevant part. I'm sad to know that President Lincoln was assassinated, but you know, everybody who lived in the days of President Lincoln is dead.

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Whether you live to be one day old or a hundred years old, it's irrelevant because you stand before God.

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I should say in one sense it's irrelevant, because timing is minimized when you stand before God.

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And just think about our culture, just for a second, we'll get into the text. We do everything we can to not think about this.

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It's the most important thing ever. It's the appointment that you will keep, is appointed for once to man die and then judgment, you'll keep it, but we've got to be busy.

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There's nothing wrong with sports and entertainment and other things, it's all in the place, but it just becomes this mighty ogre casting this shadow against our thinking process because who wants to think about death?

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They think you're weird, some kind of thanatologist, always talking about death.

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Since Jesus alone has died and returned from the dead, we need to know what

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Jesus says about life, eternal life, and what happens when we die. Who's died and come back of their own power?

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Only Christ, and so when he says, I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

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And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Are you ready to die?

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Why is there pain and suffering in the world? So called the Achilles heel of Christianity?

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No, no, no. Let's find out what the real question and the real response should be.

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Luke chapter 13, verses one through five, the way we'll outline it is very simple. It's the outline in the text, two tragedies, the same response.

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Two tragedies that happen in safe things, regular things, routine things, places that people feel the safest, tragedy strikes.

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One may be by natural disaster, certainly not by human hands. The other one by human hands.

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What's the way? How do we look at tragedies? Jesus gives the same response two times. So two tragedies, the same response to tragedies.

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Luke chapter 13, one to five. Now before we get there, let's go back to chapter 12 for a minute because I want you to see the context in Luke.

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Luke is trying to show us overall the gospel according to Luke, the gospel of Christ Jesus, the good news that God sent his son to rescue sinners like us.

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He would die a substantial death on Calvary and be raised from the dead, ascend to heaven, will return again.

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He's trying to show that he has humanity, that he's not just a spirit being, but that Jesus has humanity because we need a representative.

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How can Jesus die for someone that he's not like? God is a spirit. He dies for humans.

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How does that work? Because we've sinned, we need a replacement or a substitute or a representative, and so Christ, the eternal

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God, cloaks himself with humanity and enters the world. And so he's talking about the humanity of God and he's leading on his way to Calvary discussing judgment and how to escape judgment.

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There's a crisis in the future. What do I do? Look at Luke 12, four, please. Just to give you the idea of what was all transpiring in chapter 12 so you feel the brunt of it.

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I don't know if you've ever lost your wind, you ever got hit playing football. Remember one time I was running full blast,

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I was on the kickoff team and I was going to just smash this guy who caught the ball and he was coming around my side and I just perfectly calculated and I was running full blast but I couldn't see out of the side of my helmet.

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I wish I could have. There was a blocker there and he just creamed me and the next thing

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I know it was like those little birds flying around. And then you can't get your breath.

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That's one of this kind of passages. It shouldn't be. This is life and death. Every one of you is going to die.

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How many kids do you have? They're all dying. You're going to die. Your grandpa's going to die.

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Your grandma's going to die. Your newborn's going to die. Then what? Luke 12, four,

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I tell you my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more than they can do.

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But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear him who after he has killed has authority to cast into hell.

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Yes, I tell you, fear him. Go down to verse 49 please of Luke 12.

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It's the same kind of language, red alert, pay attention, no lethargy, don't go walk around sleepwalking through life, not thinking about the most important thing.

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I meet people and they go, well, I don't really have any life insurance. I mean, I don't have life insurance for my kids. I don't have health insurance for my kids and I'm thinking that's pretty high up on the list.

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You ought to do that. There's something much higher on the list. Luke 12, 49, I came to cast fire on the earth and would that it were already kindled.

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I have a baptism to be baptized with and how great is my distress until it is accomplished. Do you think that I've come to give peace on earth?

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No, I tell you, did you get that? No, I tell you, but rather division from, for, from now on in one house, there will be five divided three against two and two against three.

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They will be divided father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother -in -law against her daughter -in -law and daughter -in -law against mother -in -law.

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He also said to the crowds, when you see a cloud rising in the West, you say at once showers coming and so it happens.

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And when you see the South wind blowing, you say there will be scorching heat and it happens.

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You hypocrites, you know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

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Judgment is coming. You can't see that. You look at the sky and go, I can interpret that, but you can't see what's going on in the world and say,

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I've got to pay attention. Let's go back to Luke chapter 13 and see the first tragedy and it's by human hands and it's a place where people thought they were all safe.

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Almost just like this church this morning. I feel safe in the church. You should probably feel safer than I do because if somebody comes running in here wildly,

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I guess they're probably after me first, although we have a couple of key people in this audience that might try to help me, but I feel pretty safe here.

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It's one thing if you say like Ed Harrell, I just interviewed him on the radio show. He was going to world war two and he said,

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I better make sure I'm right with God because I could die and go to hell. So I better make sure

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I'm going to go in harm's way. Better be ready. Better meet with the chaplain before I go to the front lines,

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Bastogne. But see here, we're just kind of lulled a lullaby of peace.

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It's safe, it's church, it's worship, it's the temple. Verse one, there were some present at that very time.

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See the connection with chapter 12 who told him about the Galileans whose blood pilot at rascal, scoundrel, scallywag, horrible man pilot had mingled with their sacrifices.

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Now here's what was going on in the minds of these folks. We don't know historically,

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Josephus, the historian tries to, he gives us a few options. None of these really match up.

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Pilot was a wicked man. Pilot was a corrupt man. You can see how Jesus is dealt with when it comes to pilot.

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And what happened was there were some Galileans probably during Passover time going to the temple or it's environs and they were going to make sacrifice.

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It was a religious thing. And pilot sent his Gentile executioners in. Remember, they weren't supposed to go into the temple area.

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It would be very, very bad. It could start a riot. You could get killed if you would go in there as a Gentile. But here pilot desecrates the temple, sends in his executioners, his assassins, covertly they kill them.

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And whether it's mingled their blood with the sacrifices figuratively, meaning they just killed them right there, are literally taking the blood of the sacrifices and then the bodies and the corpses of these

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Galileans and actually mingling the physical blood. Either way, it was blasphemous. Now if you were thinking correctly, you'd go, look at how bad pilot is.

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That guy is wicked. Don't be like pilot. That'd be the sermon. That'd be the VBS theme. Don't be like pilot.

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But the culture of the day was so, you know what, I'm not going to really apply this to me.

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I'm going to apply it to somebody else. Somebody else is worse. Somebody else is a more horrible sinner.

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The Jewish thought at the time, torqued as it was, was, you know what, they deserved it.

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They must have did something bad to have that karma -like experience happen.

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They did something bad. They got killed. They're not saying pilot's bad.

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The Jewish mindset of these people around Jesus at the time was, they did something really bad and God gave them what was coming to them.

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Now certainly in the Bible, occasionally you see the direct result of something sinful and that is execution.

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Herod, remember Herod, wicked Herod, and God kills Herod because he's so sinful, killing one of God's choice men.

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But lots of times, there's no direct correlation between sin, personal sin at the moment, and then

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God killing the people. But that's what these folks interpreted this as, crowding around Jesus, interpreting this not as pilot's cruelty, but as, you know what,

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God was displeased with these folks. Now how would you respond?

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How would you respond to that? Somebody asks you the question. Well, how does Jesus respond?

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Let's find out in verse 2. Jesus is not going to say, let me just give you a little discussion of the problem of evil, theodicy.

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Let's talk a little bit about politics, you know, that guy's really a bad guy. Let's do a little social commentary.

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Let's talk about the major religions of the world. That's not what Jesus does at all.

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He is going to force the issue that I'm trying to force today. Are you repentant? Are you ready to meet

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God? Life is fragile, that's what tragedies show. And it's time to get right with God before you meet him.

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And then it's too late. You will either pay for all your sins, or Jesus will pay for them.

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But every sin is going to be paid for, because God is just, he's a just God, so when there's a sin, it's got to be paid for, on you or on Jesus.

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Decide now. And doesn't all the idea of, well, people are going to think I'm weird,

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I want to really keep my friends, I want to run in the same circles, what's my mom going to say, what's my husband going to say, what's my family going to say, what's my employer going to say?

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I mean, can you hear yourself say those things? How insane are those? It's literally insane to think that way.

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When there's the greater issue, you're standing to meet God, God made you. You breathe his air, you drink his water, you have the body that he gave you to do all kinds of things, and you stand before him, accountable.

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He's the creator, he's the judge, and while you're alive, what about savior?

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And Jesus answered. I love Jesus' answers. He answers with questions.

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This is so classic. And by the way, as I read this passage in chapter 13, verse 2, he lets us know that he knows what they're thinking,

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Galileans, bad, sinful, God kills him, but then changes it. He acknowledges what they're saying and what they're thinking because he can read their minds.

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And he asks the question by this way, and he answered them saying, do you think that these

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Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way?

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Tit for tat, measure for measure. He brings up the conclusion that they are having, and then he rejects it by even the question.

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This isn't the right way to think. What's the right way to think?

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Put your house in order. Verse 3, no,

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I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

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We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org

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or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.