John 18:28-40 (The Kingship of Christ

The Warning Against Useless Controversies and the Current “Christ Is King” Debate

Even though 2 Timothy 2 .23 tells us to avoid useless controversies, there is no shortage of them on the artist formerly known as Twitter. What do you do now? Do you tweet or do you X? I don't quite know.

What I've noticed about Twitter is that some controversies are absolutely pointless and useless, and they are people who are addicted to controversy. So we need to avoid that. But there's also sometimes where there are things that are important controversies that we actually should be aware of and should engage in.

And this week, as our brother Ron was telling us earlier, there is a controversy that happened that's important. I'll give you a little bit of background on this. The Daily Wire is sort of a conservative news organization.

And they had a talent who was hired by them and employed on their staff whose name was Candace Owen. Candace Owens was a conservative pundit who was recently fired by the Daily Wire because her views on Israel, Palestine, and all of that ran afoul of the Jewish leadership in the company, namely Ben Shapiro.

She was terminated in that. She was sort of publicly shamed by several members on Twitter to which she responded, Christ is king. Now, it did not take long for accusations of anti-Semitism to be leveled at Candace Owens.

She's only saying that because Ben Shapiro fired her. Oh, how hateful. Oh, how intolerant. And then it did not take long before Christians to be called the Christ as king crowd. See how this is going.

And when we say that phrase, we are anti-Semites, which is preposterous. Because at the very heart of Christianity is the kingship of Jesus. If you lose that, you lose the faith. Now, I don't know Candace Owens from Adam or Eve, and I don't know what her motivation was for saying it, but I don't really care because Christ is king and no one will tell the believer not to say Christ is king.

Let them punish us. Let them call us all manner of evil. Anti-Semitism is this week's racism. Everybody's an anti-Semite as long as you don't like them. But through all of that, Christ Jesus is king.

And all people will be confronted with his kingship. There is no neutrality. All people will come to terms with his kingship in one way or another. They will either come to terms with his kingship being crushed under the weight of his sandal, or they will come to terms with his kingship being raised up in blessing because of their election and regeneration.

There is no neutrality. There is no special status. There is not a single people on earth who can come into the kingdom apart from Jesus Christ. Christ is king. And his lordship and his kingship matters immensely.

It is our confession, and we cannot stop saying it. Because everyone needs repentance, to the Jew first and to the Gentile. And this is really important, and who knows, I might get accused of anti-Semitism for saying this.

A Jew who does not know Jesus Christ does not have a special status, and they will die and go to hell just like every other person who does not know Christ. We must say Christ is Lord and Christ is king to all people, Jew, Gentile, and everyone, whether they call us names or not.

Amen? And this is why this is so good, because as Ben Shapiro says, I'm going to agree with him, facts don't care about your feelings. The fact is Jesus is king, whether it makes you happy or not. Amen?

All right. Now, why do I bring this up? Because it's relevant, it's happening right now, and I want to encourage you not to abrogate your confession, not to be scared of what people might call you, but to be encouraged and to be able to say with boldness and confidence, Christ is king.

So I say it for that reason. But also, the confusion over the kingship of Jesus is not new. The Jews of today are not the only Jews that have been confused about the kingship of Christ. And the Gentiles of today are not the only people who've been confused about the kingship of Christ.

This goes all the way back to Christ. So today we're going to talk about Pilate, who was confronted by the reality that Christ is king, and he was utterly confused. And we're going to see six different truths in this section, six truths for us to believe about the kingship of Christ and six truths that Pilate was confounded about.

Those six truths are number one, Christ is king. Number two, he brings a spiritual kingdom. Number three, he brings a kingdom filled with truth. Number four, he brings a timeless kingdom. Number five, he brings an irrational kingdom to the to the rationality of the world.

And he brings a transformational kingdom. Six truths that will help us today understand who Jesus is as king. And it will also help us understand our place in his kingdom. So if you will, turn with me to John chapter 18, as we take on more verses than I feel comfortable.

And let us read the word of God together. We'll be in verse 28 through 40 this morning. John chapter 18. This also will close out John chapter 18 for us. The text says, then they let Jesus from Caiaphas into the praetorium.

And it was early. And they themselves did not enter into the praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover. Therefore, Pilate went out to them and said, what accusation do you bring against this man?

And they answered and said to him, if this man were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered him to you. So Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and judge him according to your law. And the Jews said to him, we are not permitted to put anyone to death.

This was to fulfill the word of Jesus, which he spoke, signifying the kind of death that he was about to die. Therefore, Pilate entered again into the praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews?

And Jesus answered, are you saying this on your own initiative or did others tell you about me? Pilate answered, I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priest have delivered you to me. What have you done?

Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm.

Therefore, Pilate said to him, so you are a king. And Jesus said, you say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born and for this I have come to the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.

Pilate said to him, what is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover.

Do you wish then that I release for you the king of the Jews? So they cried out again, saying, not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, the reality of your kingship is so clearly discussed and demonstrated in this passage this morning.

Let us see and celebrate your kingship. Let us find where we fit into the kingdom as citizens and slaves. And Lord, let us in all ways and at all times have courage. You say in your word that if we are ashamed of you, you will be ashamed of us.

Lord, let that not be true for this group. Let us to have great boldness, assurance and confidence in your kingly reign. And let it ever be on our lips all our days. In Christ's name, amen. So a little bit of the background that just to catch us up.

We've been in Good Friday and Easter and all of that. So just to catch us back up, we were in the Garden of Gethsemane. And that's where Jesus was arrested by the betrayal of Judas and his disciples. You remember, Peter goes a little Rambo on Malchus for a second.

And then Jesus says, no, Peter, put away your sword. And he's taken to the home of Annas first and then to Caiaphas, where the entire Sanhedrin was assembled. Now, if you're not aware of what the Sanhedrin is, it is the ruling party of Jerusalem.

It is the cohort of Sadducees and Pharisees who together are basically the Congress of that particular era. They were they were the ones that had the power and the prestige. And they had the authority to do almost whatever they wanted.

Now, they were assembled at Caiaphas' home as Peter was outside in the courtyard denying Jesus. And you'll remember that he denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed, before sprinting out of Caiaphas' courtyard in tears.

We don't know where he went, maybe the upper room, but he was in great shame for denying Jesus. Now, back in Caiaphas' house, the Sanhedrin came to the conclusion that they wanted. The entire kangaroo trial that they were looking for is they needed some reason to send him to Pilate.

Because at that particular time, the Sanhedrin could not put someone to death. They could adjudicate matters of their own regional law. According to the Romans, they could they could make decisions on food purity laws and they could make decisions on how much you could walk outside of your house on the Sabbath and things like that.

And certainly they did. They were legalist through and through. But at this point, if you violated a law so severely that you needed corporate punishment, where you needed capital punishment, they could not administer that.

So they had to get to the point to where Jesus needed to die. They could prove that and then they needed to hand him over to Pilate to finish the job. And in that sense, the irony runs pretty deep in this passage that the Jews out of one side of their mouth will say how ugly and dirty and disgusting those Romans are.

And yet here they're colluding with them to destroy Christ. So they hastily move Jesus. Now, you remember, they punched Jesus in the face. They've slapped him. They've mocked him. They spit in his face.

He's been in a holding cell. He got to Caiaphas' house about midnight. So he's been in a holding cell until early in the morning. Now they're marching him through the streets of Jerusalem early enough to where people are not meddling around in the city yet.

Because the last thing that Jews want is for the crowds to turn away from them. And they're taking him to the home of Caiaphas. I mean, to the palace of Pilate, the castle of Antonia. Now, you remember, as they arrive at the praetorium, that they don't go in, which is another amazing hypocrisy of this.

They want to kill Jesus. They want to murder him. But they're so sophisticated in their sensibilities and in the religious law that we dare not get near a Gentile near Passover. Because how could we eat the Passover before murdering Jesus if we get near the Gentile?

That would be that would be absolutely foolish. That would be unsophisticated of us. So in route to murdering the son of God, they had to protect their cleanness. We can understand, right? So Pilate goes out to them.

I think this is also an astonishing feature of the narrative. Pilate is the Roman governor. He could have said, pound sand, you come into me. And yet he goes out to them, which is a fascinating little feature of this, which kind of shows the what is the word, the codependency that is existing at this time between Judah and Rome.

This sort of love, hate, frenemy relationship that they have. Now, if you remember, in Rome was the governing party here. They had conquered Judah several decades before this. But Judah was a pesky sort of little place in the Roman Empire.

The Romans loved peace. And at this time there was this thing called the Pax Romana, which meant the peace of Rome, where there was no war in the entire empire. So the Romans wanted peace. They did not like headaches.

Unlike the Assyrians who would fight anybody, anytime, anywhere, and they would provoke you to fight so they could fight. The Romans actually didn't want to fight. They wanted to have a peaceful empire where they didn't have any headaches and they could prop their feet up and enjoy their day.

So the Jews made that very difficult for the Romans. The Caesars would become enraged if these types of things would happen. So they would install prefects and governors over pesky regions who didn't like being subjugated.

It just so happens to be Pilate in this particular city. Now, Pilate was installed as the prefect of Jerusalem, as the governor of Jerusalem in A .D. 26. So he was here for the entire ministry of Jesus.

And he was known for disregarding the Jews. He was known for his sarcasm, and he was known for his sort of looking down his nose and saying things that would inflame them. And over the course of his career, which at this point, I think this is A .D. 30, maybe it's A .D. 33, but he's not been the prefect for very long, certainly not for decades.

And he's already had several riots that have happened in the city just under his tenure. Now, that is a problem if you're Rome, because his job was to keep the peace. His job was to keep people from peaceful protesting, mostly peaceful protesting.

And yet he had not done that. So at this point, Pilate could not roll the dice really strongly on a Galilean messianic figure. Because if Pilate risked it in this moment, and the Jews who are threatening to riot, everything you see in this passage from the Jews is escalation.

They're pushing Pilate to obey their will so that the city doesn't get out of control. If he did not do that, it's likely that he would not only have been fired, but he would have been either beheaded or murdered for not doing his job and keeping the city under control.

Because again, the Romans don't want to have to deal with this. It took them a long time before they finally stormed the city in AD 70. But when they did, they did. So in this way, Pilate is sort of a man caught between two positions.

He knows that freeing Jesus will infuriate the Jews. And for that reason, he would want to do it. He also is a sympathetic figure in this passage because he says, I don't believe he's done anything wrong.

I don't believe he's done anything worthy of guilt. So in this sense, I can't prove this. But it seems like he not only wants to infuriate the Jews, but it also seems like that he sees that there's some truthfulness here, that Christ has not done what they're saying that he's done.

He sees their hypocrisy, and yet he's caught in between an impossible situation where if he acts on it, he's going to be in massive trouble. His heart was moved, it seems like. Maybe his wife's dream was a part of that where she said, don't have anything to do with this man.

His heart was moved, but his body wasn't. The pressure of his job and of Rome and of the situation was more than he could handle, and he became a willing participant in the death of Christ. But in this passage, that's the background.

In this passage, we see even in the midst of that, even in the midst of defeat, even in the midst of them killing Jesus, we see very clearly that his death was not defeat, that his death was the beginnings of the kingship of the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

And we see that so brilliantly in this passage. For instance, verse 33 through 35. Therefore, Pilate entered again into the praetorium, and he summoned Jesus and said to him, Are you king of the Jews?

And Jesus answered and said, Are you saying this of your own initiative, or did others tell you about me? Pilate answered, I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and chief priests have delivered you to me.

What have you done? Pilate is aware that Jesus is a king, or at least that's the title. You remember later when Jesus is crucified, Pilate twists the screws a little bit and puts above Jesus' head, Jesus, king of the Jews.

And then the Jews come to him and say, No, no, no. Can you put Jesus said that he was the king of the Jews? And Pilate said, What I have written, I have written. So Pilate found a way to still stick it to them.

Now, Jesus' kingship in this passage reveals at first, it reveals the depth and the depravity of the Jewish people at this particular point. Their hopes and their dreams for the last 400 years was that a Messiah would come and free them from occupation.

They were under the reins of multiple different empires since the exile. They were under the reign of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and now Rome. For 400 years, they have not been a sovereign people. And that is what they wanted.

They said, That's what our prophets have promised, that we would be a nation again, that we would be elevated up above all the rest of the nations. Here, their hopes and dreams are standing right in front of their noses.

And they are saying, Crucify him. The one who would make them into a people, a priesthood, a holy nation, was right in front of them, and they said, Kill him. Look at the depravity. The very God who dwelled in the back room of the Holy of Holies was standing in front of them.

And they were so blind, they could not recognize him. So Jesus' kingship reveals their deep depravity. It also reveals Pilate's utter ignorance. It exposes him as being ignorant of who Christ is. The first thing Pilate does is he asks a question.

Are you the king of the Jews? So he shows that he's got some knowledge of the situation. Are you who they say that you are? Are you the king? And you can imagine that that question was probably dripping with mockery.

Are you the king? Uh-huh. Really? Really? You want to tell Caesar that? Oh, gotcha. Okay. He couldn't understand that Jesus was a king, and he could not understand that Jesus was a king in Judah, a subjugated people, a people who were under the thumb of Rome.

He would have said, Look at us. We're the ones in charge, not you. We're the ones that have power, not you. You're a king? What an empire. Jesus responds to Pilate saying, Are you saying this of your own initiative, or did others tell you about me?

He's exposing his ignorance. He's saying, You don't really know anything. You don't know what you're talking about. Pilate then retorts, Your own nation and your chief priests are the ones who've handed you over to me.

What have you done? Because to Pilate, Jesus was just a man. I worked in a jail for seven and a half years before I moved up here. And I met many people who came in who were charged with all kinds of different crimes.

There were a few that I met along the way that I thought, I could see that they probably didn't do that. I have no idea. I'm not the judge. I'm not the one in charge on that. But stuff's just not adding up.

And do you think I stuck my neck out for them? Do you think I grabbed them by the collar and said,.

We're going?

No way. I left that jail every day and went home. And I lived with my family. And I thought pity for them. But I didn't do anything to rescue them. It's kind of similar to what Pilate's doing here. I don't think Pilate thinks that Jesus is a revolutionary.

I don't think that Pilate thinks that Jesus is an insurrectionist. Not that that's culturally relevant, that that would be a mockery term that people have thrown on other people like Grandma's in Washington.

But anyway, I think he believes that Jesus has been falsely charged. And for that reason, I think he has pity. And he has a certain degree of, if I can help, I can help. If I can't, I can't, sort of attitude.

Now, I think the reason Pilate thinks this way is because he thinks he was in charge. He thinks he had the authority. And what Jesus is going to show him is that the authority that you think you have, you do not.

This is where Jesus is going to expose his ignorance. Look at what Jesus says in John chapter 19. We'll get to this in a couple weeks. John chapter 19 verse 11. You would have no authority over me unless it had been given to you from above.

What Jesus is saying is you think you're in control. You think you're going to crucify me. You think you're doing all of this. You have no authority whatsoever unless it was given to you by God. And Jesus is telling us something theologically very significant in that moment.

He's saying that Pilate, Caiaphas, Caesar, and Satan have no authority over the people of God lest it be given to them from above. And Christ affirms this in John 18. For this reason I have been born and for this reason I have come into the world.

He's saying I'm the one who has authority. I'm the one who's calling the shots. I'm the one who's setting the agenda, not you. Which means that the purpose of Jesus's kingdom was not to liberate Judah from Rome.

The purpose of his kingdom was to take back all of the authority on earth that had been stolen. To take back authority that Satan stole in the garden. To take back authority that would lead his people into freedom from their sins.

And to extend his authority so palpably that he would have dominion over the entire earth. Where Jesus says all authority in heaven and earth belongs to me. When Jesus rose from the dead there is no authority outside of his.

There's not. That means that no king, no dictator, no boss, no Caesar, no wife, no husband, no child. None of us have any authority unless it is borrowed or given to us from God. That means that there is no authority on earth except for derived authority.

That means our wicked government has no real authority. That means that if police officers go rogue they have no authority. They can wield a stolen authority at best but they will be accountable to the holiness and the wrath of Almighty God.

Matthew again 28 .18 says all authority in heaven and earth belong to me. That's not a technical Greek term there. That's not a convoluted passage where well sometimes all means none. Or sometimes it might mean some.

No it means all. All authority in heaven. So if you go to heaven there is no authority that's not his. And on earth, so look around you, there is no authority that's not his. That's what it means. And because of that, everything that Jesus came to do will be accomplished.

Unlike Pilate who was confused by this, I pray that you and I who are citizens of Jesus' kingdom will see this with great clarity. And that we will rejoice in the fact that we don't have any authority.

We're called slaves.

And that's the best news ever.

Because if you have authority you'll screw it up. Like I would too. But because Christ has authority and he's perfect, everything that he does in your life is perfect. See you actually gain freedom. You gain joy as you surrender your toxic control or your toxic desire to have control.

The more control you try to seize, the less control you actually have. The more that you try to be in authority over anything, the more that you will be miserable in everything. The only freedom, the only happiness, the only joy comes in knowing Christ and surrendering yourself to him.

And if you get authority in this life, you recognize that it's not yours. If you get elevated to a position where you have a team of people underneath you, they're not your team, they're his. If you become the CEO of a company, I hope that's true for you.

It's not your company, it's his. If you go in your home and you say, this is mine, be careful. Don't white knuckle that. It's not yours, it's his. Because everything you own belongs to him. He is king, that's what he's saying.

And if he is king, guess what? We are not. That's our confession. That's what we say. And that's what no one will tell us not to say. We boast in our weakness. We praise him in his mighty strength. That's what it means to be a Christian.

It's to boast in the kingship of Jesus Christ and to magnify him. While we are weak, he is strong. He must become greater. We must become less. That's the first thing we learn in this passage is that Christ is king.

The Spiritual Kingdom of Christ Is Not of This World

Second thing we learn is that he's bringing a spiritual kingdom. Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. Now, please do not be mistaken by this passage. Do not misunderstand what it means. He did not say, my kingdom will have no impact in this world.

He said, my kingdom is not of or from this world. He's saying that the origin of my kingdom is not man-made. It's not like Rome. It's not like America. It's not like Timbuktu. The origin, the power, the fuel that is running this kingdom is not earthly.

It's heavenly. But be not mistaken. It will have an impact on this world. It will transform it, which we'll get to in a moment. It is the triune God himself who fuels the kingdom of God, and it is he in three persons who we submit our lives to.

Now, the Jews misunderstood this completely. They wanted an ethno-national kingdom where they were elevated above all the peoples on earth. They wanted to be the head, and they wanted everyone else to be the tail.

They wanted to look down their nose and say, ha, ha, ha, ha, we're better than you. That's what they wanted. We've said this a couple times now. In the temple, they wouldn't allow Gentiles even into the Gentile region of the temple courtyard.

They wouldn't. They had a sign up. We've said this again many times. They had a sign up saying that if you go past this point, Mr. Gentile, we'll kill you. The way that they expressed hatred towards the Samaritans, the way that they expressed hatred towards people who were not like them was sick, and it arised from a sick and diseased heart.

Instead of them being elevated, Christ came so that he would be elevated above all things. They wanted Rome to be upended. Jesus wanted something far bigger than Rome to be ended. He wanted Satan, sin, and death to be conquered under his majesty.

So much bigger than Rome. So much bigger than the Egyptians and the Pharaohs of the world. He wanted to transform everything. Paul says this as well in Ephesians 6 .12. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

He's saying that the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom, but it has physical impact. It's not a kingdom that is advanced through conquering and with violence. It is not a kingdom where we pull the Sharia law card and we go jihad on someone.

It is a kingdom where the Savior triumphs over a world filled with hate with love. It is a kingdom where a world filled with lies is overcome by a Savior who tells the truth. It is a kingdom that is not built with F -15s and submarines and nukes and everything else.

It is a kingdom that is built on the Lord's Day every week as we gather. It is a kingdom where we feast at his table. It is a kingdom that is built in your homes when you do family worship. It is a kingdom that as we worship and praise him in our lives, he overcomes the world.

Did you know that he overcame the Roman Empire with men and women who died in the Colosseum? What a crazy kingdom! You think about kingdoms, you think about Vikings who are running and overpowering people.

You think about soldiers with better weapons. No! Through one martyr after another, Rome was toppled. The greatest empire that the world had ever known was conquered on the witness of the saints. And all the empires on earth will be conquered that way.

One confession, one prayer, one worship service, one Lord's table feasting, one reading of my Bible, one family worship after another in perpetuity will end the offenses of sinful man and will bring about the kingdom of Almighty Christ.

Isaiah 11 .9 says, The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the water covers the sea. Do you see what brings in the kingdom? It's not tanks. It's not 50 caliber rifles. It's the knowledge of the Lord.

It's theology. It's knowing God. That's what overturns the world and that's what fills it with the glory of God. It's a mustard seed that starts out really small and then it grows and it fills the entire world.

It's a little pebble that becomes a mountain that fills the entire earth. It's a little microscopic molecule of leaven that eventually leavens the entire lump. It is not forceful or violent, but it will take over and it will bring about His peace.

Now, again, the Jews misunderstood this. Pilate misunderstood this. But I hope as we consider what Jesus said that we would understand this, revel in this, and I pray that we would be citizens who participate in this.

That's the second thing. That His kingdom is a spiritual kingdom and there's spiritual warfare and weapons that we can participate in to see His kingdom grow. The third thing is that it's a truthful kingdom.

In a world filled with lies, the kingdom of Jesus recovers truth and reality. It is not a political machine like Rome or like Washington or any other hyper-political swamp. Jesus' kingdom is built on truth, and lies cannot exist in the presence of truth.

How do you kill mold? You bring it into the light. How do you crush the disease of sinful man? The light of Christ shines on it, withers it, dries it up, and it will either crush it or it will bring it into His kingdom.

Jesus continues His answer to Pilate, talking about this. For this I have been born. For this I have come into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. If you hear His voice, you are of the truth.

There is no such thing as a Christian who lives in lies. There is no such thing as a Christian who panders to pagan society and says, Well, I think a man can become a woman. There is no such thing. Jesus came to reestablish reality, which makes His kingdom different than every other kingdom on earth.

Man's kingdom fundamentally at its heart. If you want to understand what connects every kingdom of man, I don't care what nation it is, I don't care what people it is, what connects them all together, the similitude that makes them the same is that they are suppressing the truth of the knowledge of God.

And what makes us different? One of the fundamental aspects of what makes a Christian different is that we no longer hate the truth of God. But because Christ was despised on our behalf, we now love the truth.

We're people of the truth. Instead of embracing lies, we embrace reality. We embrace truth. Jesus came to revive knowledge. This is why Christians ought to be at the forefront of every discipline. This is why Christians ought to be at the forefront of science.

Why is it that Christians have abandoned knowledge fields? When our God is God of all knowledge. Why have we not come up with the cure for cancer? Why did we have the heights of music and art, and now we've totally squandered that legacy?

He's a God of truth who brings a kingdom of truth, and we ought to be the people who bring that truth in every field to the nations. He set us free from the father of lies so that we could now be ambassadors of righteousness and truth.

Jesus is restoring truth about our origins. He's restoring truth about our nature. He's restoring truth about salvation and how man can know God. He's restoring truth about the purpose that we were all created for instead of the nihilistic vision that the left and that the world clings to.

I was watching this week. I don't know if you saw this. What's his name? Dawkins. Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist. He said, I want to live in a world where Christianity is believed, even though I know that it's not real.

What's happened to him? Because he used to say 10 years ago that Christianity was a plague upon the world. Now he's seeing that as people abandon truth, the world becomes a squalor. I don't know if Richard Dawkins will ever become saved, but he realizes that there's something about the gospel and there's something about the kingdom of God that brings truth to the nations.

And if you leave that, you don't get into a different hue of light. You go into darkness. There is either light or there's darkness. And he's realizing that in Europe and in Britain, his country is descending into darkness because of the abandonment of Christ.

We must, as Christians, be children of the truth. And we must hold fast to the truth. That's why we can never affirm that abortion is health care. It's not. We can. I don't even think that we can see the argument that that's a fetus.

That's a human. That word fetus is euphemism to try to degrade what's going on in that womb. That is a special creation of almighty God. And I don't care what you call it.

It is a human abortion.

Another euphemism. Murder is what it is. We must be men and women of truth. We must be men and women who say that, nope, you cannot participate in women's sports if you are not a biological woman. We must be the ones who say that no one, not Jew nor Greek, can find ultimate purpose and happiness apart from a relationship with almighty God.