Knowledge Is Impossible Without God

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So, it's Matthew 15, Jesus now has, of course, been notified about John the

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Baptist, the death of John the Baptist. Jesus then goes again into this desolate place by himself, which was often his practice to be alone with the

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Father. And that's when all the crowds actually come and they disrupt his time with the Father.

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Jesus heals all their sick, he feels compassion for them, he's moved by compassion for them.

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Jesus performs these miracles of healing, and then, of course, we know the amazing miracle of all these hungry followers, probably closer to 20 ,000 followers.

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And Jesus takes the five loaves, the two fish, and he begins to create new things, right?

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He's the creator of everything, he creates out of these five loaves and two fish new food for his people, he has them sit down, he provides for their needs, and it says that they are satisfied.

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And, of course, they collect 12 baskets full, very symbolic to God, providing for Israel's needs and them being satisfied.

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Jesus then, of course, has this amazing display of himself as creator by walking on water.

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He walks on the water, he shows who he is, he's Yahweh among us, he's God among us.

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Peter, of course, in faith, walks out towards Jesus, he wants to walk with Jesus on the water, Jesus immediately invites him, he says,

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I want to trust you, and Jesus says, come on the water. Peter, of course, sees his circumstances, he gets his eyes off of Jesus, he stops trusting, he begins to sink, they immediately know who

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Jesus is, Jesus rescues him from drowning. And then, of course, he goes, crosses over into the land of Gennesaret, and it says that people were coming to him just that they might only touch the fringe of his garment to be healed, just to touch the stuff on Jesus.

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Now, all of this activity now is bringing this flurry of notoriety around Jesus, right?

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That Jesus is in these towns, and people are coming to him in droves, he's doing these miracles, and the miracles are pointing to the greater reality of who he is.

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Again, I've said many times before that the miracles of Jesus are not just kind of David Blaine, Chris Angel kind of things that just stun you, but it's a trick.

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It's all about just that moment of astonishing you, right? Like pulling frogs from your throat, or making yourself levitate.

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It's all trickery, but it's just for that. It's to make the person who's the performer look amazing, it's to wow you.

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Jesus isn't a performer. He's not a performer, he's not a magician. When Jesus walks on water, feeds almost 20 ,000, when he's healing the sick and the blind, when he's raising the dead, he's showing who he truly is,

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Yahweh among us, and he's showing us that he can be trusted. He's displaying his nature, his character, and the greater reality of what he can do.

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For instance, when Jesus raises somebody from the dead, it's to display not simply that he can have this miraculous power, but it's showing that he's the one who's the giver of life.

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He can actually raise the dead, defeat our greatest enemy. And of course, now, all of this flurry of activity is drawing people to Jesus, and the religious leadership doesn't like it.

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So they're the ones that are trying to trip Jesus up. They're the ones bringing coins to Jesus, saying, what about the coin?

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Should we pay taxes or not? Trying to get him into trouble. They start asking him questions related to marriage.

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Jesus, Matthew 19, are you with Rabbi Hillel, or are you with Rabbi Shammai? Do you believe that the law of God dictates how we get divorced?

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Or do you believe we can get divorced for any cause? So now they're following Jesus and challenging him, right?

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So Jesus does things like display that he's Yahweh, he controls the elements, he feeds people, walks on water, raises the dead, gives sight to blind people, hearing to deaf people, all these amazing things.

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But he does other things too. For example, he displays who he is, Yahweh among us,

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God among us. It says, Jesus, knowing their thoughts, answered them. Jesus searches their hearts, he knows what they're thinking.

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Jesus says to people things like, you're forgiven of your sin, and their response was actually right on the money.

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They say, who can forgive sins but God alone? They knew what he was claiming. And of course, Jesus did it in those ways, like displaying that he was

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Yahweh, and he had the actual power of Yahweh, but he also took the prerogatives of Yahweh, like received worship, he forgave sins.

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All of that's taking place. And then of course, the explicit reminder to people of exactly who he is, like for example, in John chapter eight, when

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Jesus says this, unless you believe, ego eimi, I am, he takes a subduagence rendering of ahia in the

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Hebrew, I am, God's name, Yahweh. And he says, unless you believe that ego eimi,

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I am, you will die in your sins. He says, before Abraham was, I am.

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And they knew exactly what he was saying, because they picked up stones to kill him. Remember, in John 10, two chapters later,

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Jesus says, I and the father are one. They pick up stones to kill him again, and he says, many good works have

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I shown you from my father, for which of these do you stone me? And they said, for thy good works we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and that you being a man, make yourself

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God. They knew what he was saying. He displayed through his power and his activity in ministry, he's

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God among us. He took the prerogatives of God alone. He said that he was

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God, taking the divine name, I am, upon himself. And now, enter

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Matthew 15. Matthew 15, now these same Pharisees and scribes come to Jesus from Jerusalem, from the holy city, and they say to him, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

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For they do not wash their hands when they eat. Some of you mothers are like, sounds good to me, right?

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Sounds like a good tradition to have. Here's the thing, watch. There's a difference between law of God and law of the home, and it's really important we get that right.

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We can have the law of God understood, laid down, and we could draw from that general principles of wisdom to have laws in our homes, right?

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But we have to know the difference between a law of God and a law of the home. So for example, you might have as a tradition in your home, you're not allowed to put your feet on the couch, right?

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And in your home, that's a violation of the law of the home. In my home, not so important, right?

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But what we can't do is say, well, the law in my home is you can't put feet on the couch and you must wash your hands before dinner, therefore, that's true godliness.

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That's true piety. We have to know the difference between a tradition that's just a healthy tradition, maybe it's wise in our circumstances, but it's not actually the law of God.

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What these people did is they actually raised up a tradition called Halacha, and that tradition later morphed into something called the

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Mishnah, and what it was was seen by the Jews as sacred tradition, essentially divine.

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You got to get this, they weren't saying, say, what Christians say today, reformed Protestants about, say, a catechism, where we say this catechism testifies to truths that are found in the

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Bible. The catechism, the confession, actually has its basis, the word of God.

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If it contradicts the word of God, it's to be thrown out. We hold it loosely. We say it's good, we say it's valuable, but we hold it very loosely, saying the word of God's the ultimate authority.

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What they said about this tradition, catch this, was that this was divine tradition from God, from Sinai, from Moses, that was essentially oral tradition passed down.

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It wasn't scripture, it wasn't this. They knew what the Torah was, the Tanakh was, they knew the five books of Moses, the

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Pentateuch, they knew what it was. This important side note, I said it last week, I want to kind of emphasize it, because it's so important you know it.

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The Jews of this day, Second Temple Judaism, in the first century, they had the entire

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Old Testament that you have right now in your Bibles, all the same books. They had laid up in the

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Jewish temple as the scriptures, the word from God. They knew what the word of God was.

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They had the identical canon we have in the temple. They knew about the

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Apocrypha, the Apocrypha were other writings, they were historical writings that the

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Jews thought had valuable history in them, but listen, they did not believe that those were scripture.

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Jesus nor the apostles ever quoted from the Apocrypha as though it was divinely inspired word from God.

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They were aware of the Apocrypha, they knew it existed, it was historical writings, but they knew it wasn't the word of God and they did not lay that up in the temple as the word of God.

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Jesus and the apostles, I said last week, quoted copiously from the Old Testament writings to the degree that, listen, every book of the

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Old Testament canon is quoted in the New Testament save Esther, a very short book.

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They knew what the word of God was, they had it laid up in the temple, here's what the divine tradition was, the

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Halakha. It was a divine tradition of the elders and what they were saying was, watch, not that it's a guide for conduct, but that it was oral tradition from God delivered down through the centuries and it is inspired tradition.

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In other words, you must obey or you're sinning and so now enter Jesus and his followers aren't doing it.

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Why? Because that tradition conflicts with the very words of God, the law of God and Jesus of course at the end here says this, it's not what goes into your mouth that defiles you.

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Jesus says, where's that go? When you put something into your mouth, it goes through your system and then it comes out of your body as waste.

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That's not what defiles you. Jesus says what actually defiles you is what's from within you, right?

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Out of the heart the mouth speaks and so Jesus says this stuff comes from ... If you're talking about defiling somebody, if you want to know what sin is to God, it's what's actually happening inside you.

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Murderers, adulteries, thefts, all these things, that's from inside you. Here's the deal, this is an amazing thing.

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You might think, you might be tempted to think, this is just some peculiar oddity of the past, right?

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No. No. One of my favorite musicians, modern musicians, was, is and I think will remain

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Modest Yahu. How many of you guys like Modest Yahu? I love

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Modest Yahu. I love Modest Yahu because so many of his lyrics are based upon even psalms in the

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Bible. He takes biblical scriptures and even sometimes he sings psalms and turns them into this amazing music.

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He's super gifted and talented. Well years ago, Modest Yahu has changed a lot now.

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What made him so interesting was he was this Hasidic Jew, right? So imagine you're in Brooklyn now or some part of the five boroughs in New York and you see a

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Hasidic Jew with, you know, the little twirly things and just looks completely odd and it's essentially an

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Orthodox Jew. Well now he's doing like reggae and hip hop and you're like, this looks so weird and it's wonderful, right?

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It's just really amazing. Well I watched this video once of Modest Yahu while he was on tour and it showed him going to his trailer and while he was in his trailer he started telling everyone what's in there and it was really, just a little piece of it, was all of that Jewish tradition coming out now.

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He started talking about all the things that he does to keep himself clean. He started talking about all the ways that he keeps himself pure and he even had some stuff that he gargled with to actually keep his throat clean.

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Why? Because for them, there's a tradition connected to that, like if you can actually keep your mouth clean, then your mouth is clean before God.

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If your throat is clean, then your throat is clean before God. Because for them that tradition says that it's all external.

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It's all pointing to something. If your hands are clean, then you're not dirty, you're not foul. If your mouth is clean, you're not dirty, you're not foul.

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This is not some oddity of the past that doesn't exist today. Human beings who are guilty before God and have shame before God, watch, they will always, always, always try to find some way to scrub away the guilt.

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They will always try to find some way to find atonement for their guilt and their shame.

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When human beings are broken before God and they are guilty before God, they have a sense of that guilt before God and so what do they do with that?

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They take it and they say, well, do I come to Jesus? No, not Jesus, but I'm foul, I'm broken, so what do

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I do? Clean myself. Wash myself. Get the sin off of me.

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Get all of the filth off of me. So maybe if I clean my mouth, then what comes out of my mouth is pure because I have a clean mouth.

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Maybe if I wash my hands, I wash my hands of the blood of the person that I slayed.

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Do you get the point? Human beings try to find some way to purify themselves and the Jews, rather than going to God in this day for cleansing, rather than going to Jesus, they said, you need to wash your hands before you eat because you don't want to defile your food so it goes into you and that defiled food goes into your belly and now you are defiled.

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And so what does Jesus say? That's not how this works. What goes into you is irrelevant.

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It's just going to go out. If you want to know where this begins, it begins in your heart, it begins within you.

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This is where it comes from, inside. You want to clean yourself? Clean the inside of the cup,

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Jesus says, not the outside. He says, you're experts at that. You guys are, watch, Matthew 23, coming soon, little trailer, whitewashed tombs, right?

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It looks so fine on the outside, it's clean on the outside, it's whitewashed on the outside, but inside you are full of dead, stinking, rotting, foul flesh.

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That's what you are inside. You are a whitewashed tomb. You are focused on the outside of the cup,

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Jesus says, focused on the inside, but what he does, and this is where we get to it,

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Jesus is confronted by them, how come your disciples don't follow the divine tradition and do this?

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You're all defiled. You guys are defiled. That's what they're accusing Jesus of, of being defiled, and Jesus, his response is epic, and it has to be the gauge for us.

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He's Yahweh among us. You want to ask the question, what does God want us to have as the standard of life if I've got two conflicting claims?

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What does God want me to do about that conflict? Jesus says this when they suggest he's defiled.

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He answered them, and why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

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That's it. That's it. We have to realize, watch, that is an epistemological statement.

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It's a claim about knowledge. How do I know something to be true?

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Where do I go? Tradition? Where do I go? Experience? Where do I go? Pragmatism?

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Where do I go? Authorities? Where do I go? To the state? Where do I go?

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To the authority of the church? Jesus says this, and why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

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God among us in the flesh says this, here's how you resolve the conflict. You take your tradition, you compare it to the word of God, and you're going to either have something that matches the word of God, or you're going to have something that his words, ready, invalidate, void

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God's word. Your tradition can wipe away the word of God, and that's where Jesus' starting point is.

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The foundation of knowledge, the foundation of wisdom is, in fact, the word of God.

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That's Jesus' approach to conflict, and he, of course, I'll just give it to you if you weren't here last week.

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When he does it, he skips over their challenge. You notice that? He went right to the jugular, but he skipped over their challenge.

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He deals with the challenge later, but he demonstrates to them that a tradition is conflicting with God's word, and here's what he says.

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God commanded, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die, watch, but you say.

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Here's what God says, but you say, contrast, God's word, your claim.

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If anyone tells his father or mother, or his mother, what you would have gained from me is given to God, that's the

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Korban rule, he need not honor his father or mother. What's that mean? In the Old Testament, God said this, you must honor your father and your mother and care for the needs of the elderly, for your parents.

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We spoke a moment ago about God's order, social order, blessing the world, right?

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When we do it God's way, we don't need these social programs, we don't need to extort people, we don't need to take money through coercion and unjust taxation.

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If we follow God's law, we have a social order that blesses the world. They distorted it, because they said this,

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Jesus, Korban rule, everything I have, ready?

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Look how spiritual this sounds, is given to the Lord. That's the rule.

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You see, Jesus, I can't really honor my father and my mother and take care of their needs, because all my stuff is dedicated to temple.

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All my stuff is dedicated to God. You see, here's the deal, God, all my stuff, it belongs to you, not to my mom and dad.

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Who's more important, God, mom or dad, or you? You're more important, and so I'm not obligated to care for their needs, because everything's dedicated to you.

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And so what Jesus says is this, your tradition has invalidated

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God's word. You're in conflict with God's word, because of this tradition you've set up. And so Jesus has as the foundation, the word of God.

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Now let's talk for a minute, just for a moment, about the foundation of knowledge. And I want you to see it, go to Proverbs chapter one.

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Proverbs chapter one, what does God's word say about knowledge? How do we know things? How do we know what's true?

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Proverbs chapter one, verse seven, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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Now it's possible for us as Christians with all these amazing grand statements in the

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Bible to read a passage like that and just skip through all the implications. I admit at times to reading

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God's word and being completely light -headed, mellow -headed, never taking in the implications of something like that.

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But just consider for a moment that verse in a secular philosophy course written on the blackboard.

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I'm sorry, I'm dating myself. On the whiteboard, right? So imagine you walk into a philosophy course today in a secular university, and it's a course on epistemology, or the basics of philosophy, or knowledge, and you're learning about different ways people try to approach how we know something to be true.

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And you walk into this secular university, and it says, the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge.

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Now I'm sure if the atheists walked into the room and the agnostics walked into the room, they might have a problem with what's on the board.

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Let me ask you a question. How long do you think it would take for the secularists, the humanists, say the unbelievers in the crowd, how long do you think it would take them to start speaking up about what was on the board?

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Right? Whatever do you mean, that fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge? You're saying that I have to start all of my pursuit of knowledge with fear of the biblical

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God? That, watch, that's the beginning of knowledge? That I can't actually get myself up into the air?

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I can't start flapping my wings? I can't actually get off the ground until I first start with fear of God?

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Someone says, what's it mean to fear God? Well, in the Hebrew text of Proverbs 1 -7, fear of Yahweh, it means fear.

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That's it. Someone says, well, like, you're afraid of God, like of something

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He could do, like morally bad to you? Well, no, of course not. God is holy and just. The foundations of God's throne are just as God is holy.

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He's not like you and me. He's not untrustworthy. Even His wrath is His settled opposition against sin.

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It's not something that is out of character for God. When we talk about fear of God, we're talking about, yes, reverent submission and awe before God, but it's fear before God.

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It says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. You want to know something to be true, you have to start with God.

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You have to start with reverent submission and awe before God. He's the reference point. Watch. Remember the beginning of today's service today of worship.

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Remember what I did. I pointed to Cornelius Van Til, and Cornelius Van Til talks about how we know something.

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This is huge. When you grasp this, you'll find the beauty of the biblical worldview.

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If a human being refuses to start with fear of God for knowledge, and you say, no,

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I won't start with your own self -knowledge, God, before I move to knowledge of myself, no

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God means I have to find knowledge in myself. If I start with myself, and what do

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I know, well, I have to admit to my limitations. Here's the question I have for you.

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If you started all of your thinking without God, and you buy into the modern mythology about human beings, that all of us come from highly evolved societies of bacteria, that all of our ancestors were fish, if you believe we're just highly evolved bags of protoplasm in a universe that doesn't care, let me ask you a question.

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What do you know about the world? How much knowledge, of all the knowledge that is possible, do you think you have?

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Of all, watch, of all possible knowledge in the universe, not just our galaxy, of all the knowledge in the universe, how much knowledge do you have?

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How much do you know? Less than 1 %?

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That'd be a high number, I think, right? That'd be pretty high. That'd be a little bit liberal there, right?

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Maybe less than 1%. So, watch, if you start with your own self -knowledge, and you say, how much do

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I know, you have to admit to your limitations and say, I know actually very little. Which is to say, if you don't have exhaustive knowledge about everything in the universe, then you can't claim to know anything at all.

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Because if you say, I know this to be true, it's possible that you haven't experienced an instance where that thing is actually not true.

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So, the truth is, without God's self -disclosure, we don't know anything, nothing.

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We have no true justified belief, which is to say this, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. If we have God, who knows all things, and perfectly knows himself, if he discloses himself to us, what he tells us, we can be certain about.

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Example, people say today it's perfectly acceptable to have a home where you have three dads, no moms, two dads who are in intimate physical relationship with each other, and you don't need a mom.

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You can make that claim today, and that claim is made today. And you can say, that's a good thing.

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That's the kind of knowledge you can get to. Or you can have the kind of claim that was made this week,

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I posted about it, of a woman who's in love with a chandelier, and she calls it love, wants to marry a chandelier.

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That's a claim to knowledge, that's acceptable behavior. Well, if you don't start with God, ready, sky's the limit.

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Beyond that, it's not just the sky's the limit, everything is up for grabs. How do you know something to be true?

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You don't without God. But if you start, watch, your knowledge of yourself coming from the derivative knowledge that God gives to you about himself and you, you can be certain.

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For example, let's take a simple Christian belief, greatest commandment, second, is love your neighbor as what?

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You love yourself. We take it for granted as Christians, that's such a basic thing, you ought to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

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Our society has been shaped by that, why? Because the Christian worldview has impacted every nook and cranny of our world, and so people today who are even humanists adopt the

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Christian morality of love your neighbor as you love yourself, but that comes from God. Well, if we lived in a world where we rejected

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God's self -revelation, and now we're left in a world of our own making, and if we are the masters of our universe, the captains of our own ships, if I am the source, the principium of all knowledge, then it might be possible to say in some civilizations that the standard is eat your neighbor, and we laugh.

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We say, oh, that's graphic, and that's to the extreme, Pastor Jeff.

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Nobody believes eat your neighbor, and then I want to invite you to Papua New Guinea, or any other tribes around the world where they actually do believe that it's virtuous to kill another human being and to eat them.

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You see, we take it for granted as Christians that because of God's own self -disclosure, we can know that the standard is to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and to love your enemies, and to do good to those who persecute you and mistreat you.

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That comes from God, and you can't simply say, well, that should be obvious to all of us, because brothers and sisters, watch this, it is not obvious to all of us, and if you don't believe that, then

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I want to invite you to take a trip with me not too far from here to Florence, where we have a building that's guarded by people with automatic weapons and deadly weapons, where there are people in cages there, because society has said, you have violated fundamental laws of morality, and here's the question, apart from God's self -disclosure, how do you know something is a moral failing?

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How do you know, apart from God and His character as the foundation, that something is a moral failure?

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Is it wrong to be in a physical relationship with an animal? Is that wrong?

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Okay, you guys took a little while to answer that one, and I'm kind of worried. Well, think about it, is it wrong to be in a physical relationship with animals?

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Well, our laws used to reflect that in the United States. We actually had laws that quoted from the

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Old Testament law that said, you shall not engage in bestiality, and now, of course, we live in a society that's ordered in such a way where we say, not

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God is the reference point, I'm the reference point, so now we actually have people questioning whether it actually ought to be immoral and a criminal act to engage in that kind of activity with animals, and here's the thing, you might say, well, isn't it obvious to us that we ought not to?

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And the answer is no, it is apparently not obvious to us that we ought not to. Why?

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Because there are human beings who engage in such activities and actually say, argue for people to be free to do this sort of a thing, or how about the people right now we have in cages not far from us for kidnapping people, engaging in violent physical assaults on people?

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Who are we to say that that's against the law? Somebody might say, watch, here it is, yes, but Jeff, that's against nature.

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Okay, I'll bite, it's against nature? Do we see any other creatures in the animal kingdom eating other animals in the animal kingdom?

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And the answer is what? We certainly do, so if we're going to do what's according to nature, why don't we do what the animals do?

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Do you know what animals don't do? They don't ask for permission before they mate with another creature.

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Should we do what the animals do? How about this? Animals copulate openly without private places to do it.

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Should we do what's according to nature? How about this? Animals use the bathroom publicly without private places to do it.

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Should we do what's according to nature? People say things like this, well, Pastor Jeff, homosexuality is even seen in the animal kingdom.

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You know, you can't just say it's immoral, animals do it. And my answer is, exactly. That's right, they do.

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And we are not merely animals, we are in the image of God. Do you see now why the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge? If God isn't the source, if He's not the principium, if He's not the starting point, then you can't truly know anything.

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And we just take it for granted as Christians, we have the Word of God, we have a society that has been built by and established by Christians and the

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Bible, and unbelievers today just can't shake their Christianity loose. But they're trying mighty hard these days, amen?

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Yes, they're trying, the cultural Marxists and all the rest are trying to distort and destroy the foundations of this nation and the

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West, and we have to start with the self -attesting Word of God.

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One more verse to go to for this, and then I'm going to give you some things to think about in terms of application for today.

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Go to Colossians, Colossians, small book in your New Testament, you're going to go past Corinthians, past Galatians and Ephesians, Philippians, and get to Colossians, and I want you to go to Colossians chapter 2, and this will be a foundation marker for us once again, here it is,

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Colossians chapter 2, verse 1, for I want you to know how great a struggle

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I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

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Christ, ready? Which is Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments, for although I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ, therefore, as you received

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Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and establish in the faith just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving.

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See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty to seed according to the human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, here it is, and not according to Christ.

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So for Paul, in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and he says,

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I say this to you so you will not be taken captive, watch, the word that he uses there is robbed.

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I don't want you to be robbed by philosophy and human tradition that is not according to Christ, which is to say this, there is a philosophy which is according to Christ.

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And how do you know that it is? Because it's rooted in Christ as the treasure of wisdom and knowledge.

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So here's the question I have to ask us as a church. We see Jesus operating on the principle that the word of God is the final standard.

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It must be the thing you rest on and stand on to test every claim. Jesus says in John 17, 17, thy word is truth.

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It's the plumb line, it's the standard, and it says in scripture, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Here's the question. Is it true?

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You can answer. Yes. Okay. Is it, is that true that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ?

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Is that true in your marriage? Is it true that when you have conflict in your marriage, husband and wife, is it true that in Christ you will have the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and how to work these things out?

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Watch, here's how it applies, because here's how it works. You have a conflict as a husband and a wife, you have a debate, you have an argument over something that you ought to do or ought not to do.

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Maybe you have as a wife questions about where your husband is trying to steer the ship.

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Maybe he's wrong. Maybe he's wrong. But the only way that you know that he's wrong, and as a wife you can lovingly demonstrate it to him, is by going to the treasury.

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Is by going to the place where the wisdom and knowledge is settled. You see, when you have conflict in your marriage, the only way you're going to actually heal and be renewed and transformed and come out of that conflict to the other side of it, is if you actually bend your will to the standard of God's Word and say, what does

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Christ say? What does the Word of God say? How do we heal? You see, this matters in every detail of your life.

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Here's the question again. Is Christ the, is, are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Jesus?

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Yes? Is that true for science? Yes. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ.

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You can't even apply the scientific method and principles apart from the biblical worldview.

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Consider it for a second. If you don't believe that the world is ordered by God, sustained by God, upheld by God, carried along by God, if you don't believe that God has given the universe a fixed order and then

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He sustains it, then what gives you the idea that you can actually apply the scientific method and that the future will be like the past?

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How do you know the experience, the experiments you're doing today in Arizona and the conclusions you come to are going to be the same for Iceland and England, even in Canada, believe it or not?

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You see, watch, if you don't have Christ, you don't have a basis to tell the truth when you actually do scientific experiments and discoveries.

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What if, watch, we say, no God, no Christ, I don't want God, no fear of the

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Lord. I think I can actually make a lot of money off of scientific theory, a heck of a lot of money.

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But in order to make a lot of money with a new scientific theory, I have to actually lie through my teeth.

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Now, if you don't have Christ, there's no foundation, thou shalt not lie.

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There's no reason not to abuse other human beings. Why not get quick rich with a scientific theory?

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Who cares about the fallout? Who cares about the destruction of people's property and lives? Who cares about integrity?

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Why can't I lie through my teeth? Without Christ as the foundation of wisdom and knowledge, science isn't even possible.

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How about this? Is Christ the foundation of wisdom and knowledge in your history class?

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Oh, it certainly is. It certainly is. Watch. You say, well, how do we apply this across the board?

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How about this? In history class, you study the Holocaust. You go back and you discover

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Hitler, this evil monster who slaughtered the Jews.

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Well, you can look at history apart from Christ, and what do you see in history apart from Christ?

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One bag of meat bone protoplasm, bipedal protoplasm that did certain things that affected other bipedal bags of protoplasm.

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One human being in this universe that doesn't care about us who actually ended the lifespan of other bags of stuff.

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Watch this. Is that wrong? Yes, but listen, not without Christ.

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It's not wrong without Christ. If you don't have God and His character,

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His eternal, immutable, unchanging character as the foundation for how you view history, you don't know that it's wrong.

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What do we know about God? God says He is love. Love does no harm to its neighbor.

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You shall not murder. You look through history as a Christian, and you can pinpoint and say, evil, why?

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It contradicts the very character of God and His laws and commandments, but look through the lens of Jesus, and all you have is matter bumping into matter, and it doesn't matter.

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You also, as a Christian, can stand on Christ and His word as the principium, and you look through history, and what do you see?

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God's amazing hand of providence. You see providence in history.

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How about just the account of Jesus? Murder, and yet you see the redemption of the world.

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You see God's providence in history. How about this? Is Christ the foundation of wisdom and knowledge in mathematics?

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Oh, now you start to get a little weird. You're like, wait, math, not possible without Jesus?

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Oh, yeah, that too. Because watch this. Have you ever seen the number two?

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Have you ever seen a number two? You're all afraid now. You're like, I want to answer that question, but I think you're tricking me, and you'd be right.

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No, you have not seen two -ness. You have only seen a representation of the number two.

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Consider this for a moment. What we see around us visibly is matter.

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Now the unbeliever, the humanist, the atheist, the naturalistic materialist who believes that all there is is nothing supernatural, only natural, and all we have is matter in motion.

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If you take that worldview and you say, no to fear of God, not the start of my knowledge,

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I have a question. Where did you get the idea that there are things that are immaterial, abstract, unchanging, necessary laws?

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Let's take that worldview. We don't want Jesus, so let's do some math without Jesus.

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Well, I want to ask the question, how do you justify and appeal to immaterial, not made of matter, universal, they apply everywhere, unchanging laws of the universe?

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From a biblical perspective, I have a foundation for immaterial entities. I have a foundation for laws and orders.

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I have a foundation for arithmetic and laws of logic. They reflect the thinking and character of God. God is unchanging.

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God is spirit. God cannot lie and contradict himself, and God imposes through his governance on this world order in the universe.

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Do you see? Without Christ, even mathematics is a futile endeavor.

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Now watch. Is Christ the place where there is all wisdom and knowledge?

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Yes? Yes? How about in the education of your children? Does it matter where we send our children to school?

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Okay, see, now we're getting dirty, aren't we? Now we're getting dirty. This is where, watch, this is where you see that autonomic response of Christians, you know, where you flick somebody in the eye, what's their response?

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Throw their hand up to the eye. If you kick a guy down low, where do his hands go? Down low.

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It's an autonomic response. It just comes naturally. You say to Christians, is Jesus the foundation of all wisdom and knowledge?

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Christians go, amen, right? Is he the source where all knowledge is possible? Amen. Is he the only place where wisdom and knowledge is possible?

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Amen. How about public schools? And everyone goes, wait, wait.

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You start asking questions, deeper questions about how this actually now impacts your life and the way that you view the world.

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You start being challenged now. You see, you can approach knowledge like the rationalists, apart from Christ, that it has to be reasonable.

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Then you have to ask the question, why does reason matter in your worldview? It matters in mine as a Christian with Christ as the foundation, but how do you know reason is reasonable?

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How do you know there are immaterial laws of logic I must obey? How about the rules of integrity for telling the truth in discussion?

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Or you can take a stab at empiricism. It must be testable. I have to observe it.

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I have to see it working. And then, of course, without Christ, you can challenge and say, without Christ, how do you know your sense experience is valid?

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How do you know laws of logic are necessary? Again, how do you know integrity means something? And how do you know that induction holds, that the universe is uniform?

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You can take, and this is where we get to an important element, and we're almost done. So if you left for a minute, come right back, because this is where we get down to the nitty -gritty of our lives.

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Rome. Rome's claim is that God has given to us the gospel and God's commands orally, and in writing.

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You have oral tradition, and you have scripture. And what they believe is that this divine deposit of tradition is also from God.

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And you have the Bible and divine tradition, and they say that they work together as a single deposit, ultimately, and they're the same thing, ultimately, from God.

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But yet their tradition contradicts the Bible. Proof? Read the

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Council of Trent. It's when Rome officially fell into apostasy in history. It was the nail going in, and that's where Rome officially anathematized

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Jesus and the apostle Paul. They said that anybody that believes that you are justified through faith in Christ, apart from works, is to be condemned by God.

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Well now we have Paul condemned by God, Abraham condemned by God, Jesus condemned by God, Peter condemned by God, John condemned by God.

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Why? Trent said, in their tradition, if you say justification through faith apart from works, you are anathema.

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Paul says, if you say justification by any other means than faith, you are anathema.

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We have two things colliding, but it gets deeper. Rome says, divine tradition, sacred scripture, but then you ask the question, okay, but I got a bit of a problem here,

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Rome. Here's the problem. I'm not a very smart man, and I need someone to give me some interpretation.

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I can't read this massive text and really understand every detail, so ready, who's going to interpret the

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Bible and tradition for me? And then Rome says, oh, we've got you. We've got the answer.

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And this is the answer from the Roman Catholic catechism. The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the word of God, whether it is in written form or in the form of tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the church alone.

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Guess what that means? Rome believes in sola ecclesia, or ecclesia.

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What's that mean? It's the church alone that is the only infallible rule of faith, because watch, if you say, is it the

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Bible? They say, well, yes, but? Is it church tradition? Well, yes, but? Well, what's the only way

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I can really know? And they say, watch, trust the church, which is to say that the ultimate authority for Rome isn't even scripture or divine tradition.

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It is the magisterium of the Roman Catholic church. What they say is the voice of God, not the

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Bible, not tradition. It's the magisterium. It is sola ecclesia.

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It is the church alone. They decide. So you can begin to move this out and flush it out throughout your life.

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If I had to start with God, if Jesus rested on the word of God as the ultimate authority, we have to move that into the personal realm now and realize, is it scripture or tradition that's the ultimate authority?

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Jesus would say, scripture. The apostles would say, scripture. Is it scripture or human reason?

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Well, one's going to be the ultimate authority. Which one are you going to choose? It's either going to be the word of God or your human reason.

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Is it scripture or experience that's the ultimate authority? Because here's the deal.

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You're going to run into this, and I'm going to run into this all our lives. How about with the Mormons this week? When we go out to evangelize

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Mormons, we already know what the answer is. We're going to ask questions like, how do you know that Joseph Smith's a prophet of God?

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As a Christian, I know how I answer that question. As a Christian, I say, how do I know

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Joseph Smith's a prophet of God or not a prophet of God? I say, because God says in Deuteronomy 13 and in Deuteronomy 18, here's a test you apply, and according to God's word,

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Joseph fails. But you ask the Mormon, how do you know that Joseph Smith's a prophet of God?

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What do they say? Because the Bible? No. No. They say, I, what? I prayed about it.

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And then what happened when I prayed about it? I got a personal revelation from God. I had a personal experience.

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I had a burning in my bosom, and I knew that it was the truth of God. And you know why that fails?

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Because now who's the ultimate authority? God? Or you?

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You. And here's the problem with using pragmatism and those kinds of experiences as a standard of truth.

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You can line the Jehovah's Witness up with the Mormon, with the Rosicrucian, with the

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Christian scientist, with the Muslim, with the atheist, with the Christian, and guess what all of them are going to have?

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Personal experiences. You want to have personal experience versus personal experience? Let's do it.

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Let's have a battle. Let's have a battle over spirituality, a battle over personal experiences. And guess what you're going to hear?

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You're going to hear amazing experiences through all these people. So how do you know what's true? If it's based upon me and not the word of God.

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It's a conflicting world of chaos. Is it scripture or human authorities?

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Is it scripture or the Book of Mormon? Is it scripture or the Koran? Is it scripture as the ultimate authority or is it the state?

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Is it scripture or personal revelation? Now this is one where you get sticky. Listen, there are faithful brothers and sisters today,

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Christians, who love the Lord, who believe that you can receive personal revelation from God today, as in words from God.

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Well here's the thing. I believe that you can't put God in a box and if God wants to speak from heaven today, he can.

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But it says in Hebrews that God in the past spoke to us through the prophets, but in these last days he's spoken to us through his son.

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He's the full and final revelation of God. We have that in the scriptures. But of course, can

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God talk from heaven today? Yes. But if somebody today who loves Jesus says, I've received a personal word from God for you, watch, here's our test.

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It's not just because they say so. We have to say, does what you're saying match with the word of the living

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God? Because watch, if it does match with the word of the living God, then you maybe didn't need to say it in the first place because he already did.

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But if it doesn't match with the word of the living God, I know that it can't be the Holy Spirit telling you anything because it says in Peter that the revelation from God came this way, holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God gave us this. So whatever spirit is speaking in you, if it's contradicting what the spirit of God wrote, it can't be the same

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God. And that's the foundation. Some questions. Some questions to ask.

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When we have conflict today, do

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I have just, I'll take a minute on this one. Fairly recently, last couple of years, there was a conflict, this is a very personal one for our church, where there were some

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Christian websites who propagated a false story about Apology of Church and it went wild.

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The story that was sold to the public was that Apology of Church had a beer, a booze and tattoo conference.

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Everybody at Apology of Church was like, did I miss that weekend? When did this take place?

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A booze and tattoo conference. And so the stories just grew and expanded to one story said that Marcus Pitman was the leader of Apology of Church.

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And another story was that like, I mean literally, I just saw a video a couple weeks ago of a guy that said that at this conference, we were handing out booze to people and doing tattoos at this

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Bible beer and tattoo conference. It was a majestically bad story.

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And it never happened. And so people began to ask questions like, well, and this is what it morphed into, and we started talking about personal piety and standards and how we use the word of God to determine whether something is actually pious or biblical.

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People started saying, well, you shouldn't drink at all. And then we look at passages like, and many could be mustered here,

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Ecclesiastes 9, 7. Ecclesiastes 9, 7.

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Go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart for God has already approved what you do.

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And then we see a passage like Ephesians 5 .18 that commands us against drunkenness, and we see the balance in Scripture.

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And so we take the people who say, you can't drink at all, and we say, was that really a biblical practice, and can you hold that standard against Christians around you?

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Because watch, if you raise up a tradition and you call it divine, and you say this is the standard for people to live by, like washing your hands before you eat, no

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Christians can drink, if you say that's the standard of piety, they say, yeah, that's the standard of piety.

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Then you ask the question, so is Jesus sinful? Well, why is that?

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Because Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding in public.

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Also, Jesus was accused of being a drunkard. Yes, Jesus was accused of being a drunkard in Matthew 11 .19.

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They said John the Baptist this, but Jesus is a drunkard. Why? Because Jesus was obviously drinking wine, alcoholic beverages, in public.

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Was he a drunkard? No, that was sinful, but was he actually drinking wine? There'd be no way to make the accusation unless he was.

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And so you realize when you set up a standard that's opposed to Scripture, you end up making Jesus himself look like a sinner.

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Also, what does Jesus put on the table every week for his people? What does he command them to go to every week?

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What? Wine. Jesus puts wine on the table. And so here's a problem with raising up standards that are opposed to the word of God.

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I would say Jesus would say to the fundamentalist Baptist today, who says put grape juice on the table and never drink wine.

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He would say, why do you make void the word of God for the sake of your tradition?

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We're not saying that drunkenness is a virtue or okay. That's condemned equally in Scripture.

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But if we use the word of God as a standard, we'll find the biblical holy balance. How about this?

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Isn't it an obligation to always wear a suit and tie? Daniel says, yes.

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Well, it's possible for you to say, I think this is important. I want to do this. But the moment you start applying that as a biblical standard for holiness, you've now sinned against God and your brother or sister.

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How about the question of whether or not homosexuality is a virtuous lifestyle?

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How do you answer that question? You can either answer it through your own autonomy or you're going to answer it with submission to Scripture.

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How about sex before marriage? You're going to answer that question with your own autonomy or with the word of God.

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How about the gender confusion of today? You can answer that question with your own autonomy or the word of God.

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How many gods are there? You're going to answer that question through your own human autonomy or Joseph Smith or the word of God.

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And so, final word, are women to be the heads of our homes?

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How do you answer that question? Because there are debates. Should the state have authority to disciple your children?

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These are questions that are current, modern, important questions. Should the state have authority to disciple your children?

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Well, you're going to answer that question in the fuzzy fog of human autonomy and reason or you're going to answer it with the

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Scripture as your foundation. How about this question? Pastors have ultimate authority over doctrine for the church.

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What do you think about that one? No, spoken like true reformers. Good job, guys.

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No, we do not. How about this one? Word of God, human autonomy.

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Police can kill human beings who are suspects because they are nervous even without being presented with a threat.

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See, here's the thing, if you use the word of God as the foundation, it's pretty easy to get to the answers you need for culture and society today.

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We say today in this culture, we say police are abusing their authority and their power. They're killing people without cause.

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You have police officers who are shooting people at times because they were, quote, nervous. They take somebody they think is guilty, they have had no trial, no accusers, and what does the police do?

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Oftentimes, they execute. This is not, of course, saying that's what they're all doing, but you do have instances today where people have lost their lives because somebody who is in law enforcement decided to use their weapon on a suspect before there was a trial and people often say, well, it was a suspect.

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With the word of God as your foundation, you would never say a human being could be executed who presented no mortal threat and who had not been given a trial by a judge.

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These are questions where you're going to be able to answer through your own human autonomy or the word of God. How about this one, a common and important current question, rapists should be given life in prison.

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See, watch this. You're either going to have an arbitrary standard where you go, I don't know, what do you think? What do you think is appropriate? Do you think life or do you think 20 years?

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How about 10 years? Or like the girl that I was close to in high school, she was raped on her birthday by someone who came into their home.

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He received less than six months. Is that appropriate? I don't know, maybe it is. Human autonomy would say, what do you think?

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What do you think? What do you think is appropriate for this crime in today's society? The word of God actually has a standard for that sort of injustice.

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How about this one? Some societies claim that thieves should have their hands cut off. If somebody steals something, the way to handle that justly is to cut their hand off.

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What do you think? The word of God says that it's eye for eye, tooth for tooth, that means equal justice.

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You can't say to somebody who's stolen a loaf of bread, now you're going to be maimed for the rest of your life and never be able to produce again.

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God's word says this, if you steal something, you have to what? Pay it back.

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Pay it back. And this way, they're made whole and the person who committed the crime enters back into society whole because they've made it right.

01:00:08

You see, the word of God is the ultimate standard applies to every single area of our life. And I want to challenge you with just this last word.

01:00:17

What are some conflicts going on in your life right now as a believer? What are some conflicts that you have going on?

01:00:24

Maybe it's a personal relationship, maybe it's just confusion about what God wants you to do. Maybe you just don't know where He wants you to go.

01:00:31

Or maybe you're sitting in here right now before you came in here for the last 24 hours, you've been having a fight with your wife or your husband.

01:00:38

Maybe the last six months of your marriage has been the worst of your marriage. Maybe you guys are dealing with difficulties and struggles and you just don't know how to manage them.

01:00:49

And instead of managing them according to the word of God and being submissive to His word, you decided to try your own way.

01:00:56

And it's not working out. Trying your own way has turned into more chaos, more difficulty in your home.

01:01:02

And the person who's supposed to be your greatest friend and partner and love and ally has become somebody you don't even want to be next to in your home.

01:01:12

You don't want to go home to even spend time with them. Why? Because you're trying your own way. You're using your own human autonomy and freedom to say,

01:01:18

I'll determine how to fix this. I'll try my own way. Rather than going to Scripture and saying, what's your responsibility before God as a wife?

01:01:29

You know, one of my favorite people for women is Nancy Wilson. She's so wonderful.

01:01:36

She also cooks really well. And when she sits down with women to counsel them and mentor them when their marriages are really falling apart, she asks a really important question that I think surprises a lot of the women.

01:01:50

They come to her and they see the life that she has created by having the word of God as the foundation.

01:01:56

They see the fruit of her labor. They see Nate and the girls and they see what they are and they say, clearly you have some wisdom here.

01:02:05

Help me. And so she'll sit them down and the woman will just say, this is what I'm dealing with.

01:02:10

This is what my husband's doing. Here's how he's acting. This is how he's failing as a father and a husband and he's not obeying

01:02:16

God here and not obeying God here and this is how he's doing this and doing that and just all out on the table.

01:02:22

And the first thing she says to him is this. She says, how are you respecting your husband?

01:02:31

Right? Takes him back. Right? I came in here to talk about my husband. And she says, how are you respecting your husband?

01:02:38

Because your responsibility before God is to do what? Is to respect your husband.

01:02:44

Now when we talk to your husband, we'll ask the other question. What's that one? What is it guys? How are you loving your wife?

01:02:52

Because you see, you can do your own human autonomy and you can say, I will manage this conflict in my home. We will fix it.

01:02:57

How will we fix it? I will bite your head off. Right? Right? I will be domineering as a man.

01:03:04

I will assert my authority. I will tell you the way it is. Or you could submit to scripture as a standard rather than your own human traditions and reason and go to scripture and say, what

01:03:15

I need to repent of is my not loving my wife. Not caring for her like Christ loves the church.

01:03:21

And the wife can say to the husband, I need to repent of not respecting you as you try to lead our home.

01:03:29

It's not to say, of course, of course, of course, everyone loves to twist things. Oh, so the wife is just supposed to respect the husband no matter what?

01:03:36

And the answer is, if you're using the Bible, absolutely not. If your husband is in sin, then you use the

01:03:43

Bible to correct your husband. You see, there's safety when you use the word of God as the foundation.

01:03:50

That is safe. When you try to use your own human tradition and standards and reason, you are unsafe and you are broken.

01:03:59

So the question is this, how are you going to resolve the conflicts in your life, whether you're single, whether you're married, whether you're a child, whether you're a teenager or a young adult?

01:04:07

The question is this, what's the conflict in your life right now? How is it broken and how are you going to solve it using the word of God as your standard?

01:04:17

Here's the last question. What do you have to repent of? Because things can be broken in our lives, completely, totally, disharmonious, and there could be somebody that's actually guilty in the relationship you're talking about, the conflict.

01:04:34

It could be true. They're really guilty. But here's the question you should ask yourself as you enter into it. What are you guilty of, according to Scripture?

01:04:43

What do you need to confess? What do you need to repent of? Stand on God's word as the foundation, brothers and sisters.