Offense Defense (Matthew 22:15-46, Jeff Kliewer)

Thanksgiving Fellowship, Worship, and the Church Calendar

Our retreat and we heard some awesome teaching, truth of scripture, and good fellowship, and lots of good food, right? Good food. Yeah. And then I guess the women, you had your covered dish then Sunday afternoon.

I haven't heard how that went, but it's awesome to get back together with the Saints and to be in fellowship. I'm going to have us this morning turn to Psalm 34, verses 1 to 3, as we settle our hearts down and as we focus on the Lord.

Psalm 34, beginning at verse 1, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. We are, we are changed at the point of salvation. As many as receive him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.

And Corinthians tells us that we are a new creation. Old things are passed away. We have a relationship with God that the world cannot understand. In fact, I think, Jeff, you're going to be talking about the difference between how believers perceive reality and we know reality, and it says that my praise shall continually be on my lips.

His, my praise to the Lord. That's who we are seven days a week. While we're here this morning, while we're here in fellowship, it's a special time, and I pray that our hearts would be there. My soul makes its boast in the Lord.

There are, there are things that God has done in our lives, and there are things that he equips us, and it's good to celebrate those things that God gives us the opportunity to do. But our boast, our boast is in the Lord, because everything that we do is for him and from him.

The humble hear it and rejoice. Let us magnify the Lord. Let us exalt his name together. Let's bow our head for a moment and turn our hearts to the Lord. I will bless the Lord at all times. Father, I pray my heart to be stilled from the things of the day and the week, turning my heart to you.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together in all things this morning, in our time of worship and in song, in hearing the testimonies of your goodness, and in hearing the word as Pastor Jeff preaches us.

Let us exalt his name together. Amen. On the side over here, this, this pile just keeps growing of boxes. God has really, really done a work here. I heard a count, and after I heard the count, I saw more boxes.

The count I heard was over 360 boxes, and I think that pile just keeps growing. So let's praise God, and we're gonna praise over this in a minute, but let's praise God. And I don't often do this because I think it's not right to necessarily give praise to individuals, but we should recognize, I think, the amazing work that Cornelia has done in encouraging us.

So praising God for that. I want you to check your schedules this week. Our normal week is maybe gonna be modified. Thanksgiving is this week a great opportunity to have our hearts focused on God, but I'm going to bet that if it was a scheduled week for the Meijer Care Group on Thursday, they're probably not meeting on Thursday with Thanksgiving.

I only say check with your group leaders for the Women's Studies, the Men's Studies, the small groups, just to make sure that what you think is going on is actually going on this week. But I will say that prayer will be tonight at six o 'clock.

Come out and join us six o 'clock for a time of prayer, and I will say that the Isaiah study will be on Wednesday at noon, so go ahead and come for this. And Kimberly has put together a special ministry on Thursday.

I think she's having a lunch, a dinner, for those who maybe don't have anywhere else to go. So I believe it's noon here at the church. And so all are invited. I think letting her know how many are coming would be good, but all are invited.

As you came in, down into the hall on your right-hand side, as you leave on your left-hand side, at the end of the hall there's a bulletin board, and it has been populated with some very current and recent and relevant information on our missionaries.

If you want to know who our missionaries are, you want to know what's going on, that board is now updated. Louise Reynolds has taken on the challenge and is communicating with our missionaries, bringing us the information so that we know who they are, what the prayer requests are.

She'll actually be up here next Sunday talking about one of our missionaries, but I encourage you to go ahead and look at that board. As she gets information, she's putting it up there. There's pictures so you can see who they are, where they're located, what's going on with their ministry.

So I encourage you on that. They're not standing up here yet because I guess first service they said that was too long of a period of time to stand, but we got a youth movement going on. We have a lot of younger people being part of our worship team.

That's exciting, and it's exciting to see their hearts willing to stand up to be part of it. Now let's turn our hearts to the Lord. Dear Father, we're going to be understanding, perceiving, and thinking about the plight of the unborn in danger from the wickedness and the evil that our country and our culture is bringing forth.

We pray for these unborn because they are wonderfully and beautifully made in your image. We pray that they would experience the joy of birth and of being held by their mother and by their father and the joy eventually of turning to you in faith.

But for now, Lord, there is a risk, and so we pray for the Love Life ministry. We pray for the Options Ministry, which we'll hear about this morning. These opportunities to speak truth into the lives of these women and men who are about to make a decision.

We pray, Lord, for their hearts to be turned to you. We pray for these unborn. Father, we do pray for those in our fellowship in time of physical need. Specifically, this morning we do pray for Loretta as she continues through treatments for the cancer.

We pray, Lord, that your hand as a great physician would heal her body. And for those who are still in consolation having lost loved ones, we know, Lord, that these individuals are at home in glory with the Lord, but we do suffer the loss.

Be with them as the direct comfort into their hearts. Lord, for our hearts, I seek that we would be reliant on you, hopeful in you, thankful for all that you've given to us, fully surrendered to you, to the blood on the cross, to your grace.

Lord, as Pastor Jeff will be coming to us and speaking to us about truths that are distorted, we pray, Lord, that you would touch his heart and that you would open the eyes of our hearts to this message, we pray, in Jesus' name.

Options Pregnancy Center and the Pro-Life Ministry

We have a guest visitor with us this morning, Chuck Swanson. He's with Options Pregnancy Center. As you came in, you may have noticed a big truck in the opening of our, you go, what? Well, what this is, is an opportunity, it's a ministry that Chuck and individuals with him have down here in South Jersey.

It's called Options Pregnancy Center. It's ministering to those unborn children. It's ministering to those women who are trying to decide and giving them the truth so that their decision would be honoring to God.

Chuck was a pastor for many years, stepped down briefly, but now I understand you're back pastoring a church down the shore. He had a career in pharmaceuticals and he's been with Options Pregnancy Center for two and a half years.

Chuck, it is an honor to have you with us. Please come share with.

Us. Thanks, and good morning. How are you? I'm so grateful to be in a pro-life church this morning. You are one, and I'm so grateful. Really appreciate your pastor's leadership in the pro-life arena.

So many things going on, and we need to be bold for the Lord, and you are doing that, and I'm so grateful. It's great to see so many. I've seen a number of old friends this morning. Hello. I attended fellowship for a long time, and I'm seeing a lot of friends from fellowship today.

I'm also, I'm a member of an eFree Church, like you are here. I go to Joy Community Fellowship in Haddon Heights, and I know my pastor and Jeff have some fellowship together. So I'm grateful for your allowing us to be here.

Thank you for letting us park the mobile unit out in the parking lot this morning. Please, take a moment to go through it on your way out. You'll see it's a reason for rejoicing and show gratitude to the Lord for that.

So let me just share, I am the Chief Executive Officer of Options for Women. We have offices in Cherry Hill, which is our primary location, and in Trenton now, which is very exciting. And just recently, we've taken over the Hope Pregnancy Centers of Ocean City and North Cape May.

So we have a very, very busy, vibrant ministry. So far this year, we have received 3 ,000 calls for help from men and women who are struggling with making a choice about the pregnancy that they're experiencing.

So we hope to have a great impact with them. Just to give you a little history, the ministry started actually in 1985. It was the outgrowth of a church in Audubon that prayed about having some impact in what was beginning to happen with Roe v. Wade, and they decided to open a pregnancy center in Haddon Heights.

We moved to Audubon after a few years, and then in 2003, we moved to Cherry Hill for two reasons. One was to be more centrally located where people could get to us a little bit more easily, have transportation and so on, but also to be near what's called the Cherry Hill Women's Center.

Many of you go there and pray, I understand. It is just three blocks away from our office. It is an abortion center in the heart of Cherry Hill where they do 10 ,000 abortions a year. That's just about two or three miles from here, friends.

So we wanted to have a presence. We wanted to be in the neighborhood, and so Options has had our presence there since 2003. And now we are four centers instead of just one, and God is using all kinds of things to bless the ministry.

And I have to tell you, it's the support of churches like you that makes our ministry possible. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here and share the ministry. We're busy meeting clients, and we're working to help them to make a choice for life.

Because, you know, it's so easy to make the opposite choice, just to, as they say, to terminate the life of the child, to be rid of the problem. But God has given us an opportunity to meet literally thousands of moms every year and have influence with them and to share the truth of the gospel with them.

So we're grateful that you are willing to hear about the ministry this morning and maybe even help us in a way. So as I said, our ministry is to help women and families to make a choice for life. It's so easy just to say, let's get rid of the baby.

But we know that for many, the circumstances of life drive them to think about using that option. Maybe they have lifestyle choices that they have to consider. Maybe finances are a problem. Maybe family or partner pressures are pushing them toward having an abortion.

Well, options will stand in the gap and try to take the crisis out of the crisis pregnancy so that women and their partners can make a choice to keep a baby, to give it an opportunity for life, to understand the value that they and the baby have before an almighty God.

So we provide things like pregnancy testing, Bible-based counseling, and one of the people in our earlier services has been Patty Klepacki, has been a counselor in our counselor rooms face-to-face with our clients for years, ministering to them, sharing the hope of the gospel with each and every one of our clients that comes in.

So we do Bible-based counseling. We provide ultrasounds. And by the way, once a new mom sees that ultrasound, 95 percent of our clients decide to keep their babies. So praise God for that. Beyond that, we provide for their physical needs.

If they need housing, we can we can find housing. If they're food insecure, we can do that. If they just need educational opportunities, things to help them to grow as individuals, we can help them. We'll help them to understand things like breastfeeding, what it means to be a mom or a dad, because so many of them have such poor role models, and maybe help them understand what the process of birth is going to be like as well.

So, but all in all, we know that Scripture tells us, really screams out, that we are made in the image of God. We are made in His image, and He knows us even before we are created in our mother's womb.

And so we want to give every baby the chance for life. But at the same time, help the mom to understand the value that God has for her, and for her life, and for her eternity. So we're hoping that our ministry has that effect.

As John shared this morning, you probably saw as you drove in this morning, we have our brand new mobile unit that's standing ready to serve. We're just waiting for a couple of pieces to fall into place, and then we will have that mobile unit out on the road through Central and Southern New Jersey, everywhere from New Brunswick all the way down to Cape May, ministering to women, going where they are, so that they can see the hope of the Gospel, and have some of their actual needs taken care of.

So we want to help you to see how that will help them. You just please take a minute and stop in, take a quick look through there. But I have to ask you something this morning. We don't charge our clients a penny for what we do.

Since 1985, when we began, no one has ever gotten a bill for the services that we provide. We've never taken an insurance card. We've never asked the government for money. So everything that we do is dependent on those people like you, and others in churches around South Jersey that understand the value of helping women find their way in this world, and to hear the hope of the Gospel.

So this morning, I'm going to ask for your help. I have my hat in my hand, and I would just hope that you would consider helping us. On your way out this morning, we have baby bottles and envelopes by the front door.

Would you take one of those with you? Take a baby bottle, fill it with your spare change, and then bring it back here over the next few weeks so that we can provide for our moms. We can help them find the hope of the Gospel.

Or maybe take an envelope in which you could just insert a little, you know, something in paper, and send that back to our office. It'll support our ministry. We would really appreciate your support and help.

We know that God is in this. But please, please pray about how God would use you to help us to save lives as we are out in the world. We know that there are women and families that are really struggling.

But every gift helps us to provide not only the hope of help, but the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we are prayerful about your support this morning, and just hope that you can help us in any way that you can.

Thanks for inviting me, Pastor Jeff and John. Just really grateful for your time this morning. Thank you.

Our Lord, we do praise you and thank you for men like Chuck who are standing in the gap for these unborn babies, wonderfully made by you, who are in danger and for these women and for these men who are about to make terrible decisions.

And men like Chuck and this Options Pregnancy Center standing in the gap. We pray, Lord, that you would empower them, that your love would be shining on to these people. Father, we thank you for the message of hope that they give.

We thank you for the spiritual guidance they give and for the practical, physical support that they give to them. Lord, I pray that we would be responding in prayer and we were responding even financially, supporting them according to your lead.

We lift this ministry to you, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to thank you, sir. Thank you. Pastor Jeff, if you would come over to me by these boxes.

Pray for the kids that are going to receive these boxes. So Father God, we thank you so much for what you've done here at this church with these almost 400 boxes that are going to go to the ends of the earth.

We pray for the children that receive these boxes that their hearts would be lit up with joy. Lord God, that they would know that they are loved and Lord that they would experience your love through this gift.

Most of all, Lord, we pray that the gospel would go deep into the hearts of these children, that they would know Christ and how he died for them and rose from the dead, that they would believe and be saved.

We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Worship Songs of Praise, Thanksgiving, and the Gospel

There was mercy in your eyes, to fulfill the law and prophets, to avenge and came the word, from the throne of endless glory, to a cradle in the dirt. Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the sweet God of glory, majesty ever to the King.

From coming and to reconcile the lost in your suffering, you fought to the other side. Valvation, Jesus' cross, heaven held its breath, till that stone was moved for good, for the Lamb had conquered death.

And the dead rose from their tombs, and the angels stood in awe, for the souls of all who'd come to the Father are restored. And the church of Christ was born, then the Spirit lit the flame. Now this gospel truth of hope shall not kneel, shall not faint.

By his blood and in his name, in his freedom I am free. For the love of Jesus Christ, who has resurrected me, a son unto the King.

Lord, we come before you this morning, knowing that you are our Lord and our King, the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. We stand before you now, Lord Jesus, humbly before your throne, giving thanks to you in every circumstance, in everything that we do.

We are so thankful.

His love endures forever, for he is good and he is above all things. His love endures forever. Sing praise, sing praise, for he has been reborn. His love endures forever. Sing praise, for in the grace of God, we will carry on.

Sing praise, for in the grace of God, we will carry on.

Upon this season of Thanksgiving, and as believers, we know that we can be thankful every day for every blessing that God has given us. Especially in this time, it's amazing that we have such a different perspective on thankfulness.

It's not just family, which is good. It's not just having a good job or going through some difficult times and being thankful. But we are so thankful that we have a Redeemer, that we have salvation in Jesus Christ.

The only thing that we can do in response is to be thankful. We're made to be worshipers. By singing praises to him, we prove that our heart is overflowing with joy, that God has provided a way for us.

Let's sing together, what can I do but praise you?

I see the beauty of a sunset's glory. Amazing artistry across the evening sky. When I feel the mystery of a distant galaxy, it awes and humbles me to be loved by a God so high. What can I do but thank you?

What can I do but give my life to you? Hallelujah, hallelujah. What can I do but praise you? Every day, make everything I do. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Hear the story of a God of mercy, who shared humanity and suffered by our side.

Of a cross they nailed you to that could not hold you. Now you're making all things new. By the power of your risen life. What can I do but thank you? What can I do but give my life to you? Hallelujah, hallelujah.

What can I do but praise you? Every day, make everything I do. Hallelujah, hallelujah. We're so thankful Lord Jesus. What can I do but thank you? What can I do but give my life to you? Hallelujah, hallelujah.

What can I do but praise you? Every day, make everything I do. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

One more time, what can I do? Prayerfully, your heart.

What can I do but thank you? What can I do but give my life to you? Hallelujah, hallelujah. What can I do but praise you? Every day, make everything I do. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

Through our mothers, Lord, born into this world, every breath we take is a gift from you and we thank you. We thank you especially for Christ Jesus, your son, who died the death that we deserve and rose on the third day.

And through faith now, we have been given life, eternal life, to live forever with you. Thank you, God. What can we do but say thank you? Lord, we pray that you would take our lives and use them for your glory.

Lord, we pray that this morning we would become more and more like your son. As we open this book and read about Jesus Christ, we pray that as we see him and behold his glory, we would become like him.

The Culture of Death, the Unborn, and the Church's Duty to Defend Life

Sanctify us by this truth. Your word is truth. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. In 2002, on the Senate floor of the state of Illinois, a bill was brought which would protect the lives of babies born that survive an attempted abortion that failed.

And so the idea is the baby has survived the attempted abortion and now is alive there on the table. And the Born Alive Act would ensure that the doctors would do anything possible to rescue that baby from death.

After all, the child is alive. But in 2002, on that Senate floor in Illinois, the Senator stood up and argued against the Born Alive Bill. Saying in his exact words, an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.

So the Senator argues that the baby should be left to die. In the days of the Holocaust, in World War II, there was a pastor named Helmut Helich who stood against the horrors of what was happening. He said, once a man ceases to recognize the infinite value of the human soul, referring to the fact that all people are made in the image of God and therefore have dignity, they're human, they're made in the image of God.

He says, then all he can recognize is that man is something to be used. But then he will also have to go further and recognize that some men can no longer be utilized. And he arrives at the concept that there are some lives that have no value at all.

That explains the Holocaust, not only of Jewish people in Germany, but of babies in the womb in this country. Now such a monstrous view, as the Senator held in Illinois, is something frightening to behold that anybody would think like that.

But what's scarier still is that this culture of death, that someone with that kind of mindset, that a baby should be left to die, that this culture would turn and elect that then Senator of Illinois to be the President of the United States.

His name was Barack Obama. A culture of death is interested in depopulation, sterilization, mutilation. A culture of death in America today is not unlike what we saw in the first century, the Roman Empire.

The Greeks and the Romans, they believed not only in abortion but in infanticide, the killing of infants that were not useful to the empire. The church, of course, stood against these things with vigor because there are two competing worldviews, a culture of death and a culture of life.

And we Christians have a message of life, that every life ought to be protected because made in the image of God. And moreover, Christ is the life, the way, the truth, and the life, the resurrection and the life, and he gives to those who believe in him the gift of eternal life.

We believe in Christ and so we believe in life. In the first century, Christians believed in life and in the second century they wrote a document called the Didache. Anybody heard of the Didache? It's called the teaching.

It was an early Christian writing that taught on Christian ethics. Quoting from the Didache, they write, Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not corrupt boys. And in our culture, the same issue as in the Roman Empire has come about, the corruption of boys.

Do not fornicate. Do not steal. Do not practice magic. Do not go in for sorcery. Do not murder a child by abortion. Or kill a newborn infant. In the culture of death in which we live, a prominent nuclear physicist named Winston Duke recently said,.

A philosophy of reason will define a human being as life which demonstrates self-awareness, volition, and rationality. Thus, it should be recognized that not all men are human. It would seem to be more inhumane to kill an adult chimpanzee than a newborn baby, since the chimpanzee has a greater mental awareness.

Church, do you realize that we are up against a culture of death? From abortion to the rampant practice of homosexuality and promotion of homosexuality, which is absolutely contra-life. By definition, homosexual couples cannot what?

Procreate. Reproduce. All the way to the moment of death, where now the culture of death is advocating for euthanasia at the end of life. The culture of death runs squarely up against the message of life.

See, there are two different worlds, and in the Didache, it was called the path of life and the path of death. The way of life versus the way of death. And these two forces are in opposition to one another.

We defend life with vigor as they seek to destroy life. But they are not content to remain outside the walls of the church. In fact, the offensive of the culture of death seeks to infiltrate churches to move us off the mark.

For we have made a stand and said it is an absolute, absolute no-go in the killing of babies. We will never accept it. We will always stand against it. And we will always vote against any politician who advocates for the killing of babies no matter what.

And so what the left has done is that they've sought to infiltrate churches to move us off that mark. Barack Obama had a faith advisor in 2012 whose name was Michael Ware. Michael Ware advised him on how to reach evangelicals to get us to be less dogmatic about this point.

And so they began to push a narrative through what they called the AND campaign, which was founded by Michael Ware and Justin Gibney, who writes for the Gospel Coalition. Justin Gibney saying that if we do not accept social justice, then we evangelical Christians are the heterodox ones.

We've rejected orthodoxy, he says. You see, the strategy of the left is to infiltrate evangelical churches by elevating this concern for quote-unquote social justice in order to move us off the mark in protecting life.

It's not just the AND campaign. They formed a research group called Docent Research. And Tim Keller advocates for this group. One of the things that Docent Research does is seeks to write the sermons behind the scenes for prominent pastors.

But Michael Ware is behind the Docent Group as well because Joy Harris, who works for Michael Ware, is also part of the Docent Research Group. And they have been behind the scenes writing the sermons for the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose name is Ed Litton, recently discovered for plagiarism.

But what was worse than the plagiarism is the content of what he was plagiarizing, the social justice rhetoric which is being inserted into the evangelical church. The left is on offense. And sadly, although we are on defense and we stand against these things, often we do not fight with the vigor that is necessary for a war.

Do you realize, Christian, that you are in a truth war? Which requires a wartime footing. Requires a sword. And that sword is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Matthew 22. Today we won't spend as much time verse by verse as we normally do.

We're going to plow through the entire chapter just hearing what Jesus did. Because we're trying to see the grand scope of the war that he's in. Began last week as we studied Matthew 21. And we made application to mandates that the government seeks to issue over the people.

But just as Jesus went into the temple and cleared the temple, claiming ownership of the temple, so he owns every individual body on earth. All authority has been given to him. And he claims right over our individual bodies, which we then steward for him.

And no one has the right to come into the temple of God, which belongs to Jesus, and mandate that we inject anything into our bodies. We talked about that last week. But we move into 22, and we see that the struggle between Jesus and the Pharisees and Sadducees on the other side of the truth war is a battle.

And it's intense. And Jesus is not the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that we see pictured in the Renaissance paintings of him, where he's depicted with a very soft face. And he's always holding a lamb, and he's always so gentle.

Yes, he's gentle towards the repentant sinner. He will forgive any sin. Even the sin of abortion. And other forms of murder. And slander and gossip and sexual immorality. He is gentle towards the wounded read, and the smoldering wick he does not snuff out.

The repentant one who comes in faith will find him to be meek and merciful. A high priest that understands and sympathizes with our weakness. And he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But the rebel sinner who opposes his throne, and fights against his lordship, will find him to be hard and bearing a sword.

So let's read on. He's now interacting with enemies of the cross. Those from the culture of death who seek to murder. And so we read about this, the first parable here, we'll take from verses 1 to 14.

Again, Jesus spoke to them in parables saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. Sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.

Again, he sent other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see, I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered. Everything's ready, come to the wedding feast. So notice there, it's an offer of salvation.

Come, all are welcome to come. No matter what you've done, how good, how bad you are, come to the feast. But the religious leaders, they paid no attention and went off. One to his farm, another to his business.

While the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them. They killed the prophets sent to them, the culture of death. The king was angry and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

God's judgment that falls when it does is harsh and hard, an eternal flame. It says in verse 9, go therefore to the main roads, and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find. Now this gospel is offered not just to the religious in Israel, but to the nations, to Irian Jaya, and the Philippines and Mexico and the United States of America.

Just go announcing this invitation. And those servants went out into the roads and gathered, all whom they found, both good and bad. So the wedding hall was filled with guests. It's a beautiful picture of preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth.

We offer the gospel to all. It's a free offer. But when the king came in to look at the guests, notice a twist in the plot here. He saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?

And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.

It's not enough to gather in the church and be ostensibly assembled with the righteous in the path of life. For in fact, there are some who are from the path of death who are here among the assembly of the righteous.

They lack one thing. The righteousness of Christ. The wedding garment. His active and passive obedience that he earned in his righteous life and in laying down his life on the cross, his passive obedience, is imputed to those of us who have faith in him.

So every person gathered who has the new birth, who has repented of sin and believed in him, is credited with Christ's righteousness. That's your wedding garment. And that's your ticket to remain in the assembly.

You have that, you belong. But if you're only pretending, if you're only gathering in the church, but you don't believe, you're not born again, you don't have his righteousness, you ultimately will be thrown out where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Hard words from a soft savior, but good wounds from a friend. Notice now the interaction that we left off with last week. The Pharisees and the Sadducees on one side, Jesus on the other. He is speaking truth, he's speaking life, but they have war in their hearts, they have death in their bones.

It says in verses 15 and following, then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. And they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians saying, teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully.

And you do not care about anyone's opinion for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us then what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But Jesus, aware of their malice said, why put me to the test, you hypocrites?

So much for gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Show me the coin for the tax. And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, whose likeness and inscription is this? They said, Caesar's. Then he said to them, therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.

When they heard it, they marveled and they left him and went away. The first thing to watch out for in this truth war are dissemblers who masquerade as righteous. Let's call them virtue signalers. You're aware of virtue signalers, right?

Think our congressman from the third congressional district in New Jersey, Andy Kim. When he picked up a few pieces of trash after the so-called insurrection, he went home and paraded what a righteous man he is.