Letters to the Churches Part 4

Okay, we're going to get started.

We're going to be back in Revelation chapter 2.

I will, if anyone had any questions regarding the sermon, you can go ahead and post them in the chat now, and

I will get to them.

There was something I wanted to show everybody regarding our epistle text, which I, you know, this is one of those

times where sometimes the Greek, knowing the Greek and the languages is super helpful

in at least giving you a chance of getting at the gist of it.

Because always when you translate, there are limitations in every translation.

Because biblical languages, just like any other languages, they're not codes.

They don't have one -to -one correlation.

There are words and grammatical constructions that having an equivalent in

modern English is sometimes tough to kind of sort out.

So, you know, as somebody who translates the biblical languages, I recognize the limitations, and

this is why it's always good for your pastors to know their biblical languages and to actually read the text ahead of time.

I'm just saying.

I guess it's one of my pet peeves or things that I like to point out from time to time.

So with that, we are going to pray, and then we will get started.

Hang on one second here.

There we go.

Blessed Lord, you have caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning.

Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, so that by patience

and comfort of your holy word we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life, through Jesus

Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Okay, so before we get started, and let me do this real quick here.

See if I can find this.

It's over here.

Go to my chat window.

Very good.

Stephen Elliot, question from today's gospel text.

Why did Jesus call Peter Satan?

In this particular case, because he becomes the mouthpiece for the devil.

So yeah, he was likening Peter to Satan because he had his mind on earthly things.

So in this case, Peter's basically what he said is a

temptation to keep Jesus from what it is that he was sent to do.

He wasn't sent to go and establish his kingdom here on earth.

He was sent for the purpose of laying down his life and becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Oh, it's muted.

Hang on a second here.

Let's see here.

Unmute.

There we go.

Can you all hear me now?

There we go.

Thanks for pointing that out.

So the answer to the question.

Yay, all right.

My apologies here.

I have seen your moments more often.

So the question is why did Jesus call Peter Satan?

The reason is simple because Peter was being a mouthpiece for the devil to try to

get Jesus off mission.

Jesus did not come for the purpose of setting up a glorious kingdom.

He came for the purpose of laying down his life and to bleed and to die and to be obedient to the point of death on a cross in order to

secure our redemption, to secure our salvation, to be our substitute.

That was the idea here.

So Peter basically trying to dissuade Christ from the actual reason why he came becomes the mouthpiece of

Satan and it's rightly seen then as a temptation.

Okay, so what we're going to do here, before we get too far, I wanted to show you all this.

I'm going to duplicate this tab.

We will be in Revelation chapter 2 unless we have a rip -roaring conversation is the best way I can

put it.

And let me make sure I'm going to share my screen on my Apple TV here in the church.

In Romans chapter 10 or

was it 12?

My apologies, 12.

12 .9.

In the sermon you may have heard this and I'm going to bring this out.

This is one of those reasons why knowing your biblical languages is super de -duper helpful.

And I wanted to show it to you at least from the Greek so you can kind of see how this works.

And I know it's all Greek to you but that's alright.

I'll be here to walk you through it.

So the ESV translates this.

Let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil.

Hold fast to what is good.

These sound like commands but the way the grammar works in the Greek, it's

descriptive not prescriptive.

It's kind of a fascinating thing.

And so in verse 9 I'll read this out.

It says,.

So here it is.

The love.

Hey is the definite article.

The.

Agape is love.

You've heard that word before.

And anukritos means genuine or sincere.

That's kind of the gist of what it says.

And you know this isn't even a full sentence.

The love sincere.

The love genuine.

No verb.

And it's not a command.

It's almost like, as I read this in the Greek, it looks like a heading.

And then this is where it gets interesting is that the verbs are participles.

Now I know that like me when you graduated from 11th

grade you did everything you could to forget everything that you were taught regarding English grammar because

grammar is just dry.

Gravity.

And the thing I hated worse about grammar class was then those lessons that had to do with poetry.

Me and poetry don't get along very well.

I'm about as poetic as a Mack truck.

Anyway, but the point is this is that if you were to think back to your basic grammar

when you have something ending in ing that's your participle form.

And so here's what's happening here is that you were not seeing a command to abhor what is evil.

This is a description of the love that is genuine or the love that is sincere.

So here we have our first word.

And it's a little bit of a mouthful.

Apastougountes is how it's pronounced in the Greek.

And it's a participle, present active participle.

Abhor.

But when it's parsed out it's abhorring.

Abhorring ta paneron.

Abhorring the evil.

The love that is genuine is abhorring the evil.

And then we get this middle passive verb.

Glued.

I won't go ahead and pronounce everything out but the verb here kalao

means to be glued or fastened.

And it's passive.

It's not active.

And that's the funny thing.

So if I think of like cruel tricks that kids

do to each other.

Stunts and things like that.

So you take a kid and you decide that it'd be fun to velcro him to the gym

wall or something like that.

So the kid's stuck to the wall and he can't get down.

Everybody laughs because the poor kid had nothing to do with it.

It was done to him.

But the way the passive verb here is working is that it's describing that we have been

passively glued to the good.

It's not saying hold fast to what is good because the verb is passive.

You have been glued to the good.

The love that is genuine.

You are abhorring what is evil.

You are glued to the good.

Te Philadelphia.

Philadelphia.

We all know what that means.

Brotherly love.

The brotherly love unto one another is well kind of hard to pull this one

into the English.

Is devoted.

You are devoted to it.

To the brotherly love of one another.

And so you see what's going on here.

In this portion of scripture, and this is why I made a big to -do about it.

And over and over again when you see in scripture and you consider what it says regarding our

sanctification it becomes harder and harder for you to think that somehow your

salvation has anything to do with your sanctification.

Your sanctification is a result of your justification.

Your justification is in no way the result of your sanctification.

And so you'll note then this text is actually descriptive.

It's describing who we are in Christ.

It's describing the love that is genuine.

And this is what we all are.

What we long for in things of this nature.

And so we must always be on the guard against the tricks of the devil to

somehow sneak our good works in as part of the formula for our justification.

They are absolutely, I'm going to make this clear good works are necessary.

But they're necessary by virtue of species.

So, you know, like what good would a cat do if a cat didn't meow?

Or if you had a cow that didn't moo.

That doesn't make any sense.

There are dogs that don't bark.

Might as well be cats.

So the idea here is that you do what you do because you are what you are.

And you can see this over and over again when you carefully work through and run the verbs in the text

in relation to sanctification.

So you get the idea.

Alright.

In Ephesians, here's the question from Oscar.

In Ephesians when Paul said we must work out our salvation what did he mean?

Actually it's not in Ephesians, it's in Philippians.

And let me show it to you because over and again that is one of the classic texts that is thrown

into our faces from those who deny salvation by grace through faith apart

from works.

And I will note this.

When you see it in context you're going to go, oh.

Because the context is so easy on this one.

Let me make sure I've got this down now.

I don't think it's in Philippians 1.

I do believe it's in Philippians 2.

Hang on a second.

And if you find it before me, go ahead and throw it into the chat.

There's only one Philippians.

Hang on a second here.

How did I miss it?

Hang on a second.

Work out.

Let's do this.

And I need it in the epistles.

Philippians 2 .12.

There it is.

Okay.

I was in the right place.

It's just that while scanning these old eyes are somehow getting distracted.

Alright.

So Philippians 2 .12.

Therefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only in my

presence but also much more in my absence.

And here's the phrase taken out of context.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Well, there you go.

You better get busy.

But notice there's a comma there.

This is an incomplete sentence.

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his

own good pleasure.

It is God who works in you.

So you'll note here, he's not saying go and save yourself.

But working out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Basically it means to walk it out and it is God who's working and willing in you and doing the heavy

lifting.

Now we participate in our sanctification.

This is absolutely true.

Luther had a funny way of describing it though when it comes to our sanctification.

He basically says that we are a flea on the back of a horse.

And God is allowing us to touch the reins but Christ is the one who has control of the

reins and we're sitting next to him but we have the least bit in our sanctification.

The idea here is that being sanctified properly as a Christian is

to believe who you are in Christ.

To believe the baptismal promises.

To believe that you have a new person that you've been given in your

salvation.

And then walking that out by faith.

You'll note that what you believe is going to end up impacting what you do with your daily life.

So if you believe that God is going to judge the living and the dead and that

stealing is a sin, you're not going to be actively going to Walmart and engaging in the five finger

discount.

That's just out of the question because you believe that that is a sin and that plays out then in your actions.

But if you don't believe that there is a God or that somehow something is only a sin if you get caught, then

you're going to behave lawlessly.

What you believe ends up working out in how you conduct your life.

So if you believe that you are already saved.

That you are a new person in Christ.

If you believe that through the power of the Holy Spirit then you are given the task

of daily mortifying your sinful flesh what are you going to do?

You're going to do that.

If you don't do you really believe it?

That's kind of the idea here.

So what we believe always is going to be the thing that's going to inform how we act.

All of that being said, Oscar I hope that answered your question.

Is that Oscar Watmore by the way?

Oscar, what's your last name?

If it is you, happy birthday.

I saw your birthday messages on Facebook.

Alright, coming back then Portillo.

Bummer.

Oscar Portillo, glad that you're here and I'm sad that I didn't get it right.

So now we have more than one Oscar.

Alright, Revelation 2 .19.

We talked about this last time.

Talking about this idea regarding syncretism and strange

people coming into the church who claim to have prophetic abilities and who end up

leading people into sexual immorality and other things.

It's a strange phenomenon but one that we must be on guard against because it exists even to this

day.

I think about the sheer number of churches nowadays and you almost

have to use the word church in a very loose sense that

teach that God blesses sexual immorality.

What scripture clearly defines as sexual immorality.

You think of like the ELCA and their charge to ordain

impenitent homosexuals and their charge now to

normalize polyamory and all kinds of just strange perversions that

scripture clearly says are contrary to the word of God.

All in the context of we are a church and we are disciples of Jesus Christ

and you sit there how do you come to this conclusion?

Nothing's changed.

This is a problem that goes all the way back.

So again Revelation 2 .19 Christ says to the church in

Thyatira the words of the son who has eyes like a flame of fire whose feet are like burnished bronze I know your

works I know your love and faith and your service and your patient endurance again this is like the major theme of

the book of Revelation the idea of patient endurance.

Your latter works they exceed the first so you're growing in good works but I have this against you.

You tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess.

So here we got a problem.

A prophetess woman has arisen claims that she's a prophetess.

I hear from the voice of God and she is teaching and seducing my servants to practice

sexual immorality.

Say what?

Huh?

And to eat food that sacrificed idols.

You can again think of syncretism here.

I gave her time to repent.

She refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Note the patience of Christ.

First move when you got somebody engaging in false prophecy

teaching people to engage in sexual immorality.

First move of Christ is to be patient and give that person time to repent.

But they persist in that so behold I'm going to throw her under a sick bed those who commit adultery with her I'll throw them into great

tribulation unless they repent of her works.

I will strike her children dead.

That seems brutal.

Right.

You'll note that there's a warning to how God punishes.

And all the churches will know that I am he.

And I want to see something in the Greek.

Yeah, that I am.

Ego e me.

And this is another one of those points where I don't understand why the translators of the ESV chose this

particular way of translating.

And that they will know that Hati ego e me.

That I am.

I really believe that as a reference to the divine name of God.

They will know that I am.

That I am God.

And that he who searches the minds and the hearts and I will give to each of you according to your works.

Now in scripture over and again we hear these words.

Christ is going to repay us according to our works.

According to our works.

Is this not a proof that we are saved by our works?

No.

No.

Okay.

I will show you a text that helps us along these lines.

And if you pay attention to how this all works out, you'll recognize then that it doesn't work out that

way.

Pun intended.

In Matthew chapter 25.

In a parable that doesn't read much like a parable.

It's probably one of Jesus' most thinly veiled parables.

It's the parable of the sheep and the goats on the day of judgment.

And watch how this works.

When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him.

He will sit on his glorious throne.

Before him will be gathered all the nations.

He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

He will place the sheep on his right.

The goats on his left.

In verse 33 the judgment has already

taken place.

You are judged first by what you are.

Are you a sheep or are you a goat?

So you'll know.

The separation has already occurred.

Now it's just a matter of repayment.

Being paid according to their works.

The judgment has already taken place by what you are.

You are either a sheep or you are a goat.

Now the reform take issue when I talk this way.

And I understand that because it's consistent with Calvinistic teaching.

Because of their understanding of the elect.

But each and every one of us is born dead in trespasses and sins.

We are born goats.

And by the grace and mercy of God working through the word

we have been regenerated and we have been raised to life not as goats but as

sheep.

Now the reform don't like that metaphor.

They basically say you're born a sheep you just don't know it.

That's not quite how that works.

So they take issue with the metaphor.

Regardless the judgment already takes place when Christ says alright sheep over here.

Goats over there.

And you goats you've been bad.

That's what he says to them by the way.

That's in a Roseboro paraphrase.

Tough crowd.

Tough crowd.

Those of you joining us digitally you can't throw tomatoes at me.

Alright.

So you know the judgments already take place then the king will say to those on the right now those on the right

they are believers.

And in our cross reference here I'm going to throw another cross reference up.

And I like coming back to this one because this just provides so much comfort.

In the book of Colossians chapter 2 Colossians chapter 2 we have these

words in relation to the gospel.

I'll start in verse 13 so this is part way through Paul's thought.

You were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh.

God has made you alive together with Christ.

That's the hymn there.

Having forgiven us all our trespasses.

So this is an important bit here because who's the one who made you alive together with Christ?

God is the one not you.

Dead people do not raise themselves from the dead.

That's kind of the one thing we noticed about that.

It's not like somebody is in an auto accident they're taken to the hospital.

While they're on their way to the hospital they die.

When they get to the hospital the team there they get the electric paddles and they're shocking them and

trying to get him to come back to life.

But of course everything stays flat line.

They don't sit there as a last resort and go come on.

You can do it.

You just got to lean into life man.

Stop embracing death dude.

It doesn't work like that.

When you're dead, dead, dead.

Doobie doobie dead.

Not just mostly dead.

When you're dead it takes an act of God to raise you to life.

Joshua just threw tomatoes at me virtually.

That's just terrible.

So you'll note the text says God made you alive together with Christ.

Watch this because the sentence goes on.

Often times a good discipline is to learn to ignore the verse numbers and pay attention

to the grammar and where the sentences end.

He made us alive together with Christ by canceling the record

of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

Note he has forgiven us our trespasses and now we have a picture of what that means.

God has canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

So when you hear about on the last day the books are open.

Christ is going to repay you according to your works.

He's going to judge you by your works.

Do Christians have recorded anywhere in their book a single sin or a

bad.

Work?

No. David.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There is a text and I don't know it off the top of my head and I think that my

search for it may be fruitless but there is a text talking about how in sin people believe

that good is evil and evil is good.

That's really the discombobulating nature of sin is where you

for real are so entrenched in a delusion caused by your

rebellion against God that you think God is evil and that you're

good and that you think God is evil for saying that adultery is wrong, that thieving is

wrong, that coveting is wrong, that lying is wrong and you get

offended when somebody dares speaks the truth of scripture and in so

doing is saying you're a sinner.

How dare you say that I'm a sinner.

And so what they do is they believe that evil is good and good is evil.

Yeah.

Isaiah 5 20.

All right.

Hang on a second.

Let's take a look here.

Isaiah 5 verse 20.

Yeah.

So woe to those who call evil good and good evil who put darkness for light

and light for darkness who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight.

And that's.

Really the issue, isn't

it?

That's possible.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you went with feelings.

Let me give you something a little bit stronger than feelings.

Something that our feelings can actually follow.

Let me explain.

So how do you know you're on the right side of all of this?

Let me ask you an odd question.

Of course I can tell that somebody who's going to be watching or listening on the internet, they're going to groan because we're going to go to

Nazi Germany for a minute.

As soon as you play the Hitler card, apparently you lose the argument or something.

What?

Yeah.

So let me ask you this.

Six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis.

Was that evil?

How do you know?

Because God tells us.

What does God tell us?

Is that murder?

So the idea here is this.

In order to judge ourselves, and we're going to start with me.

You're going to start with you.

In order to judge ourselves, we need an objective standard that we can look at.

And then that also gives us the ability to make judgments out in the world.

I know that the Nazi Holocaust was pure evil

because there were people who, contrary to God's command, you shall not murder, were murdered.

And murdered in mass.

Murdered in factory style.

It was like the industrial age version of murder.

I mean, they got it down to an efficiency that is frightening.

And that was really kind of the point.

In the Nuremberg trials, I believe that there was a movie made, I can't remember the name of it now, maybe Trial at

Nuremberg or something like that.

In the Nuremberg trials, one of the Nazi war criminals tried the

you don't have any objective way of judging me.

And he, in his defense, his defense was the only reason why I'm on trial for war

crimes is because the Allies won the war.

If we had won the war, things would have been flipped around.

And it was an interesting argument, but the American prosecutor had to go with something objective.

And he actually went objective and said, no, the reason why you're here is because objectively murder

is evil.

That's the reason why you're here, objectively.

And so he had to make an objective argument.

So we have to understand this.

How evil and good are defined is not based upon my feelings.

Nor is it based upon a vote.

If 51 % of the population says this is good, that doesn't make a thing good.

So in our days now, what have we seen happen in the last decade?

We've seen the United States government redefine marriage

and take something that scripture clearly says is sinful and make it

so that that is considered good.

And it's right.

And if you speak out against it, you are attacked and you are

considered to be evil.

Yeah.

So I hear my mom saying, and if all your friends told you to jump off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff.

Too?

Yeah.

Funny that you would say that, though, by the way.

My apologies.

My snark went on.

In Romans 1, talking about humanities really slide into

sin.

Consider what Romans 1 says in this regard, though.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

And here's the problem.

Who by their unrighteousness they suppress the truth.

That's what we do.

We all do that.

And any of you out there denying that you do that, just give me four minutes with your spouse and I'll debunk

it.

Because when your spouse tells you you did something wrong, your immediate response is, no I didn't.

No I didn't.

And either he or she has to wrestle you to the ground and get you to say, uncle.

My wife has to do that to me.

And I have to do that with her.

And y 'all are married to sinners, every one of you anyway that are married.

It's how this works.

So they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

What can be known about God, by the way, is plain to them because God's shown it to them.

God's invisible attributes, His eternal power, His divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of

the world.

And the things that have been made so that men are without excuse.

So note this then.

When it comes to the existence of God, scripture is clear.

There is no such thing as an atheist.

God does not believe in atheists.

So when you run across some yahoo saying, I don't believe in God.

I don't believe in God.

And I'll prove to you God doesn't exist.

This is a person who knows that God exists and they are just obsessed with trying to find some way

to get God out of their mind and to suppress that truth.

Although they knew God, they didn't honor Him as God.

They didn't give thanks to Him.

No.

They became futile in their thinking.

So you'll note that with the suppression of the truth, your thinking gets futile.

It gets delusional.

Let me continue reading.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God

for the images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore, God gives them up to the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to the

dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and they worshipped and served the

creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

And then it gets worse.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

Men likewise gave up natural relations with women.

They're consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameful acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.

So you go from futile to debased to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of evil, covetousness, malice, full of envy, murder,

strife, deceit, maliciousness, their gossips.

Yeah, by the way, gossips in this list are worse than homosexuals.

I just want to make that clear.

Slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil and disobedient to parents, foolish,

faithless, heartless, ruthless.

This is what I see on the news every night.

Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them,

but here's the last part, they give approval to those who practice them.

Why?

They know better than they're...

Why are they doing that?

I'm going to answer the question in just a minute, but I want to come back to our text in Revelation.

I get it.

We'll talk about this in a second.

But Josh, you wanted to make a point.

Real quick?

Funny

enough,

since

we.

Know how the end of history is going to go down...

They're not on the right side of...

Not only are they not on the right side of history, they're not on the right side of eternity, as you pointed out.

So the idea here is how does human history end?

Human history ends with Christ separating the sheep from the goats.

So anybody who claims that they're on the right side of history, I would argue the Nazis made that claim

pretty early on, because Hitler's rhetoric was that he was creating a millennial Reich, the thousand

-year glorious reign of the Aryans.

That didn't last very long, by the way.

Even though he thought he was on the right side of history, he proved to be on the wrong side, because he didn't factor in the wrath of God against his

sin.

All of that being said, let's come back to this text, and then we'll go into Revelation and then I'll answer your question along the way, Dave.

So he places on his right the sheep and the goats on his left.

The king will say to those on his right, Come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the

foundation of the world.

So you'll note when it comes to Christ then repaying their works, there are no

sins recorded in their book that his eyes are going to look at, because the whole record of

debt has been canceled and nailed to the cross.

If you are a sheep, the only thing recorded are your good works.

And note this, the Hebrew says without faith it's impossible to please God.

Without faith it's impossible.

So watch what he says, I was hungry, you gave me food.

Why would a sheep give Christ food if Christ was hungry?

Because that's what sheep do.

I was hungry, you gave me food.

I was thirsty, you gave me drink.

Why would sheep give a drink to Jesus?

Because that's what sheep do.

I was a stranger, you welcomed me.

I was naked, you clothed me.

I was sick, you visited me.

I was in prison and you came to me.

Then the righteous will answer him.

Notice it doesn't say the sheep, the righteous.

These are those who are clothed in the righteousness of Christ by grace through faith.

They are righteous, they will answer the Lord and they're going to scratch their heads and go,.

Huh?

Dave, one thing I know about you, you haven't had coffee with Jesus yet, have you?

Neither have I.

Have you clothed Jesus?

Have you fed him?

No, but the one thing I know about you is that you have taken care

of your brothers and sisters in Christ in need.

I know that for a fact.

You'll note that even the least good work that you do for a Christian brother because they are a Christian

brother in meeting their needs, that Christ repays you

as if you had done that for him personally.

Now all of a sudden you realize, wow, those good works that we are created in Christ Jesus to do, they're

huge.

They're not minor things.

To stay -at -home moms, Christ would say, I wet my diapers and you changed them.

Yeah.

I was struggling with my algebra and you helped me.

I couldn't figure out how poetry works and you tried to explain it to me and I still didn't get it.

But that's a different text.

Yeah.

I have some poetic problems.

We'll get there.

So I was a stranger, you welcomed me.

I was naked, you clothed me.

I was sick, you visited me.

I was in prison, you came to me.

Righteous will say, Lord, when do we see you hungry?

Feed you, thirsty, give you a drink.

And when do we see you, a stranger, welcome you?

You are naked and clothed you.

When do we see you sick or in prison and visit you?

And the king will answer them, truly I say to you, as you did it to the least of these, my

brothers.

And according to the gospel of Matthew, who are the brothers of Christ?

Those who believe in him.

Right?

If you did it to them, you did it to me.

Now here come the goats.

Remember Hebrews 11 says, without faith it is.

Impossible to please.

God.

It's impossible.

It's not difficult.

It's impossible.

It can't be done.

You might as well try to swim to the top of Mount Everest.

It can't be done.

Okay?

It's impossible.

So to say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire, prepare for the devil and his angels.

I was hungry and you gave me no food.

Now we know from what Christ says to the sheep.

What's the operative thing here?

How believers treat each other.

And that's all because of Christ.

So when somebody comes to you and preaches the gospel to you and says, you're a sinner.

You earned the wrath of God by your wickedness.

You have woefully fallen short.

But God loves you so much that he sent his only begotten son that if you believe in him, you will not perish.

But he will give you eternal life as a gift.

So repent and believe this good news.

And they sit there and go, you are such an idiot.

Oh my word.

Bless your heart.

Right?

Believe me, I have family from Memphis and from Atlanta.

And when they say bless your heart, that means you're stupid.

Okay?

And then they'd offer you sweet tea afterwards.

Okay?

That's how that goes.

Right?

They're rejecting Christ and then they're going to turn around and they're going to mistreat you.

Because nobody is neutral when it comes to Jesus.

Nobody.

You are either at war and hostile towards God or you are at peace with God because of Christ.

And then that peace that we have with God, then we have with each other.

We look out for each other.

If one of us gets arrested and thrown in prison for preaching the gospel, we're there visiting them in prison.

When one of us loses a job, we are there opening up our checkbooks, giving them our money so

that they can pay their rent.

Because that's what we do for the sake of Christ.

But the unbelievers, they reject Jesus altogether.

So when his saints and the preachers of the gospel come,

they have nothing to do with them.

And he says, I was hungry, you gave me no food.

I was thirsty, you gave me no drink.

I was a stranger and you did not welcome me.

I was naked, you didn't clothe me.

Sick and in prison, you didn't visit me.

Then they will answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or stranger, naked or

sick or in prison and did not minister to you?

He'll answer them, truly I say to you, as you did not do it to the least of these, and who's he pointing to?

The righteous.

The least of these.

You did not do it to me.

So nothing they did counts.

Nothing.

Any good...

Well, Jesus, I was the vice president of the Rotary Club

in Grand Forks.

But Jesus,.

I gave to the poor.

I worked to stop systemic racism.

In the United States.

You see?

And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

So when you hear a text where you hear from Jesus' own mouth that he is

going to give to each according to their works, please note that.

That is absolutely true.

But the important.

Thing is faith.

Without faith, it's impossible to please God.

And by faith, we have been given the righteousness of God.

We have been declared righteous.

Our sins have been forgiven.

The whole record of debt that stood against us has been canceled.

So on the day of judgment, Christians, you've got much to look forward to.

That is going to be an amazing day.

And I think our jaws are going to be on the floor when we consider

the generosity of Christ as he repays each and every one of us for works

that we considered to be lowly and despised.

So James, every time you take out the trash, Christ is keeping track of that.

Every time.

And when you clean up your room and you put all those Legos where they belong, that's a good work.

Christ is taking note of that as well.

So you get the idea here.

So Christ says, I will give to each one of you according to your works, but to the rest of you in Thyatira who do not hold to this teaching,

who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, fascinating in that congregation, there were people who were

aware of this Jezebel, false prophetess woman and what they were doing, and the murmurs had gotten back to them and they called it the

deep things of Satan, whatever that doctrine is, we don't even want to know.

To you I do not lay on you any other burden, only hold fast to what you have until I come.

To the one who conquers and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the

nations.

Now notice here, who keeps my works.

That's another way of talking about faith.

How can you keep the works of Jesus?

By believing them?

What he did for you?

So again, we always conquer by faith.

To him I will give authority over the nations.

And here's the weird thing, you're starting to get a picture here of something about the new earth.

A good way to talk about the new earth is as the kingdom of Christ, because Christ will sit on

the throne of David forever, but it's a kingdom of kings.

Isn't that weird?

And so you'll note here that there is a promise for Christians in this lifetime

that they will have authority over nations, that they will be given authority.

So this is a kingdom of kings under the king Jesus.

You'll note that Christ then shares his authority and he rules and reigns through us.

Now let me ask you this.

I hate the idea of being a politician.

At one point I actually wanted to go into politics and then I realized that what Mark Twain

said was right.

Polly, politics comes from two words.

The word polly meaning many and tics meaning bloodsuckers.

But the problem is that politicians in this life, what

a mess.

Your job for the most part is to just basically keep evil at bay.

That's really the job of a politician, to enact policies to punish evildoers so

that good things can happen for law abiding citizens.

But the good things that happen, the law abiding citizens always do good under the threat of punishment by the government.

Believe me, how many of you this year, when you heard they were not going to require you to

pay your taxes or to file your taxes until July, filed them in January or

March?

I waited until the last day.

If I don't have to pay it, you're not going to punish me.

I'm not going to give you my money a minute sooner than I have to.

But I know I have to.

Because if I don't, there's bad consequences.

David?

Let's talk about that real quick.

The question on the table is, why are so many people doing evil and thinking they're doing good?

If I could rephrase the question.

Here's what's going on.

People have bought in to a false narrative.

Let me explain.

Narratives have power to control our actions.

So here's the thing.

All the people who are burning down Kenosha, and burning, and rioting and burning down

other business and stuff like that, do they believe they are doing evil or do they believe they are doing

good?

They believe they're doing good.

They believe that what they're doing is virtuous.

And on top of that, the narrative is because you are silent as you white man, you are

complicit in the violence that they claim is taking place in the United States.

So what's the narrative?

What's the narrative that's informing them?

Their narrative is that racism has never been solved in the United States.

This is their narrative.

So you have the United States founded during a time when slavery was

not only legal, was quite the industry.

Especially in agricultural parts of the United States in the South.

And so it was based upon racism.

This is how the claim goes.

So what happened?

We fought a civil war.

We get the 13th Amendment in the Civil War, which puts an end to slavery.

Ah, but the narrative points something out.

There's a loophole in the 13th Amendment.

The loophole in the 13th Amendment is that slavery is outlawed unless

somebody has committed a felony.

And so as the narrative goes, once the Civil War ended and the slaves were freed, the South systemically

went about criminalizing, or basically coming up with

felony criminal charges that every black person then was effectively re -enslaved and became prisoners.

And so the method by which the United States keeps slavery going on to this day

is through the criminal justice system.

And their claim is that what is happening in the United States the police

and the criminal justice system and the prison industry have all conspired

to re -enslave black people or keep them enslaved, and that they

are not really engaged in real criminal justice, and that the vast majority of people who

are African Americans who are in prison, the reason they're in prison is because these

racist police forces basically charge them with

felonies, felonies to the effect of they're guilty of being black.

That's their narrative.

So what they're fighting is the perception or the belief that the

United States is still a nation of slaveholders.

Rather than them being on the plantation, the slaves are in the prisons.

And who are they working for?

The slaves are working for Fortune 500 companies who hire prisoners to do work

at $2, $3, $4, $5 an hour.

That's the claim.

So when you hear talk about systemic racism, why are they defunding the police?

The reason they're defunding the police is because the police is the mechanism for enslaving

people.

That's their claim.

Yeah.

And that's the thing.

So in their claim then, capitalism is the driving force behind all of this.

Why do they need to be enslaved?

Well, because capitalism.

So the way you get rid of slavery in their Marxist narrative is you basically turn the United

States into a communist nation, and there'll be no need for enslaving people

because the corporations will be gone, private property will be dissolved.

In their view, the United States will become a utopia.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's the narrative.

So you understand, they think they're doing good, and that their actions are virtuous

because they have incited an open rebellion against

an oppressive racist system that is still enslaving African Americans.

They believe the narrative and they believe that their actions are not only justified

but required.

The goal is the overthrow of the United States Constitution and the present republic.

And the disbanding of capitalism and the enforcing, basically turning the United States into

the 21st century version of the Soviet Union.

That's the goal.

Hmm?

Yeah, that's what they always say.

You always point them out.

Everywhere this has been tried, it has failed miserably.

And people have tried to flee for their lives from this stuff.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

that's

not

the

point

of

our Bible study,.

But your points are well noted.

Well, you asked why.

Yeah.

So you're going to note then.

Yeah.

But you're going to note then.

They believe that they are acting virtuously.

That's the weird thing.

You can get so turned around that you can justify evil in

the context of a narrative.

Okay?

So, what's been taking place?

Destruction of property?

The murder of innocent human beings.

This has been taking place in our streets in the last few months.

Not one or two incidents.

We're talking about I've lost track of how many different protests there are.

Okay?

Right.

So, all of this going on, the people who are instigating this, they believe that they are acting virtuously.

They are calling evil good.

And the narrative is what's driving it.

Indeed.

Indeed.

Okay.

What do we do to fight against it?

Great question.

So, let me go on a tiny excursus and then we've got to wrap up.

Okay.

And this will be our last thought of the day for now because I have to wrap up and head off to serve another congregation.

What do we do?

The reason why this is happening is because 150 years ago,

a little more than that actually now, a book was written by a fellow by the name of Charles Darwin called The Origin

of the Species and the church

lost its nerve and abandoned its belief that the Bible is the

Word of God.

And so what has happened and what has gone on unchecked in the Christian

church is rank unbelief masquerading as

Christian piety.

People running around the church saying you can't trust the Bible.

And rather than preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins, because here's the thing, you know why sinners

sin?

Because they're sinners.

Right.

And so the church long ago stopped believing that the Bible is the Word of God.

And you have entire congregations that are set up now.

In fact, you have these abandoned urban cathedrals that are like artifacts of a day long gone by.

A cathedral in a city like Chicago that can seat a thousand.

And at one point did.

And you got 30 gray haired old ladies and a cat who show up with their

liberal pastor there and they are taught the Bible isn't true.

Sin isn't sin.

Just do good things and make a difference in the world.

That's all that you can do.

And they go, yes, that's right.

But the reason why there's nobody in that congregation is because only the Word of God

can raise somebody from the dead.

The church has been given the task of proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

And if you don't believe the Bible's the Word of God, you ain't gonna preach that.

So what happened is that when a whole group, I mean a large mass of seminary students were

taught this nonsense that the Bible can't be trusted.

And they get into the pulpit and they start telling everybody, oh, the resurrection of Jesus is just a metaphor for

spring.

And it reminds us of when our tulips come back after a hard winter.

Rather than preaching that Christ rose bodily from the dead, nobody is believing the truth

anymore.

And the church is not evangelizing.

Christians aren't being made.

And as a result of it, we're watching in our lifetime the sheer number of Christians as a percentage of our

population dwindling and dwindling and dwindling and dwindling.

And the people who remain, they're listening to like nonsensical yahoos like Bill Johnson of Bethel

or Kat Kerr or some weird freaks out there claiming to hear the voice of God and they're not being taught the

Word of God at all.

You want to turn this around?

Get the heretics out of the church and start telling the world there are a bunch of sinners and Christ died for their sins and they need to

repent and believe the Gospel.

That's the only hope.

Of course they don't.

Of course they don't.

So the only hope to turn this around is the Gospel.

Period.

Well, yeah.

I don't want to do that every morning.

Yep.

Yep.

Alright, real quick here.

Carlos says, how would double predestination fit in here if God is giving a chance for repentance?

You're going to note, Carlos, in this particular case technically we're supposed to be, he's writing to a church so you're supposed to be

talking to somebody who, Christ is supposed to be talking to somebody who is a believer who's supposed to be repenting.

So if they were chosen not to be elected why bother offering repentance?

Your point is well taken, by the way.

First, negates double predestination, limited atonement.

In one sense it does, I agree.

Oscar Portillo says, the text in Revelation says be hot or cold but not lukewarm.

You're getting ahead of me, Oscar.

You're getting ahead.

That's for the church of Laodicea.

We'll get to that maybe next week or the week after.

Because he'll spit you out of his mouth.

What does that mean exactly?

Does it mean you can lose your salvation?

Like I said, we will talk about that when we get to the letter to the church of Laodicea so I would say stay tuned.

Bless your heart.

It's all about context, context, context.

Indeed.

How should we interpret crowns of rewards in relation to works of righteousness?

I think, Carlos, you answered your own question when you recognized that we throw our crowns before Christ.

We're not worthy of them anyway.

I look terrible in a tiara so I have no problem giving it back to Christ.

So you get the idea.

Peace to you brothers and sisters.

I've got to go because I have another congregation to serve.

We'll see you guys, Lord willing, next time.