Sermon: Wisdom & Justice For Rulers

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If you would, saints, open your Bibles to the book of Proverbs 8.

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Proverbs 8. We are in a series at Apologia Church going verse by verse through the book of Proverbs.

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This is wisdom from above. These are the words of God to us to have knowledge from God and skill from God.

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How do we live? So we are in Proverbs 8. Last week, Zach took a large portion of this.

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And so I'm going to review a little bit of it and emphasize a smaller section. So Proverbs 8, starting in verse 1.

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These are the words of the living and the true God. Does not wisdom call?

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Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand.

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Beside the gates, in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud.

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To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence.

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O fools, learn sense. Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right.

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For my mouth will utter truth, wickedness is an abomination to my lips.

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All the words of my mouth are righteous. There is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to him who understands, and right to those who find knowledge.

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Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold.

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For wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion.

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The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance, and the way of evil and perverted speech

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I hate. I have counsel and sound wisdom. I have insight. I have strength.

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By me, kings reign, and rulers decree what is just.

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By me, princes rule, and nobles all who govern justly.

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I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.

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Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver.

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I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries.

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Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together as His people. God, we thank

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You for Your Word. We recognize all of us now. Here before us is a gift.

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Lord, Your speech cannot be missed. You have spoken from the very beginning through all the things

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You've made. The heavens declare the glory of God. Lord, Your speech isn't missed.

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It's loud. It's in the public square. It's in our minds and in our hearts. You've been heard.

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And Lord, You have not just spoken through Your creation, testifying of Your goodness, of Your presence, of Your righteousness.

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You've spoken in Your Word. You've cried aloud in the streets to the children of men. You, God, are the wise

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God. The only wise God. And so we ask, God, that You'd bless today as we open

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Your Word and we hear from You. God, speak to us as Your people. Challenge us.

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Speak through the words of a man by Your Spirit with inspired words.

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Change our minds. Renew us. Teach us. Use us for Your glory and kingdom. We pray this in Jesus' name.

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Amen. So last week, we started in Proverbs 8, this large section you've already heard.

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But I want to emphasize some important foundations when we think about what's happening here in Proverbs 8.

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Because if you heard it, you've heard that this is a repetition. It's some of the same things said before.

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It's reiterated over and over. And wouldn't that be the case for sinful people like us that often forget we lose our way.

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We lose our sight. And so God's constantly reminding us as He calls us as His children to follow

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His wisdom, to keep your eyes set on it, to not miss it, to treasure it up within you.

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We're getting these reminders again. We have wisdom displayed and then reminder. This is better than gold.

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It's better than all the things you're pursuing. All of the earth's wealth and gold and silver. This is better.

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Pursue this and don't neglect it. Don't forget because we tend to forget.

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We forget all the time. And so we're getting the reminder again that wisdom is public.

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Wisdom is in front of everybody. God has spoken in creation. He's constantly testifying to everybody about who

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He is. But He's also spoken in special revelation. And He's crying out here to the children of men, listen,

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I have more to offer you. It's better than you think. This is better than your gold pursuits.

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It's better than your silver pursuits. Seek wisdom. You're getting it again, that reminder.

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But I want to go back to the very first. Not to do the book again, but to remind us of the very foundation that started this amazing book of wisdom from above.

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And it's Proverbs 1, verse 7. It's the very foundation of knowledge and wisdom.

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And it goes like this. The fear of the Lord is the what? Beginning of knowledge.

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It's the starting place. It's not the middle. It's not the conclusion. We're not working our way to the conclusion.

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It's the very starting place. Reverence, submission, and awe before God is the very beginning of knowledge.

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If you want to know, you have to start with God. We are but mere men and women and children.

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We're just creatures. God is the Creator. If you want to truly know and not abandon knowledge, and not abandon wisdom, and not abandon understanding, you must start with fear before the

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God who made you. You must submit yourself to His thoughts. Think His thoughts after Him.

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Submit to His knowledge. If you want to know something, you have to know it only in the original knower.

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He speaks and gives us understanding. And so this starts with that. The fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. If you want to truly know, you can't know apart from Him.

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And we have a debate coming up, I mentioned at the very beginning on April 1st, with two humanists, secularists, atheists, a man who says he denies that there is anything supernatural.

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Supernatural. Anything hupernatural. Anything that is outside of or above or greater than the natural.

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All you have is the material realm. All you have is these bags of stardust banging around in the cosmos that could care less about you.

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There's no justice ahead of anybody. There's no objectivity to anything. It is mere subjective prejudicial conjecture.

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That's all we're getting and all we ultimately will get, I'll make a prediction, from the humanists that day.

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They are the center. And so they cannot ultimately know. They're going to walk into a debate whether morality depends upon God.

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And all they have is the material realm. All they have is just bags of stardust in the cosmos that doesn't care less about them.

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And so how do you know something? How could you make any claim about something that is right or wrong or true or beautiful or lovely?

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You can't. If you're just a cosmic accident, then you're nothing more than, as Dan Barker said, cosmic broccoli.

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You're just something growing on the surface. What are these claims about right and wrong and truth and value and beauty?

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You can't know anything. The very foundation of knowledge, to know something, is the fear of the

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Lord. And what you have to notice, as that's the foundation of this book of wisdom, is that wisdom is constantly portrayed as crying out to people, calling, beckoning to the image bearers, crying out to, of course, the children of men, but also to God's children.

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Listen to me. Pursue me. Treasure me up. Don't forget me.

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Be just. Be righteous. Don't be a sluggard. Avoid the immoral woman.

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Avoid the harlot. She will take you to the pit of death. You have all of the wisdom of God on display, but it's portrayed in Proverbs chapter 8 as something that is public.

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It's out there. It's not something that's hidden. It's not some secret knowledge.

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This is something that is out there for the world to hear. You have, of course, general revelation.

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I gave that to you. That's the heavens declaring the glory of God. That's God speaking through the created order, but you also have special revelation.

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God, wisdom incarnate, walked among us, revealed

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Himself, spoke to us. Our faith is not a faith with a God who is far off and unknowable.

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This is a God who makes contact with us, walks among us, touches people, experiences all that we experience, and, listen,

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He speaks. You know the famous verses that as pastors we try to bury into your hearts and your minds where Jesus is asked the question related, of course, to the resurrection, and He says this to Jews in His day.

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He says, have you not read what was spoken to you by God? Have you not read?

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Wait a minute. Hold on now. That was something that was given to Jews long before they came along.

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And Jesus reminds them, those Scriptures you're holding contain God's very speech.

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His words. He's talked to you. And those words that were spoken long before are given to them in their day as words to them.

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Have you not read what was spoken to you by God? This is

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God's speech. These are the words of God. That's why we always start even as part of our liturgy and how we do this, we start with, hear now the word of the living and the true

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God. The reason for that is so that everybody stops for a moment and is silent and reminded that these aren't the words of a mere man.

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These are the words of your God. The only true God. And so when wisdom is portrayed here as calling out in the public gate, in the marketplace, it is speech that is public.

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It is not hidden. It is for public consumption. And here's the problem.

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You read wisdom here at the gates, in front of the town, at the entrance of the porters, she cries aloud.

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You read that and it doesn't match very well with the way that we have churchified the

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Bible today. As Dr. Joe Boot says, we've ecclesiasticized the

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Bible. Ecclesia, the word for the gathering, the called out ones, the assembly, the church.

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We've churchified the Bible. And a churchified biblical faith doesn't match what's actually happening in Proverbs 8, where wisdom comes into the city gates, wisdom is crying out in public for public consumption.

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I mentioned to you at the very beginning how grateful I am for the body that God has called together here at Apologia.

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We've tried as leaders to model for you what it means to engage in the public square with the truth of the

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Gospel at great cost. And you know what it's like to be in our midst, to have our church body out there, outside of these walls, in public, at the mosque, at the

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Mormon temple, at the abortion mill, at the strip club, at the city council. Why?

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Is it just a fad? Is it just sort of a trend we've tried to build at Apologia?

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No, it comes from deep, deep and solemn conviction that the Word of God is for the children of men.

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It is for out there. We bring the Gospel out of these four walls, outside of our homes, and from behind our ears out into the world because that is how

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Jesus approached the world. His mission wasn't secret. It was public, for public consumption.

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He is the Lord of all, the King of kings and Lord of lords. And so His message goes out to the world and it is a message for the nations to come under His authority, to hear about the

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Word of His salvation. We go into the public square, at the city gate, because that's where wisdom cries out.

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That's where the principle is. And it is reiterated over and over in Scripture. This is for public consumption.

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These are the words of God. The problem is that we've churchified the Bible. We take wisdom, the book of Proverbs, these

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Gospels, this Word from God, we take it in our day generally as something that is for those

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Christians. Right? It's a personal thing. It's a personal romance with Jesus. It is very personal.

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And the answer is, of course it is, very personal, it is very intimate. He knows your name.

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He was dying for you if you trust Him, if you know Him, if you believe in Him. He is your

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Savior. He's your God. He calls you child. It's very intimate. But we've taken this wisdom, this

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Word, and we've treated it in our day as though it was for this room. It is for those professors.

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It is not for out there. We act like there's borders or limits around God's revelation or His wisdom.

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We act like there are people who aren't accountable to it. We act like there's borders around the

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Gospel itself and where it's allowed to be proclaimed. That is not the message of the

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Christian faith. And that is not what wisdom does. Wisdom doesn't hide. It cries out at the city gates.

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We have churchified the Bible. We believe that the Christian faith is primarily a private experience with private personal demands.

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We think it's a private experience with private personal demands. And so we close our mouths.

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We don't speak out. We love our lives and our stuff too much. Maybe that's a motivating factor.

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But I think it's deeper than that. It's a theological problem. It's that we think that this is just about a personal romance, a personal relationship.

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And all these words from God are just for me. They're for our experience. They're for my kids only and my home only.

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And that is exactly, by the way, where the secularists want us to keep it.

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They're comfortable with it there. But that is not where wisdom comes according to the

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Scripture. Wisdom demonstrates here in chapter 8 as it starts, once again, wisdom demonstrates that our faith, our trust in God, our trust in this

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Word is public with universal demands. It's not private with personal demands only.

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It's public with universal demands. That's how wisdom comes into the world.

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This is the revelation of God. Stop and think for a moment. God has spoken.

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You know, many of you guys have experienced over just say the last 23 years those moments where some major event happens in the world.

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I can think about, many of you remember this, when 9 -11 happened, the chaos that ensued for the next two days, right?

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I mean, it was madness, wasn't it? It was madness. Everybody's glued to the TV. Nobody knows exactly what's going on.

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There's candlelight vigils happening that night all over town. It is something that everybody's wrapped up in.

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Everybody's glued to the radio. You're glued to the television. And everybody was waiting for that moment where the

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President of the United States would come to address the American people.

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Do you remember that moment? Do you remember being in front of the television to make sure you were there to hear his words, the words of a person who was at that top place of authority and you're glued to the screen?

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Or how many times in even the last 20 years have you seen it with other presidents where you need to hear what happens?

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You want to hear his words. These are important words. Words like from the President when

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Osama bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team 6, DevGroup. When he came before the

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American people to announce we've killed Osama bin Laden. Everybody wants to hear his words.

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We want him to reveal to us what has taken place. These are important words and you're hanging on them.

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Right? Or the last words of a loved one. How important those words are.

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How you're glued to the loved one. You know that there's very few words left. And so you're there at the bedside and you're waiting for those words.

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And all those words count. You're waiting. And this revelation from them. What do you want me to know?

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What do you have to say to me? Those words are meaningful. And brothers and sisters, what you're holding in your hands is the revelation of God.

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The God who created all things. The God who sustains you at this very moment. The God who's holding you in your seat.

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The God who's guided your life from its very beginning to this very moment. And the

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God who's determined the length of your days. When He's going to bring you home. That God has spoken.

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And these are His words. This is His revelation.

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And it's public. Again, we talked about general revelation. But this is special revelation.

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This is God revealing to us. Capture this. You'll get everything. This is God revealing to us

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His standards of justice. His standards of righteousness. His standards of what are actually true things in the world.

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How He made the world. How He calls us to live with Him and one another. This is special revelation.

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And so when He speaks, we should be silent. When He speaks, we should learn. When He speaks, we should stop.

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You know, you think about those moments in your home, right? Where maybe there's a little bit of conflict in your home between maybe you and your husband or you and your wife or you and your kids, right?

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And as someone who loves Jesus, what do you do when you know something is broken and you see, maybe as a father, what's broken?

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What do you do? You bring the words of God. Right? This is where everything stops. These are the words of God.

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And this is the moment where everybody's mouth in the home is supposed to close. Right? Like when a father says to the son or to the daughter, he says, do this.

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And the son or daughter doesn't want to do it. Right? We act like... Our kids act like we act like with God sometimes, right?

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And so we say, no, you need to do this. And they're like, I don't want to. What do you say? You say, you need to honor your father and your mother, obey your parents and the

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Lord. It doesn't matter if you want to do it. I'm telling you to do it because I'm your father. God gave me to you and you to me.

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And He calls you to live this way, in this order, right? Or husbands, when you say to your wife, if she's having a bad moment, you say, honey,

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I want you to respect me right now. Be humble for a moment and listen to what I'm saying to you. You need to respect your husband right now.

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Or when wives see the husband going off, right? The husband goes off. Maybe he's being harsh or heavy -handed and the wife needs to bring the words of God to bear on the husband, right?

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Like maybe the husband's being harsh. He's not being reasonable. And then the wife says, weaker vessel.

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Right? That should silence the mouth of the husband. Why? Because these aren't the words of the woman.

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These are the words of God. This is the revelation of God. It's special revelation.

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He has spoken. I want you to consider how important this is when we think about wisdom in the public square.

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Special revelation in terms of the meaning of it and knowing what is true, what is right, what is wise.

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Because oftentimes, we allow the unbelievers to take for granted all of the wisdom and righteousness and justice that's been fed into their community from the

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Christian worldview in the public square. The unbeliever today in the West has essentially borrowed

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Christian capital. They borrow Christian capital. They get blessed from what were

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Christian laws and they take it for granted. I mean, something as simple as you should love your neighbor rather than eat them.

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Right? Now, you challenge an unbeliever enough, you'll see they say, well, I guess it's not really wrong to eat your neighbor.

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You know, I guess we don't... It just makes me uncomfortable. I don't think I want to do it, but I guess it's not actually immoral.

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We allow the unbeliever to take it for granted that they have essentially co -opted the Christian worldview and then they distort it at every turn.

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Dr. Will Provine, the professor of biology at Cornell University, he's dead now.

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He's a creationist now. He was an atheist then. He says this, listen, in terms of the importance of special revelation, the word of God.

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Listen, kids, teenagers, listen. This is the opposing worldview. Capture it.

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Capture it and don't let the unbeliever take capital from you, from the wisdom that God has given, to try to argue against the wisdom of God.

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Here's what Dr. Will Provine, a very respected evolutionary biologist, says about the world.

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He said, Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear.

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And I must say that these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods.

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No purposeful forces of any kind. No life after death.

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When I die, I am absolutely certain that I'm going to be completely dead.

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That's just all. That's going to be the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans either.

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Dr. Will Provine, professor of biology at Cornell. And this is the glory of our wisdom from God coming into the streets, at the city gates.

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They don't have wisdom. They don't have justice. They don't have purpose. They don't have knowledge.

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All they have is cosmic accidents. Living, breathing, dying, collapsing, and disappearing.

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You heard from his position, there is no wisdom. There's no ultimate meaning.

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There's no ultimate foundation for ethics. And so when you hear these words of God about justice and righteousness and kings and princes ruling and justice and all these things, that's ours.

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Do you understand? When you hear the world out there talking about things today like social justice and all the rest, they don't have it.

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They've abandoned the very source of those truths so they don't have any knowledge. They don't have any wisdom.

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They have so -called knowledge. Brothers and sisters, this is yours from the living

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God. You get it. You get it. They don't have it.

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All they can do is borrow. They're like barnacles on the

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Christian ship as we drive through the world. That's what the unbelieving world has.

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And wisdom speaks in the public square at the city gates.

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Now that's what you got in what you unpacked last week with Zach.

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But I want to emphasize today the next few verses. Proverbs 8. And verses 14 -16.

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So last week, Zach emphasized the fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. And now 14 -16.

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Here are the words of God. I have counsel and sound wisdom. I have insight. I have strength by Me.

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Don't miss it. Don't miss it. Don't miss it.

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Because evangelicalism, if that means anything at all anymore in the West today, largely does not believe this.

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What we're about to emphasize now from the words of God and the wisdom of God is something that is largely rejected in our day, and it is the answer for so much chaos and decay out there.

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It is the answer. I'll say it again. Here it is. Verse 15. By Me. By Me.

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Kings reign. And rulers decree what is just.

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By Me, princes rule. And nobles, all who govern justly.

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Do we believe that? Or is that just a pithy Christian thing? Slogan? Just words?

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Do we believe that? Do we believe that rulers and princes, kings, that it is by the wisdom of God that they rule and reign and rule justly?

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You see, because what have we said mostly in our generation today? What do we say? We say, no, let's unhitch the

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Old Testament from the New Testament. Right? Let's take it apart. These are like law words.

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This is law stuff. It's real harsh. And now we have just the happy Jesus who just wants to take us to heaven one day.

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Doesn't care about law or any of that stuff. All those things in God's law about loving neighbor and respecting their property and property rights and all those things about justice and victim's rights.

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God doesn't care about that anymore. That was the old God. Now we've got the new happy God, Jesus. And so we're all so much better for it.

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We don't believe that rulers today are held accountable to Jesus Christ. Which is, by the way, why you see a massive difference.

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A massive difference between how as a church ourselves and with other pastors and churches across the nation, we are approaching civil magistrates with the demand of abolition and justice over against how the pro -life establishment has done it over the last generation.

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We bring the words of God to those rulers. We call them to repent and to establish justice in Jesus' name.

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And we remind them of the day of judgment that is coming before them. That as rulers, put in that position by God to be a servant of the true

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God, they will answer to God for every injustice. And the blood of every child sacrificed in this nation will cry out to God against them.

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They will answer to God for the injustice. There's a big difference. You can approach the world and leaders in two different ways.

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One with pretended neutrality and one standing under the banner of Christ's Lordship. Which way will we do it?

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The text says, by me kings reign and rulers decree what is just.

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By me princes rule and nobles all who govern justly. That's what the text says.

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We don't believe this today largely because we've ecclesiasticized the

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Bible. It's churchified. It's that church book. We profess to believe that these are the words of the one true and living

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God. We profess to believe that He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of lords. And yet we play the hypocrite in the marketplace.

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And we fail to bring His Word to the world and to our leaders.

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Now just consider for a moment, you've got a text here from wisdom from God Himself who says, by me, by God's wisdom, kings reign and rulers decree what is just.

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By God's wisdom, by me, princes rule and nobles all who govern justly.

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But is it just narrow? Is it just in one space?

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Is it just an odd thing you find in this moment in Proverbs? Or is it actually something that is a feature in Scripture?

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That these are the words of God and God holds all men accountable, all women accountable to His words.

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Think for a moment about what you heard before we came to the message today from Psalm 119.

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Go. Let's go ahead and read Psalm 119. I'm just joking. That would be the entire service today if we just read through it, right?

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Psalm 119. And go to verse 46. It was read to you at the beginning, but I want to say it again.

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Listen to how the words of God come. It's a feature. Psalm 119, 46.

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After all the word, teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end.

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Give me understanding that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. That was 33 and 34.

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The text is clearly all about God's instruction, all about God's law. And in verse 46, look at the word from God.

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I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame.

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These are the words of God. These are the words of God. And it's interesting because I'm speaking now to us, to me, to us, our generation, where this is such a foreign concept that rulers and kings and princes are held accountable by God to hold to His wisdom, and that they will rule and reign and they will actually be just and establish justice if they do so according to His wisdom and His words.

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It's foreign to us today. Confess. It is. But brothers and sisters, these are fundamental assertions of the

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Christian worldview. Listen, we either believe it or we don't. Let's stop pretending. I hate churchianity.

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I hate the fiction. I hate the hypocrisy to walk into a church and act like Christ is king and He's God and He rules over all.

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And then we walk out there into the world, into the marketplace, and we act like there's a border around His authority.

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Like it's not for them. This text says, I will speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame.

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We think we'll be put to shame. We're afraid of what the world will say to us if we go to our leaders with a prophetic voice that call them to repentance and faith in Jesus so they experience salvation in Him.

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We think we'll be put to shame if we bring God's standards of justice into the marketplace, into the public square, and to the servant of God to wield the sword justly.

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We think we'll be put to shame and so we're afraid. We compromise. We're not courageous. But the text says,

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I will speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame. Never forget, when our

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Lord ascended as promised, He said something that our church body is very well aware of and we emphasize often.

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And that is that when He was ascending as promised, He said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.

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And that is why we therefore go. Because He is the one with all authority.

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We profess to believe that Christ is Lord. Again, not something that is really dangerous to say in the

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United States of America, a nation that was given the blessings of the Gospel. It's not so dangerous even today to say

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Jesus is Lord. Yes, you can lose your job. Yes, you could not be allowed to be a teacher in a school because you come from a

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Christian college and you say Jesus is Lord, and so you're dangerous. Yeah, you could maybe not get a job or lose your job or somebody thinks you're an idiot or they call you names.

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Yes, but it's still not very dangerous to say out in the street corners that Jesus is Lord. That proclamation is what got our ancient forebearers, the early

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Christians, killed. They would not submit to the ultimacy of the government, the ultimacy of Caesar.

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They said that Jesus is above all and everybody must serve Him. That's the fundamental assertion of what we believe, that Jesus is

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Lord. He's the King of kings and Lord of lords. We believe that. We say that we do. Now, listen, if the text says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, and that was given 2 ,000 years ago, brothers and sisters, the question is this, very simply.

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Does Jesus have authority over the government of the United States of America today? Do you really believe that?

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Then you bring His wisdom and testimonies to them. Does Jesus Christ have authority over the city council in downtown

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Phoenix? Which is why the members of Apologia Church went there, preaching the

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Gospel, calling them to repentance, bringing them the very words of God. Did we look like freaks there that day to them?

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Yes, but not to the angels. Not to the angels. Yeah, when you're standing in a room with a bunch of woke city council members next to the

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ACLU and the director of Planned Parenthood in Arizona, these demons, when you're sitting in there with them, yeah, you look like a freak, but not before the angels.

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You look like God's children. You look like wisdom at the city gates, proclaiming it in the marketplace.

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That's what you look like. Is God teaching us in His Word that Christ has the authority today over all the kings of the earth?

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That they're actually supposed to obey Him? Well, He said it long before Jesus came. They were singing about it long before Jesus came in Psalm 2, where the

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Father says to the Son, ask of Me and I'll give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession.

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And then He says to the kings of the earth to be wise and to obey the Son or they will perish.

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Where is that coming from our lips today? Where is it? Where is it coming from our lips today?

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That the rulers of the earth will perish if they don't obey Jesus. May God help us to bring it.

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In Revelation 1, verse 5, it was said, and don't miss it, please don't miss it, because I know, listen, it could be so easy to say, yeah, but you know what, here's the deal.

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Look, listen. Yeah, Jesus is Lord and all, but we live in a context today of sort of like a nation that is apostatized from like its

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Christian beginnings and so you can't really come with the authority of Jesus like maybe you could have with Washington or John Jay or any of these, they understood that.

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Christianity was in the atmosphere, the Christian faith and Christ's authority was in the atmosphere, they understood it. You can't bring that to President Biden.

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You can't bring that kind of authority to Pelosi. You can't do that to the rulers of the earth today because they don't accept what you say.

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They don't believe in that authority. They don't believe it. Remember that Revelation chapter 1, even if you take a later dating, which isn't true, but even if you take a later dating, it was written during the reign of Caesar.

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And the words of Revelation 1, 5 were said in a very hostile pagan context and those words are that Jesus Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth.

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That was said when Nero was in control and Rome was a state.

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The way that it was. Hostile to the Christian faith. And the Christians were saying, Jesus is Lord.

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I can't say, Jesus is Lord. He's the ruler of the kings of the earth today. Everybody must obey

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Jesus. Listen, let's take it or leave it. Let's believe it or not.

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But let's stop pretending. The authority of Jesus Christ in Scripture is above all. He is the

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One who is on the ultimate throne and every king must bow and yield to Him. That's the truth.

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And that is the fundamental proclamation of the Christian faith. Why do you call the average sinner on the street to repent and believe the

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Gospel? Why? Because Christ is the ruler of all. Everybody will have to give an account to Him.

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And that message cannot be taken away from the rulers of the earth. It must be given to them as well.

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As Pastor James said today in the Catechism, we have to bring that message of repentance and faith to everybody and we can't rob our rulers of the wisdom and salvation of God.

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Do you see it? Do you see it? These are the words of God. You see, listen.

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When you think about what the text says in Proverbs 8, it says again, verse 15,

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By me kings reign and rulers decree what is just. By me princes rule and nobles all who govern justly.

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When you think about that and you think about it in the context of today and what we largely believe, we pretend neutrality.

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The unbeliever pretends neutrality. They're not neutral and they show it at every turn. They want you to be neutral,

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Christian. That's the truth. It's a pretended neutrality, kind of. The reality is they want you to be neutral.

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They're not neutral. Have you noticed that the rulers today, the rulers today are not compromising.

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They want their law. They want their gods. They want their authority.

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And here's the deal. It is not a question. This has been said over and over again, but I want you to bury it in your hearts and your minds.

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It's not a question of whether we will have a God over our nation.

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But which God? It's not whether we will have law imposed or brought on a people.

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It's which law, whose law. When you think about one of the most glorious Christian doctrines, the area of theology of the immutability of God, immutability, that God is unchanging.

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He's unchanging. It's one of the things that should most satisfy your soul. Because daily when you fall, daily when you're a mess, daily when you sin, daily when you just fall apart and you're foolish and you're a terrible husband or you're a terrible wife or you're a terrible kid, you sin and you fail and by noon you're repentant.

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Like, what do you cling to? He said, God doesn't change. His promises are true.

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He's going to keep His commitments. He's not like me. He's not falling down. He's not inconsistent.

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He doesn't change. And if He's made a promise, He's going to keep that promise.

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It'll never fail. And you and I cling to that all the time, the immutability of God. He's unchanging.

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He'll never change. The same yesterday, today and forever. He's my anchor because He doesn't move.

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That's the truth. But you know what else is part of the immutability of God, the unchangeableness of God?

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His standards of righteousness and justice. Listen, it's the dichotomy today, right?

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It's a dichotomy. And you see where it's going. Years ago when I had the discussion, debate, with Andy Stanley on Unbelievable Radio Program where he wants to unhitch

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Christianity and all the rest wrapped up in that, you knew where it was going. If you have a man saying, unhitch the

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Bible, the Old Testament from the New Testament, if you're going to say that about God, about His own character and His own standards and throw it all away, then there's stuff that's going to happen down the road with your practice and your theology and we're all seeing it now.

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Are we not? Are we not? When you think about someone like Andy Stanley's practice today and the things he's accepting today with homosexuality and all these perversions, did we not see it coming?

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If you want to create that disjunction between the Old and New Testament, this is what you're left with.

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No. Scripture teaches very clearly that God is the God of justice. I say it every

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Lord's Day virtually. What do you hear me saying in the prayer? What do I say? We praise God. You are the God of justice.

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Your throne is established on what? Well, some of you are listening. Your throne is established on justice.

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You are the judge of all the earth. You will always do what? Right. She's listening.

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I'm saying that because that's the God that we worship and He's unchanging. He's still the just God and He still demands justice.

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Listen, if you want the premier example, the premier example that in the New Covenant era

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God is concerned with justice, look at that cross. That cross is the display that God is not just love.

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He's a God who is just and He demands justice. He demands it.

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In Scripture, we could do this for days, but I'll give you some verses if you want proof texts.

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Isaiah 1, verse 17. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression.

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Bring justice to the fatherless. Plead the widow's cause. That's Isaiah 1, one of our favorite sections here at Apologia where God rejects the worship of His people, of the covenant people, the people who profess to follow

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Yahweh. He says, I don't want it. It's a burden to me. I don't want your prayers. I don't want all the sacrifices.

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I don't want any of it. Your hands are full of blood. And so He says that. Learn to do good. Seek justice.

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Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless. Plead the widow's cause. Amos 5 .24.

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But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever -flowing stream.

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Micah 6 .8. He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the

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Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your

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God. Proverbs 21 .15, same book we're in now. When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.

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Psalm 33 .5. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the steadfast love of the

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Lord. Isaiah 61 .8. For I, the Lord, love justice.

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I hate robbery and wrong. Psalm 106 .3. Blessed are those, are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times.

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Leviticus 19 .15. You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

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Proverbs 21 .3. To do righteousness and justice... Listen. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the

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Lord than sacrifice. Righteousness and justice is more meaningful to God than all your giving, all your stuff, all your sacrifices.

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What He calls you and I to is righteousness and justice. Righteousness and justice. God is unchanging.

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Amen? And so the God of all the earth cares about justice and righteousness, and He says in His book of wisdom from above,

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He says, By Me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just.

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By Me princes rule, and nobles all who govern justly. God is still concerned with justice.

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What do you get? What do we get? When we abandon God's standards, when we abandon

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God's wisdom, when we turn away from His law, when wisdom is crying out of the city gate and the public square, and we put our fingers in our ears and close our eyes and start yelling to drown out the voice of God, what do we get?

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Well, just look at the last ten years. Take that as a sampling. How are we doing in our nation today since we've stopped bringing the

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Word of God to our rulers and to our kings and to our princes, to our magistrates?

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How are we doing in this nation that was once so founded upon Christian truth and the Gospel itself?

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How are we doing since we've taken wisdom and we've put her into a closed room and shut the door as the

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Christian church? How are we doing with Game Raj? How are we doing with the acceptance of all this wickedness, all this evil, all this perversion?

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How are we doing with the school board that is not hiring or will not hire anyone with a

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Christian college degree because their beliefs are harmful, can't get a job at a school if you went to a college that professes faith in Jesus and loves

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God's Word? That just happened this week, didn't it? Wasn't that this week? Was that Washington? Was that typical?

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How are we doing with taxation and the destruction of private property? How are we doing? I mean, we don't think about it and we're just under it now so we have to yield for the moment because we will not be prophetic as a church.

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How are we doing with the destruction of private property? We've talked about this before. You can't even own your land in our nation.

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You're always renting through what? Taxation. You can buy the dirt, you can buy the stuff with all of your money and it's all paid off and what are you doing for the rest of your life?

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What are you doing? You're paying the government what? Property taxes. And what happens if you say,

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I'm going to stop paying. What happens? You're going to lose everything that belongs to you.

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Why? Through coercive taxation we rob our neighbors of what belongs to them because we are a culture of covetousness.

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We want their stuff to be our stuff. We want to take from our neighbor and perpetrate injustice.

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If you look at a single dollar that you have in your pocket, how many times it's going to be taxed or it was taxed before it got into your pockets or you can store up all the wealth through all the hard work and blessing other people your whole life and when you die, our nation says today, the government says, we are the first born.

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The government's the first born in our nation through death taxes. It used to be in God's law, the family builds up the wealth, the family builds up the wealth, the father dies, the mother dies and that gets passed on to that next generation through the first born to bless the next generation to continue to establish more wealth, build more businesses, bless more lives, take away poverty.

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Now the government today, because we will not bring wisdom into the public square, says that belongs to me.

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I'll be the first born. Now, when you work, before you get your money, the government has already said, this half is mine.

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I'll take it. And we just accept it. And it's a recent innovation, also, if you didn't know that, it first started as, well this will help out war efforts and the financial situation that we have today.

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And now what do we have? Because we've taken wisdom out of the public square, God's standards for righteousness and justice.

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It went from, this is a voluntary tax situation, income taxes, to actually we kind of like this and now if you don't do it, you're going to go to jail and you're going to lose everything.

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And we're under it today. Why? Because we've taken wisdom, the wisdom of God, and the standards of justice of God, and we've put her into a corner and closed the door.

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We've said, stay silent, it doesn't go there. Scripture says, if you want a king to reign, if you want rulers to decree what is just, they must do it by me.

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What's the by me part? The wisdom of God. It seems today, because we hate

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God's wisdom, and we won't bring it to our kings and to our princes and to our rulers, it seems that we've actually adopted the unjust war theory.

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The unjust war theory. Did you know that in history, it was the Christian church that developed just war theory.

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It is a gift to the world. Just war theory. Using the word of God, they said you've got to take principles from God's law and God's wisdom to develop a just war theory about how and when and why you can go to war.

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But God's word is not the foundation of our nation anymore, and so now it's olly olly oxen free.

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It's unjust war theory. We can do what we want to who we want, how we want, when we want.

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And the people of the nation are no longer even ruling and telling the rulers what to do.

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They do what pleases them. Government becomes God. And when government becomes

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God, they are unjust every time. Always.

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How close are we as a nation? How close are we as a nation to war with China or Russia or some other nation?

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A war like we've never experienced before. This is not prophetic. I'm not telling you what's going to happen. I'm saying look how close.

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I remember growing up as an 80s baby, I remember very clearly that Cold War.

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I remember military police taking me back and forth to the bus stop on base to get back and forth because tensions were high between us and Russia, and so they were always just on the ready.

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But you know what people didn't do then? They didn't threaten nuclear weapons. It was a no -no word.

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You don't say it. You don't talk about it. You don't do it. And now it's being thrown out. Nuclear weapons, all the rest.

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And why? Because we don't have proper standards. We start trouble as a nation.

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We get involved in things that we have no right before God to get involved in, and we get ourselves in trouble.

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And listen, we are a nation ripe for the picking, ripe for judgment. What did John Calvin say?

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It's a wonderful thing that when God wants to judge a people, He gives to them wicked rulers.

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Oh, how right He was. Rulers that despise

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God to His face. That's where we're at today. We're at a place where we have a four -star officer, the depraved slob of a man, spilling out of a dress,

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Mr. Rachel Levine, the assistant health secretary, and one of USA Today's top women of the year.

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We are in a place because we won't speak with God's wisdom to our rulers. They're ruling as God, as a law to themselves, with Resident Biden's kleptomaniac, lipstick -wearing, bald, mustached man in a ball gown, pun intended, nuclear waste guru,

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Sam Brinton. That's what we've got. We're the laughingstock of the world.

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They see our military with men in dresses. They see a bald man with lipstick and a

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Hitler mustache wearing a dress in control of nuclear stuff in our nation.

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And we say, no, God's wisdom doesn't go there. His revelation doesn't go there. We say that, and we'll continue that at our peril.

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We must repent. We have to repent as Christians in terms of our shame over the wisdom of God and our lack of courage to bring the truth into the public square.

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And we need to repent as a nation and turn to Jesus Christ for salvation and forgiveness, or we are lost.

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We are lost. Just think about the blessings. It wasn't that long ago.

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It wasn't very long ago. I mean, time goes by so quickly. It was actually very shortly ago.

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I was watching a show last night with my son, Stella. We were watching a show where this guy goes out.

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He hates to travel, but he goes on all these traveling adventures, and he was in Venice. He was in Venice, and that place is just amazing and gorgeous, like a city floating on water.

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It's like, how'd they do that? How do they do that? It's crazy. It's beautiful and gorgeous. And he goes into this hotel, and in the hotel, they're showing him the room, and there's gold and laid stuff, and it's just gorgeous, and there's art and everything else.

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And the woman says to him, this dresser is from like, I think she said it was from like 1600 -something.

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The dresser was older than the United States of America. The dresser was older than the

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United States. We're in a hotel room. Like, that's how young our nation is. And it wasn't very long ago that our nation had the blessings, and they referred to it.

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They referred to it in the Federalist Papers and everything else. They referred to Lex Rex, that Christian doctrine that rulers and kings and princes were supposed to appeal to and yield to the transcendent law of God.

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That it was not the king is law, or the president is law, or the prince is law.

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It was that God's law is the transcendent ultimate, and you are to submit to God's law,

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Lex Rex. There would not be a United States of America.

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There would not be this experiment without Lex Rex, that pesky Christian doctrine of God's wisdom and truth being the ultimate.

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Lex Rex. Or how do you like the separation of powers? I love to watch leftists and atheists and unbelievers talk about things they know nothing about.

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When they talk about there's a separation of powers and division of powers and everything else, you watch me go, oh, that's nice. Where'd that come from?

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Where'd the separation of powers come from? It's almost like the people who started our nation said something like, men are not angels.

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And because men are not angels, a constitution is necessary. And because men are so sinful, you are not to ever trust an

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American. There must be a division of powers. Why? To check sinful people who want to be ultimate and God themselves.

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You must be able to check that power so you have these different parts of government to check out of control sinful rebels.

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It's almost like our nation was founded with an understanding of total depravity. The doctrine of separation of church and state.

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If you like the doctrine of the separation of church and state, thank a Calvinist. Thank a Christian. Because that doctrine of the separation of church and state was developed by the

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Christian church on the basis of the word of God. Isn't it interesting that today people love to talk about separation of church and state and they completely misinterpret it.

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They take it out of its historical context, right, and they forget that it was actually the Christian church that gave you that doctrine and they gave it to the kings and they said this.

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You must obey Jesus and you do your duty before Jesus over there.

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But we are the church and we're going to obey Jesus over here. We are two different spheres.

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You must never try to take control of the church and we can't as a church try to rule the state.

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Sound good? Sounds good. That's the doctrine of the church, separation of church and state, and we gave it to the world so you're welcome secularists.

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How about the blessings that were a part of this nation? And by the way, our nation is not the utopia.

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Our nation is not the kingdom of God. It is just one nation of different tribes who have come to Jesus because of the gospel.

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But let's think about all that we've lost and all that we barely have today. The blessings because we brought

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God's wisdom and standards of justice to our princes and kings and rulers of the freedom to preach the truth of the gospel in the public square.

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The freedom of speech is not something that Stalin was very fond of. Atheist leaders and rulers don't like the freedom of speech.

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Atheism doesn't give you freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Those are explicitly Christian doctrines.

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They come from the Christian church. So secularists, if you like your freedom of speech, thank a

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Christian. Freedom of the ability to defend yourself as a man, as a woman, as a child and to do it with a weapon.

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That came from the bible. We've done that here before. I won't reiterate it all now.

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But that doctrine of self -defense came from the Christian church. The ability to defend myself against an enemy and against an out of control government.

01:00:03

That's where it came from. Do you like no warrantless searches and seizures?

01:00:10

You can thank Moses for that one. Do you like not having to testify against yourself in court?

01:00:16

You can thank Moses for that one. Do you like having an evidence -based justice system?

01:00:22

You can thank scripture for that one. Do you like the case law system we have in the U .S. today? You can thank

01:00:28

Moses for that. Do you like cross -examination in court? Do you like the presumption of innocence?

01:00:34

And that you bring people in and you question the witnesses to challenge them on their evidence. You can thank a

01:00:39

Christian for that. That's because there was a time when you had leaders like John Jay, our first Supreme Court justice who believed that God's word was the standard and when he gave us the case law system of our nation, that ruler quoted explicitly from the

01:00:58

Torah. When he was giving case law, he would give a biblical reference next to it.

01:01:04

What happened to us? What happened to us? You have to say, look, let's take ownership. You have to say, first and foremost, let's start here, it starts with the pastors.

01:01:13

We're failures. The pulpit is failing. The pulpit failed this nation.

01:01:19

The New England pulpit that started the war of independence was a faithful pulpit that preached God's righteousness and his justice and that's why that happens.

01:01:28

You had faithful pulpits. The pulpit today is unfaithful and that's why there is unfaithfulness out there.

01:01:34

But that bleeds into the congregations. We're unfaithful. The Christian church is unfaithful.

01:01:40

We have to repent. We have to be bold. We have to speak God's truth to kings, princes, and rulers.

01:01:46

Amen? That is where the failure is. John Jay, the first supreme court justice,

01:01:57

October 12, 1816 said this, quote, Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our

01:02:13

Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.

01:02:21

National prosperity can neither be obtained nor preserved without the favor of Providence.

01:02:29

Don't you think it's strange or interesting that somebody who is so deeply connected to leadership in the

01:02:35

U .S., supreme court justice, first supreme court justice, John Jay, he used the words in 1816 as well as the privilege and interest of our

01:02:46

Christian nation. Isn't it strange that back then he was able to say our

01:02:53

Christian nation? Again, he's freely quoting Torah, the law of God, when he's giving case law examples and he's calling it our

01:03:02

Christian nation as a ruler and he's saying to people you need to actually elect

01:03:07

Christian leaders. Why? Because they'll obey God's wisdom. They'll obey God's law. You need to have a

01:03:13

Christian there. Just think about examples in history of where we've fallen with George Washington at the inauguration and it's been a tradition.

01:03:27

Today it's meaningless and that demon put his hand on the Bible in the last election and knows nothing of what he's doing.

01:03:33

When you put your hand on the Bible what are you saying? What are you saying? You're swearing an oath.

01:03:40

And that hand used to go on the Bible. Where did it go? Does anybody know where that hand went in the

01:03:45

Bible? Where was it? Anyone know? Deuteronomy. Very good. You must be related to Dr.

01:03:52

White. Deuteronomy. Where was it at in Deuteronomy? The blessings and cursings.

01:04:01

The hand goes on the blessings and cursings as a ruler to say what? I will uphold

01:04:08

God's law under the penalty of these curses. These are

01:04:14

God's standards. These are God's statutes. And so presidents had as a tradition to put their hand there and on that Bible to essentially swear to God to uphold

01:04:25

God's standards of justice. We've come a long, long way.

01:04:32

It's meaningless now. It's just a ritual now that means really nothing.

01:04:38

Queen Elizabeth at her coronation ceremony.

01:04:45

Think about how far away this was from us. Not very far. 2nd of June, 1953.

01:04:52

Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth who recently died. In the 2nd of June, 1953 she had a coronation ceremony and she was told to ask or answer questions.

01:05:06

She had to solemnly promise and give an oath. And one of the questions in the coronation ceremony to the queen was this.

01:05:17

The archbishop says this. Public, before the United Kingdom.

01:05:23

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God and the true profession of the gospel.

01:05:39

1953. The Queen of England had to swear before the people that she would uphold the law of God and the true profession of the gospel.

01:05:53

She said all this I promise to do. That's been the tradition.

01:06:00

And why? Where'd that come from? Did it just drop out of the sky in the 1950s? They decided just to do this coronation where you have to swear an oath to uphold

01:06:08

God's law and to preserve the gospel? No. The reason that took place is because it was assumed by Christians when you evangelize the culture and they turn to Jesus Christ that everybody small and great must obey

01:06:21

Jesus. And even the queen and the king must serve the king of kings and obey his law.

01:06:29

It's not foreign. It's a feature of the Christian faith. It's where the world is going.

01:06:35

Because listen, if the goal of the gospel is the nations, part of that goal is to teach the nations to obey.

01:06:44

And do you believe that in the Great Commission the goal is to get the nations but not the leaders in those nations?

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It's to bring the nation to God. All tribes, tongues, peoples, languages, everybody, small and great, kings and queens, and the little ones must obey

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Jesus. That was her coronation ceremony. We were in, we were in,

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I think when it happened we were in Northern Ireland, the UK, when the queen passed away.

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And if you guys remember you would see on TV the king coming in and he's swearing in now and he's giving his oath.

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And one of the things I may have mentioned this to you before, I was watching like some secular news things to try to get like,

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I wanted to watch it happen. And I remember some commentary that was being made in one of these channels when they were watching all this stuff going on there's all this talk about the gospel, all this talk about Jesus, all this talk about scripture.

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And these secularists who are watching this all take place were so twisted up and they were basically mocking it all.

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Saying this is just like the last vestiges of this old way of doing things. You know, there needs to be a discussion had about like, when are we going to finally remove this stuff?

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We're in the coronation ceremony, they swear an oath to uphold the law of God and the gospel itself.

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We've got to do away with that. It just sounds so strange to our ears. The question, the better question to ask is this, how did it get there in the first place?

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How did it get there in the first place? And the answer is it got there through faithful Christians who proclaimed

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God's wisdom in the public square. So this was the coronation oath that just took place through the

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Queen's son, King Charles III. Here's what he said. This was just last year.

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This is not ancient history. This was just last year. He had to give this oath. He said,

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I, Charles III, by the grace of God, of the

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United Kingdom, of Great Britain and of Northern Ireland and of my other realms and territories,

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King, defender of the faith, do faithfully promise and swear that I shall involubly maintain and preserve the settlement of the true

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Protestant religion as established by the laws of Scotland in prosecution of the claim of right and particularly an act instituted, an act of securing the

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Protestant religion and Presbyterian church government and by the acts passed in both kingdoms for the union of the two kingdoms together with the government, worship, discipline, rights and privileges of the

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Church of Scotland, so help me God. King Charles III. He just said that.

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Is it just a ritual? How did it take place? Where did that come from?

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Here's the reason. A faithful church proclaims the truth of God and the wisdom of God to everybody.

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There is no one that is outside of its borders. And so it has been the mission of the

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Christian church in history that when the gospel goes forth, it goes forth to transform the world.

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And we bring the gospel to a nation, the goal is that nation coming to Jesus to experience

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His peace, His salvation, and yes, His standards of justice and righteousness.

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They are gifts to the world. They were to be seen as gifts to the world. The promise of the

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Messiah was that He was going to establish justice on the earth, Isaiah 42, and He wouldn't grow faint or weary until He had done so.

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And so, one final thing to show you this very recently in history. Just before the

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Civil War in our nation, just before the Civil War in our nation, missionaries went with the gospel to the

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Hawaiian Islands. Missionaries, Christian missionaries, Reformed missionaries, went to Hawaii to preach the gospel and to win

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Hawaii to Jesus Christ. 1820, they went. And by 1840, they had over 90 % of the native

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Hawaiians professing faith in Jesus Christ. Hawaii was in 20 years now a

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Christian kingdom. 20 years of missionary work. And I want you to see, or hear, when the constitution of the

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Hawaiian kingdom was established and given after 20 years of missionary work, I want you to hear the words.

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Were the words of God for the rulers, the princes, and the kings in their minds? Obviously so.

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The Declaration of Rights, both of the people and the chiefs. God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the earth in unity and blessedness.

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God has also bestowed certain rights alike on all men and all chiefs and all people of all lands.

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There are some of the rights which He has given alike to every man and every chief of correct deportment.

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Life, limb, liberty, freedom from oppression, the earnings of His hands, and the production of His minds.

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Not, however, to those who act in violation of the laws. God has established government and rule for the purpose of peace.

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But in making laws for the nation, it is by no means proper to enact laws for the protection of the rulers only, without also providing protection for their subjects.

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Neither is it proper to enact laws to enrich the chiefs only, without regard to enriching their subjects also.

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Are you guys hearing some proverbial wisdom about partiality here? Laws for the kings, laws for the subjects, they must be the same.

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It almost sounds like they were reading the book of Proverbs where unequal weights and measures are at what?

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An abomination. Do you think Fidel Castro has a commitment to unequal weights and measures as an abomination?

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Do you think Hitler had a commitment to unequal weights and measures are an abomination? Or Stalin?

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Or Pol Pot? Or Mao? Or any of these tyrants in history, and yet the Hawaiian kingdom within 20 years of missionary work says this as they start their constitution.

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This is God's work. There must be equal justice for everybody.

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God's law blesses people. Now listen, this is my favorite part of it. You heard me say it before. It is our design to regulate our kingdom according to the above principles and thus seek the greatest prosperity both of all the chiefs and all the people of these

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Hawaiian islands. But we are aware that we cannot ourselves alone accomplish such an object.

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God must be our aid. For it is His province alone to give perfect protection and prosperity.

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Wherever we first present our supplication to Him that He will guide us to right measures and sustain us in our work.

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This is in the constitution of the Hawaiian kingdom. Did you know that? That shortly before the civil war the

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Hawaiian kingdom was saying this because of the work of Christian missionaries in their constitution.

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And here's where the next part is, my favorite. It is therefore our fixed decree one, that no law shall be enacted which is at variance with the word of the

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Lord Jehovah or at variance with the general spirit of His word all laws of the islands shall be in consistency with the general spirit of God's law.

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That's not a general theism. That's calling down the name of the biblical

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God. That is the Hawaiian kingdom saying our God is Jehovah. We will obey

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His laws. And none of our laws can contradict His laws. So what do you have there in the

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Hawaiian kingdom? You have a transcendent standard outside of the rulers and leaders that the rulers and leaders must be subject to.

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That's the wisdom of God. That's the wisdom of God. And if you want to know what happened to the

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Hawaiian kingdom you can hear the story of the tyranny of the United States of America that stole it from them.

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That's the truth. That's the truth. That was a Christian nation and somehow they believed that rulers needed to obey

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God's law and Jesus. So, the text says, By me kings reign and rulers decree what is just.

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By me princes rule and nobles all who govern justly. So we must repent. There's no other way.

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We have to turn. We have to have a change of mind. Our neighbors are being destroyed and God is being offended.

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Wisdom is being hidden and the Gospel isn't being proclaimed faithfully, loudly, at the city gates, in the public square, to everybody.

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We must repent of our disregard of God's wisdom. We have to repent as a people of our preventing wisdom from speaking in the public square.

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We have to repent of our shame, of our being ashamed of God's truth and God's wisdom.

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We're ashamed of it. We don't want to bring it because we're fearful of what people will think of us. And we must repent of our cowardice as a people.

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We love our lives so much we're too afraid to bring the truth. If you ever want to get a kick in the teeth, pick up a copy of Fox's book of martyrs and look at some of the giants in history and what they endured to love

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God and love their neighbor. One of the things that's very challenging and I will end on this point that is very challenging in the book of Revelation is that when it talks about people being cast into the lake of fire and you talk about people that are outside the kingdom of God, it says that there are cowards.

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Cowards. That cowardice is a sin for which you will experience eternal judgment.

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Cowardice. You know what's right to do and you refuse to do what's right.

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Cowardice is something that will be judged by God. And so brothers and sisters, when we consider this question of why will we hide wisdom from our rulers and leaders, we need to challenge our own hearts and minds and ask us, do we really believe these are the words of God?

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So do you believe it? Do you believe it? Do these words go to them as well?

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Then let's bring it to them. Let's pray. Father, I pray that your word would go out today and transform the world for your glory and kingdom.

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Thank you for your words that are a gift. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Now we come to the table of the