The Kingship of Jesus in America

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♪ Swerd abroad and bring the strangers home ♪

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We long to see thy churches full ♪

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That all the chosen praise ♪ May with one voice and heart and soul ♪

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Sing thy redeeming praise

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You may be seated. I had been fully intending to continue the series that we have begun on the subject of baptism when

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I began this week, and then Tuesday happened, and then

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Wednesday happened, and then Thursday happened. And by about that time,

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I came to the conclusion that while I might be able to get through a sermon on John's baptism and its significance and meaning and background and everything else,

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I just don't know how many people would still be listening to me after about five or 10 minutes. Not because we wouldn't have a lot of people who recognize that the truth about biblical baptism is still something that's important even in a day like today, but because we're human beings, and as human beings, we are living in a rapidly changing world, changing at a speed that is difficult for us to comprehend.

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And so I want, in the brief time that we have together, to consider, as you will see, with the longest titled sermon ever put on the bulletin,

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I guess, that's actually a Puritan thing to do, to have nice, long sermon titles, and in fact, it would be very good to have an entire subparagraph to be truly

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Puritan, but to consider how we can and how we must and how we are called to proclaim and live in the light of Christ's kingdom when surrounded by inveterate rebels.

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What is an inveterate rebel? It has nothing to do with a confederate rebel, but it does have to do with the worldview that is animating what we see around us.

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And unfortunately, as I see it, the vast majority of even conservative commentators do not recognize and interact with the centrality of worldview to what we're seeing going on in our nation and in cultures all around us.

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We, of all people, should be the first ones to recognize the centrality and importance, the presuppositional nature of the worldview clash that is going on around us, but if people, including those who are ostensibly on our side, quote -unquote politically, but not on our side, spiritually and worldview -wise, if they don't see it, well, there is defenseless as a...

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And those on the other side who are simply being dragged along to their own eternal destruction by secular worldview that robs them of all purpose, robs them of all fulfillment, and will rob them of eternal life, theirs is even a more woeful situation.

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And so we need to know what the scriptures say. We need to be encouraged as believers that in the midst of a time when there are many who are questioning how can an ancient book of writings written by multiple people in multiple languages over the course of 1 ,500 years, how can such a text be at all relevant in light of what we're facing today?

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There are many who are asking that question, and we have answers.

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We recognize that we would rather have that which has been preserved and unchanging for 1 ,500 years than that which will require version 2 .0

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by the fall. And yet that is what people are offering to us is a changing, changeable set of moralities and ethics.

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And they don't understand why we would say, no, thank you. Not interested, don't want it.

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We have brief time this evening, so I want to look, first of all, to the story of Daniel.

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Turn with me to Daniel chapter six. I want us to talk a little bit about the importance of making sure that idols know they're nothing but idols, but doing so with the proper attitude in our own hearts.

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What do I mean? Daniel chapter six, verse three, then this

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Daniel began distinguishing himself among commissioners and satraps because he possessed an extraordinary spirit and the king planned to appoint him over the entire kingdom.

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Then the commissioners and satraps began trying to find a ground of accusation against Daniel in regard to government affairs, but they could find no ground of accusation or evidence of corruption, as much as he was faithful and no negligence or corruption was to be found in him.

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Then these men said, we shall not find any ground of accusation against this Daniel unless we find it against him with regard to the law of his

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God. Then these commissioners and satraps came by agreement of the king and spoke to him as follows.

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King Darius lived forever. All the commissioners of the king, the prefects and the satraps, the high officials and the governors have consulted together with the king, should establish a statute and enforce an injunction that anyone who makes a petition to any

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God or man besides you, O king, for 30 days shall be cast into the lion's den.

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Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the document so that it may not be changed according to the law of the

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Medes and Persians, which may not be revoked. Therefore, King Darius signed the document, that is the injunction.

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Now, when Daniel knew that the document was signed, please note that, he entered his house.

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Now in his roof chamber, he had windows open toward Jerusalem and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying, giving thanks before his

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God as he had been doing previously. Then these men came by agreement and found

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Daniel making petition and supplication before his God. Then they approached and spoke before the king about the king's injunction.

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Did you not sign an injunction that any man who makes a petition to any God or man besides you, O king, for 30 days is to be cast into the lion's den?

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The king answered and said, the statement is true according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which may not be revoked. Then they answered and spoke before the king,

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Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or to the injunction which you signed, but keeps making his petition three times a day.

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Then as soon as the king heard this statement, he was deeply distressed and set his mind on delivering Daniel. And even until sunset, he kept exerting himself to rescue him.

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Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, recognize, O king, that it is a law of the

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Medes and the Persians that no injunction or statute which the king establishes may be changed.

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Now, you know the rest of the story. This is the prelude to Daniel being cast into the lion's den.

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And you know, all of us, especially if you grew up in the church, I'm so old,

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I saw this story on something called flannelgraph. If you don't know what that is, consult encyclopedias, museums, things like that.

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They will tell you what flannelgraph was, but I saw Daniel into the lion's den on the flannelgraph more than once.

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And I remember that to this very day. So we know that God delivers

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Daniel. We understand the demonstration, numerous demonstrations in the book of Daniel of the supremacy of Yahweh over the gods of the nations.

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But I want us to consider this previous section because of what it tells us about Daniel and about mankind.

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Because what we have here is politics. We have concern on the part of certain of these commissioners and satraps.

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They can see that Daniel has a, there's something special about Daniel. And Daniel isn't serving himself, he's actually serving the king, but he does so with consistency and morality and brilliance and insight that they don't have.

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And so they collude together. You want collusion? This is the, the

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Mead and Persian collusion, not the Russian collusion or the Chinese collusion. This is the earlier form of collusion.

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They're gonna, they try to find some reason to accuse him. They're gonna get together, they're gonna use their numbers, but then they realize that's not gonna work.

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And so notice what they say. We're not gonna find anything in him unless we find it against him with regard to the law of his

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God. There is something about the way that Daniel lived, something about the way that he made decisions, how he carried out his life, even with great authority.

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Reminds us a little bit of Joseph, doesn't it? There was something about Daniel, and they recognized that he was faithful to the law of his

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God, not their God. There doesn't even seem to be any thought in their mind, well, our

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God is greater than his God, so we should pray to our God to defeat his. They don't even think along those lines. They're politicians, gods are things to be used.

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And they're afraid of this one who has a higher authority than anything they have.

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So we need to find something about the law of his God. So let's go to the king and let's use his pride.

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Oh, that's always highly effective. Always highly effective, people with power.

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Let's appeal to his pride and to his arrogance. And let's get him to make this absurd decree.

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But it's a decree that is based upon the idea that he is now the greatest ruler there is.

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And so people will show their fidelity to him by for 30 days, and it's only 30 days.

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I mean, 30 days to flatten the curve, right? It's only 30 days.

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You can get people to do anything for a brief period of time, right? So 30 days, you need to stop praying to whatever gods you've got, and the ultimate authority, the ultimate object of your prayers needs to be the government.

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It's only 30 days. You'll get to go back to worshiping your God at the end of 30 days. Come on,

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Romans 13. Go ahead, think that one through a second. A little bit of an anachronism there.

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And so they know enough about Daniel's, the law of Daniel's God, what

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Daniel's gonna do, what Daniel will be forced to do. And so it is interesting to me that verse 10 says, now when

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Daniel knew that the document was signed, I mean, the king was thinking about making him, putting him in charge of everything, just like Joseph.

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And so he knows all about this. He's not stupid. He knows what the content of the document is.

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He did not try to start a riot to stop the signing of the document, did he? Nope.

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He knew when the document was signed and he entered his house and he has his windows open toward Jerusalem because he's an exile and that's where God's temple was, would be again.

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And he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his

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God as he had been doing previously. There is something massively powerful in the fact that Daniel did not make a show of something that he hadn't always been doing anyways.

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The world knows when we start play acting. The world knows when we start doing something that we weren't doing before, but now we're gonna do it to sort of prove a point.

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Daniel had been doing this all along, but Daniel would not hide his dedication to his

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God. The attitude that he has is the right attitude.

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It's consistency. He had been consistent before. He remained being consistent and he refused to hide.

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He needed to be open and honest about who he was, though he knew what the result of that would be.

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Daniel knew what these guys were up to and he knew the laws, the

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Medes and Persians could not be changed. And so he knew something was coming, but he did not close his windows.

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He did not retreat into silence. Any testimony that we bear against the idolatry that poses as government better come from the consistent application of our principles and life.

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It can't be a show. It can't be, I'm just gonna stick my finger in somebody's eye because I feel like it.

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It can never be something that draws out the sinful nature within us.

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It has to be based upon consistent application of the principles we've always lived by to begin with.

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And this Daniel does. And God delivers him in a fantastic way.

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And just as Nebuchadnezzar learned his lesson, so the king learns his lesson here.

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But what we see in Daniel is consistency and an unwillingness to compromise when the government made a decree that is only worthy of God.

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Now, I wish it was always really easy and simple. For us to be able to identify exactly when the government does this.

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We'll talk about what happened in the Roman Empire in a few moments. But in this instance, it was clear.

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And when Daniel is convicted as to what he has to do, he knowingly obeys

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God and trusts the rest to his

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God. Let's turn to the book of Revelation, chapter two.

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Revelation chapter two. The letters to the seven churches, some of the richest material

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I think we have in the New Testament, especially as it comes from the very lips of the risen

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Lord. Ever thought about that? These are words that come from the one who defeated death.

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Who had died upon the cross and is risen the third day. And is now glorious at the right hand of the

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Father. And yet these letters tell us that he is intimately aware of everything going on within his church.

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We talk about Christ being with us. Here's an example of it. He knows what's going on here and in every one of his bodies, every one of his assemblies around this world today.

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But I want you to notice, just not gonna even try to exegete any of the texts,

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I just want to point some things out to you. In Revelation chapter two, verse eight, you have the beginning of the letter to the church at Smyrna.

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To the angel of the church at Smyrna write, the first and the last who is dead and has come to life says this, I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich.

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And the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer.

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Behold the devil is about to cast some of you into prison that you may be tested and you will have tribulation 10 days.

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Be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.

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He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. And then in the letter to Pergamum, notice what it said there.

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And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write, the one who has the sharp two -edged sword says this, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast my name and did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you where Satan dwells.

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So here we have two letters. In one, martyrdom has already taken place.

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Someone named Antipas, Antipas, the faithful witness, the faithful martyr who was killed among them, probably in their presence.

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And yet they held fast to the name of Christ and did not deny his faith. This is the commendation of the church at Pergamum.

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And then the church at Smyrna, you have a form of prophecy on the part of the

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Lord Jesus. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Do not fear what you are about to suffer.

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Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison that you may be tested and you will have tribulation 10 days, be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.

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Do you notice something? The devil is about to cast you into prison, but the devil is not doing anything that Jesus isn't in full control of.

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Do you see that? This isn't Jesus going, the devil's about to cast you into prison.

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I'd like to stop him, but you know, free will. You know,

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I mean, we're doing the best we can. And I'll try to make the best come out of it at the end.

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You can't even begin to understand these letters if you have that idea of what's going on in the world.

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No, but God uses means. And the devil will cast some of you into prison that you may be tested.

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That's not the devil's purpose. He doesn't want them tested and tried and refined and made even more like Jesus.

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That you may be tested, but notice, you will have tribulation 10 days.

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Now that probably in the book of Revelation does not mean 10 literal 24 hour periods.

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It might, but in all probability, given how Revelation works, this is a complete period of time.

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But the point is it's limited. It's limited. God has set a limit.

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The devil does not have power to cast into prison and to cause tribulation beyond the time period that God in his sovereignty establishes.

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Are you with me? Do you hear me? Am I speaking to some fearful hearts?

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Do you hear what the promise of scripture is? It's not that you will avoid tribulation.

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It's not that you will not go through difficulty. It's not that we will not experience arrests, but it's all under the control of the sovereign

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God. And he sets the limitations. Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Christians over the past 2000 years have found such great strength and consolation in knowing these truths?

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You are not alone. We are not the first people to face something like this. You will have tribulation.

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Be faithful unto death. We were mocked a little over a year ago for having that on our membership certificates.

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Have you seen that? You remember your membership certificates? Be faithful unto death. Well, I think quoting

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Jesus, probably a good idea in a Christian church, not a bad thing to do. Be faithful unto death.

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No compromise. No compromise. Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.

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This physical life that we have is transient and short.

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We know the source of eternal life. And the one making this promise that I will give you the crown of life is himself the one who rose from the dead.

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You can trust him. He is the only one you should ever trust when he says,

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I will give you life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the

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Spirit says to the churches. There are many in our day who do not have an ear to hear what the

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Spirit is saying to the churches. And sadly, there are many people that maybe at times in our own lives, we have been blessed by their ministry and yet now it becomes evident they're not listening to what the

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Spirit is saying to the churches. Stay firm. The number of different voices, the number of people calling for compromise will be great.

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We cannot listen to them if we want the crown of life.

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He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. That's the only death we have to fear.

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The one who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. These are biblical promises, biblical concepts.

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Now, you are aware that in the early church,

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I've mentioned it to you before, so I'll be brief. In the first centuries, the

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Roman Empire demanded that believers, that all Romans, basically sort of do what the

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Medes and the Persians wanted, and that is to recognize the ultimate supremacy of the state.

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You can have your religion, you can worship your gods, but once a year you need to come and you need to take a pinch of incense, an offering, and place it on the altar, burning coals.

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It'd flame up, and the scent would be smelled. And you were to say,

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Kaiser curia, Caesar is Lord. You can say all sorts of other people are

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Lord too, but you had to say, Caesar is Lord. And as you know, many a

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Christian died gruesome deaths. We will not know their names until eternity.

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For the vast majority, we know a few, we know Antipas from Revelation chapter two. We have a few other names from periods in the early church, the great tribulation took place in Lyon around 180.

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Some of the faithful women martyrs who died at that time.

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We know about Ignatius, we know about Polycarp, but most we have no knowledge of, and they were faithful unto death, and we will not know them until someday, in that great day, when that entire body is gathered together.

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We will know who had that calling. But as you know, after 313

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AD, after the conversion of Constantine, the church was given peace, and by the end of that century, allegedly the entire empire is proclaimed to be a

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Christian empire. Now we do not have time to unpack what all that meant, and what it has meant to this very day.

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But one thing that did happen was, this was already, Rome was already on the decline.

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The decline had begun really back in the first and second centuries. But things didn't go as fast back then as they do now, partly because of communication.

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And remember, Rome had sort of taken over on the back of what Alexander the Great had done in the huge expansion of the

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Greek empire. And Rome had defeated all of its enemies.

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And sometimes they would just stop to defeat somebody just because, well, we're Romans and that's what we do. I think of Masada in Israel that I visited a couple years ago.

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Incredible story of the 900 Jewish zealots who perished on the top of that amazing structure.

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The Romans could have just marched home, they didn't need to do that, but they're Romans, this is fun. That's the whole mindset of being a

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Roman. There's nothing we can't do. And so as Rome is declining, there's a lot of people coming up with reasons why this is, and one of the favorite scapegoats was it's these

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Christians. The ancestral gods are abandoning us, and these Christians, they are so close -minded.

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They are so hateful. They say their God is the only God, and this

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Jesus is the only way. And because they are so, they're filling our heads with hate speech.

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They even called them atheists because they said there were no gods but theirs.

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And so you had opposition all along.

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And as the empire continues to shrink, and there's more and more fractures, and people can tell, you know, things aren't as good as they used to be.

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They're always looking for someone to blame. And then came one of the greatest days in ancient history.

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Which I would imagine most of us in this room don't know much about. August 24th, 410

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AD. August 24th, 410 AD. Put that phone away,

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Elliot. I can just see it. I'm Googling this one. I'm gonna know what it is before it gets there.

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August 24th, 410 AD, Alaric the Visigoth. That is not a rock band.

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Alaric the Visigoth enters the city of Rome. He has allies inside the city.

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He has had allies inside the city for a long time. It's very interesting. Almost no great nation or empire ever falls from the outside without help from the inside.

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And as I look around today, as I look at, as I listen to the words of John Adams who very clearly said that the

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Constitution is specifically designed for the governance of a religious and a moral people.

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It is not able to function in that way for any other kind of people. I look around and go, yeah, it's happened again.

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People inside willingly wanting to destroy the system to build something new. That's what happened.

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They opened the doors and for the first time in 800 years, a foreign army walked on the streets of Rome.

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Now it wasn't like they then destroyed the city. They burned a few buildings,

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I guess Visigoths, that's the sort of something they do. Probably would have felt very disappointed if they hadn't gotten to burn a few things.

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Took a little plunder, but generally left things as they were. They were there for three days, got tired of the food and left.

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The fall, the sack of Rome had a massive, huge impact upon everyone in the empire.

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Because the one thing they had become accustomed to was at least the remnants or at least the idea of the

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Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. Rome was called the eternal city.

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Nothing could ever happen there. And if something can happen in Rome, then there's no certainty for anything in the future.

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We're done. It's all over. And once again, many people raised the objection.

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It's because of those Christians. It's because of the mistakes that have been made.

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See, it had only been a few decades earlier that Theodosius had declared the

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Roman empire a Christian empire. And see, see, this prompted the production of one of the most amazing pieces of Christian literature ever written.

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As I said, it's about 800 pages long in printed form in English. Augustine, the

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Bishop of Hippo in North Africa wrote one of his most influential books,

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The City of God. Most of us do not realize how deeply we have been influenced by The City of God. Our very understanding of time is pretty much based upon what

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Augustine presented in The City of God. Unlike the Greek historians that saw things going in cycles

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Augustine viewed history as having a start, a middle, and an end. It has a purpose.

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You're going a particular direction. Most of us have always thought that way. That's how we were taught.

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That has not been the majority view of the human race until this time period.

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It is certainly what we find in Scripture. I want to read you just a few quotes from Augustine's book.

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We saw the one in the bulletin. Let me give you a few others.

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So it falls out that in this world, in evil days like these, the church walks onward like a wayfarer stricken by the world's hostility, but comforted by the mercy of God.

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Nor does this state of affairs date only from the days of Christ and his apostles' presence on earth.

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It was never any different from the days when the first just man able was slain by his ungodly brother.

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So shall it be until this world is no more. The earthly city has made for herself, according to her heart's desire, false gods out of any sources at all, even out of human beings, that she might adore them with sacrifices.

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The heavenly one, the heavenly city, and that's his contrast all the way through. The earthly city, Rome, any form of government here that we have versus the heavenly city.

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The heavenly one, on the other hand, living like a wayfarer in this world makes no false gods for herself.

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On the contrary, she herself is made by the true God that she may be herself a true sacrifice to him.

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Vast difference, vast difference in the thinking of those who follow the way of Christ.

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Indeed, the only cause of their, Rome's, perishing was that they chose for their protectors gods condemned to perish.

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Think about that. Every nation has a God. Every nation has gods.

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Every nation. The scriptures recognize this. Blessed is the nation who's what? God is

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Yahweh. Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh. That's a blessing upon a people.

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The good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills.

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But the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.

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Think about that. What has been my message over and over and over again?

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The only power this world has against us is the power we give it through our love of the things of this world.

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If we do not love the things of this world, the world will have no power over us whatsoever.

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The good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills, because those aren't the things we love.

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But the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.

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For no wisdom is true wisdom if it does not direct all its prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice towards that final state where God shall be all in all in an assured eternity and perfect peace.

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We now live surrounded by a society that does not believe there'll ever be a day of judgment.

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And hence that there will ever be a day of perfect peace because there is no God who says it is finished.

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I have now accomplished my intentions. We live surrounded by people who are convinced that if justice is gonna be done, they're not sure why justice needs to be done.

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They can't explain why Stardust needs to have justice in the first place. But if justice is gonna be done, it has to be done in this life now with whatever tools we have available to ourselves.

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Because there can be no cosmic justice. There will be no day of judgment. That leads to abject unhappiness.

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Abject unhappiness. The whole of history, since the ascension of Jesus into heaven, is concerned with one work only, the building and perfecting of this city of God, Augustine said.

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Whole of history. That's a radical statement. It was a radical statement back then.

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It's a radical statement now. The people around us do not believe there is a purpose of history.

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They do not believe that history is going a particular direction. They do not believe that there is a decree that is establishing the meaningfulness of everything in time.

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You and I do, and we must not only be firm in our convictions on that, but we must start living out those convictions in all of life.

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We have had much time of peace and blessing and prosperity, but that doesn't force us to be consistent in application.

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The whole of history, since the ascension of Jesus into heaven, is concerned with one work only, the building and perfecting of this city of God, and that's what we're a part of.

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Right here, right now. Not just in heaven someday. But we recognize, we recognize the purposefulness of time.

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Our God is a God of purpose. Let me read you one very important quotation.

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In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for themselves as for human affairs, but the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness, while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity.

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For to the just, all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue.

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Let me read that again. For to the just, all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue.

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Therefore, the good man, although he is a slave, is free.

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But the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave. And that not of one man, but what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices.

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Of which vices, when the divine scripture treats, it says, for of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond slave.

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You hear what he's saying? Saying even when you have evil men with power and they reign over others, they are the ones who are enslaved.

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And when a just man is mistreated and abused and enslaved by the unjust man, he's the one who's free.

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Because as it says, that would require that we be being punished for our iniquities.

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But since it's not a punishment of crime, it's simply a test of virtue. This is why

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Cyprian could write to those Christians in the mines, who were enslaved, who were dying, starving, mistreated, beaten, and talk about the glory that was theirs.

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Those wooden shackles on your ankles represent the wood of the blood of the cross of Jesus.

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The nails that hold them together, the nails that held him to the cross, see in everything

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God's purpose is being fulfilled. From the world's perspective, that's foolishness.

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But from God's perspective, that's how he makes us like Jesus. That's how he makes us like Jesus.

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What does the future hold? I don't know. I am not a prophet nor a son of a prophet, as has often been said.

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But I do know this, just in this past week or so, we have seen our tribe increase, little

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William Joseph and Tobias Ulysses. Good luck finding anything at a gift shop with Tobias Ulysses on it.

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That's gonna, that ain't gonna happen. And then I just so enjoyed,

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I hope you all saw on Facebook. We still have Facebook. I think we're still on Facebook for now. Probably not for a long time.

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But I truly enjoyed the gender reveal I saw this morning for another poor little boy who will never find his name on anything in a gift shop,

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Boaz, who has not yet arrived, but is planning on making that arrival in the future.

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We have all these little children. We're looking forward to our own little one in our family.

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And that's pretty much normative for Apologia. That's pretty much how we do things around here.

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And all of us in our more serious moments, when we're not distracted by the things of the world, are thinking about what kind of a world are these little ones going to be living in?

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If you're as old as I am, you simply have to honestly say, we've had it easy.

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We've had it easy. We've had freedoms like nobody's business.

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And we have to ask ourselves the question, in light of these little ones coming and all the little ones who are here right now, what kind of a foundation are we gonna provide to them to be able to stand firm, to stand fast in the midst of a flood of rebellion against God?

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Will we instruct them so that they can understand that there can be no true peace or happiness or fulfillment in what the world has to offer?

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Will they come to understand that just because the majority of people scream loudly that such and such is true, that's not what makes it true?

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Will we teach them to stand firm in the light that flows from the empty tomb of Jesus, to remember that he is the one who has authority over all things, that anyone who believes we are nothing but aggregates of stardust has anything meaningful to say to us concerning anything that will have application after the last beat of this muscle right here?

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Can we communicate to them, help them to understand the value, the riches to be found in the

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Christian faith and how empty and shallow and meaningless the wisdom of the world truly is?

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Are we willing to give ourselves as examples for them to give up the things of this world, to be mistreated?

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Or will we look at Daniel and say, Daniel, he was just a little extreme.

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He shouldn't have done that. He was trying to get himself into trouble.

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And that Antipas guy, there was probably a way he could have worked things out, don't you think?

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Without resulting in his own death? I mean, just think of the impact that had upon his local church.

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There will be many voices, they're already out there telling us that it's okay to offer just a little pinch of incense.

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You can say Kaiser Kurios in one part of your life and Jesus Kurios, Jesus is

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Lord, in the other part of your life. The scriptures and the testimony of those who come before us say no.

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And so as we look to the next few weeks where in all probability there will be a flood of evil, you might say, what kind of a flood of evil?

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The Equality Act that Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris have made a central part of their legislative plan now that they control both houses of Congress is a direct

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Moloch -inspired rebellion against the

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God who gave this nation every blessing it has ever possessed. It is rebellion, it is evil on a level that's difficult for me to even begin to explain behind a pulpit.

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And it will be passed with such rapidity that most of us will be left gasping for air.

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And you and I will experience frustration and anger because we know what it's gonna mean, not just for our young ones, but for those all around us.

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And we have hearts made of flesh, and so we mourn at the lies that will be broken and destroyed by this evil.

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The temptation will be to not remain faithful, but to take things into our own hands, to lash out.

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What we need to do is to be quick, to recognize that every single person with whom we are speaking is made in the image of God.

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Get up in the morning and pray, God, if I'm gonna speak to people in this world, prepare their hearts even now so when

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I bring your word to bear, you by your Spirit will bring conviction in their hearts that they're not just stardust, they are your creatures and they're responsible to you and that you give meaning and purpose.

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Are we prepared? Are we ready for that? None of us have ever experienced this.

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Luke seems to think that I have because I've experienced everything that's happened in church history, but I can assure

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Luke and everyone else, that's not the case. I'm not gonna stand here and say that me and Jeff and Luke and Zach, we've been sitting around and we've got it all figured out.

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Have you all done that while I was preaching? Jeff, have you all got it? There you go, see?

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Never trust a man with a beard that long. We've not gone through this.

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We need your prayers for wisdom and insight, restraint because so much of this makes us so angry.

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Oh, the hypocrisy. You need to understand something, folks. The secular worldview considers hypocrisy in its own promotion to be a virtue.

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Do you hear me? The secular worldview views hypocrisy as long as it promotes its own worldview to be a virtue, not a vice.

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So don't expect even scales. It's not gonna happen. And that angers us.

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Our anger can never be our motivation. Man's anger does not accomplish

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God's purposes. We have to pray for self -control. We have to pray for humility.

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At the same time, we're praying for strength and courage. Pray for your pastors.

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Pray for every faithful church. Pray for Joseph Booth's church up in Canada. Pray for the brothers up there who are already being charged by the

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Canadian government for having met at church, even though they followed all the rules who are still being charged.

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Pray that God would restrain the madness. And then all of it, we would be salt and light.

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Salt and light. Oh, we've used that phrase so many times. But in the midst of darkness, light is a great gift.

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We live in a city, it's never dark here. It isn't.

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There's such a glow from the sky. You finally get out to where it's really dark and you realize what a blessing light is.

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We are called light. We're also called salt. That doesn't mean that we raise the world's blood pressure, though that's true.

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I don't think that's what Jesus meant. Salt was a preservative.

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Salt slowed decay. And so if we find ourselves in a situation where God's judgment comes full fury against a nation that has sinned so grievously and has blood dripping from its hands, if that's what we're called to serve in, then

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God, use us, glorify yourself and use us.

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May all of our stuff and our things rot, but use us at this time to proclaim the name of Jesus.

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He was King of Kings and Lord of Lords when he wrote to the churches in Revelation. He was

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King of Kings and Lord of Lords when a lark sacked Rome. He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords today.

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He always will be. That is our message to the world. God, make us ready to proclaim it with our lives if need be.

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Let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, you are indeed the

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King of Kings. You sit upon the throne of the universe. You hold all things in your hand.

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You uphold it all by your power. We cannot begin to conceive of your majesty and your greatness.

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And yet you have condescended to have dealings with us. Indeed, to glorify yourself through what you do in your church.

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It is amazing to us. And Lord, we as your people, we come before you at this time in our history and we need your wisdom, we need your strength, we need your guidance.

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Lord, we want to be used of you to be salt and light, to proclaim the name of Jesus, to be as Antipas was, that faithful witness.

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Make our deepest and strongest desire to be faithful until death.

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Make us desire that crown of life more than anything this world has to offer.

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God, show us our idols, cleanse us, make us to be a people who truly proclaim the glories of our

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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in his name that we pray, amen. We already know the privilege that is ours in partaking of the supper together.