Confront Evil (Luke 11:29-54, Jeff Kliewer)

Cornerstone Church

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Hallelujah, God, all we have is Christ and Christ is sufficient.

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Thank you, Jesus, that your blood has covered our sin, washed us clean and made us new.

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Thank you that you've taken away our sin and given us a new birth. Thank you,

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Father, for providing your son and with him all things that we need for life and godliness.

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Thank you, God, for your word to us this morning, and I pray by a supernatural working of your

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Holy Spirit that we would know and understand your word. Lord, we know that in our flesh, our eyes have scales on them so we can't see and our ears are plugged up.

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We don't have a spiritual capacity. We're dead in Adam. And yet by your spirit, you bring life and your words are life and your words are truth.

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So Lord, awaken us this morning to your truth. Correct us and train us in righteousness. Thank you,

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Lord, for your word. Speak to us this morning. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Many of you are familiar with the story of David and Bathsheba.

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Of course, David had gone up to his rooftop and at a time when the king should have been at war with the troops, he instead was at home and he noticed

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Bathsheba bathing and committed adultery. And in order to cover up that sin, he called

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Uriah the Hittite, who was the husband of Bathsheba, and gave him instructions to go home.

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He wouldn't go home. Finally, he sent Uriah the Hittite off to war and put him at the most intense place of the fighting, intentionally causing him to be killed.

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So not only does David the king commit adultery, but he also sends

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Uriah to his death and murders him effectively by the sword of the enemy. Well, at the end of 2

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Samuel 11, verse 25, after this atrocious thing, Joab, the commander of the army, sends word to David saying,

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Uriah was killed in the fighting. Of course, we know that that was David's plan, that Uriah be killed in the fighting.

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And so his response is this, do not let this thing be evil in your sight.

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He tells Joab, don't be displeased that Uriah fell at battle. One falls in battle because that's how the sword devours.

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It's just something that happens with battle. Don't let it get you down. But the question remains, who gets to call evil, evil?

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God or David? David said, do not let this thing be evil in your sight,

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Joab. Two verses later, God says this, or tells us in his word, verse 27, but the thing that David had done was evil in God's sight.

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God was displeased. The thing was evil. And the question arises.

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First of all, who gets to call evil, evil and good, good? The answer is that God alone tells us what's good and evil.

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But the next question is, what do we do about evil in this world? Confront it or acquiesce to it?

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You know the story, don't you? God raises up Nathan, a prophet to go to David and tell him a little parable about a man who stole someone else's sheep.

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And David is outraged that someone would steal someone's one and only sheep, it was like a pet to that guy.

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And David is just really worked up and says, I will have this man thrown in jail or worse. Until Nathan turns to David and says, you are that man.

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Nathan the prophet confronted the evil of David the king. Took a lot of courage to do that.

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But he very well could have lost his head for confronting the king of Israel. And yet he had the courage to stand up and confront evil.

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A great example for us. Another one who confronted evil was John the Baptist. John the

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Baptist was baptizing people in the Jordan. But he also heard about the king of Israel at the time who was under Roman rule.

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That king of course was Herod. And Herod had been sleeping with Herodias, his brother's wife, and was guilty of this.

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And John the Baptist publicly confronted Herod and said, the thing that you do is evil.

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As a result, Herod, unlike David, had John's head cut off for that.

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Threw him in prison and then at the prompting of his wife, beheaded him. And so we see evil needs to be confronted.

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But it takes great courage to do that. If you want to read about David's repentance when he had been confronted, we find that in Psalm 51.

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But evil sometimes bites back. So it takes courage to confront evil.

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You know, there's a teaching this morning. I want us to talk about how do we confront evil. But I want to begin by offering a warning.

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Because I think sometimes some of us are prone to be, I guess

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I'll say, excited by conflict. We enjoy a little bit of conflict. Look at the ratings on some of the fighting shows that you'll see.

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Or even reality TV, which is basically, you know, people fighting over who knows what. People enjoy and are entertained by conflict.

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And I'll confess sometimes I'm that way too. I like to see a good battle, you know, watching something on TV.

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You want to see some drama, some conflict. But in the Christian world, we shouldn't be that way.

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We should not be people who are interested in quarreling. It says, the warning in 1

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Timothy 6, verse 4, is not to take an unhealthy interest in quarrels. So often we err in that way.

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But this morning, I want to look at the error in the opposite direction. Sometimes we have an unhealthy interest in conflict.

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But other times, we ignore evil. And we tolerate evil.

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And we refuse to stand up and confront things that need to be confronted. There is an ungodly tolerance of evil.

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In Ezekiel chapter 33, Israel had watchmen that kept lookout for invading armies.

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And we're told in Ezekiel 33, 6, that if a watchman sees an army approaching and fails to ring the bell and notify the city, the bloodshed that comes from that is on the watchman's hands.

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But if he rings the bell and warns the city and people refuse to respond to it, and they don't come and defend themselves, then that blood is on their own hands.

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The watchman has a responsibility to warn people of a coming evil, of a coming danger.

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If he doesn't do that, he's negligent in his duty. Brothers and sisters, very often, as the church, we have dropped the ball in confronting evil, myself included.

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There are things that need to be confronted, boldly and strongly. And I think we have a picture of Jesus, which is mostly painted by the media, of who the media wants

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Jesus to be, that is rather soft and even weak with regard to evil.

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Because he teaches that we turn the other cheek. And in conflict, we should be forgiving and be willing to forgive 70 times 7.

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And yet, there is a place for confronting evil. And in our text today, Luke chapter 11, verse 29 and following, we will see a picture of Jesus that's very different than what the world wants him to be.

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We see a strong Jesus. You know, often when you see pictures of Jesus, he almost looks effeminate in some of the pictures, doesn't he?

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With long flowing hair and a real tender face, holding a lamb. It looks like he could never harm anyone.

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But the Jesus we see here is quite a different picture. And guys, this is why we constantly go to the scriptures.

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This is why preaching is important. Because every time we go to the scriptures, that pericope, that portion of scripture that we study, corrects our understanding from some misconception or some undeveloped assumption.

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And corrects us back to the norm. It's the standard that conforms us to the image of Christ.

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The Christ that we see in this passage is the Christ that we need to be like.

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We are being conformed into the image of Christ. And part of that means we need to grow to the point where we confront evil.

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We stand up to evil. It's encouraging to see how this happens. So let's follow along.

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In Luke 11, there's three ways that Jesus confronts evil. And three different kinds of evil that he's dealing with.

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And each one escalates higher than the other, deserving a stronger response from Jesus.

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So follow this. Luke 11. Turn with me if you have your Bible. If not, find it on your smartphone. We're using the

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ESV. And it begins in Luke 11, 29. And I'll read to 36.

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We'll make comments. When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, This generation is an evil generation.

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It seeks for a sign. But no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the son of man be to this generation.

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The queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

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But behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.

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For they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

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No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand. So that those who enter may see the light.

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Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light.

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But when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore, be careful, lest the light in you be darkness.

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If then your whole body is full of light, having no part of dark, no part dark, it will be wholly bright.

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As when a lamp with its rays gives you light. In this section, the evil that Jesus confronts is the evil that's inside of all people.

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It's resident evil. It's evil that's part of every person who descends from Adam and Eve.

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Notice in verse 29, he began to say this generation is an evil generation.

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He lumps all of those living at that time together as one with one problem.

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The problem is that they are evil. Now, we don't like to think of mankind, humankind as being evil, do we?

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We like to think that people have generally good motives, good hearts. And if they do wrong, that's the aberration.

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But the biblical presentation is exactly the opposite. The Bible presents mankind as desperately evil because we descend from Adam.

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And yet we don't see desperate evil and all the outworkings of evil in our day -to -day lives.

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Why? Because God in his grace is restraining what the human heart is capable of doing.

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So God restrains the evil of man all the time, which makes this world a pretty good place to live.

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Because God is so gracious, he sends his reign on the just and the unjust alike. He is gracious and he restrains evil.

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But the presentation in the text is that mankind is evil to the core.

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A good place to study that farther, if you want to explore it more, is Psalm 36.

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Psalm 36. There you see the picture of wicked people who do not reject evil.

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And the only way that you can tell how wicked mankind really is, is when it's juxtaposed with who

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God is. After talking about the wickedness of God, it just turns on a dime and begins to speak about the love of God.

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And the purity and holiness of God. And that's how we understand what evil is. By looking at God and seeing his holiness and his beauty, we recognize how wretched and sinful the human heart really is.

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When I compare myself with other people, it's easy for me to justify my own sinfulness.

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As long as I don't do what other people do. If it's a murderer on death row, at least I don't murder.

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Or someone who commits adultery, or looks at pornography, or does all these wicked things.

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I say, well, at least I don't do those things and therefore I'm good. When I compare myself with other people,

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I can justify myself. But when I look in that perfect law that gives liberty, when

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I see God for who he is and I compare myself with his holiness, I fall down on my face and I recognize that all of the evil that's present in mankind is resident in me.

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However restrained it might be. This is the starting point for Jesus.

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This generation is evil, he says. Verse 29, it seeks for a sign.

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It wants some evidence as if God needs to prove himself to man, rather than man stand before God.

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It seeks a sign, it wants miracles. And notice we've seen this over and over again, that mankind wants to test

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God. The Pharisee, the lawyer, they come to test him. And Jesus in Luke 4 tells

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Satan, thou shalt not put the Lord your God to the test. People want a miracle or a sign and then they'll believe, so they say.

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But Jesus now here gives us the answer to this first kind of evil. And it's surprising.

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So we've established that there's evil in the hearts of men. But here's the answer. You confront evil with good.

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You overcome evil with good. And particularly with good news.

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Follow this. No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.

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The sign of Jonah is this. It is the preaching of the resurrected

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Christ. For as Jonah went three days and three nights in the belly of a whale, and then was spit forth to go and proclaim to the people of Nineveh repentance and faith in Yahweh.

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So Jesus will be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth. And come forth and the preaching of his resurrection will be mercy to the evil heart.

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This is the answer of Jesus to restrain resident evil in the hearts of men.

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It is the preaching of the gospel. The sign of Jonah. The other day

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I was sitting on the couch listening to a debate. Live from South Africa.

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James White was debating a Muslim. And the Muslim was trying to argue against the sign of Jonah.

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He said well that's no sign at all because Jonah wasn't dead in the fish. When Jonah was swallowed by the fish he was alive and he got spit back out and then he preached.

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But Jesus according to you James White was dead in the grave. That cannot be.

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There's no parallel there. Well it just so happened that Timmy my son had crawled up on my lap and was listening to this.

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And he jumped off of me and he says no that story does point to Jesus. Every story in the

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Bible is pointing to Jesus. He began to argue. He was debating with this

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Muslim in South Africa in real time as I was streaming it live. And you know where he learned that?

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He learned it in children's church where he is right now. Because we're doing a curriculum called the gospel project.

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That shows verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book that all things are leading to that cross.

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And that's what Timmy began to argue. He said it's all pointing forward. No he wasn't dead but it points forward to Jesus buried.

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He was passionate too. His eyes were lighting up as he was arguing this guy. And here's the point.

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We confront evil with good. The good news of the gospel.

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We confront evil with the good news of the gospel. Now preaching needs to be biblical.

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We're in verse 30. We confront evil with the good news of the gospel that comes from the word of God.

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For as Jonah became assigned to the people of Nineveh so will the son of man be to this generation.

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Now there's another biblical reference. You know the story when the queen from Sheba came to visit Solomon and listened to his teaching.

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Jesus referenced that in verse 31. She not even being an Israelite was willing to listen to the wisdom of Solomon.

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The queen of the south, the queen of Sheba will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them.

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For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold something greater than Solomon is here.

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Back to the first example, Jonah and the Ninevites. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold something greater than Jonah is here.

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Jonah was a preacher. He went proclaiming the God of Israel and calling for repentance and faith.

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Solomon was a preacher, the teacher, the wise instructor of Israel proclaiming the

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God of Israel. This is the answer for the sin of the human heart.

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It is the preaching of God's word. Declaring that Jesus is greater than, lifting

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Jesus up. You know the book of Hebrews talks about how Jesus is greater than angels.

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He's greater than Moses. So much greater as the builder of a house is greater than the house that he builds.

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Jesus is greater than the priests. The Levitical priests who offered sacrifices day in and day out.

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Jesus offers a one -time sacrifice. His sacrifice is greater than. Notice in verse 32, something greater than Jonah is here.

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It is our job to overcome and confront evil to so value

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Jesus that we see him as greater than anything else in our lives. And he lights our tongues on fire to go forth proclaiming that Christ is greater.

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And as we do the message of Jesus lifted up and exalted, draws people to himself.

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And a person with a sinful wicked heart like any of us had, sees

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Christ lifted up. And he transforms them by his grace through the preaching of the word.

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It's my job on Sunday mornings to exposit these passages and go through and train us as we are learning from the text.

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But it's all of our jobs to go out from this place, proclaiming Christ to the ends of the earth.

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Something greater than Jonah is here. Something greater than Solomon is here. Jesus, you preach and it confronts the evil of this world.

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That is the first and primary way that we are called to confront evil. But now at this point in the text, things begin to heat up while he's still speaking.

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Verse 37, while Jesus was speaking.

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So we see there's an interruption that happens here. A Pharisee asked him to dine with him.

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So he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner.

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And the Lord said to him, now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish. But inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

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You fools did not he who made the outside make the inside also, but give his arms those things that are within.

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And behold, everything is clean for you. The second way that we need to confront evil is through apologetics.

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Apologetics. The word apologetics comes from apologia, which we find in first Peter 315.

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We are told always be ready to give a defense, an apologia, an apologetic for the hope that we have.

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Only do this with gentleness and respect. When someone accuses and attacks the message of Christ or the person of Christ, the answer is apologetics.

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We need to be ready to defend the truth of the Bible, which requires that we study and learn and be ready, which is part of what we're doing now.

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It says in verse 37, while Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him. Well, there's nothing challenging about that, except that he interrupted and we aren't even told what he says to Jesus.

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But don't you know that even a look on a face can be accusatory? If this

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Pharisee has an indignant look on his face, astonished that Jesus doesn't go through the ceremonial washings, he shows it on his face.

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And so we see in verse 38, the Pharisee was astonished. The idea is appalled to see that he did not first wash before dinner.

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Wearing it on his face, he demonstrates that he feels superior to this teacher, this prophet, who's claiming to be the

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Messiah. He's indignant. And the

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Lord said to him, now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

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Pharisees had a problem. Wanting to follow the law of God with its 613 commands, some odd, they had stacked up rule upon rule to go with those things to supplement those teachings.

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In order that they could outwardly obey the law. So if they're told that they cannot work on the

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Sabbath, they would come up with all kinds of rules and regulations to monitor that.

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Someone could walk a thousand feet from his house on the Sabbath and no more.

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If you took that extra step, you've broken the law. So said the Pharisees. But the Pharisees would look for ways to get around that.

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So they had, they had come up with this scheme where they would tie a rope across the street and for some reason, which makes no sense to me, if they did that, that could give them an extra 400 feet.

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Makes no sense. But they had found a way to justify their own ability to go farther.

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Because maybe somebody they wanted to visit was a bit farther than a thousand feet. The point is, they tied up people with rule upon rule until the people felt bound and unable to do what the

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Pharisees were calling them to do. Alistair Begg is one of my favorite preachers. And he tells the story about when he was in Scotland.

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He had gone on a boat with some Christians, church people. And when they were getting off the boat, he noticed a huddle of men that were grumbling and complaining.

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And so he came and listened in and heard what they were talking about. And it was the fact that one of the women on the boat was wearing trousers.

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And so he was very, very interested to hear what they were saying. And they were saying, well, the Bible says a woman shouldn't dress like a man.

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And they were complaining about the way she dressed, not even thinking the fact that it was probably more appropriate to wear pants on a boat than it would be to wear a dress.

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But then as he walked away, he looked back and began to laugh to himself because he realized that these men who were complaining that way were all wearing kilts.

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The hypocrisy of these men who were tying up rules upon rules.

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Things that aren't written in the law. And that's how the Pharisees were. Matthew Henry mentions about this text that it's like a man bringing a cup, a servant of the king, bringing a cup to a king.

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And he scrubbed the outside of the cup so that it shines. Would he do that and bring to the king a cup?

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And when the king looks in, it's filled with cobwebs and spiders. The outside looks good because they're from all appearances to those looking at the cup, it looks clean, but inside it's filled with every unclean thing.

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That was the heart of the Pharisee looking good on the outside, but filled with wickedness on the inside.

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Notice that Jesus confronts it head on. They accuse him and he answers.

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He says to them, now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

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You fools. You believe Jesus said that? See the exclamation point?

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You fools. He's getting a bit aggressive here. Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?

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But give his alms those things that are within. Get from the heart and behold, everything is clean for you.

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And now we move into the final section that we'll study today and things really begin to heat up.

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This is not the Jesus picture that you'll find in the media. This is the picture of a strong savior who confronts evil.

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Sometimes evil is so unrestrained. Remember, evil is in all of us, but sometimes evil is so unrestrained.

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God allows people to go their own way to follow the course of their own desires and evil being so unrestrained begins to damage other people and to close up the kingdom of God from other people.

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And the answer to that is polemics. Not just apologetics. Apologetics is when you give an answer to someone who's accusing you or accusing the gospel.

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Polemics is a strong verbal attack against evil, confronting evil.

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And I think this is where we often fall short in evangelicalism. We so want to be tolerant and again, the media has twisted even the meaning of the word tolerance to mean that you have to accept and affirm things that you disagree with.

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But we so are influenced by our culture that we are no longer standing up and speaking about truth and attacking things that are hurting people and that are dishonoring

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God. But notice what Jesus does. He's not like us. He is not like us.

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Look at the strength of what he says. But woe to you

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Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God.

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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.

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Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves and people walk all over them without knowing it.

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One of the lawyers answered him teacher and seeing these things and saying these things, you insult us also.

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And he said, woe to you lawyers also, for you load people with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.

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Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them and you build their tombs.

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Therefore also the wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation.

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From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.

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Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge.

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You did not enter yourselves and you hindered those who were entering. As he went away from there, the scribes and the

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Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, lying and wait for him to catch him in something he might say.

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This is an intense conflict. There is evil that needs to be confronted.

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This is the kind of evil that I call unrestrained evil. And we'll just briefly look at two kinds here.

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One is the kind of evil that shuts off the kingdom of God from people by distorting the truth.

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And the other is injustice. In a physical sense in the real world where people are hurt or even killed on account of injustice.

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In verse 42, he says, Woe to you Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God.

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So is he saying we shouldn't tithe? Remember, tithing is giving to the church, but the word tithe does not just mean give.

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It actually means give one tenth. Tithe means tenth. That's kind of the baseline or starting point of our giving.

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Is Jesus saying, no, we shouldn't do that? No. In fact, as you look here, he says, these you ought to have done.

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It's good that you tithe, but without neglecting the others. Jesus doesn't just want our money.

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We should give from a willing heart because we want to support the kingdom of God and the work of the ministry in the world.

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That's how we should give. God loves a cheerful giver, but he doesn't want our money. He doesn't need our money. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

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What he truly wants is our hearts. And he wants justice and the love of God.

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The example he gives here, woe to you Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and greeting in the marketplaces.

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They love the honor of men. They love to be esteemed and looked up to. Verse 44, woe to you

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Pharisees, for you are like unmarked graves and people walk all over them without knowing it.

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According to Numbers chapter 19, verse 16, if a person came in contact with a dead body or with a grave site, they were rendered unclean in Israel.

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So there's a problem if someone buries a body and doesn't mark it. People are becoming defiled and unclean without them even knowing it.

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And Jesus says, you Pharisees are like unmarked tombs.

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By your teaching, by your laws, you have defiled the nation. You're the teachers.

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You're the law experts and people follow you and they're defiled by you. They don't keep the laws that you teach.

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And the path of life, which is available through the law, which points to Christ, this they shut off.

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So they oppose the truth of God for the sake of their traditions. Jesus calls this evil and he confronts it with force.

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Verse 45, one of the lawyers answered, teacher in saying these things, you insult us also. Jesus' answer, of course, is classic.

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Woe to you lawyers also. He doesn't back off a little bit. You load people with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.

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They always had a loophole to make it easier for them to meet the laws. But the people who are genuinely trying to seek

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God are being crushed under the load of the law, which they cannot keep. Woe to you, verse 47, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed.

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They want to honor the prophets of the Old Testament. They want to honor Isaiah. They want to honor

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Jeremiah. But these are the very same people that were persecuted in their time and many of them killed.

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And so what Jesus will do here is he'll take the first martyr, Abel, who was killed by Cain to the last martyr of the

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Old Testament. In the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles was the last book. Now we have

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Malachi because in our Bible, we've rearranged the order. But in the Hebrew Bible, 2 Chronicles would be last.

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And in chapter 24, near the end of that book, you have the killing of Zechariah.

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Joash was a good king as long as Jehoiada the priest was looking after him and guiding him along.

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But when Jehoiada died, his son was kind of a counselor to him. Joash went wrong. And he killed

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Jehoiada's son. He murdered him. And Jesus will say here,

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I will call you to account for all the blood of all the prophets. Because you stand in their line and you're going to do something worse.

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Notice the prophets and the apostles in verse.

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Fifty, somebody help me if you see it, 49. I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute.

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Jesus knows the hearts of these Pharisees and lawyers. When the apostles go out preaching, they're going to die one by one as martyrs.

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Stephen being the first one, not an apostle, but killed for preaching the gospel.

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The same heart that killed the prophets in the first place is in them. And they will be responsible for that murderous intention.

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So this is the second thing that we need to confront. And that is injustice, evil.

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And I will say to you this morning that all the blood of the prophets from Abel to Zechariah to the apostles is only a drop in the bucket compared to the bloodshed that has come from this nation since 1973.

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There is an injustice in our land that began in Roe versus Wade, 1973, when abortion was made legal.

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And babies are killed here now to the level of 60 million since that time.

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Since I've been preaching today, if I preach a standard length message, a hundred babies will have died while I stood here in our land.

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Every one of them is valuable as Zechariah and Abel and all the prophets.

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And I will confess right now that I have not confronted this evil as loudly as I should, the way

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Jesus does. I'll post things on Facebook. I'll send in red envelopes and I'll go to certain events from time to time.

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But when I think about the injustice that is abortion in this nation,

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I have been far too silent for far too long. Babies are murdered.

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And you say, well, how do we know that these are human lives in the womb and not just tissue?

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Well, as Christians, we know. The scriptures teach us that in Psalm 139, that God knits together a human in the womb.

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And we see in the law that if two men are fighting and one of the men hits the other man and he falls against the pregnant woman and the baby comes out and dies, the death of that child from the womb is counted as murder.

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Life for life. It's one of the 17 cases of capital punishment in Israel. That baby is considered a life in the womb, according to the law of God.

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And we know that John the Baptist when he was in the womb, yet unformed in his thinking, when

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Jesus was in the womb of Mary and came into the same room, John leapt for joy. He was a person, a living person.

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Now the world might not know this because they don't accept revelation, but this revelation comes from God.

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And so we know that the life begins at conception. And what's happening in our country is murder.

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And I think it's time for another king. Or Wilberforce or Calvin.

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People who have stood up against injustice in times past. Maybe it's all of us.

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William Wilberforce, when slavery was allowed in England, stood up like a prophet and proclaimed year after year until finally it fell.

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Fell later in America, Abraham Lincoln, and a war was fought. When there are injustices like this, it is not acceptable to tolerate evil and say, well, wait for another day.

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That's not how Jesus approached evil. He confronted injustice.

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He spoke up against injustice. And so in our day, that is one great evil.

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And there's many evils in our world. But that is one where the blood of babies calls out from the ground, like Abel's blood did.

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Finally, the last thing again, woe to you. Verse 52 and following. We'll jump to here. Verse 52.

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Woe to you, lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves and you hindered those who were entering.

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So there are injustices in our land that need to be confronted. But there are also religious injustices or lies told about the kingdom of God that also require confrontation.

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Polemics. Sometimes we need to speak out boldly and strongly against lies that are being told.

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Not to attack any person. For example, if we were to speak of Mormons, what do we do with Mormons?

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We love Mormons. But when the LDS Church teaches that the scriptures have been corrupted and you need this key of knowledge, which is the

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Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, and these keys unlock the scriptures and you can't understand the scriptures unless you have this key.

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We take our polemics and we aim directly at the Book of Mormon.

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Not at a Mormon, but at the Book of Mormon. And the same is true of Seventh -day Adventists who use

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Ellen White and her teachings as a key to unlock the meaning of the Bible. And so they have Jesus right now doing an investigative judgment in heaven.

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Another atonement where he apparently, because of a prophecy in 1844, that Jesus would come back, given by William Miller, that Jesus would return in 1844.

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It didn't happen. And so others began to teach, well, it actually did happen. You just couldn't see it.

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What really happened is Jesus went from the holy place in the temple in heaven to the holy of holies in heaven.

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And now he's there accomplishing atonement. It's blatantly unbiblical.

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And it's not unloving for us to say that. Polemics is not unloving. We are telling the truth when we say that Ellen White is a false prophetess and her keys don't unlock the door.

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Rather, they lock the door on the truth. Many people are enslaved by false gospels.

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They abound. And it's right to confront those things. So in verse 53 and 54, as he went away from there, the scribes and the

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Pharisees began to press him. Did they acquiesce? Did they repent? No, they're like Herod who chopped off John the

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Baptist's head. There is a penalty. There is not a penalty. There is a consequence when we stand up and speak.

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Soon as you do that, you put yourself in the crosshairs. You might lose a friend. There'll be people who will push you out of their lives.

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For what? For telling the truth. Paul says, have I become your enemy for telling you the truth? Conflict is inevitable when truth is on the line.

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If you stand for truth, those who are lying will be provoked and they try to provoke him. It says they press him hard and provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him to catch him in something he might say.

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So in closing, we are called to stand up. And there's one issue

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I wanted to raise today and that is abortion. And to say people, we need to speak and confront the evil of our culture.

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This is the battle of our day in terms of injustice. It seems like every generation has to fight that, right?

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In the 1960s, Christians were right to stand behind Martin Luther King. Right? In World War II, it was

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church, very few people that stood against Hitler in Germany. But some did and some spoke while most were acquiescing to the evil of the day.

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Will we be a people that speaks against the injustice of abortion? There's two organizations

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I know that are very active right now and I'm going to recommend one and not recommend the other.

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There's one called End Abortion Now that I feel is doing a good job. Just this last year, this one church from Arizona saved 30 -some babies by going to abortion clinics and preaching there, calling out, but in a loving and compassionate way and offering to adopt, offering to help, offering to love the women who were planning on going in there.

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And one after another, women are choosing not to abort their babies and they're becoming part of that church. End Abortion Now comes from Apologia Church.

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You see the root of their name. They understand this teaching. I would recommend that.

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There is another group out right now called Abolish Human Abortion, AHA, and I would not recommend them.

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Even though they're fighting the same battle, I feel like they've become imbalanced in it. They have been going to places like John MacArthur's Church and the

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Shepherds Conference there and picketing and protesting the church because they say that the

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Christians there, the leaders are not speaking out enough against abortion. And so they turn their fire on fellow

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Christians. Who may be focusing on other issues and called to do other things. We could very well have

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AHA people protest us because we've spoken not enough about it. So I would not recommend

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Abolish Human Abortion, but I would recommend End Abortion Now. I would recommend that we as a body get involved in standing against this injustice.

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And individually, some of you will be called to do that more than others. The Lord has called me to preach the gospel.

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And I know that's where I need to be most of my time. But sometimes I'll step out and do something in that area.

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Some of you might have a special calling in your life, like a Wilberforce or a Bonhoeffer to stand against this injustice, to speak boldly and often.

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The other aspect of this is preaching truth. The three kinds of evil we talked about, resident evil, which is in everyone.

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We don't address that by attacking. We address it by preaching good news. But studying the scriptures, we know that we will be accused and we must, the second kind, be ready to do apologetics, to have a reason for the hope that's in us.

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And the third kind, polemics, to attack injustice with a strong verbal or written attack or to stand up and to fight for the truth.

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When a cult or some lying prophet offers a false gospel, to stand up and preach the truth against those things.

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Brothers and sisters, we need to become stronger. We need to confront the evils that surround us.

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That's the Jesus I see in scripture. He's strong and he confronts evil.

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Let's close in prayer. Worship team, if you could come up. Jesus, we thank you for correcting us this morning.

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We live in a culture that preaches tolerance as the highest value. When in truth, you are the highest value and you determine what is true.

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Without you, we have no way of knowing what is true. But you call good, good and evil, evil.

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And I ask God that you would strengthen your people this morning to stand up against evil.

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And I pray that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit to go out preaching the gospel to the lost.

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Because this is an evil generation. Empower us,

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Lord, to preach Christ and to say that Christ is greater than, to lift up Christ, that people would be drawn to him and help us to study, to show ourselves approved workmen.

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Who are worthy of our higher, rightly dividing the word of truth. Lord God, help us to know your word so we can defend it.

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Give a reason for the hope that is in us. Help us to be apologetic minded as a family here.

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And Father, we pray also for holy fire, for a boldness in us to speak polemically against the evil that pervades this culture.

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And this morning with particular focus against abortion, Lord, make us bold and always

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Lord, to do so with gentleness and respect, knowing that we aren't you,

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God. Only you could speak as boldly as you did.

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You speak of hell more than anyone else in the Bible, Jesus. But we need to be like you.

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And as you did to stand up against evil. So give us courage, Lord God, no matter what the cost.

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Even if we wind up in the crosshairs of someone else's fire. God, please give us boldness and courage in Jesus name.