Sermon to the Irish Church

Apologia Studios

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I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. If you don't know our church,

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I'd encourage you, if you would, be honored to have you look on Apologia Studios online, on YouTube, different platforms, years of teaching ministry.

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And I think one of the greatest honors of my life and the blessings of our church is that we've spent so much time in the public square bringing the gospel to the world.

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So rather than what has been sort of customary today in this generation and a generation past in the

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West, in Christianity, where we sort of have the church, the building, the gathering, the worship service, that place of evangelism, whereas in Scripture people are saved and they're made part of the body of Christ and they come to the local church to worship

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God. So this is a place for people who know Jesus Christ, who are saved, who are declared righteous, who are in Christ.

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This is that place of gathering and assembly and worship. And what Western Christianity has sort of had as a tradition this last generation is that we treat this place, this gathering, as the central place of evangelism rather than bringing the gospel out into the public square to where the world is.

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I want to just remind us very humbly, brothers and sisters, that Jesus said that he would build his church, you know the rest, right, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.

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I want to remind you that gates are defensive. They are not offensive. Gates are not moving.

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Gates are defensive. And so when Jesus says that he'll build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, that gives the idea of the church offensively taking those gates down.

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And so one of the great honors of my life is to be a part of a church body that is so committed to bringing the gospel to the world in the public square.

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And so I'd encourage you, if you would, take a look at Apologia Studios on YouTube so you can see a lot of the evangelism, the outreach to Mormons, to Jehovah's Witnesses, to atheists, public debates, moderated public debates, going to legislatures around the country, preaching the gospel to legislators, and I think more importantly what we're talking about today, standing for justice for our pre -born neighbors, the unborn, in the womb.

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And so that's who I am. If you guys don't know, it doesn't really matter. I think what's most important today is that you hear the word of God and that you're challenged by it.

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I hope that you forget my name. I hope that you forget me and that you remember Christ and what you've learned today from his word.

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That's what's important. That's, I hope, what we all have in our minds, that we would leave a legacy for the kingdom of Christ, for the gospel itself, that we would die and be forgotten and Christ would be made famous.

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Amen? Yes? They say amen in Ireland? Yes? Okay, good. All right. So we're going to start with Matthew 28, 18 through 20, as the foundation.

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I want to encourage you with this as you get there, Matthew 28, 18 through 20. Most of you maybe already have this memorized.

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This is the foundation of everything else I'm going to say. If you want to encapsulate the three -hour message

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I'll give today, just kidding, maybe. It really is summed up in this text,

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Matthew 28, 18 through 20. Just as you get there, remind us that this is after the resurrection of Jesus.

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This is the prophesied ascension of the Messiah. As your pastor said earlier, he is at the right hand of the father, amen?

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He is seated on that Davidic throne. He is the king of kings and the

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Lord of lords. And so this moment in Matthew 18 through 20 is that prophesied moment where the son of man ascends.

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He goes up and he is given a kingdom and all the tribes, tongues, languages, people, nations are supposed to come to him.

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He has this kingdom that is everlasting. It will never be destroyed. So that is the background before this famous moment of the ascension.

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Now I'll remind you as we get to the text, I'll remind you that Jesus says something here that's familiar to us as believers.

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We know this. We believe it. We understand it. We embrace it. But it's something that we are accepting of post -ascension and the growth of the gospel of the kingdom, of the church going throughout the ages and spreading around the world.

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We see this and recognize it and oftentimes don't realize the implications of it all and what it meant for the

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Lord Jesus to say this at this time under Roman rule. I'll remind you that Jesus was a crucified

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Messiah, treated as a criminal, thrown away, abused, lied about.

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There was injustice. They thought they had defeated Jesus, God in the flesh.

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But this is what he came for. Nobody takes his life from him, he says. He lays it down of his own accord.

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And so Jesus goes and he purchases us. He provides that eternal redemption, that once for all sacrifice.

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He conquers our greatest enemy, death. He is risen from the grave.

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And now here's this moment. And Jesus says things here that I'll remind you Caesar would have had something to say about.

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Talk of all authority in heaven and on earth is something that Caesar would have had something to say about.

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And I'll remind you, here we are in the 21st century. The gospel is spread around the world.

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We have so much more work to do. But I'll remind you in that moment, these words, from any human perspective, did not make any sense.

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For Jesus to claim this, and it was true, it is true, for Jesus to claim this, it would have been an audacious claim to make.

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With some very confused disciples, a handful of very confused disciples here at the

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Ascension. I want to encourage you to read this text afresh.

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Consider its implications because everything to do with the mission of the church in the world, where Ireland is today, where I am in my nation, this is central.

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This is everything. So, hear now the word of the living God, Matthew 28, 18 through 20.

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And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

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Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the

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Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever

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I have commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

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Amen. Thus far is the reading of God's holy word. So there it is. All authority in heaven and most

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Christians today will acknowledge that instinctively. That's the place of Jesus' authority.

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That's where Jesus rules and reigns. Every Christian gives a hearty amen to that.

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There's no question, there's no doubt. We live like that's true, we think like that's true, we pray like that's true, that Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven.

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The problem with Christianity in our day is we've relegated Jesus' authority to that place alone.

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Jesus is king over heaven. That's where Jesus has authority, that's what Jesus is concerned with.

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What we really need to be about is just simply rescuing souls so we can get out of this place, this world is evil, it's sort of a throwaway, let's get them to that spiritual gassy realm out there somewhere because that's all really we're to be concerned with is just getting souls saved for heaven one day because that's where Jesus rules, heaven, that spiritual realm.

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I don't want to remind you what the text says, it doesn't just say that Jesus has some authority, limited authority, one place of authority, it says that Jesus has all authority, all of it.

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The Greek word there for all is all. What's it mean?

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It means all, all authority in heaven and here it is, ready? Here's what we've forgotten and you're seeing it all around our society, the remnants of a

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Christian civilization with a church built with gospel preaching and discipleship.

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You're seeing it all around us in your nation. I was just somewhere in Ireland yesterday and we were at a festival, a gay pride festival, saw men wearing dresses, walking around wearing dresses in the public square celebrating their lifestyles and their perversities.

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We see two cultures in collision. You see the remnants of the old Christian civilization, what

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Christians built with the gospel and discipleship. You see it all around you in Ireland and yet now you have a different culture.

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You have a lot of darkness and brokenness coming in and I think it's because we've lost this part of the great commission, all authority in heaven and where?

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Do you believe it? I don't know if we do.

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I don't know if we truly do. I'm speaking to myself as much as I'm speaking to you. I don't know if we truly do believe that.

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I think we can say, I'll pass the theological exam. If you give it to me and you ask the questions,

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Trinity, deity of Christ, justification by faith, scripture's authority, the inerrancy of the word of God, all that we would pass as Christians easily those theological exams.

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Does Jesus have all authority in heaven and on earth? Yes. Is he the king of kings today? Yes. Is he the lord of lords today?

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We would ace it. We would get up. Is that a grade in Ireland? Okay. We would get 100%.

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We would pass that test. We can do that. We can do the theology as Christians but we don't practically live, preach, and act like it's the truth that Jesus has all authority today on earth.

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That Jesus is the ruler over Ireland. Jesus is the ruler over the

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United States. Jesus is the ruler over Africa. Now, I'll remind you that Jesus was brought before the rulers of his day and the charge against him, there are many false claims made against him, but the charge against him primarily was that he was claiming to be

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Mashiach, the Messiah. What was the role of the Messiah, brothers and sisters? Do you know it?

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The role of the Messiah was to win the entire world to Yahweh. That all the nations would stream up to God's mountain.

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That all the families of the earth would return and remember. That he would bring all the tribes, tongues, peoples, nations, languages.

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That they would serve him. That he shall have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.

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This was the role of the Messiah. So they say, he's saying he's the king of the world, Pilate.

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That's against your authority. And Jesus is brought with those charges. Saying that he's the king was treasonous.

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Saying that he was the king was subversive to the authority of the state. And he was killed.

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I want to remind you, read the book of Acts, brothers and sisters. Read that text. Read it sometime in the next week.

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Read it. See how the apostles brought the gospel into the world. See how the apostles and leadership brought the gospel into the public square.

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And watch for the charges against those early Christians.

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What were the charges? The famous scene. You know it. They're saying there's another king,

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Jesus. Remember, the early Christians aren't being killed by Rome because they worship

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Jesus. They weren't killed because they worshiped

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Jesus. Rome is pagan. You can worship anything you want. Rocks, stubble, hay, stone, gold, silver, it doesn't matter.

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They had temples set up in Rome where you could worship the emperor. You could do all manner of evil things in these temples.

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They didn't care what you worshipped. Early Christians were killed. Why? Because they refused to say something.

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Just to say it. They refused to say, Caesar, curios. Caesar is

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Lord. You see, is it around here? I imagine it's probably somewhere on a poster or a picture or something.

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We have it on bumper stickers on our cars and in our houses and paintings. We say, Jesus is

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Lord. And you can't get in a lot of trouble for that. Why? Because of the influence of the gospel.

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Because of the history of the Christian church in this nation and in my nation. We say it. We say it freely.

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We say it courageously. Jesus is Lord. Understand something. When the gospel came into the world, their saying that Jesus is

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Lord was something that they were killed for. They refused to merely say it. You save your life in early

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Rome, or the early history of the church. You save your life by simply saying that Caesar has ultimate authority.

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That Caesar is Lord. Those Christians died. They were burned at the stake, wrapped in pitch.

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They were eaten, speared, thrown into ovens. They were murdered. They had their families murdered in front of them because they would not acknowledge the ultimate authority of the state of Caesar.

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They said, we'll be good citizens, we'll be at peace, we'll be obedient, but we cannot say that Caesar has all authority.

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Jesus is Kyrios. Jesus is Lord. And so when the early church comes into the world, they come with a proclamation that Jesus is the

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King of Kings, and he's the Lord of Lords, and he has all authority today on earth.

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It's not just heavenly reigning, it's he has the authority on earth. So I'll give you a test, ready?

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Do you believe that Jesus is King of Kings? What does that mean?

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Stop and think about it. We say it. We have all kinds of pithy slogans as Christians. We say all kinds of Christianese all the time.

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We say it, we acknowledge it, it's instinctive, right? He is Lord of what? Oh, come on now.

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I thought this was like a charismatic church or something. That's what I was told. You guys are wild and crazy. I am really surprised because this is not wild and crazy, okay?

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He's Lord of what? Lords. I didn't have to teach you that. You already know it instinctively.

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What's it mean? What are the implications? If Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords 2 ,000 years ago, he remains that way today.

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What are the implications there for the culture around you, the society around you? What are the implications for the world today?

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Does Jesus' authority cover your nation? Is your nation, is your nation supposed to come under the authority and salvation of Jesus Christ?

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Yes? Yes? Do you believe that? Everywhere? Your home?

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Your church? Your legislature? Are your legislators supposed to obey

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Jesus? See, it got quieter that time, didn't it? Because we don't really believe it.

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Admit it. We don't really believe, like the gospel goes to my rulers, that they're supposed to obey

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Jesus too. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Jesus has that.

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And he says, therefore, because it's all mine, everywhere, heaven and earth, go and do what?

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Disciple the nations. Baptize them and teach them to do what? Obey. It was amazing.

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I know this is a difficult week for your nation. We just happened to come at just this moment.

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And it was interesting for me to see the heartbreak, to see the respect that you have for your rulers, to see the honor and the respect you have for your queen, and to also witness something very important that I hope wakes us all up.

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Me too. I'm not speaking down to you. I'm speaking to you as a brother. Hope that it wakes us up. The queen was defender of the what?

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Hmm. Yeah, I also got to watch some of the news footage of people when the commencement speech for the king was about to happen and people talking about all the weird stuff that's surrounding this commencement and the speech of the king and his address, all the old vestiges of this

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Christian stuff. And they were even suggesting, I was watching different news things, that do we really need these things anymore?

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Does he really have to say that he's a defender of the faith? Question, which faith is that? Which faith?

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Christian faith. So the secularists and the humanists look at this as some old relic of, we have a ruler promising fidelity to Jesus Christ?

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Do you see? You see, we have been so indoctrinated by our culture in the modern that we've forgotten what the goal of the

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Great Commission was. We've forgotten about the authority of Jesus Christ and what it's over. And we've also forgotten what our spiritual ancestors from all over the world actually gave to us as a deposit.

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We've forgotten it all. It's gone. Why? Because we've been indoctrinated to believe that your

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Christian faith, the salvation that you've received in Jesus Christ freely as a gift, that is a private matter.

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It belongs between your ears and behind your eyes and it needs to stay there and it must stay out of the public square.

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Question, this is my challenge to you, is that the Christian faith that you see in the book of Acts?

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People used to ask us, you know, why do you guys as a church go out into the public square? You guys do some crazy stuff.

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You go out into the streets, you go to the Mormon temples and do evangelism, you do public debates, you go here, you go there, you go to abortion clinics and you preach the gospel there.

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You know, why do you do that? Like, what is it? And my answer is, we're not special. I'm not special.

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We're not superstars. There's nothing special. All we did is we looked at the book of Acts and we said, how did the apostles bring the gospel with the spirit of God when the church was, boom, brought forth into the world?

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How did the leadership of the church do it? How did the spirit of God bring the gospel into the world and transform that entire

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Roman empire? How did the gospel turn the world upside down in the first century?

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How did it happen? Oh, look, they're going into the public square. Oh, look, they're being lowered out of windows to escape with their lives.

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Oh, look, they're being beaten. Oh, look, they're being beheaded. Oh, look, they're being killed. And look what's happening.

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The gospel is spreading. The gospel is bringing salvation to the world.

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People are coming to Christ because Christians actually believe that this gospel was supposed to go around the world and bring all the nations to God.

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As a matter of fact, I'll remind you, the verse we started with today, the mission of the gospel is what?

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Not to start Bible studies in basements. That's not ultimately where it reigns. The mission of the gospel is to disciple the what?

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Nations. And to baptize them and teach them to do what? Obey Jesus.

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That's the mission of the gospel. That's what we're here for. And I'm going to encourage you to think about that methodology of the early church.

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I'll just give you one example because I don't want to keep you here until 5 o 'clock this evening. An example is

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Acts chapter 9. This is just a single example in the book of Acts. You can go read this later, but pay close attention to it.

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When the apostle Paul has his eyes open to the truth, it says after his eyes are opened, after he believes in Christ, he takes a beeline, a fast line towards Damascus, and he goes directly to the place of religious worship, and it says that he argues with the

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Jews, proving that Jesus is the Messiah. So he immediately goes to a place where there's going to be hostility.

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There's going to be difficulties. People aren't going to like him. They're thinking that he's doing this wrong. They're offended by him.

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He goes to the place of religious worship, and he preaches Christ, and he argues for the truth of the gospel.

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And what's the result? It says that some people wanted to kill him.

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Have you ever had people in your life take an oath not to eat anything until you're dead?

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Right? It's like one famous preacher said, one famous pastor preacher said, everywhere that the apostle

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Paul went to preach the gospel, they tried to kill him. This pastor said, everywhere

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I go, they serve me tea. Think about that.

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How did the gospel spread around the world? How was it so successful? How did it take place?

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It was the spirit of God. It was the word of God. The spirit of God. The word of God. The spirit of God. The word of God.

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The spirit of God. The word of God. But it was out into the world. It was where they were at. It was confronting.

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It was loving. It was contradicting. It was arguing for the truth of the gospel.

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And it says in Acts chapter 9, when the apostle Paul went to these churches, or these synagogues, sorry, when he goes to the synagogues, and he preaches, and he argues, it says that what happened?

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Some people wanted him dead, and it says the church was built up, they grew in numbers, and they experienced peace.

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Why? Because he went into the public square with the gospel, preaching the truth, and being willing to be hated, and sacrificing his life for love for God and love for neighbor.

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I want to encourage you to consider that, brothers and sisters, when you look at the world around us and what the mission of the church is.

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One of the things that's on my heart I wanted to share with you, my Irish brothers and sisters, is

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I wanted to share with you another aspect that we often don't consider today.

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It is part of our heritage. It is part of the history of the Christian church. It's always been a part of the

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Christian church and what we've done, but you're not seeing it as much today in our generation in the West, and that's

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God's concern for justice. God's concern for justice. This is very, very important.

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I want to just tell you just a quick part of our church and what

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God has done. About ten years ago, maybe a little bit more, as a church, we started as a church.

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I was a pastor for years before this, but God called me to plant Apologia Church, and I was the chaplain at a drug hospital rehab.

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It was a 24 -hour hospital with nurses and doctors and therapists. People would come in who were addicted to drugs and alcohol, heroin, whatever the case may be.

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They'd come in and get detox, and then we had a Christian program where they can choose to come into my program, and it was just the gospel and Christian discipleship for 30 days.

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So many people were coming to Christ at that hospital. It became very clear to the elders I was serving with and other pastors that I was being called to plant

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Apologia Church. And in the family building, a teeny little room in a drug rehab at a hospital.

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And as we were this kind of rough -looking crowd of new believers in Jesus Christ, we, early on in the history of our church, were deeply challenged by God over the issue of the slaughter of the preborn, child sacrifice, abortion.

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And so we were the typical pro -life people. I mean, Christians instinctively say,

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I'm pro -life because God is the creator. He knits us together in our mother's wombs, and God is the creator of life.

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And so, yeah, we're pro -life. That's our default position. And we think those organizations out there are representative of the

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Christian message, and that's our team. And so on Sanctity of Life Sunday, that's the day that Roe v.

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Wade was officially given to the world in the 70s, most

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American pastors will preach a sermon, a pro -life sermon. And we were that kind of church. You know, this is

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Sanctity of Life Sunday. We talk about this issue, but we didn't do much else. And I met somebody, a believing woman, a sister in Christ.

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I started seeing her come up on my feed. I thought I went to high school with her. Her name was

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Lisa Metzger. I had a Lisa Metzger in high school that was a friend of mine, and so I thought that's why she's on my page.

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But I kept seeing her in different hospitals with different women and different babies. New baby comes up.

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Next day, new baby comes up. Next day, new mom and new baby comes up. And I'm like, what is this? And I find out she has a ministry where she goes to the abortion mills, and she preaches the gospel and offers to help and to give those women hope.

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And so we had her on my radio program. And on the program, found out that she actually wasn't my friend from high school.

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She didn't know how I got on her feed or she got on mine. It was really a weird thing of providence. I'm not in the habit of friending strange women, okay?

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And neither is she. And so we don't know how we ended up on each other's page. We didn't know each other. But we had her on the radio program, and she told me that she's been in this for 20 years, preaching the gospel at abortion clinics.

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And I said, that's amazing. You're saving children, their lives. She said, yeah, we saved 365 children from death.

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365 human beings alive because she went to where they were being slaughtered.

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And I couldn't believe that. I was astonished by that. And then she said, yeah, last year.

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Last year. She's been doing it for 20 years. That's like a life saved a day.

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So that began to challenge our very young, very small church that we have to do something.

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And then I saw a film made by my friend with a man named Rusty Thomas, which

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I think you guys know Rusty, right? You're probably still fixing your ears because of Rusty. And in that film with Rusty, Rusty talks about this issue and I broke down.

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Our church was broken by the words that he preached. We were challenged. And so we started a ministry where we go to the abortion clinic.

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We would go to the abortion clinic, ground zero, where they're murdering the children. We would preach the gospel.

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We would offer to help. We would offer to adopt their children. And our very first day that we went, we saved two children from death.

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Our very first day. And so we just started talking about it on the radio program. We would say, hey, this week we saved two babies.

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Hey, we saved twins. We saved this baby. And then we started actually posting the pictures of the babies that we had saved.

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Moms would come and let us hold the babies and we would show the pictures. And so what happened was other churches started saying, wait, how do we do that?

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How can we get involved? Can you teach us? And we said, well, it's very simple. We're just going there with the gospel. We're calling them to repentance.

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We're offering to help them. We're giving them anything they need. And we're offering even to adopt their children. And so other churches started doing the same things.

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And they were saving children on a regular basis. And so as time went on, God put it into our church to start

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End Abortion Now, where we wanted to actually bring the gospel and to establish justice for our pre -born neighbors, to love our neighbors like we love ourselves.

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And we wanted to bring the gospel and raise up churches to the abortion mills. And we wanted to bring the word of God and God's demands for justice to legislators.

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Not just to the abortion mills. Because we recognize that we're saving children.

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By the way, we've saved tens of thousands of children from death. Do you hear what I said?

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Tens of thousands. To the glory of Christ. You know how? The church.

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The church. These are local churches. Local churches. Christians.

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Pastors that are going to the abortion mills where they're killing their children, preaching the gospel and offering help.

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That's all they're doing. There's nothing special. It's the gospel and it's offering to help. And they're going out and they've saved tens of thousands.

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And we've been able to bring the gospel and the call to repentance and the demands of God for justice and love for neighbor to legislators across the

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United States. Let me tell you this. In 50 years of Roe versus Wade in my nation, over 62 million, 62 million babies slaughtered.

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Now, I recognize as I say that number, we can't understand that.

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We can't. I recognize that. We can't comprehend that number.

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You have to think about it as my friend says, one person at a time.

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Sixty -two million is incomprehensible, but in 50 years since Roe versus Wade in my nation, over 62 million babies dead.

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The pro -life establishment, the pro -life industry from the very beginning had a particular doctrine and a particular methodology in their fight against the issue of abortion.

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Do you know how many bills the pro -life establishment and the pro -life industry put into legislators across the country for abolition or equal protection for all humans or criminalization of abortion?

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Do you know how many? Nope. Do you know why?

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Because of their doctrine. They have a particular doctrine, and we're going to talk about that in a moment here, that stops them from doing anything like that.

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They never, ever will, because for them, they have said explicitly they are not

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Christian organizations, they are not using the word of God, they will not call people to repentance and faith in Christ, and they do not believe that a woman who murders her child in the womb is guilty of anything.

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They are not standing where we stand, brothers and sisters, where we were just standing when we were singing these songs and we're looking at this word.

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They're not standing where we're standing. So we started bringing the gospel to legislators across the country.

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We were able to get bills of abolition, criminalization, and equal protection for all humans from conception into states like Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Louisiana.

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And do you know who fought against those bills? If I was to say to you, okay, here we go, I don't want to do trick questions here, but if I were to say to you, brothers and sisters, right now, that Christians were able to convince

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Christian legislators to establish justice for the pre -born, to treat them as human from conception, which is what they are according to our worldview and according to all biological science, if I was to say to you we got these bills into legislatures of equal protection for all humans and we had resistance, who do you think was resisting it?

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Your instinct is what? The pro -aborts. Pro -choicers.

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Pro -choicers. They fought against it. Do you want to know the truth? Most of the time, they never even showed up.

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Do you know who fought against our bills every single time? The pro -life establishment and industry.

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They worked to kill every bill of justice for the pre -born, and here's why, and we'll get to this, you'll hear this in a moment, because they do not believe that this issue is an issue of the authority of Christ, they do not believe that you should use the gospel to fight against the issue of abortion, they will not stand on scripture, and they do not believe that the woman or man who's involved in the slaughter of the child in the womb bears any guilt.

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They believe that they are equally victims with the baby who's been murdered. That's their doctrine. That's their official doctrine.

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So when we put bills in that say, it's human from conception, all humans deserve equal protection, they fight against it because they never, ever, ever, ever, ever, want criminal penalties, ever, for a mother who murders the child in the womb.

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And so brothers and sisters, that also means something, that they do not believe that the gospel applies to the woman who has killed her child in the womb.

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My church is filled with women who have murdered their children via abortion.

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I have women in my church that have had multiple abortions. And do you know what's glorious?

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They are forgiven. They are washed. They've been set free. They've been declared righteous.

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Their sins will never be counted against them again. But you know what they've done? You know this, sisters. They've turned from that sin and they've given it to Christ.

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It was given to Jesus on that cross. Amen? Yes? The pro -life establishment says that she has nothing to repent of.

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She is not guilty. So they have removed the gospel for women who have killed their children because they say that the mother is a victim and she is herself not guilty.

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So there's no gospel for her. No freedom for her. They say, you're not guilty, sweetie.

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You're just as much a victim as your child. So there's no peace to be brought through the cross to that woman.

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And I want to encourage you to consider, as you've heard all that, to consider this word from God in Isaiah 1.

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Go to Isaiah. Isaiah 1. God says in Isaiah 1, verse 10.

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Now I want to remind you of the background quickly. This is the word of God to His covenant people.

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So think pre -Christ, pre -Messiah. This is the word of God to His covenant people.

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They're doing church services. They're doing religious ceremonies. They look like they are

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Christians. Followers of Yahweh. They're doing all the stuff they're supposed to do.

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Externally they look like religious people. They're going to church. They're participating in worship.

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They're doing it all. And here's what God says to His people, His covenant people. In Isaiah 1, verse 10, it says,

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Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom. Give ear unto the law of our

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God, ye people of Gomorrah. Now, quickly, Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Good place, bad place. Bad place. Here is God saying to His covenant people something that they recognized as an abomination in the past.

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What is it? Sodom and Gomorrah. The evil, the destruction, the abomination. And God says to His covenant people,

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Listen to me, Sodom and Gomorrah. He's saying that to the people who profess to be worshippers of Yahweh who are doing church.

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They're doing all the religious things. And He says, To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto

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Me? Sayeth the Lord, I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of goats.

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When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand to tread My courts? Bring no more vain oblations, incenses and abomination unto

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Me, the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies. I cannot away with.

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It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting, your new moons and your appointed feasts.

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My soul hateth. They are a trouble unto Me. I am weary to bear them.

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And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide My eyes from you. Yea, when you make many prayers,

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I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you.

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Make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes. Cease to do evil.

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Learn to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed.

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Judge the fatherless. Plead for the widow. What's God saying to His people?

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What's He saying to them? He's saying all the religious things that you're doing, your sacrifices, your festivals, all of the worship and the assembly and all those things,

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God says, I am weary of it. I don't want it. Why?

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Because your hands are full of blood. Israel had all of this evil, all of this injustice all around them, and they were just going along like all is well.

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That we can live religious lives, we can look like Christians, we're going to do our typical godly things, worship, sacrifice, all the rest.

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And God says, I do not want any of that. It's a burden to Me. Your hands are filled with blood.

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And He says, cease to do evil. Learn to do good.

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And He tells them here, He tells them here to correct oppression and to bring justice to the fatherless.

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Now what's amazing here is, do you know where this is? This is where that famous section is for all of us believers.

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It's that famous section. Because as you continue reading, what's it say? One of our favorites.

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Come now and let us reason together, sayeth the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as what?

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Snow. Can I point out to us all that that famous verse from God that is so satisfying to our souls, that ministers to us in our moments of brokenness, in our moments of awareness of our own shame and our own guilt, that section, that word from God, is on the heels.

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It's on the heels of the section where God says to His people, I don't want your worship.

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I don't want your worship. Don't do it. Why? Because your hands are full of blood.

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You have all this evil around you. You won't correct it. You won't love your neighbor. You will not bring justice to the fatherless.

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I'm weary of it all. And then the call afterwards, as He says, cease to do evil, learn to do good, correct depression, bring justice to the fatherless.

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The word is what? God says, come let us reason together. Though your sins are as scarlet, they'll be white as snow.

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The promise of forgiveness there is on the heels of God telling His covenant people that He demands that they uphold justice.

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And He says to His people, bring justice to the fatherless.

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Can I ask you humbly, what is that child in the womb?

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Fundamentally, it's a fatherless child. It's a child who's been abandoned.

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And it's our neighbor. It's a neighbor that God's commanded us to love.

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That section of Scripture is a section of Scripture that has wrecked me.

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It truly has. God is the unchanging God, amen? See, I think typically what we do is, let's be honest, we look back at Old Testament passages like this and we go,

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God's clearly very concerned for justice. He's clearly very concerned for the fatherless and for the widow.

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He's clearly very concerned. But that's the Old Testament. What does the

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Bible say about God? He's the same yesterday, today, and what? Forever. He's the

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I Am. It's in His very name. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And He says to His people,

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He says that He does not change. Therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

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The hope that they were supposed to have when He says that is, I don't change! I'm not like you.

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I don't change. And so therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. And it's on the basis of what? God's unchanging nature.

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He's immutable. And so if God is concerned with justice and His people establishing justice, upholding justice, if He's concerned with it then,

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He's concerned with it now because He's the unchanging God. And brothers and sisters, this has been underneath us as a church.

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As we've gone, we've saved tens of thousands of children from death that are alive today because the churches woke up and started bringing the

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Gospel into the public square where they were killing them. Tens of thousands.

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We've raised up about 900 local churches around the United States, around the world,

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Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland.

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We've raised them up. People are going to save lives. They're bringing the Gospel to these women and these men to preach the

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Gospel to them, to help them to adopt children. We've also been able to get state legislatures to put bills in to establish justice for the pre -born that says this, from conception, it's human.

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Now brothers and sisters, can I tell you something very exciting? I hope this is inspiring to you, exciting to you.

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I'm not a motivational speaker, but I want you to hear this and be excited about it. It's human from conception. That is a biblical, indisputable fact.

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Amen? God is the creator. He's the creator of life. What He puts into the womb,

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He knits together. It is unique image of God. And, here's the exciting part, all, all biological science today testifies clearly and incontrovertibly that from the very moment of conception, it is a unique human being.

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All of the data, all of the details that make you you and me me, details like eye color, your height, your genetic makeup, at that moment of conception, that is that moment of human life.

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It's beginning. It is indisputable. So our bills have simply said, they're very short by the way, ridiculously short, they say stuff like this, what's in the womb is the image of God.

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Yes, our bill in Louisiana said that. We're not afraid to say it. Why? Because Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth.

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See, this is not an issue of biology, it's an issue of sin. Can I just say that real fast? Have we noticed that yet as a church?

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That this is not a biological issue. These issues are not biological, they are issues of sin and rebellion and people need to be freed and born again.

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Have you noticed that? All of these organizations that say, no, we don't want to use the word of God, we just want to say that, you know, we're just pointing to biology, that biology says it's human life from conception.

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Have we noticed that our culture does not care about biology? For example, when you see the man walking down the street with a big male face and a big male beard and a big male body and male reproductive organs and he's wearing a dress and you say to him, sir, sir, have you noticed that biologically it is a biological objective fact, you are in fact male.

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It cannot be disputed. What are you hearing today? Oh my goodness, I had no idea.

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Thank you for letting me know. I need to go shop for more clothes, different clothes.

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Is that their response? No, what does the person say? It's not an issue of biology, it's an issue of rebellion because what they say is,

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I feel like a woman and I don't care what my biology speaks to.

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I want to do what is in accordance with my lusts and the issue of abortion is the same issue.

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It is a Christ issue. It's an issue of sin in the gospel because you can point out the biology all day long and what they'll still say to you is this,

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I still think I have the right to murder my child so in Louisiana, we put in our bill that it is in the image of God, it is human from conception and all we said was this, all human life deserves equal protection and you know what's amazing?

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It's the last two years when we've been getting all these bills in specifically, it has been happening right at the height of this big discussion in two different camps.

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One, BLM, Black Lives Matter. What's the foundation of their argument? What do they say?

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They say we're humans, we deserve equal protection, we deserve equal justice and the Christian church says amen, yes.

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Yes, that's straight the word of God. Welcome to the club. We believe that black lives matter.

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Why? Because they're made in the what? Imago Dei. Now there's problems down the line in that discussion but fundamentally you say yeah because you're in the image of God and you do deserve equal protection and equal justice and there's another camp over here that says the equality project,

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LGBTQ, all of those things. They say we all deserve equality and we say what?

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Yes, amen. You're still made in the image of God and it's a sin issue. We say equal, equal, equal.

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Our bill said what these people say they believe, human life from conception, all humans deserve equal protection and brothers and sisters, something historic happened with us in Louisiana this year.

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In 50 years since Roe versus Wade, the pro -life establishment and the pro -life industry has only put in bills of partiality, bills of unequal weights and measures.

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Please hear me on this. They not only believe that the woman is never to be seen as guilty and doesn't need the forgiveness of Christ for her abortion, they do not believe that she does.

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They also believe that we should just sort of do this incrementally and we should put in bills that say things like this.

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You can't murder the child using sharp instruments. You can only use chemicals to set them on fire.

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Those are the bills that they've put in. Partiality, unequal weights and measures. They said things like this.

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I'll give you one example. In Arizona, we put a bill in that said equal protection from conception. It would have abolished and criminalized abortion in my state.

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We had support from legislators and the head of the pro -life movement in my state went to our legislators and said, do not pass that bill.

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We do not want abortion to be criminalized like that. We do not want the woman or the father to ever be seen as guilty.

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And so she said, don't pass Jeff's bill, pass my bill. Do you know what her bill said? Her bill said this.

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Her bill said, you can kill a child in Arizona in the womb but not for the express reason that it has a genetic abnormality.

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It takes a moment. Think about it. What she's saying there is that you can kill the healthy unborn children but you are not allowed to kill a child with Down syndrome.

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By the way, I told Kathy this as well. I said, your bill is irrelevant. Do you know why? Because the bill said you can kill a healthy child in the womb but you can't kill a child for the express reason that it has a genetic abnormality.

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So I told Kathy, I said, Kathy, you realize something? That your bill means nothing because all a mother has to do in Arizona is say to the doctor,

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I'm not killing it because it has Down syndrome. I'm killing it because I hate it.

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And she can kill her child. She also put in her bill, you can kill your child in Arizona but you must give it a proper burial.

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The pro -life establishment in my nation, which is trying to set up in your nation, that says they don't want to preach

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Christ, they don't want to make about the gospel, they take millions and millions and millions of dollars and then they celebrate a bill that says this.

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You can't use a sharp instrument to disembowel and decapitate and dismember the child.

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You can only use chemicals or suffocation. These are the bills that they've done.

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But in Louisiana, in all the states we've gone to, we try to put bills in and the pro -life establishment says, no, it's not about Christ.

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No, we don't ever want her to be seen as guilty. No, she does not need forgiveness for her abortion. She's a victim too.

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We want this not to be criminal for the mothers or the fathers. Not a crime. And so what they've done is they've killed all of our bills in committee.

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They've tried to fight against them getting on the floor but in Louisiana, something historic happened. In 50 years since Roe vs.

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Wade, it never happened. God blessed us with something tremendous. Our bill went into a mostly

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Christian pro -life legislature. They looked at our bill and they go, hey, that's what we raise money for.

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We're telling people we're pro -life. We believe it's human from conception. We believe all human life is sacred and needs to be protected.

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That's what that bill says. And so our bill was the first in 50 years of Roe vs. Wade that passed the hearing and it went to the floor.

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Yes, praise God. All glory to God. The day of the vote was interesting because Christians, churches, and pastors came from across the

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United States of America. They came to join us in Louisiana. And let me tell you something. You never saw this in 50 years of Roe vs.

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Wade in my nation. Christians, pastors, believers in Jesus Christ gathered in the middle of that capital to worship

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Jesus. We were singing worship songs together to Christ.

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Presbyterians, Baptists, Charismatics, Reformed Anglicans.

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It was the church gathered together worshiping

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Christ, standing side by side. The day that that bill was going to the floor vote, the week before the vote, we polled the legislators, many of them believers.

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They all said they were voting yes on it. That we were going to pass and abolish abortion in the state of Louisiana.

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And then the pro -life establishment heard of what was happening in Louisiana. And the heads of the pro -life industry in my nation worked together to kill our bill.

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They formed a letter to legislators across the United States of America that said they never want a legislator to pass a bill that would make abortion a crime for the mother or the father.

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Did you hear that? They just gave permission to women to DIY abortions with impunity.

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Do it yourself. They believe that even if they shut the abortion mills down and mothers are killing their children on their own via pills and potions or whatever, they believe they're not guilty and they have permission to do it.

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Now, of course, they don't want them to, but they believe there should be no legal consequences. And so the pro -life establishment worked together with 70 of the largest pro -life organizations in my nation.

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They formed the letter, they put it in the hands of our legislators that day of the vote, and they challenged our legislators not to pass a bill that would abolish abortion.

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Why? Because they're not doing this as Christians. Because they're not doing it with the authority of Jesus Christ.

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Because they're not doing it with the word of God. Because they've removed the gospel hope for the woman and they never, ever want abortion to be seen as a crime for the mother to kill her own child in the womb.

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And so they killed our bill in Louisiana the day of the vote. They killed it.

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And I want to just point you to two things, brothers and sisters. I'm desperate for this. Can I tell you my heart?

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We're almost done. The church in my nation, yes, we had moments where we were speaking consistently against this issue.

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But 3 ,000 babies were dying every single day in my nation. Still being killed in my nation.

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Roe vs. Wade did not end abortion in my country. But through Roe vs.

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Wade, the church, of course, was saying the right things in our churches, behind our walls.

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All those things were saying, yeah, it's murder, but we shipped off this issue to secular organizations and non -Christian organizations to fight this fight for us.

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Without Christ, without the word of God, without the gospel, and 3 ,000 babies a day were dying.

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Over 62 million were murdered in the 50 years of Roe vs. Wade. And they're still being killed to this day.

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And it was about the last 10 years that the churches started to really wake up in my nation to recognize that this is for the church to do.

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This is our responsibility. This is not the responsibility of secular and neutral organizations.

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It's the responsibility of the people of God. We have the gospel. The gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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The world doesn't change apart from Jesus Christ and the gospel.

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Do we believe that here? Yes? So we can't give this demand of transformation to organizations that are

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Christ -less and gospel -less. Now, brothers and sisters, this is what

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I'm desperate for you to understand. At the end of the last 10 years of Roe vs.

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Wade, again, nothing has really changed in America. Roe vs. Wade was overturned, but they're still killing babies. It's still permissible.

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It's still, you can still do it, no problem in my country. Nothing's changed. We discovered into the tail end of Roe vs.

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Wade that this is the role of the church. We need to use the gospel, no compromise. And you know what we did?

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Churches, pastors, were able to get thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children saved from death where they're killing them.

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It's still happening this very day. And we were able to get bills to abolish abortion, to criminalize abortion, to call it the image of God into legislatures across the country.

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We have eight more states coming up in the next couple of months. Bills of abolition.

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Do you know where that came from? Not the pro -life establishment. Not the pro -life industry. They fought against it every single time and they will continue to do so because of their doctrine.

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It happened because of Christians just like you. Nobodies. With no money to really speak of.

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Our budget compared to them is pennies. Pennies on the dollar.

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We did it with the word of God, with the spirit of God, with the gospel. But we only discovered near the tail end of our

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Holocaust that this is the role of the church and here's the success that you're gonna get when you use the gospel. And we are gonna end abortion in my nation, criminalize it.

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It's happening now. We are close because of the gospel, because of the church, because of the word of God.

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You are at the beginning of your Holocaust. You're at the beginning of your

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Holocaust. 62 million slaughtered in my nation.

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You're at the beginning of your Holocaust and you're hearing from a pastor who has no right to be before you that this is the role of the church, that it is the role of the word of God and the gospel itself and the transformation is only gonna happen from the

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Christian church bringing the gospel into the public square on this issue. You're hearing about it at the beginning of your

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Holocaust. My brothers and sisters, I say to you very humbly, don't stand on a pile of 62 million dead bodies in Ireland.

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Use the word of God now. No compromise now.

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Preach the gospel now in your nation. Bring it into the public square.

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Be willing to be a righteous and godly troublemaker for the cause of Christ.

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Be willing to lay your life down the way that the apostles did in the book of Acts to preach the gospel, to be hated by people, to be despised by people, not because of your behavior, but because of the message.

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Jesus said if they hated him, they're gonna hate you. Too many of us want to be just liked and loved by the culture around us.

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We don't want any real troubles and so we watch the world go to hell around us rather than sacrificing ourselves for the cause of the love of God and the love of neighbor.

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You're at the beginning of your Holocaust, brothers and sisters. Don't, as a nation, be where we are today, where we have blood guiltiness in our nation.

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Over 62 million dead in my nation. From what I understand, you have 3 ,500 now since it began in Northern Ireland.

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My son, Augustine, I adopted him

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December 13th, 2019, right before the whole COVID situation.

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His mother, his biological mother, found out she was pregnant with him when she was five months.

01:00:02

She was addicted to drugs, basically homeless. Five months, she discovered she was pregnant with my son,

01:00:10

Augustine. We adopted him. But when she found out she was pregnant with him, she was gonna kill him.

01:00:21

She wasn't in a place, she thought, to have the baby, to raise him, so she figured she was gonna kill him, so she had an appointment to murder my son.

01:00:31

And what happened was that she, in the providence of God, ran into a

01:00:36

Christian sister named Tabitha that she had known for like 20 years. She told

01:00:42

Tabitha what she was going to do, and Tabitha, this amazing Christian who saved my son's life, told her, you will not murder your son.

01:00:53

She told her the truth. She said, you will not murder him. She said, I will take care of your needs.

01:00:59

I will feed you. I will give you a place to live for free. It will cost you nothing. We'll find a Christian family who will adopt him.

01:01:07

And so she talked her out of murdering him. And then she went to her first real appointment for ultrasound, and what'd they find?

01:01:14

They found out that he had the worst stage of spina bifida that there is. There's about four stages.

01:01:20

He had the worst. He was on the best end, they said, of the worst of spina bifida. I have the ultrasounds.

01:01:27

You can see this big black hole in his spine. He had brain issues they were looking at, and so they told her he has spina bifida, and it's very bad.

01:01:36

They said it's possible he'll have brain problems, brain damage. It's possible he'll never walk in his life.

01:01:43

And so she decided then, well, now I really have to have the abortion. I have to kill him, because nobody's going to want a boy like this.

01:01:52

And Tabitha, this amazing believer in Christ, kept giving her the word of God, kept pointing her to Christ, kept calling her to turn to Christ, and that we would find a family that would adopt him.

01:02:06

Well, I'll spare you a lot of the details of the miracles that took place for us to discover that it was supposed to be us.

01:02:12

I didn't know them at all. God providentially worked this out. If you look up some stuff online, you can see the full story.

01:02:19

But we said, yes, we'll adopt him. When we agreed to adopt Augustine, we knew that he had spina bifida, that he was going to have between two and six weeks of surgeries.

01:02:30

They were supposed to deliver him on December 13th via C -section, and because of the spina bifida and the brain problems, nobody was allowed to touch him.

01:02:40

They were supposed to take him out and bring him to the NICU, the newborn intensive care unit, where basically he would have to be placed on his belly because his spine is open, and they would go into an immediate surgery to his back.

01:02:52

Then they had to work on his brain, and so they told us, you're going to be at the hospital between two and six weeks, and you're not allowed to touch him.

01:03:01

You can't touch him because it's too delicate. We were prepared. We said, yes,

01:03:07

Lord, here am I. Send me. I'm going to love this boy. We'll take him. Yes, he's my son.

01:03:15

And at the hospital, my wife Candy and I are waiting in the waiting room while the birth mother, biological mother, and Tabitha are in surgery.

01:03:26

The surgery is taking like a long time, a long time. So my wife

01:03:32

Candy says, hey, do you want to go get some coffee while we're waiting? I said, yeah. So we drive right across the street to get some coffee, and my wife

01:03:39

Candy, she says to me, she says, babe, are you ready? I said, what do you mean?

01:03:47

She said, are you ready? I said, for what? For Augustine?

01:03:53

Yeah, I'm excited. She said, are you ready for it to be worse than we think? And I remember that this is the first time

01:04:04

I talked like this. I did not say this any other time.

01:04:10

There were Christians around the world praying for Augustine. My adoption of Augustine was public because we didn't have the money to do it.

01:04:18

But it dropped out of the sky. So Christians around the world helped to fund his adoption. Everybody knew about the issues, spina bifida, brain issues, surgery, and everybody was praying.

01:04:28

It's the first time I talked to my wife like this. She said, are you ready for it to be worse than we think? And then

01:04:34

I said, of course. He's my son. I don't care. And then

01:04:40

I said, and I know where it came from, but I hadn't thought these thoughts before.

01:04:46

I said, but are you ready? She said, for what? Are you ready for God to completely heal him?

01:04:54

And she said, she gave the Christian answer, well, of course. Like, God can do anything.

01:05:01

Of course. I said, are you ready? And she said, well, of course. But it was just a throwaway.

01:05:06

Like, yeah, that's really going to happen. So we go back to the hospital. Tabitha's not answering the text messages.

01:05:11

And then Tabitha comes out solemn. Nothing. Just looks.

01:05:20

No expression. She comes. She says, OK, come with me. And Candy and I looked at each other, and we thought, oh, no.

01:05:29

It's worse. And so we're following Tabitha through the hospital. We go through these doors.

01:05:34

We turn corners. And then I realized we're going into a surgery center, but we're not going to the

01:05:40

NICU, where the NICU was that way. We're going the wrong direction. So in my mind, I'm going, I don't know why we're not going to the

01:05:45

NICU. OK. And so we walk into the post -operation surgery room.

01:05:51

We walk into this room, and I see a nurse, and I see the birth mom lying there.

01:05:56

And something unusual was there, is happening, is Augustine was on her chest.

01:06:03

Now, we were told, you are not allowed to touch him for weeks, possibly. Nobody can touch him.

01:06:10

It's immediately to the NICU. Get him on his belly, and it's surgery. No one can touch him. So why is she holding him?

01:06:16

My head's thinking, why is she holding him? And at that very moment, the whole entire surgical room breaks out, screaming.

01:06:24

The nurse, the birth mom, Tabitha, just screaming.

01:06:32

I think my wife was speaking in tongues, because she was screaming. Not really. She was screaming.

01:06:40

It was just this chaos. And the nurse said, he's completely whole.

01:06:47

He's totally whole. The nurse unravels him, and she's got him.

01:06:52

She's turning him over. Like, look, look, his back. Look, there's nothing wrong. He's totally whole.

01:06:59

Tears and screaming. The doctors are in the hallway saying, we've never seen anything like this. The doctor who was scheduled for his surgery has been the greatest surgeon for 35 years in our state for this issue.

01:07:10

And he says he's never seen this one time in all his medical career. He's seen him come out completely whole, no brain issues, no spina bifida.

01:07:17

We've got the ultrasound from two weeks before, I think, or one week before the surgery, before the birth itself, where you still see the big hole in the spine.

01:07:26

He came out completely whole. His name is Augustine, and he's the most beautiful thing God ever made.

01:07:41

Now, I'm sharing that story for the glory of God to tell you an amazing miracle that I witnessed in my life, a genuine miracle. But Augustine is one.

01:07:50

He's one child. 62 million slaughtered in my nation.

01:08:01

And they are being killed in yours now. And the two things that are the lies you have to overcome, coming from my nation and organizations that pretend to be on our side, is one, that the mother is not guilty.

01:08:21

Scripture says, Proverbs 17, 15, write that down. Go read it. The person who acquits the guilty and condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to God.

01:08:37

Did you hear that? We all know what it means to condemn a righteous person. We saw that with Jesus. That was an abomination.

01:08:43

But God also says that when you declare a guilty person not guilty, that is equally an abomination in God's eyes.

01:08:52

The pro -life establishment is going to try to train you and indoctrinate you as a church to remove the gospel hope for women who have killed their children, to take it away by saying that she's not guilty and she doesn't need

01:09:06

Christ for that. The next thing is they're going to try to convince you as a church to accept partiality and bills of unequal weights and measures.

01:09:22

Kill these, but not these. Partiality. God says unequal weights and measures.

01:09:28

Proverbs 20, 23 is an abomination in his eyes. If you want to see it expressed in a way that actually fills it out for you, read

01:09:36

James chapter 2. It's easy to see. What's James chapter 2 talking about? The rich coming in and the poor, and you're giving the rich a special place in the congregation, right?

01:09:44

You're giving them sort of this head position, but not the poor. What's God say? That's a sin of partiality.

01:09:49

That's not loving your neighbor. That's partiality. That is a sin against God, and it's a sin against your neighbor.

01:09:55

These bills of partiality are unjust. Kill these, but not these. I mean, my nation should know better.

01:10:02

It wasn't very long ago in my nation we had people telling black people that they weren't allowed to ride the same buses or to drink from the same fountains, and they had

01:10:10

Christian churches that made black people sit in a different place to hear the word of God. My nation just came out of that sin of partiality.

01:10:18

We recognize it for what it is. You're saying to these humans that they're not the same as these humans, and they're not to be treated equally.

01:10:26

What a sin. And now we're going to do it again with the preborn and to say you can kill these, but not these.

01:10:34

Brothers and sisters, who told us that we have to compromise? Who told us that we don't have to use the gospel?

01:10:41

Who told us that we don't need the word of God in this fight? That's not coming from the Lord. That's not a

01:10:47

Christian position, and I'm going to encourage you, brothers and sisters, preach the gospel. Preach the gospel.

01:10:54

Don't let that be a pithy slogan. Preach the gospel. Bring it to the public square. Bring it to the world around you.

01:10:59

The gospel is the power of God for salvation. If we look at the world around us and we see darkness encroaching, what is the call for Christians?

01:11:06

The Christian church is to be light and to be salt, to preach the gospel, to see God transform the world by his spirit and his word.

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But it must, brothers and sisters, it must come from you. And you might think it's an impossible task.

01:11:22

You might think there's no way it's possible. How in the world, when you see all this evil out there, are we going to see transformation?

01:11:29

It seems too overwhelming. It seems too big of a task. I'll remind you of the one who said that he had all authority in heaven and on earth before 11 very confused disciples.

01:11:40

Jesus said to these disciples, I'm the king. I have all authority. It's all mine. And now he says, go get the world because it belongs to me.

01:11:49

Can you imagine the disciples that were left at that point going, uh, wow.

01:11:57

The whole world? Win every nation to this king? It probably seemed impossible then too.

01:12:03

It probably seemed like a mustard seed that was insignificant. You couldn't even see it in your hand barely.

01:12:09

But those seeds grow into very large trees, Jesus taught. It probably seemed like leaven in a lump of dough.