Must Hear Sermon: No King But Christ

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Watch this new, important, and very powerful message from the Elders at Apologia Church. Pastors Luke Pierson, Zack Morgan, Jeff Durbin, Dr. James White spoke to the congregation at Apologia about our current cirumstances. You don't want to miss this one! Be sure to share it with everyone you know! You can get more at http://apologiastudios.com. Be sure to like, share, and comment on this video. #ApologiaStudios You can partner with us by signing up for All Access. When you do you make everything we do possible and you also get our TV show, After Show, and Apologia Academy. In our Academy you can take a courses on Christian apologetics and much more. Follow us on social media here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ApologiaStudios/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/apologiastudios?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apologiastudios/?hl=en

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All right, we're doing a little bit different today. We did this back when
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COVID started, actually, if you guys remember when we were meeting at Desert Hills. So all four of us elders are going to take a few minutes to share what's on our hearts in light of what's going on in our nation right now.
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And so yeah, because I'm taller than some of our elders,
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I have to kind of squat down a little bit.
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So forgive me if I look weird. Speaking of Pastor James, he mentioned that what goes around comes around.
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And I hope, I pray for that, because I'd love to live to be 500 years old.
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Seriously, though, I'm going to start with a reading from Proverbs, chapter 24, verses 8 through 10.
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Whoever plans to do evil will be called a schemer. The devising of folly is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to mankind.
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Here in verse 10, this is the verse I want to really camp on. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
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So this election is far from over. We may not know who's going to be our next president until January 22nd, the way this thing's going.
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But the question is, how shall we live? How shall we approach this, regardless of the outcome?
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I say that we respond with boldness, and with strength, and with courage.
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Now is not the time to be weak. Now is not the time to throw in the towel and to wave the white flag.
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And according to verse 10 that we just read, if we faint now in this day of adversity, it shows that our strength is small.
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I say, let's show how great our strength truly is, because our strength is found in the
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Creator. First Corinthians 16 .13 says, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
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One of the hardest things for me personally to watch this last week has been the so -called conservatives and Christians that have just packed it in and have given up, simply because the outcome of this election looks to be really bad, and the future looks bleak.
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But I have to say that I'm thankful, so thankful, that our founding fathers did not faint in their day of adversity.
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I'm so thankful that their strength was not small, that they were watchful, that they stood firm in their faith, and that they acted like men.
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The question I have is, where has that fighting spirit gone? It has been slowly eroded away, one enticing tyrannical trickle at a time.
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We would not be standing here today if our founding fathers had the same lack of fortitude, the same lack of courage that's been on full display this last week.
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No matter the final outcome of this election, Christ is still ruling and reigning.
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He is sovereign over all of this and is in total control. Quickly, I want to give a little brief history lesson on a man named
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Jonas Clark. If you don't know who he was, he was a pastor in Lexington.
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He was a good friend of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. They used to hang out together.
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Actually, Adams and Hancock used to spend time at his home quite a bit. They were actually all at his home hanging out when
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Paul Revere did his famous ride and came to his house to let them know that the
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Redcoats were coming. There's a sermon that he gave in Lexington on April 19, 1776.
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So this was three months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He did this sermon to commemorate the shot heard round the world, which was one year prior on April 19, 1775.
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So keep in mind that Jonas Clark was there and several members of his church were the ones that were shot and killed at the shot heard round the world.
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So this is how he started this sermon. He said, next to the acknowledgment of the existence of a deity, of God, there is no one principle of greater importance in religion than a realizing belief of the divine government and providence, to realize that God is governor among the nations, that his government is wise and just, and that all our times and changes are in his hands and at his disposal.
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We'll have the happiest tendency to excite the most grateful acknowledgments of his goodness and prosperity, the most cordial resignation to his paternal discipline in adversity, and the most placid composure and equanimity of mind in all the changing scenes of life.
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Inspired with this divine principle, we should contemplate with grateful wonder and delight the goodness of God and prosperous events and devoutly acknowledge and adore his sovereign hand in days of darkness and perplexity and when the greatest difficulties press.
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This will be a source of comfort and support under private afflictions and trials, and this shall encourage our hope in God and trust in his name under public calamities and judgments.
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Yea, however dark and mysterious the ways of providence may appear, yet nothing shall overwhelm the mind or destroy the trust and hope of those that realize the government of heaven, that realize that an all -wise
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God is seated on the throne and that all things are well appointed for his chosen people, for them that fear him.
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I've actually just, the last couple of weeks I've read this, it's long, it's really good though, and it's very, very much applicable to where we're at now.
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And I've been saying for a while that I truly believe that God is preparing us for a time of repentance in our nation, for a time of reformation, but he has to form
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Gideon's army first, so that he gets all the glory. In Judges chapter seven, if you're not familiar with Gideon's army, we see that God whittled down Gideon's army from 22 ,000 to 10 ,000 to 300 men.
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And in Judges chapter seven, or I'm sorry, in verse two, the Lord told Gideon, the people with you are too many for me to give the
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Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me saying, my own hand has saved me.
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So God intentionally shrinks his armies in order for him to get the glory. So the 300 men that God preserved for battle were the ones that were alert and prepared.
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These were the ones that, instead of bowing their face down to the water to drink, it says that they scooped up water into their hand and lapped it up like a dog, showing that they were aware of their surroundings and ready for battle.
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They weren't just prepared for war though, but also for victory. If nothing else, we have seen
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God whittle down his church to those who are truly faithful and committed to him in 2020 the chaff has been blown away and the dross has also been burned away.
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And I've sincerely asked this question, are there 300 faithful pastors left in our nation that are ready and prepared, not just for battle, but also for victory?
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I believe that there are, I do, but now is the time to stand strong, to be courageous and to act like men.
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Only God knows for sure who the president for the next four years will be. Only he knows if he will grant us mercy, undeserved mercy, or if he will completely give us over to the judgment that our nation so desperately deserves.
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But I do know this, and I can promise you this, that the
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Black Robe Regiment will ride again before any one of your pastors bows before tyranny.
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I can promise you that we will fight for truth and for liberty and for justice to our last dying breaths.
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Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not some pithy slogan, but it is rooted in Christ, and ultimately can only be justified by Scripture.
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In the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter one, 20 to 21, it says, "'As it is my eager expectation and hope "'that
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I will not be at all ashamed, "'but that with full courage now as always
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Christ "'will be honored in my body, "'whether by life or by death.
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"'For to me, to live is Christ, "'and to die is gain.'"
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And lastly, I wanna end here with my little sermonette.
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I want to end with the closing from Jonas Clark's sermon. He said this. This is the blessing he gave at the end.
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May that God, who is a God of righteousness and salvation, still appear for us, go forth with our armies, tread down our enemies, and cleanse and avenge our innocent blood.
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And may we be prepared by a general repentance and thorough reformation for his gracious and powerful interposition in our behalf.
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And then, may we see the displays of his power and glory for our salvation, which
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God of his infinite mercy grant for his mercy's sake in Christ Jesus.
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Choose this day whom you will serve. And as for me and my house, we have no king but Christ.
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That was absolutely excellent. Hey guys, I'm gonna move through this really quick.
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We got a couple of heavy hitter, long -winded heavy hitters on the deck, so. And you all know it's true.
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I just wanna share with you what I've been kind of preaching to my own heart. I think when we go through times of anxiety and worry, and we don't know what's a step ahead of us, we gotta preach to ourselves.
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We gotta preach the truth to ourselves. So it's kind of just three points, maybe three areas that I've been telling myself.
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I hope it's encouraging. I hope it challenges you. I hope it's helpful. And let's just get into it.
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Point number one, your Lord is with you and your pastor's with you to the bitter end.
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And that's the greatest thing about belonging to the community of God's people is we don't have to go about living life alone.
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I couldn't imagine being out there. I think the unbeliever is the most alone person in the world, while the believer is never alone.
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The Lord is with us. He doesn't leave us or forsake us. And then we have the community of God's people around us to help us and just to walk through life with us.
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But you have to know from our perspective that as your pastors, we're prohibited from ever leaving you, that we're here for you, to protect you, to care for you.
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Until our dying breath, just like Pastor Luke just said, the number one priority of your president is to protect his nation's inhabitants.
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That's why, unfortunately, Joe Biden is disqualified from this role because you can't protect your nation's inhabitants and think it's okay to kill them in the womb.
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It doesn't work. But the number one priority of a shepherd, a shepherd pastor, a good shepherd pastor, is to protect and care for his flock.
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A good pastor, when he sees a storm coming, when he sees trials and adversity on the horizon, he can't run, he can't hide, he can't self -prioritize.
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That's what we wanna do in our cowardice, but we as pastors aren't allowed to do it. Look what John 10, 11 through 15, says about the good shepherd.
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He says, I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep. He was a hired hand and not a shepherd who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
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He flees, listen, because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep, but I am the good shepherd, and I know my own and my own know me, even as the father knows me and I know the father, and I lay my life for the sheep.
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A pastor can't leave the sheep or be disconnected from the sheep in any way. We live as servants, we live to serve you, to lay our lives down again for you.
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Like Paul said, we're the lowest of men taking that role of a servant. A shepherd disconnected from his flock is an oxymoron.
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And I think we kind of got a feel for that in the nation when pastors shut down their churches and the body just couldn't deal with that because we need one another, and we need to be again connected to those guys, those qualified guys over us that are gonna lead us into still waters and green pastors.
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If the pastor is unwilling to lay his life down, and I'm not talking about just for a moment when things are good, or laying his life down figuratively.
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If the guy's not willing to take a bullet for each and every one of his sheep, you have to flee from him.
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Ezekiel 34, one through 10 gives you a really good outline of what it means to be a bad pastor.
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Just for the sake of time, I'm not gonna go through it, but read Ezekiel 34, one through 10. We've gotta mark out a false shepherd.
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We have to mark out false pastors because they are the ones that victimize the sheep. It's something that we don't necessarily enjoy to do, but I heard this quote this week.
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It says, weak pulpits create a weak country, right? But weak pastors create weak pulpits.
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But praise God, there's strong pastors out there. A good shepherd puts the flock before himself, lays down his life for the flock, protects his flock, has his heart and mind focused on the well -being of the flock, not himself, and doesn't use the flock for selfish gain.
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So I said all this, and I've been saying this to myself, because you look at the state of affairs in the nation, and your mind wanders, right?
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You just present a billion what -if scenarios. What if there's forced vaccinations? What if I'm gonna lose money in the stock market?
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What if I'm gonna lose my job? And we can kind of get lost in this world of what -ifs.
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What we wanna remind you about Matthew 6 -34, it says, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself.
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Each day has enough trouble of its own. So we take it a day at a time.
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It's good to look out in front of you, and we've got wonderful shepherds here who have the power to see and to forecast.
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It's been amazing how God has used Dr. White and his ability to foresee things. Those things are great, but we take it a day at a time.
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And we are gonna, we commit to you that we're gonna be fully focused on God's word and employ principles as these days kind of open up to us.
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We're gonna be here for you, the deacons and the men of the church are gonna be here to serve you. And if we have to die for you, well, that's all, that's just in the calling.
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So that's number one, the pastor's gonna be here for you. Number two, we're commanded to be here for one another. We're commanded to carry one another's burdens.
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So what we can tend to do when we see a storm looming or a storm on the horizon, is we batten down the hatches and we say, you know what,
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I'm just gonna kind of remain in my own home and focus on my own family. I'm gonna make sure they're provided for to the exclusion of other people.
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Now, your primary ministry, especially as men, is your family. We have to look out for our families.
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The Bible says we don't do that. We should be considered worse than an unbeliever, but not to the exclusion of our brothers and sisters in Christ in their needs, right?
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This, it's kind of this, I don't know if you've heard it before, it's this us four and no more kind of ideological system that pervades the
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American Evangelical Church. And it's, I'm only going to care for my family. Everybody else can literally just fend for themselves.
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That's not the way we're supposed to operate, folks. No, we attend to our families, but then we attend to our brothers and sisters primarily.
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We're commanded to practically care for one another. Philippians 2 .4 says, do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
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Galatians 6 .2 says, bear one another's burdens and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.
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And I know I'm speaking of the choir because you guys do so great and caring and our meal trains and the way that we pour out our lives to one another.
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I've never known a church or been a part of a church that loves one another like you guys do. So I know I'm preaching to the choir, but when we see adversity, when the pressure of adversity or difficulty raises up, then we can pull back and we can say, oh no, no, no,
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I'm only going to focus on me. It's something that we have to resist. Galatians 6 .10
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says, so then while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people and especially those who are of the household of faith.
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The Christian life shouldn't be defined by the pursuit of comfort and ease and self -preservation.
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That's wouldn't, you shouldn't mark a Christian from those things, right? Our lives have to be marked by sacrifice, laying down our lives, sharing what we have for the good of God's people and one another.
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Romans 12 .1 says, therefore I urge you brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship.
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And then Acts 2 gives an account of the early church and how they would do that. It says in verse 45, and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing with them all and as anyone might have need.
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So that second point, six, make sure that we're taking care of our families, working hard, but also looking to the right and looking to the left and opening up our homes to our brothers and sisters who might need us.
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The third point is that we can rejoice in persecution and proclaim the gospel.
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Rejoice in persecution. It sounds crazy because that doesn't come to mind when you think about going through rough times, but the scriptural example is that we rejoice in persecution and proclaim the gospel.
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Look at Acts 540 through 41, a couple of verses, I'm constantly preaching to myself when we're going out in the field and preaching the gospel.
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It says, so they went out on their way from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for his name.
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And every day in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus Christ, Jesus as the
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Christ. So persecution should be expected. Second Timothy 3, 12 says, indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
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So it's not a win or it's not an if, it's a win, it's coming at us, but it's up to us to decide whether or not we're gonna respond to it.
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I guess in a down matter or in a way that would move from our responsibilities as far as the way that we respond to different issues, or are we gonna do what these guys did and are we gonna rejoice in persecution?
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How can we rejoice when being persecuted? I mean, you think about these guys, they would go out, this is the model, the biblical model of the early church and their evangelistic efforts.
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They would go out, just get their bottoms beat. They would high five each other after that.
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And we're not talking about just fists being thrown at them, really beat up badly. They would high five, come back, get bandaged up by the church, get restored, and then go right back out into the field again.
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That's how they responded. That's amazing. And we can respond to persecution with rejoicing because persecution strengthens the church.
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It always has, and it always will. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
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You track it all throughout down church history, looking at faithful Christianity, it always strengthens the church.
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It unites the church, it enlarges the church, and it purifies the church because what does it do?
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Persecution, when things get hot and heavy, the fakes come to the surface when it comes to false
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Christians and false pastors. So we can flee from those type of men, call them to repentance, and we can evangelize the
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Christians who are false brethren. In the midst of the church. So when we are persecuted, it always goes good for us.
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You know, compared to much of our brothers and sisters all throughout church history, you know, the writer of the book of Hebrews says, we haven't resisted to the point of shedding blood.
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Right? We got a good here. It's people saying not so nice things to us. Is that going to change?
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It may. Sometimes you want to welcome that because the hotter the persecution on the church, the better and the bigger the church becomes.
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But just to go back a little bit to the Scottish covenanters, what would happen to them. So the
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Dragoons were the English soldiers. And if they even suspected back then, and this is from 1630 to 1688, if they even suspected that you were going out to an outside meeting because they were banned from having meetings at homes or in churches, but they just suspected you of doing that, then they would go to your house, they would kill the man, and then they would set up what's called quarter in the house.
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They would eat all the food. They'd kill all the livestock in the home. They would eat it all. They would do whatever they wanted with the wife and the kids.
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And then they would banish that family's name into poverty for the rest of their lives.
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So they couldn't buy land. They couldn't get jobs. This is real persecution.
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But you know what's awesome about this? In the midst of that, those Scottish covenanters had a joy like you couldn't even imagine.
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They weren't running. They were facing it head on. And the church flourished.
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Thousands upon thousands were saved in Scotland. God was glorified. And these guys, again, they're funny.
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They loved their wives. They loved their kids. They didn't let the persecution warp their understanding of who they knew
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God to be and what persecution was doing in the midst of the church. So that third point is we can have joy in persecution.
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Are we being joyful as we go about this? Or is it just doom and gloom and oh no, woe is us?
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That's not the Christian response. And that's not the historical response. So persecution would come upon the church and then they would go out preaching the gospel.
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And that's really the ticket. And when we talk about the state of our nation and what leads to it, it's the absentee church.
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It's the church that abdicates its evangelistic duty on all fronts to go out into a nation and preach the gospel.
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That is why we're here is because such a small percentage of the professing Christian church will go out and share the gospel.
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I'm not talking about preaching on the street corner or getting up on a soapbox, but simply sharing the faith.
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When the church doesn't share the faith, then you get the culture and then you get the leaders that we have right now.
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So what's the response? Share the faith. Open your mouth. Share the faith.
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Share the gospel of those around you. You know, what we are seeing, and I think one of the most discouraging things for me, even though I'm hopeful in Christ, is that such a vast majority of the
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American evangelical church are not Christians. They're false Christians. They're people who would vote for a man like Joe Biden and think that they're justified biblically to do that.
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Right? If you do that, you know, deep down within, you don't know Christ. You're not born again.
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What does that mean for us as we go about sharing the gospel? You talk to somebody and you say, hey, my name's
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Zach. I'm gonna share the gospel with you. And they say, I'm a Christian. Don't let them off the hook. Just a little practical evangelistic advice for you right now as you go about doing this.
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Ask them to share the gospel with you. Just say, hey, that's great, but could you share the gospel with me for a couple minutes?
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And if they don't know the gospel, ask them, how can you be saved by a gospel that you don't understand and share the gospel with them?
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My heart and my focus is really evangelizing the American evangelical church because so many of our lost neighbors sit within those pews every single day because, again, they're under false pastors and they're being fed the false gospel.
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So that's it. One, we're here for you. Our priority is the flock. We'll die. We'll live for you.
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We don't wanna die. We wanna live for you, but if we gotta die, we gotta die. Let's take care of one another and let's get out there rejoicing in persecution and preach the gospel.
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So we love to rib each other as pastors. And I actually wanna talk about that for a second.
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For us, truth matters. We can't compromise. We have to take truth seriously always.
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I think it's important, though, and I think we recognize this together, it's important also not to take ourselves too seriously.
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The truth, serious, not ourselves. That's why you see a lot of that. With that, we joke a lot with each other about time because everyone knows
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Pastor James speaks way longer than all of us. But it's something interesting. I mentioned it a while back.
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You guys remember we came back from trying to equip the church in Northern Ireland and then the Republic and then
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Scotland. And while we were in Scotland to equip the church out there, we got to spend morning and a little bit of afternoon with the person that took us around Edinburgh to all the places where the
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Scottish church was being persecuted and being destroyed and murdered and mauled by the government.
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And one of the things we got to see that was so intense, it was just truly, truly an experience.
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We got to see John Knox's pulpit, the pulpit that he preached from. I got to touch it. It was an incredible experience to be there and some of the tools that they would use to crush the thumbs of the
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Christians or break their legs or to cut their heads off were there. I mean,
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I actually have a surprise in the museum there where they were killing the Christians. They have the thing where they cut their heads off.
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And you would think they have it behind glass or behind ropes or something, but they had one of the things they would use just to chop the heads off of Christians for refusing to say that the king has authority over the church.
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That's it. Just say it and you go home, you're free. Your wife doesn't get raped.
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Your food is in your cabinets. Your livestock is fine. All you have to say is, yes, the government has authority over the church, the worship of the church, the message of the church.
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So you look at your bulletins today, it says what? No king but Christ. That was what they said.
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I'm sorry, the government's ordained by God. The government has a responsibility, a prescriptive, described duty before God.
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Yes, and we will submit to government so long as it's submitted to Jesus and to God's law.
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But I'm sorry, when you try to take over the authority of the church or the nation by some other
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God, we have to say no king but Christ. He's the ultimate.
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And so you would see the tools of dismemberment and I got to touch it. It was a truly amazing experience.
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To put my hand on the wood and it's just jarred and torn to pieces and you can see it's stained.
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I don't know how many Christians had their heads removed and the blood just poured on that wood and I got to touch it.
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That's the kind of dramatic persecution that faithful believers have gone through in the past and they won.
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You see, we tell these stories today. It's relevant today. You hear a lot about the covenanters today. You're gonna hear about the Puritans and the Huguenots and Christians that came over.
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We're talking today about a wicked government that's abandoned Jesus, that celebrates the death of children, that celebrates debauchery, that celebrates coveting and theft, that celebrates gender bending, that celebrates gay mirage.
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But what are we complaining about? We're saying no, there's a system behind us, a worldview and establishment of justice, the things that are in accordance with biblical law.
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You know who gave us that? The descendants of the covenanters, the Huguenots, the
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Puritans, those were Christians and they believed God's law and that Christ was king and that's what they established.
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So here we are and one of the interesting things, and this goes back to how I'm talking about how we rib each other.
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We don't really mean it, by the way. We just like to poke fun at each other. There was, and some of you guys remember me saying this, there was a place for an hourglass.
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They didn't have what we have today, just pull out your smartphone to complain about how long Pastor Jeff is going. They had a position for the hourglass and it was an hourglass.
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And so the preacher would go up on that little wooden pulpit and turn that over on the Lord's day and it would run out of sand, an hour was up.
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And it was commonplace, and everybody knows this in the history, it was commonplace for the congregation to start barking at the pastor saying more, more, turn it over, turn it over, right?
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And so they would turn it over again and he'd go for another hour and then the congregation would say more, more.
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They were hungry. I mean, these covenanters enduring this kind of persecution building a nation that they were, their perspective of a sermon is more.
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We need to be fed. We want to hear God's word, we're longing for it. And so they would flip it over and it would flip over three or four times.
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And that's what I'm trying to get us to. Maybe the problem in our nation is we have even jellyfish churches that are satisfied with 25 minute stories of the pastor's life rather than the word of God being fed to the people of God.
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Maybe the problem is, is we don't know God, we don't know his word, we don't know his law.
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And so the abandonment of the culture is something that the church has to grapple with. If this nation started with a
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Christian worldview in the atmosphere, if the law of God was prized and treasured and even unbelieving people who said, no,
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I'm not a believer, but they respected the Christian worldview and understood that's the established worldview here.
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They understood. And now it's not. So what happens?
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Well, you could say human sin is the issue and the answer is, of course, human sin is the issue. You could talk about rebellion, you could talk about fallen hearts and fallen minds and depravity and hostility towards God, but can we confess to sin where there is sin?
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If the church is here, if the church had something to do with the establishment of this nation and justice and the church has been here, then how come so much darkness?
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I think at a certain point we have to say, I know what that sin is,
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I know what that lawlessness is, I know what that rebellion is, I know the cause of that out there, that person's lost, but how did we get like this?
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We have to start taking a look inward and to say, where's my sin? Where's my failure?
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Where's my compromise? Where's my capitulation to the culture? Now, God is the ultimate judge, but brothers and sisters,
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I have to say, what happened to the last generation of Christians who gave us this?
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Where were the compromises? Where was the capitulation? Where was the yielding?
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Where was the giving up? I think a problem oftentimes when you see nations kind of rise and fall like this and moments like this where injustice becomes rampant, at a certain point you have to say, where's the failure of the church?
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What did you love more than the truth, right? What did you love,
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Christian, more than the truth? Because that's, by the way, that's the bottom line that we need to come to grips with as Christians.
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When we think about the message of Jesus, I wanna read you this. When Jesus, we know this, I've said it so many times because I think it's so important.
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Jesus is the master at destroying the megachurch movement. He has massive crowds following him and he finds ways to whittle them back down to 12 again.
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But Jesus says in Matthew chapter 16, 24, Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
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So deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus. Words that, let's be honest, don't mean a lot to the 21st century
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American, Christian, or to anybody in terms of take up your cross.
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But in Jesus' day, that meant take up your cross and do the death march. It lands in one spot, it ends in one spot.
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When you take up a cross, you're carrying it to the place where you will be crucified and suffocate and bleed to death.
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So Jesus tells them in that context, you must, what? Come after me, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.
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So Jesus says, the way that he preaches the gospel to people, and by the way, we don't like this today in the evangelical megachurch culture.
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We wanna have as many people coming in as possible so that we can love as many people as possible and influence as many people as possible.
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Jesus says, no, no, you gotta count the cost. And he says, if you don't come to die, then don't come follow me.
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So he says, deny yourself and come do the death march. And I fear that our culture is the way that it is because we have so many people who profess to be light and really they have never died and risen again.
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We love our stuff too much, we love this world too much, we have not come to die.
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And Jesus says in verse 25, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
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For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
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Jesus preaches the gospel to people in such a way, he says, you come die or you don't come at all. You come to lose everything or don't come at all.
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What does it profit you if you gain everything and you lose your soul? And that's my challenge to myself, to my family, to our church body is have you died?
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It's really amazing, it talks in scripture about how believers are supposed to have lost fear over death because the one who has power over that fear of death has been conquered and here we are loving our stuff, afraid to die, afraid of persecution.
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You sit and read the book of Acts and I think at times we read those stories of the early church, read the stories of the apostles going into the culture and setting gospel fires and starting riots and being lowered out of windows and baskets and being beaten and tortured and preaching the gospel and people taking oaths that they're not gonna eat anything until Paul is dead, that sort of thing.
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And you read that and you go, see, that's faithfulness. Yeah, that's what we have to do. You read Acts chapter five and you're like, look at the apostles taking a beating for Jesus and then leaving the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ.
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You read that and it's just this inspiring, motivational speech because the truth is we're not willing to do it.
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We're not largely willing to do it. We talk about how glorious it is that the apostles take a beating for Jesus.
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They're told to not say anything else in this one's name and they go out continuing to preach in the name of Christ.
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And we'd say, that's faithfulness. That's the kind of thing we need to do is rejoice over the beating and most of us are too ashamed to say anything on social media that would conflict with the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age or the cultural gospel, what the world is teaching as good.
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If the culture is the report card of the church, how are we doing? How are we doing?
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But you know, brothers and sisters, we have to keep in mind that what's happening in the world around us, our world, this nation,
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God is sovereign, nothing's changed. He's wielding his will and plan over this nation.
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And for you brothers and sisters who know Jesus, you're in Christ, there is no judgment for you.
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Christ was already judged on your behalf. There is no condemnation for you, for us. However, we may be living in a nation that is under judgment.
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I believe we are. And there are two paths for this nation. There's either a path of judgment or a path of blessing.
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The path of blessing is gonna be in accordance with the Psalm that Tim read before service today, before the word today and that is obey the son or you'll perish.
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When nations honor God, glorify the son, they experience blessing.
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When they don't, they will be judged. There are historical judgments. God is not mocked.
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And brothers and sisters, we've sat in a nation that has murdered our most innocent among us, over 60 million children murdered since the 1970s.
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And we ask why is this happening to our nation? We tell people that in sexual ethics, anything goes.
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You can be whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. Pornography is more accessible now than ever.
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More people are addicted to pornography now than ever. We have no rules any longer.
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We can do as thou wilt. We love theft.
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It's on the ballot, by the way, did you see it? It was on the ballot, the raising of taxes, right?
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I was shocked to see. I thought, well, at least there's gonna be a victory there. Who reads a piece of paper that says, let's raise taxes?
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And everyone goes, yeah, yes. And it wins because we're fools.
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We don't know the limits of government. We love theft. Coveting is a virtue in our culture.
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We want our neighbor's things. That's the sin of our nation.
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We deserve judgment. Can we say that? As much as all of us would hate to see it fall on our nation, brothers and sisters,
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Kamala Harris is the president we deserve. She's the president that we deserve.
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People talk about her being the most radical, leftist, closest to communism, senator that was in existence.
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Well, that's what we deserve. We deserve a person who loves sin and wickedness to rule over us.
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And we deserve a woman to rule over us, which God, by the way, says is judgment. But nothing has changed.
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Jesus is the king. And by the way, that is not a pithy slogan. When I say, by the way, you don't understand something. That can either be something to rejoice in.
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Jesus is king over this nation in this moment. Look at the blessing. Look at the blessings of the king. Or when
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I say in this kind of context, Jesus is the king, you understand that's also a threat.
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Jesus is the king is a threat to a wicked nation. I'm telling this nation, if it doesn't repent and obey the gospel, believe in Jesus Christ, it will be taken down and judged by God.
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Jesus is the king can be a blessing or a curse to a sinner. Daniel chapter seven talks about this glorious vision of the son of man coming up to the ancient of days and was presented before him.
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And to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the people's nations and men of every language might serve him.
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His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away. And his kingdom is one which will never be destroyed.
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That brothers and sisters is our hope right now. Jesus is the one with all power and all authority.
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He is the king and nothing has changed that. And nothing ever will change that. The question is judgment or blessing?
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What's changed? Nothing. Here's the charge. Matthew 28, 18 through 20, you're gonna have this memorized.
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All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. You have to stop there for a moment because we usually say that in the context of like, we're thinking about like the duty of the church, the mission of the church, all authority.
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I want you to think about it in the light of the things we may face in the days ahead. A days ahead, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
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That means Christian, you have a basis to speak out against evil, against injustice, against sin in the culture around about you because you are coming as a child of the king, proclaiming his authority and his rule.
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He's the one that has the right to determine what a male is, what a female is, what righteous and God glorifying sexual ethics are.
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He's the one that has the ability and the authority to say, this is your role government and no further.
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This is your role leader of a country and no further. Jesus is the king with all authority and that authority brothers and sisters is everywhere.
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Someone asked a question like, well, how far is the boundary of the church? It's there is no boundary of the church because he has all authority.
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We speak prophetically into every single area. There is no maverick molecule in this universe as Dr.
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Sproul said and there is nowhere in this universe that exists where Jesus doesn't say, that's mine, everything belongs to him.
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So first thing that hasn't changed is all authority belongs to Jesus. So go and tell it.
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Of course, we have humility. Of course, we are saved by God's grace. Of course, it is God that's done this in us.
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So there shouldn't be any pride or arrogance in our conflict with the world. There has to be humility but brothers and sisters, there must be boldness because you're coming with the truth of the living
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God. You're coming with the authority of Jesus and brothers and sisters, I am not a motivational speaker. I am telling you the truth.
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Humble because it is God who saves sinners and bold because it is the truth of God. That is what you are approaching the world with and you're doing it with the authority of the king which extends everywhere.
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Jesus says after saying that all the authority is his, nothing's changed to make disciples.
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Brothers and sisters, nothing's changed. Make disciples, make disciples.
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How do you do that? The gospel is the power of God for salvation.
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You proclaim the good news of Christ which by the way, have we forgotten includes the message within it of the kingship and authority of Jesus Christ?
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Have we forgotten that part, right? Like we preach the gospel of people in our culture like this. Jesus just wants you to be happy, healthy and wealthy.
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He wants you to go to heaven one day. So if you just pray this magic prayer with me, you'll go to heaven one day. We don't wonder so many false converts.
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The way the apostles preached the gospel was Jesus is Lord, he's God in the flesh. He is the ruler over all things.
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This is a gospel of a kingdom. He was perfect, he died for sinners and he rose again. You better repent and believe in a hurry.
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Come to Christ for life. He's coming to judge, repent and believe. He has a day where he is going to judge the world and now
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God commands men everywhere to repent. Where's that message?
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God commands you to repent. You're gonna be judged. You're gonna be judged if you don't bow before this king. Make disciples, call the world to repentance and faith but you have to preach the gospel.
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And the problem in our making disciples or not making disciples in our culture is we love our lives more than the truth.
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We love our lives more than the truth. We love our stuff more than the truth. We're not willing to suffer and die for the gospel.
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One of the stories that I love the most about the Covenanters was when it was banned, these churches to meet together because they were saying this, we're gonna worship
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God, we're gonna worship God. You're the king, we'll obey the government, blah, blah. Oh, you wanna take authority over the church?
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Absolutely not, we refuse to do that. And so what they did is they started meeting in hiding and they had pastors who would go and preach the gospel but their lives were in danger and so were the lives of the people who were meeting in these church groups outside in the fields, hidden away in the woods and all the rest.
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And so this one pastor used to have this mask that it looked terrifying and the mask was in the museum.
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It looked utterly terrifying. If I was to preach to you through this, we couldn't have family integrated church.
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The children would be absolutely terrified. They would never wanna come back. Well, this pastor, he was never caught but he used to go out and he'd put this mask on so that nobody could identify who he was but everybody was listening to him and he was a faithful preacher but he had to hide his face because if they found out who he was, he was gonna die.
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That's the kind of faithfulness. Doesn't matter, we're gonna keep preaching, we're gonna fight, we're gonna tell the truth and we're gonna do it whether we die or not.
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You see, here's the deal. It's not a powerful motivator to the people of God when someone says,
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I will kill you unless you shut up. It's not a powerful motivator to people who have already died.
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It's not. It isn't a powerful motivator. Brothers and sisters, when these governments tell us you're gonna go to jail, you're gonna go to prison, you're gonna die for your faith, the response of John MacArthur was epic.
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I'd always wanted to start a mid -jail ministry, right? So what, you take my life.
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You take my life to live as Christ, to die as gain. It doesn't matter. Now I know, listen, my family is a blessing, my kids are a blessing, our friendships are a blessing, our homes are a blessing, the cars are a blessing, all those are a blessing, but they are fading and they are passing and the ultimate is
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Christ. You're all gonna die, we're all gonna die and if you've already died in Christ and raised from the dead, then this world has no power over you, no government has any power over you.
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So you have all of the confidence and boldness to tell the truth.
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We are too afraid of people not liking us and when did Christians get into the mindset that would make somebody truly faithful in God's eyes is if the culture loves them.
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Jesus says, woe to you when all people speak well of you. Our savior did not have the good attention of everyone around him.
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They called him a drunkard and a glutton and a false prophet and he was an enemy of the state.
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Have we forgotten that the savior of the world, the king of the world was killed by the state.
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So follow in his footsteps, brothers and sisters. We need to be the kind of church that has a bold proclamation of the truth we see in the book of Acts, the kind of proclamation of the truth that starts riots.
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Now listen, of course, we've got this on people, I'm gonna go, oh, he's trying to start a riot. No, I'm saying this, if you preach the gospel and a riot breaks out because faithful proclamation of the gospel,
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I say, praise God. Maybe the problem is we haven't been preaching the truth enough to where riots break out.
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Maybe we haven't been preaching the truth enough where people actually wanna take our lives. We need to be willing to take a beating for Jesus.
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And again, I'm not gonna reiterate the story, but you have the apostles in the book of Acts being told, shut up, stop preaching in his name.
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And then they go right back out, they're found in the temple preaching his name. They bring him back, didn't we tell you, stop preaching his name.
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We gotta obey God rather than men. And they take a beating for Jesus and they go out rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.
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We need to have that kind of proclamation in the world around us and also that kind of confidence. You can take my life, you can put me through pain, but I've already met the
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Savior. I know him, I have eternal life. You have no power over me. You have none, none.
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So we speak the truth. We speak the truth in the public square. Public square, by the way, right now is in your pocket. It's in your pocket constantly in the public square.
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Preach the truth, preach the truth. Go out there in the public square, preach the truth. Preach the truth boldly to legislators who are sinning against the king.
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It's the kind of thing John the Baptist did to his legislator in his day. He said things like this. It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.
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Here's a prophet of God speaking to the political power of the day saying, God's law matters, you're in sin, repent.
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Where's that in our day? And the final thing here is this. What's changed? Nothing's changed. Jesus says he has all authority.
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He says to make disciples and he says teach them to obey. What should be on our lips is God's standards. That's the problem.
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It was assumed early on in this country. When you talk about the Huguenots, the Puritans, those Presbyterians and Baptists and all those guys that were in that crew who founded this nation, it was assumed
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God's law is the standard. It's the reference point. We need to preach God's law,
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God's standard. Brothers and sisters, I'll reiterate it again. We are worthy of judgment.
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We have blood guiltiness in our nation. Isn't it interesting in the book of, in Isaiah chapter one,
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God speaks to his people. He talks to his people and he says to them,
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I don't want your worship, stop your many prayers, stop your offerings, stop it. I am weary of them.
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And what does he say when he's calling them to come to him for forgiveness? For revival?
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For reformation? He says, cease to do evil. Learn to do good.
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Seek justice, correct oppression. He talks about caring for the fatherless and pleading the widow's cause.
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And then he says, come, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet, they'll be white as snow. So in the context of repentance of the people of God, coming to God for forgiveness,
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God has surrounding all that context in that passage, correct all this.
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Fix this. We are worthy of judgment and if we want reformation and revival, brothers and sisters, it starts with repentance in me, it starts with repentance in you, it starts with a call to repentance to the world around us.
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But I just wanna say this final word here, because we just preached on this this year. In Philippians chapter four, the apostle
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Paul says in verse four, in the context, by the way, he's in the context of persecution, intense persecution, that you and I have never felt ever.
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He's still in chains and he says all this is working out to the furtherance of the gospel. God's gonna complete what he started.
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Rejoice, rejoice, to live is Christ, to die is gain. All of that is right before this and it's severe persecution.
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He's riding this in chains, okay? Who put him there? The government. He says this, rejoice in the
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Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always.
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Again, I'll say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.
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Do not be anxious about anything. Do not be anxious about anything. Do not be anxious about anything.
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But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
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What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. My word to you, question is this.
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Do you really believe that God is sovereign? This is the part where God purifies his church.
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You come to Christ, you're saved, and then he sanctifies you. Marriage, by the way, is the fast track to sanctification, so just so you know that.
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Married people are like, amen. God purifies you.
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He, by his spirit, challenges you, convicts you. Praise God, he's gentle. But this is the moment where God is doing something in his church.
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Do you believe he's sovereign? Do I believe that he's sovereign, that he's truly in control? Because this is where your faith is tested.
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Does your heart and mind match your profession? God is sovereign.
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Every reformed person's like, let me get the t -shirt. Sovereignty of God, it's on my mug. See, look, it's like the
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Instagram post. Look at my God is sovereign mug, right? And this is where we know if you really believe it.
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A moment like this, where there's difficulty, where it goes beyond the profession of I hold to the five points and this confession of faith.
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No, do you believe that God is sovereign so that you can laugh in the face of the enemy today and you are not worried, anxious, fearful of the future?
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Do you believe that Jesus has final authority? How you react to the evil in the days ahead will test that.
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Do you believe that people are sinners and that their only hope is
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Jesus Christ? If you and I really believe that, then why aren't we telling people with a ferocity and a boldness and a passion that that belief deserves?
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They are sinners in need of a savior and they're gonna die and spend an eternity apart from God without Jesus.
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Why aren't we telling them? Why aren't we telling them? I do believe something in terms of what this may have revealed in many of us.
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When you see, by the way, we're not Republican. Again, you don't see no American flag over this, okay?
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Where our faithfulness and allegiance is to Jesus. But I will say this, this last week during this election process and as we move forward, something may be revealed in all of us.
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Where is my trust? Where's my hope? Is it in human governments?
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Is it in a man who's gonna occupy a seat that's not even supposed to have the kind of power that it has today according to our constitution?
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Is it behind a four -year plan, that's where our hope is? Or is our hope in Jesus Christ and His kingdom?
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That's not a pithy slogan, brothers and sisters, that will satisfy your soul through any election.
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Our hope is not in any political leader and maybe if your soul was crushed this week, your idolatry has been exposed.
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More! You will notice we went in chronological order.
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Luke also said we went in order of beauty. So I just thought I'd let you think through that. Because if I'm at the end, that means he's thinking the beauty started at the other end, but anyway.
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Acts chapter 12, please open your scriptures to Acts chapter 12. Stretch your legs, move them around a little bit.
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Moms, find the emergency supply of Cheerios. I know you all have them, just for these types of situations.
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Acts chapter 12. Now about that time, Herod the king laid hands on some who belonged to the church in order to mistreat them.
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And he had James, brother of John, put to death with a sword. And when he saw that it pleased the
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Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. Now it was during the days of unleavened bread. And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him before squads of soldiers to guard him and tending after the
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Passover to bring him out before the people. So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God.
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And on the very night when Herod was about to bring him forward, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and guards in front of the door were watching over the prison.
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Behold, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared and the light shone in the cell, and he struck Peter's side and roused him, saying, get up quickly.
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And his chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, gird yourself and put on your sandals. And he did so, and he said to him, wrap your cloak around you and follow me.
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And he went out and continued to follow. And he did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.
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And when they had passed the first and second guard, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened for them by itself.
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And they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. And when
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Peter came to himself, he said, now I know for sure the Lord has sent forth his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all the
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Jewish people were expecting. When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, who was also called
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Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked the door of the gate, a servant girl named
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Rhoda came to answer. By the way, I would never name my daughter or a grandchild Rhoda in light of this particular text of scripture.
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A servant girl named Rhoda came to answer, and when she recognized Peter's voice, because of her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter was standing in front of the gate.
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And they said to her, you're out of your mind, but she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, it is his angel.
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Then Peter continued knocking, and when they had opened the door, they saw him and were amazed.
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Notice we are not told what Peter said. But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the
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Lord had led him out of the prison, and he said, report these things to James and the brethren, and he departed and went to another place.
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Now, when day came, there was no small disturbance among the soldiers as to what could have become of Peter, and when Herod had searched for him and had not found him, he examined the guards in order that they be led away to execution.
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And he went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there. Now, he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and with one accord they came to him, and having won over Blastus, the king's chamberlain, they were asking for peace because their country was fed by the king's country.
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And on an appointed day, Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them, and the people kept crying out, the voice of a god and not of a man.
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And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give
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God the glory and he was eaten by worms and died. But the word of the
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Lord continued to grow and be multiplied and Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their mission, taking along with them
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John, who was also called Mark. Very briefly, please note what happens in this chapter.
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Herod is a representative of the government. He is a local representative with local authority, but he is under the authority of Rome.
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But Rome had a program where they recognized to try to keep everybody together once they conquered an entire area.
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It was good if some of the local authorities, local kings, would work with them under Rome's authority to keep things together.
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And that's what Herod is doing and that's what the Hasmonean dynasty and things that we do not have time to get into this evening but notice
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Herod is a politician and he had James, the brother of John, put to death the sword and when he saw that it pleased the
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Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. Politicians are always the type of people whose moral compass is determined by votes, popularity, and polls.
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And Herod is a politician and he sees that something he did, something he did that was evil, something he did that would mean he should not be in the position of authority pleased the
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Jews and he needed them. This is leading up to AD 70, remember the pot's already boiling and so he wants to please them and so he sees that he did something, ah, this is politically expedient, this is a good thing and so I will follow this path.
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This is the kind of a person who has no moral foundation and the most dangerous people in human history have been leaders who had no moral foundation but polls and pleasing the people in their countries so that they could maintain power.
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And so he puts Peter in prison and Peter is really in prison.
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He's not in the nice minimum security spot, he's in the maximum security spot.
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He's got double chains on him and the church is praying fervently for him to God.
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We read the story of his rescue, not even Peter can believe it was happening. God does this in such a way as he purposely brings about the destruction of the men who were simply doing their jobs.
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Did you catch that? Did you see what happened to these guards? You might sit there and go, that's not fair, they're just doing their jobs.
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Well, sometimes doing your job is an evil thing. We are still tracking down 99 -year -old
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Nazi prison death guards and putting them in prison and trying to execute them.
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Why? Because we recognize that what they did was so utterly evil.
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So the excuse, I'm just doing my job, didn't work in Nuremberg and it didn't work in Acts chapter 12.
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The angel delivers Peter in a way that absolutely astonishes him. And the result is the destruction of those who are involved in his imprisonment.
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We chuckled just a little bit. I appreciate humor in scripture. I appreciate the fact that God made us to be creatures who can smile.
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And I can just see Peter once Rhoda figured out who he was and ran off, leaving him standing in the street alone, having just been released from prison by an angel.
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She doesn't open the door for him. Oh my. I wonder what
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Rhoda told her grandkids about that particular evening. I don't know, but God bless Rhoda.
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God bless Rhoda, but open the door, Rhoda. Let them get the man inside and let him tell the story, okay?
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So Peter continues knocking, he motions. He says, be silent.
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This is how the Lord has delivered me. Go and report these things to James and the brethren.
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And then he got out of there. You might say, why would he leave? He was just released from prison by an angel.
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If he was truly bold, then he should have marched right into Herod's palace with those angels guarding him, right?
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Except the angel left. So even though he had been supernaturally delivered, he did not become arrogant.
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He did the wise thing. He had heard Jesus say, flee the mountains. And he got out of there and he let
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James and the brethren know that he had been delivered as well.
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Then we have the guards. And then we have the story of Herod going down and his dispute with the people of Tyre and Sidon.
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I just want you to see that here again, you have politics taking place.
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And Herod is a politician, but sometimes politicians get drunk with power.
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Drunk with power. And in this situation, there are people pleading for him to do something for them.
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And I can't exactly have much of a level of respect for the people who kept crying out, the voice of a
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God and not of a man. And you might sit here today, that would never happen in our context.
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It's happening every single day. It's happening every single day.
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They believed in many gods. What is the God of our land today?
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Science, the state. The one thing that isn't the
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God of our land any longer is the God that would have been recognized by those who founded this nation.
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We can't have that God. That God is holy. That God has a law.
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That God will judge the world by a man by the name of Christ Jesus, whom he raised from the dead.
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We can't have that. And today we have a God of this nation and we have politicians who serve that God.
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We have politicians who have announced that they will require the worship of that God. And what do
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I mean? Well, you never blaspheme the God of the people. And if you dare today say
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God made man and woman and that it is an evil depraved act to take medical science, a substance called
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Lupron and inject it into the body of a prepubescent boy or girl so as to put off puberty, so as to stop the natural development of what
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God made that boy or girl to become, that is depraved evil coming straight from the
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God of this nation. And you can lose your job if you dare speak against that God today.
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And if certain people who look like they're coming to power have their way, the force of government will be behind.
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Not just big tech, which will shut you down if you misgender
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Bruce Jenner, but when the force of government comes upon you, they want to go beyond that.
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Why? Because they're idolaters. It is idolatry for mankind to think that we have the right within our brain to change what
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God made us to be and to rebel against what he has told us to be in light of how he made us.
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That is idolatry and it brings the judgment of God. And so these people, they believed in many gods.
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The voice of a God and not of a man. And that's exactly what our society is doing when it bows its knee to gay mirage, when it bows its knee to that which is impossible, transgenderism, when it bows its knee to Moloch and offers the unborn child on the altar.
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It's all idolatry. And Herod hears the words.
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He knows what they're doing. He's a politician, he knows. He doesn't rebuke them.
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He accepts it, he likes it. He knows if the tables were reversed, they wouldn't be saying it, but he doesn't care.
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He accepts this acclamation because he did not give
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God the glory. He did not give God the glory. And so what does
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God do? An angel of the Lord struck him and he was eaten by worms and died.
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He was struck down. You say, I don't see that happening a lot.
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Well, the world would be a different place if God was doing it with regularity in such a way as we would see it.
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But here is an idolater accepting idolatrous worship from the people and God strikes him dead.
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But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. This is just the beginning of the persecutions.
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This is the very early church. It's going to be another 220 years before the worst period of persecution under the
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Roman Empire begins. And then for over 60 years, the combined force of the
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Roman Empire will be brought against the Christian faith. The blood of martyrs will stain the soils of Rome.
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And yet here we are. On the other side of the planet, speaking a different language, the church continues to be built.
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Why must we with clarity and boldness refuse to bow the knee to Caesar in this day?
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Why? There are some who would tell us, well, you know, it's almost all over anyways.
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Let's just go along and get along. I'm one of the older people in the room, as Luke has pointed out.
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A little bit older than I thought I was, but 500 years, not doing too bad. I'm one of the older people in the room.
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I am sad that many of my generation and the generation before mine have shown themselves to be considerably more concerned about the size of their houses and their retirement accounts and how much time they can spend playing golf than what's going on in our nation in light of what has happened recently in the
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COVID stuff. There has really been on the part of my generation, a selfishness.
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A selfishness in being willing to see the opportunities and lives of younger generations put on hold or destroyed for us.
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I don't understand that. I'm a grandfather. I've had my children.
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I've had my youth. And now I want to sow into these next generations.
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And so you ask me, why would you stand up? Why would you be willing to say the things that you know are going to get you shut down, get you persecuted, and could, in a very short period of time, get you sued and arrested?
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They're sitting right down there. My grandkids and the one we don't know anything much about yet, right down there.
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The next generation, they need to see that those of us who have gone before them stood firm.
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And as was said at the beginning, Jesus called us to die. Dead men, how many of you remember the
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Lord of the Rings? Well, thank you. Some of you are still awake. Good, all right.
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How did that final battle at the return of the king get turned? You brought a bunch of dead guys in.
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They're sort of hard to kill twice. And man, what an army.
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If we really understood that we have died with Christ, how it would change everything.
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But our love of things, our love of our houses and our cars and our clothes and our conveniences, we have become so accustomed to them and so used to them, they are the greatest danger to us being able to stand firm when the world threatens to take away those things from us.
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Greatest danger. Some of you are sitting there going, yeah, we've heard you preaching about that for a long time now, yeah.
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But now it gets real. Now it gets real. I hope each one of our thoughts for you has been useful to you, encouraging to you.
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Think upon these things. Do not be like so many that walk away and forget what you heard.
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Ponder what has been said. Consider these things. Speak about it with your family.
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And may God use this church. Folks, we're being watched, not just by that thing over there and not just by people who hate us.
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We expect that. We are being watched by churches all around this world.
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Today, over the past 12 hours, I've received communication from one church in the
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London area, another church in Randberg, South Africa. They're watching.
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They're watching us. They're seeing what we will do.
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Us, guys, us. You feel that?
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You feel that responsibility? Too heavy? Yeah, it is. None of us are able to bear that responsibility, but we know the one who can.
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And so we need your prayers. We pray for you, you pray for us.
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We stand together. We stand together. Let not your heart to be troubled is the teaching of Scripture.
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You cannot add anything to yourself through worry, but we live in this world.
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We cannot help but think about what the future might hold. Be assured of this.
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What the future holds is the victorious proclamation of the kingship of Jesus.
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The path to there, he has already plotted, it is already certain, and he will sustain his people along the way.
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History's told it to us, Scripture promises it to us. Will we believe? Let's pray together.
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Our gracious Heavenly Father, as we consider your truth this night, in this place, in this day, we are so thankful that we understand that none of this has caught you by surprise.
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You have a purpose in it all. You have placed this people in this place at this time.
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Lord, we know that only by obedience to your word, obedience to your truth, can we be the people you're calling us to be.
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Father, we want to glorify Jesus in this hour. Give us wisdom, give us guidance, direction, strength, steadfastness.
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Protect us from division, protect us from distraction. Lord, this is our time, this is our day.
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May we be faithful to the name of Jesus in the midst of all of this. And Lord, now as we come to your table, we ask that you would bind us together evermore in our common celebration of the elements.
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Remembrance of the shed blood, the broken body of the God -man who gave himself for us.
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This is what unites us. The world cannot begin to understand it. Father, be pleased as we obey, as we partake of the table this evening.