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#NoDespair2020
One of my favorite Bible verses is Proverbs chapter 12 starting at verse 10. The New King James Version says it like this, a righteous man regards the life of his animal but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. That's an amazing verse because I think there's so much at play here but I think the idea here is that even a righteous man even has regard, even has respect, even cares about the life of even animals.
You know what I mean? But for a wicked person, even the things that he does that he says are merciful, they're actually cruel.
They're actually not merciful. And I think that this actually does apply to people that would call themselves
Christians but adopt the mercy of the pagans because the pagan version of mercy is never actually mercy.
When you get down to the root of it, no matter how merciful, no matter how good, no matter how tender it looks, it's actually evil.
It actually hurts the people that it claims to help. It's actually drawn swords.
It's war. It's rebellion. It doesn't work out the way that people say it's intended to work out.
And so when you adopt the principles of pagans, when you adopt the definition of justice of pagans, you are doing harm to your brother and sister in Christ.
You are doing harm to your neighbor. You are hating your neighbor, not loving your neighbor.
I was thinking about this just last night. I was watching Unsolved Mysteries again with my wife.
We've been kind of working through the old school Unsolved Mysteries shows. We're in season three now.
And one of the things that we've been commenting on again and again and again is the ridiculous nature of the sentencing in our country.
We'll see people that get convicted of murder. We'll see people get convicted of stealing large sums of money.
We'll see people that are convicted of child molestation, all kinds of heinous crimes, right?
And there's two things we've noticed about the sentencing. One, there is no consistency to it. Someone will get 30 years.
Another person will get 10 years for the very similar crimes. Restitution for things that you've stolen is rarely, if ever, commanded by the judge.
And even when it is, it's rarely ever collected. And so there's really no consistency to it.
And one of the things that we've noticed as well is how often people get out of prison early. And now
I'm against prison out of hand for murderers and rapists and things like that.
Those people ought to be executed. That's biblical justice. That's what restitution is. When you take a life, you give your life.
But if we're going to sentence someone to 40 years for a murder, don't let them out in 10.
It's just so crazy, right? And I know the idea is to be merciful. Prison is seen by pagans as more merciful than the death penalty.
But it never is. It never works out that way. All you have to do to know that is to watch one prison show, one show about what it's like to be in prison, to know how dehumanizing prison actually is and how evil prison actually is.
And so even the idea of being merciful by not executing murderers, we can see how that's not loving to your neighbor, the people that are going to be victims of these murderers.
But we can also see, if you think about it for more than just a few seconds, more than just a millimeter of depth, that it's actually not even merciful for the person that you're intending it to be merciful towards.
You know, this is something that we're seeing kind of play out on a grand scale in Big Eva as well.
By now, many of you have seen this ridiculous situation. The Black Lives Matter protests have removed the
Frederick Douglass statue at Rochester Park. They vandalized it and tore it down. And Frederick Douglass is a black abolitionist.
And, you know, it's just like, okay, so how did this happen? How did the Black Lives Matter decide that it was time to take down a statue of a black man who was against slavery?
How did that work? And the reality is because everyone has adopted the pagan version of justice, the pagan version of mercy, and that kind of thing.
I can draw a direct line to the insanity of taking down a
Frederick Douglass statue, a direct line to the pagan mercy that people like Ligon Duncan and Russell Moore and probably a lot of your friends have tried to show as far as the
Confederate flag and getting rid of it in Mississippi and stuff like that. Look, I don't care about flags as such.
And actually, I don't even care about statues. I think statues are kind of weird. So I don't really care about them in and of themselves.
But I do very much care about the ideology that says that we have to get rid of anything that, you know, has any sniff or whiff of slavery.
And actually, it's not even that. It's just we have to get rid of anything that we say in the moment.
This is a pagan idea of justice. This is why Frederick Douglass got torn down. Because he didn't get torn down for being pro -slavery.
He didn't get torn down for representing white supremacy. He got torn down because the mob decided it was time to tear him down.
And that's the thing. Like when Ligon Duncan says, we got to get rid of the Mississippi flag, when Russell Moore tries to do his best
Ronald Reagan impression, take down this wall and that kind of thing. It's not a principled stance.
There are no principles to it at all. All he is doing is adopting the tender mercies of the wicked and taking it on as his own.
And so that's why I can draw a direct line from that to this Frederick Douglass thing. Because none of it takes any thinking.
None of it has any scruples at all. None of it is based on any biblical principles of morality or ethics or anything like that.
Both the flag and taking down the Frederick Douglass statue have only one thing that they're considering.
And that is, what does the mob require of me today? Russell Moore, Ligon Duncan are serving the mob, the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist.
They're trying to serve that mob. And so they can't complain when all of a sudden that mob changes its mind and says, okay, well now it's time to take down Frederick Douglass.
Now it's time to take down this or that. Like when you serve the idol, it's going to demand you constantly to serve it.
And the way it's working right now is the idol's desires change from day to day.
I mean, just look at every single person that went and said, oh, this killing was racist before there was any evidence of it being racist, right?
Every single one of those people that decided to go with the mob and say, this is an example of racism, whatever it was,
George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery, an example of racism before any facts came out on it at all.
I'm not talking about the fact that you're saying it's an injustice, police brutality, fine. But when you said it was about racism, you didn't know that.
And you are trying to serve the mob. And guess what? Here's the problem. The mob is inconsistent.
The idols don't have any scruples whatsoever. It's not based on principle. So I was having a conversation with someone the other day.
And she said to me, she said, okay, so what happens now when a white woman accuses a black man of rape?
What happens now? Because on the one hand, we're supposed to believe all women, you know, me too.
And on the other hand, we're supposed to defend black because Black Lives Matter. So now what do we do? And the only honest answer to that, for all of you who've jumped on these bandwagons again and again and again, for all of the evangelical leaders who jumped on the
Me Too bandwagon, for all of the evangelical leaders who jumped on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon, here is how you have to serve your
God. You have to see what are we doing right now? Are we doing Me Too right now? Are we doing Black Lives Matter right now?
See, the facts don't ever matter because you've jumped on the bandwagon. You've joined the lynch mob. And so what you have to do to decide who to defend in a situation like that, where a white woman accuses a black man, is you have to wait.
You have to wait and see what your God demands of you today, because it's likely not the same as what your
God demanded of you yesterday. It's likely going to be different because today, maybe we're doing Me Too. Yesterday, we were doing
Black Lives Matter. The day before that, we were doing Me Too. What are we doing today? You have to wait to see what your overlords say.
What does MSNBC tell you to believe? See, that's where you're at right now. You're serving the zeitgeist.
And so when you decide how you feel about a certain issue, you have to wait. What does MSNBC say?
We're wearing the mask. We're not wearing the mask. What are we doing now? Are we avoiding? Are we social distancing?
Or are we protesting? Which one are we doing? Are we avoiding groups of 100 or less? Or are we going out and protesting
Black Lives Matter right now? Are we wearing the mask? We're not wearing the mask. What are we doing right now? See, you're slaving. You're enslaved to the zeitgeist.
There's no consistency to it at all. There's nothing. It's not based on scruples. You can write as many think pieces as you want about how not singing to the
Lord on Sunday is loving your neighbor. It doesn't make it. So all you're doing is attempting to serve your real master, which is the master of this world, the spirit of the age, the master of the power of the air, that kind of thing.
You're trying to serve that master. And so what do you do? You go to the headlines. What is MSNBC saying?
What is CNN saying? All of a sudden, that becomes loving your neighbor. That's what you're doing. And you're being made to look like idiots because of stuff like this, where all of a sudden
Black Lives Matter and the movement is now canceling Frederick Douglass. You're being made to look like morons every single time another statue comes down of someone that maybe you don't really agree with.
But now you're a slave. Now you have to agree with it. Maybe Mount Rushmore has to get canceled too. Hey, the minute you give these people an inch, oh, yeah, yeah, the
Mississippi flag. Totally. We got to get rid of it. It's a monument of hate. Well, what about all the monuments of hate in your institutions?
They're coming for you. The zeitgeist, the beast is never satisfied. It's going to keep changing.
And you're never going to know. And one day you're going to slip up. One day you're going to slip up. You're going to think, oh, I guess we're doing
Me Too now. And you're going to believe all women. But that's going to be a misstep because that day you're going to be serving Black Lives Matter.
You're not going to know that. What are you going to do when the mob comes for you? You see, that whole idea of being enslaved to the spirit of the age, figuring out, trying to figure out something that's un -figureoutable without looking to the mainstream media, it's going to lead to a misstep.
And the slavery is never ending. You will never know what is what. The idols of the spirit of the age are constantly changing.
That's why everything is so topsy -turvy. That's why you can't make heads or tails of what's going on in the news. On the one hand, visiting
Mount Rushmore is racist. On the other hand, when Barack Obama does it, it's the best thing since sliced bread. Like that kind of slavery, it's not fun.
You just admit to yourself it's not fun. And remember that Christ has set you free from that kind of thing.
Christ's burden, his yoke is easy. His law doesn't change. He's consistent.
He's fair. He's not partial. He doesn't make you guess and hop on one foot and then the next day you're hopping on the next foot.
He doesn't make you wonder whether wearing a mask is loving your neighbor or not, depending on the day, depending on the context.
Are we protesting? We're not protesting. It's not like that. That must be exhausting. Stop trying to work your way into salvation.
That's as honest as I can put it. I see you guys. It's exhausting out there. What are we doing today? I guess we're against this.
Before that, it must be exhausting to try to figure that out all day, every day, trying desperately not to misstep.
But forget about that stuff. Stop worshiping idols. Enough of that. God's law is consistent.
It has never changed. It will never change. And the other thing is your worth, your self -worth, your status before the
Lord, your status before God doesn't rely on you deciphering this obscure law where you have no idea what's what.
You don't know what to believe until MSNBC gets on TV and stuff like that. That has nothing to do with whether or not you're loving your neighbor well.
I know all the think pieces make it seem that way. It's just not that way. So anyway, I hope this is encouraging for you.
Look, leave all that mess behind, man. Leave all those idols behind and serve the