The Meaning Of Life (part 1)

Bethlehem Bible Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Our Father in heaven, we are so thankful for your kindness, for your goodness toward us, your grace, your love, your mercy.

00:12

Lord, would you bless our time this morning as we look to your word, as we even discuss difficult things.

00:18

And I pray that you'd give us just an ironic spirit this morning and just a love for one another as we look at your word, as we discuss these issues, as we really discuss life, death, and your sovereign hand in all these things.

00:39

Father, bless each one here in Christ's name. Amen. Well, last week was so difficult and, you know, it was so hard.

00:46

I just thought we'd ease up just a little bit. So we're just going to go through the table of contents of your Bible this morning.

00:53

Okay, that's not true. You know, discussing difficult issues. And if you weren't here last week, you know,

01:00

I opened up Pandora's box. We're talking about this situation in Connecticut.

01:06

This young woman, it was in the news a week or so ago, young woman, 17 years old, who has cancer, and she didn't want to go through chemotherapy.

01:17

It's painful, makes you very sick. In fact, for those of you who weren't last week, here last week, if you are familiar with chemotherapy, here's the objective.

01:27

The objective is to get you as near to death as possible. Why? Because the goal is to kill off the cancer and then kind of bring you back to life.

01:37

So, you know, if you know people have gone through it, you get super sick and all this, well, it's because they're really, you know,

01:43

I think my doctor's trying to kill me. Well, there's some truth to that. But his goal is to keep you alive, but barely.

01:51

You know, you're only going to be mostly dead. And for those of you who have no idea what

01:59

I'm talking about, blessed are you. But she didn't want to do that.

02:06

And her mom supported her in her decision. So DCF there in Connecticut intervened, took her away from her parents.

02:16

The case went to court and she lost and her parents lost. And they said, by court order, you have to go.

02:25

And people, you know, there are various sides to this issue. And in all the things that we're going to talk about in the next several weeks, here's the important thing.

02:35

I don't care what political party you are, what your political persuasion is, because we all have our initial sense of what's right and what's wrong in these issues.

02:48

The important thing is, what does God's word say? And if I'm willing to put my politics up above what the

02:56

Bible says, then I've got an issue. And I would suggest that I need to change my mind rather than, you know, change the word of God or just subject it to my political views.

03:10

And we talked about Genesis 1. Let's just read this because I think it's going to be so foundational to what we're going to talk about.

03:18

Genesis 1, verses 27 to 31. And it's really important to just think about who

03:30

God is, what he has done, and really what the value of life is.

03:39

That's why I call it the meaning of life. I could have called it the value of life, but the meaning of life just has a, you know, a more, yeah, it's heavier, you know.

03:51

I wouldn't say it's really catchier. You're not going to write a song called the meaning of life. You could, but it wouldn't be a hit.

04:00

Okay. Genesis 1, 27 to 31. So God created man in his own image.

04:11

In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

04:18

And God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

04:34

This is the charge to man. You're in charge. Take care of this planet. Take care of everything on this planet.

04:41

Verse 29. And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree was seed in its fruit.

04:52

You shall have them for food and do every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth.

05:00

Everything that has the breath of life. Another important phrase here. I have given every green plant for food and it was so, and God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.

05:15

And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. We talked last week about this idea of being created in the image of God.

05:23

The Latin phrase is Imago Dei. And it just means it doesn't mean that God looks like us.

05:30

It means that we reflect him not in our physical stature. God is not either too skinny or morbidly obese or any of those things.

05:41

He's not six foot five. He's not five foot two. He's none of those things because God is a spirit doesn't have a physical body.

05:49

So it's not in that sense is talking about, as we quoted last week, talking about his communicable attributes.

05:59

And then we listed some life, personality, truth, wisdom, love, holiness, justice. There are many of his communicable attributes that we, that we have.

06:09

When you think about it, I mean, what do we say? We, we, we like justice. We like to see things.

06:14

I mean, here's a, here's a trite example. I really don't like to go to a movie when

06:19

I know the ending is going to be sad. I mean, one of the classic movies, how many of their, well, you don't have to raise your hand or anything.

06:29

You ever watched citizen Kane? Classic movie. I went through this thing several years ago where we had to watch, everything was in black and white.

06:37

I don't care if it was the 29 steps from, what's his name? Good evening.

06:46

Hitchcock, or whatever. So we watched citizen Kane. I'm going, oh, this is really an interesting movie.

06:51

One of the all time greats. And then you get to the end and you're just like, can I have that time back, please?

06:58

So I don't do that. Why is that? Because we like things that turn out well in the end. We like happy endings, but we also like justice.

07:09

We like all these kinds of things. And in that sense, we reflect God. Now where we don't reflect him is, you know, the results of the fall.

07:17

But I don't want to get into all that here at the moment. But we reflect, we're created in the image of God.

07:23

And we are the only creation, the only part of creation that the

07:29

Bible says that bears the image of God. Only man does that.

07:34

It's not true of dogs. Dogs are dumb. God is not dumb.

07:40

I love my dogs, but they're dumb. It's not true of any other living thing.

07:48

And we also talked about dominion. And I said, you know, it's referenced there in Genesis 1. God has given man dominion, that is control, sovereignty over all of this earth.

08:05

We also talked about the breath of life, nepheshaya, which is, even as we read in Genesis 2 last week, it's in all the animals as well.

08:18

I mean, here's the picture. And Pastor Mike, if you didn't hear his sermon, he's going to talk about how, you know,

08:25

God has the right over clay today and every day. But God makes things, right?

08:32

And in Genesis 1 and 2, he actually breathed the breath of life. In other words, here are these objects that, in and of themselves, have no life.

08:41

He creates Adam out of the dirt, and then he breathes into it. And boom,

08:47

Adam comes to life. Adam was just a piece of dirt that he shaped and formed, and then he gave it life.

08:54

And so there's that concept of the breath of life. And when we think about animals and things of that nature, having the breath of life, that gives them an inherent value, an inherent worth, not the same as man, but some value, some worth.

09:15

Then we were talking about these different ideas, the image of God, the breath of life.

09:22

And then we were talking about Cassandra, and is it biblical to support her right to die, as some have said.

09:29

And someone asked the question, you know, are we obligated, basically this is the question, are we obligated to take every measure possible to extend a life?

09:40

Are we obligated to take every medical procedure, you know, to use every medical device, every advance of science, to push life as far as we can?

09:53

Because after all, that breath of life is precious, and the image of God is precious. So what do we do?

09:59

Do we push it as far as we possibly can? So I ask you, because this is an interactive class,

10:09

I mean, I could talk for 45 minutes, and that would be fascinating, but you're not supposed to laugh at that.

10:17

But, you know, the idea is to get an interchange here of ideas. So what do you think? Should we do everything we possibly can to live as long as we possibly can?

10:24

John? Our days are numbered, right? Yeah. Is it going to change our date, our expiration date?

10:32

I mean, that's kind of a... I think John will be leading the discussion at this point. No, I'm...

10:39

What do you think? I mean, it is true, right? We come in, we're like a carton of milk, you know, you bring it home from the store, it has an expiration date on it.

10:49

We don't know our expiration date, but we come home from the hospital or, you know, like with my granddaughter, from the bathtub, with an expiration date.

11:02

So what about that? Did you have something, Tom? Okay, so there is, in that sense, if they're unsaved, we want to keep them alive as long as possible, because we want them to believe.

11:14

Bruce, did you have something? Can we keep them alive if they... Well, okay, a worthy question.

11:22

Let's just go this way. If God has said, you know, on August 17th, 2015,

11:28

Steve Cooley is going to die, that's his expiration date. No matter what we do,

11:34

I'm going to die. Let me just take a moment here. My sister -in -law has been in the hospital for several weeks now, and when she went in...

11:46

I may have talked about this before, but I'll just repeat it anyway. When she went in several weeks ago, the procedure she was going to get, she has a disease called

11:56

Moyamoya, which basically means that you're going to get strokes, and these strokes are going to get worse and worse and worse until they kill you.

12:05

And they said there are two ways we can go. One is to medicate you, and the other one is to do this procedure. If we do this procedure, we get better results.

12:13

The day before she went in to have this surgery, someone else had the surgery. They went home the day that she went into the hospital.

12:22

No problems. She has the procedure, and it was several days later, you know, we're following the

12:29

Facebook posts and everything like that, and my brother -in -law posted. He said, you know, basically, we're going to have to make some decisions in the next few days about whether to unplug my wife or not.

12:46

Those were hard days. She's now in a rehab facility.

12:54

She's not speaking yet, but she's making really excellent progress because, you know, in the few days that they had until they were going to have to make these decisions, she showed signs of improvement, and now she's recovering, and we'll see what happens.

13:11

So to get back to that, can we extend it? The answer is no. Humanly speaking, though, do we have a responsibility to do everything we can, or would we just say, you know,

13:24

God's sovereign, and therefore, you know, if I'm supposed to die on August 17th, well, I'm going to die on August 17th no matter what, and I think there's a balance there.

13:34

You know, there has to be some wisdom exercised. Go ahead, Charlie. Yeah, and let me just repeat for purposes of the tape, you know, with this young woman,

13:46

Cassandra, if her, humanly speaking, her chance of success with chemotherapy are 83%, you know, then it is basically an imposition on the gift given you by God, a rejection of it, really, to say, no,

14:05

I'm not going to do that, and, you know, she was going to pursue alternative means, and I understand that. We got into a discussion about that last week, but let me just say this.

14:14

If you're the judge, and we're not the judge, but if we're the human judge, and we're sitting there, and we're going, okay,

14:21

I have 83 % here from the medical experts, and they've got a long track record, more than 30 years of doing this.

14:27

I don't even know how long it goes back, but of treating this particular form of cancer with this particular treatment,

14:33

I know it's at least 30 years because they gave the example of Peter Johnson, Jr. last week, and they have a really, you know, they have this established track record, and they can say 83%, and on the other hand, she wants to pursue whatever it was, this alternative method, which

14:48

I don't even know what it was. The judge is sitting there and has to go, okay, 83 % is pretty good, alternative method with little track record,

14:57

I don't know. Well, if you're the judge, you have to decide on what seems the most reasonable, given the information you have.

15:06

You can't just go, you know, I yield to the alternative method that I know nothing about. You can't do that.

15:13

You might even want to, but you can't, and I think for us, there was also a discussion, and I'll just mention this, well, no,

15:21

I'll push that off. Other thoughts about, you know, how far we should take this? Taylor? Okay, and we'll talk about that in depth later, but at what point does it become suicide?

15:35

Let me just say this, you know, having, I mean, I don't want to, you know, moan about how difficult my life is, because it's not, but this last year, it just seemed to me like it was all about death.

15:49

2014 is not a year that, you know, other than Jude, that I'll look back and just say, what a sweet year that was.

15:57

I mean, you know, it started, my dog died, and then my friend in California, this unbeliever died, and at least

16:05

I got to go see him and talk to him for a few hours before he died. You know,

16:11

Mark Westcott died, and, you know, I spent some time with him, and what

16:21

I learned a lot from that episode, but with Mark in the hospital, and there was a moment, because he really wanted to go home.

16:36

I remember some ladies from the church went over to his house and decorated and welcomed home

16:41

Mark, because they were anticipating him going home, and I remember being with Mark when he looked at Kim, and he knew he was going to die, and he said,

16:51

I never made it home, and he was really disappointed, and they reached the point, you know,

16:58

Kim talked to me, and they said, you know, the doctors basically have said, because he had these tumors all throughout his body, and there was no way he was going to live, and every day just got more and more painful.

17:13

I mean, breathing for him was painful, and they can only do so many procedures, and it was going to start having diminishing returns, and so, you know, they gave him some things that he could do to extend his life, but what did that mean?

17:33

It meant extending his pain and his stay in the hospital. He wasn't going home no matter what, so they chose not to do those things.

17:42

Now, was that suicide? I don't think so. It was difficult, but if you visited him during that time, you know how much pain he was in.

17:55

You just go, okay, if that's me, and they're telling me I'm going to die, and I know I've got these tumors that are growing inside of me, and they're suffocating me, basically.

18:04

The idea of prolonging that doesn't really seem like such a great idea, so,

18:11

I mean, it's difficult, and I wouldn't second -guess somebody who wanted to. Maybe there's some reason for them to want to do that, but I didn't have any problems about that.

18:24

Other thoughts? I don't think it can be. You know, Joni asks, is it a cookie -cutter approach? You know, do we always do this, or do we always do that, and I think the answer is no.

18:33

I think you have to go into it. You have to weigh things out. You know, if I think it would have been harder for me to say, you know, yes,

18:43

Mark, why don't you go ahead and just waive those extra procedures that may give you a few extra days to live, or whatever, if I didn't know where he was spiritually.

18:53

It'd be very, very much harder to do that. Why? Because, you know, yes, we know that God sovereignly chooses.

19:02

Yes, we know all these things sovereignly, but humanly, we have a responsibility, and, you know, to just shun our human responsibility is to make ourselves kind of, is really to deny what

19:14

God has commanded us to do. So, God is sovereign, we are responsible, and we need to take that responsibility seriously.

19:23

Bruce? Okay. Excellent question. Bruce says he has a friend who's getting, has cancer, is getting alternative treatments, getting good results, ignoring his doctor, and things seem to be going well.

19:37

So, you know, what about that, and the right to pursue alternative medicine? Well, you know, the situation with Cassandra, though, is what?

19:46

She's a minor, and we don't like it when, you know, a minor is enabled to murder her child, to have an abortion, without parental consent.

20:07

You know, the state just says, hey, go ahead and do what you want to do. We don't like that, but here we have the state stepping in and actually trying to protect life, and we would say, well, what about her right to do what, you know, the alternative thing?

20:20

And again, I think you have to look at it this way. I'm a judge. I'm in charge by law now, because the state has stepped in.

20:29

I'm in charge of determining the best course of action to preserve this child's right.

20:35

Now, I could either say, well, this alternative thing seems promising, or I could say 83%.

20:40

I think it's hard, you know, if you just say, well, I'm the judge. If I decide wrong and this child dies, how do

20:49

I feel, you know? Bruce? Well, that's the law, right?

21:00

And so, which is a good lead -in, because I wanted to talk about parental rights next. That's an issue that we care deeply about, right?

21:10

I mean, we want parental rights, and I mean, I've seen some DCF do some amazing things.

21:15

When people call me and say, you know, DCF wants to come into my house, the first thing I say is, don't let them in your house.

21:22

Why? Because it's kind of like, you know, when internal affairs would come and talk to us, you know, when

21:30

I was on the job back in the day. There's almost nothing good that internal affairs brings to the situation, and there's almost nothing good that DCF brings.

21:39

Don't let them in your home. Why? Because everything they say or everything they see is evidence, you know.

21:46

The house isn't clean, you know. I licked in the refrigerator, there's spoiled milk in the refrigerator, whatever, you know.

21:54

I mean, there's just nothing good that can come of it. I saw a Bible, you know what that means. So, I mean, just, you know.

22:03

Now, if they have a warrant or they have some legal reason that they can get in, well, then they'll probably have the police with them.

22:10

And then you have to, you have to yield. But if there's no warrant or anything like that, I say, don't let them in.

22:16

You can talk to them somewhere else. But talking about parental rights, we remember the case of Justina Pelletier.

22:25

Not long ago, she, where does she live? Either Rhode Island or Connecticut, one of those little, little states, south.

22:37

You know, I think South Massachusetts is what we like to call them. And they foolishly brought her up here for a second opinion and Massachusetts stepped in because we are more important than other states.

22:53

And took custody, which I completely did not understand how, you know, the doctors in one state could overrule the doctors of another state.

23:01

And I thought that was bizarre. But they took custody of Justina and that went on for quite a while.

23:10

And to me, you know, legally, it seemed questionable. I didn't like the trampling of parental rights.

23:17

I was bothered by all that stuff. And we like parental rights. We think parents should be in charge.

23:23

Why? Because God put parents in charge. And we'll get to the other side of the issue.

23:29

I don't know if we'll get there this morning. But I thought of that. I thought of DCF. I thought of homeschooling.

23:40

I mean, just to give you an example, did you know in California, you know, you think you have it tough here. Did you know in California, if your child goes to, is homeschooled, your child may not play in interscholastic sports.

23:53

Period. Nothing. You know, they can't go to some, in any kind of high school competition, they're just done.

24:05

Zero. So they, in fact, I know a family like that.

24:11

And so they actually do like the, they do private associations. I mean, they're not even school teams.

24:17

They're just like, what would be an, like, yeah, AAU, that kind of thing.

24:23

You know, no, no interscholastic thing at all. And this was three years ago.

24:30

I mean, talking about, you know, why you might want to homeschool your child. The governor of California three years ago signed a bill that would require public schools in each or in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender

24:49

Americans. This is in history class. You know, I mean, you're going to hear about,

24:55

I don't know, Benjamin Franklin was bisexual or whatever. You know, I mean, anybody who had some sexual deviancy in history, they're going to be elevated above anything else.

25:06

And the governor went on to say, history should be honest. This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books.

25:21

It represents an important step forward for our state. And I thank Senator Leno, this homosexual, for his hard work on this historic legislation.

25:31

We hear all this stuff and we just think, I want to keep my kids out of school. I don't want them involved in this.

25:38

There was the case of the family from Germany who came here.

25:44

Why? You know, fleeing basically what they said was religious persecution because in Germany it's illegal to homeschool your kids.

25:52

And I think more and more we see states like California, Massachusetts, other states making it harder and harder and harder.

26:00

Why? Because they want your kids. They want them in school. And I'm not saying, you know, our kids were in public school.

26:07

So I'm not saying don't have your kids in public school. I'm just saying they're going to make it harder to homeschool.

26:13

That's their goal. Parental rights.

26:22

So what about parental rights? Do they supersede? Are they more important than what the Bible says about submitting to your government?

26:33

If the government says, if the Massachusetts state government comes out and says, you may not homeschool, do we go into our gun cupboards, unlock them, search our house for the ammunition, you know, and charge the state building, what do we do?

26:55

Okay. So Charlie says, grab your muskets and your blunderbusses and let's, oh no, that's not what he said.

27:04

There are ways of trying to influence and trying to shape the law. But ultimately, you know, if the state does something or another, then, you know, we have the capacity to make our feelings known, to support different candidates, to try to change the law through the system or to move is certainly something else we could do.

27:25

But parental rights, I mean, we think these are, they're

27:32

God given in a certain extent, but are they irrevocable? Can the state do nothing about them?

27:37

And I'm going to tell you that the state can do something about them. And in fact, we'll talk about, we won't go into depth about this, but just think if you lived in Rome and the

27:49

Caesar is, you know, the emperor is driving his chariot thing down the street and you're out there cheering on the

27:55

Caesar and he sees your child and he says, you know what? I'll have your son and he will be my son now.

28:04

What are you going to do? No, he will not. And guess what? You'll die.

28:13

There is a point at which you can, you know, you can only resist so far.

28:19

And I think it would be right to try to change the law to try to do this. And do I think that, you know, we're in any danger right now of them forcing you to go into school, public school?

28:30

No, but I think what we're going to see is as, um, not to get too political, but as the federal government takes more and more control of the educational system,

28:43

I think you're going to see these standards kind of creeping in and you're going to be one way or another, you're going to be encouraged to teach your children in accordance with these standards.

28:57

God is sovereign. And you know what happens in all these different situations? Joni says, look, we have them for 18 hours a day.

29:04

The state only has them for six hours a day. And I would just point out that if you have teenagers, yeah, you have them for, you know, 18 hours a day, but they're sleeping for 12.

29:13

So, you know, then it's six versus six and it's all, it's all even. All right.

29:24

That's right. And, and that's an excellent point. Pastor Bob makes, you know, that, uh,

29:29

Daniel was ordered not to pray. He prayed anyway. He had to be willing to take the consequences for that.

29:39

Um, you know, even with the diet, I mean, we can go through all the things that Daniel went through and then I'll be like, dare to be a

29:45

Daniel. I'm not, I'm not going to do that. Here's the point though, that pastor Bob made, which is there's a tension between our capacity to resist what the government says or to even defy it and understand what the consequences are.

30:01

And we need to be ready for that. I mean, there are, uh, and I'll just throw, I throw this out, out here.

30:07

I became aware a few years ago of, there are a group of people who think, and I don't know whether they are or not, but they believe themselves to be

30:17

Christians, but they also believe, or they also think that, uh, uh, there should be no government.

30:25

They're anarchist Christians. And I have a real problem with that, you know, because God ordains government and everything else.

30:33

And if you just see what God says about government and how it's a, really a protection against evil, a punisher of people who do bad things.

30:44

And you just think, okay, if there's nobody to punish those who do evil,

30:51

I think there's going to be a lot more evil because I know what's in the heart of man. And furthermore,

30:56

I just think, you know, when I, is there a biblical description of, of anarchy? And I think there is, you know, a book it's in judges, which is every man did what was right in his own eyes, right?

31:11

You want to live in a chaotic, crazy world. Imagine 300 plus million people and everybody just lives by their own standards.

31:21

I mean, I've seen it in some of those videos in of Asia where people drive according to their own standards.

31:26

And I'm just like, it's too much for me, but just imagine everybody just living. However they decide is right.

31:34

No, thanks, Charlie. Our closing song today will be God saved the queen. That's because you're a rock and roller.

31:45

Of course you like rebellion. What about the American revolution?

31:56

I, I sort of think they, the English do have some nice things going for them, you know, uh, fancy some chips, you know, what is, so what about the

32:10

American revolution? Was it right or wrong? I tend to think it was probably not.

32:19

Um, it was God ordained, right? Because it happened. Was it the righteous thing to do?

32:26

I mean, I can remember being in a, a cult where, you know, we basically celebrated the rebellion of the colonists.

32:33

And I'm not so sure that, you know, at the time, I think it would have been really hard not to go with the, uh, because I think we act on what we feel a lot of times, but biblically,

32:44

I think it's really hard to justify the American revolution. I think it's hard. Okay. And he was there, so Sorry.

32:53

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

33:00

Sorry. Sorry. Oh, Pastor Bob said that only about a third of the people based on the poll he saw at the time.

33:11

No, sorry. Only about a third of the people supported the revolution. I think that's true, right?

33:18

And, and, you know, if we know anything about today's society, right? You look at these polls and, you know, who are you, who do you support for presidents?

33:25

Like the day before the election, 40 % for this candidate, 38%, 22 % don't know.

33:31

And I'm like, so if you say one third supported,

33:36

I think there are probably like, you know, 50 % of, uh, I don't know, you know, and, and a bunch of people who were like, you know,

33:43

I like things the way they are, you know? And if you were, uh, part of the people who benefited from the

33:50

British system, then certainly you supported that. But, you know, biblically, if you look at things like, uh,

33:56

Romans 13 and, uh, first Peter chapter two, you have a hard time saying it's the right thing to do to rebel against the

34:07

King. The one that, I mean, if it was wrong, if, if Peter could write, uh, first Peter under the rule of Nero, I don't think that as bad as King George was that he was quite

34:19

Nero. He wasn't lighting Americans on fire and using them as torches. So, you know, yeah, they had a problem with the taxation and they didn't have representation.

34:28

I get all that. Um, and I'm sure that there were other issues and it really didn't seem fair that they were doing all the work and England was getting all the money.

34:37

But, you know, if you didn't like that, you shouldn't come over here in the first place. So, I mean,

34:45

I, I just think that's a hard issue and I, I, um, I'm not really prepared to talk about the

34:50

American revolution, but I was going to take on some easier issues like the shooting in Ferguson and the death of some of my notes.

35:00

Yeah. Charlie, what do you mean? Like the constitutional convention and that kind of thing? No, I, I think those things are perfectly fine.

35:07

You know, people don't even know about that. I, uh, there are, uh, the idea of amending the constitution is something that we've, we've done a few times in history, right?

35:16

Where, you know, it has to go through the Congress then has to be ratified by what, three quarters of the states or something like that.

35:22

We've done that kind of thing, but people don't know about a constitutional convention that they could actually meet together, that the states could vote to have a convention outside of the federal government, the federal government would have no say in it.

35:33

And whatever this convention does, I mean, they could do all kinds of things, which is one of the scarier things about it.

35:38

Um, whatever they do, uh, does it have to get ratified by the states?

35:47

But, but it has to get ratified by the states after that. Uh, one expert says, and, and, but it has nothing to do.

35:55

The federal government has no say in it. So there's, there's that way of kind of bypassing it and would be fairly revolutionary and could actually, uh, restrict the growth of the federal government.

36:06

There's an amazing thought. Uh, but anyway, my goal throughout this series and we, and we kind of got into some things today, but my goal is going to be,

36:19

I have several issues to, to discuss and, you know, our instant reaction is we, we know the right answer or we think we know, we think we want to rely on parental rights or we want to think that, um, you know, we have the right to die or whatever, but here's the, here's the ultimate issue.

36:39

It's not what rights do I have? It's what has God said in his word?

36:45

We need to view all these kinds of social issues, these kinds of legal issues through the prism of what has

36:53

God said? How should I think about them in light of God giving life in light of God giving dominion over the planet in light of God, uh, giving life even to animals and everything else.

37:08

How should we view these kinds of things? And as I said, I, I do want to talk about, you know, this all lives matter campaign.

37:17

And I think there are some spiritual implications to it that I don't, I don't think get mentioned enough.

37:25

Um, so with all that said, we're out of time. Um, let's close in prayer and we'll, we'll pick this up next week and hopefully move a little faster.

37:38

Father in heaven, just deep, deep issues, things that are really worthwhile to contemplate far beyond what we can do in just 45 minutes, life and death and, uh, what our responsibility is before you, even as parents, as stewards of life itself.

38:01

Father, these are often complicated and difficult issues, things that we have to think through.

38:07

Uh, even as was mentioned this morning on a case by case basis, thinking, praying, seeking your wisdom, your guidance, looking to your word again and again, trying to extract really, uh, the nuggets, the truths that will help us and lead us through difficult decisions in life.

38:31

Father, even as I think about this last year and the people who died, the difficult situations that, um, came up in this church,

38:43

Lord, just so thankful to know that our, our home is not in this world and that's ultimately what we need to focus on.

38:52

You have promised us an inheritance that cannot perish, cannot be rusted, cannot be transformed or changed or touched really by any human power.

39:07

Lord, would you cause us to think of ourselves as those who have been bought with a price and who owe everything to our