God's Concern With Justice

Psalm 2 and the Kingdom of the Messiah

So as you guys get there in Psalm chapter 2, I'm gonna do a bit of small touch on a foundation from last night and move in to how to approach this issue before us. The issue of abortion in our culture that is faithful to the Lord Jesus, that submits to Christ as Lord, and in a way that's inconsistent with the scriptures and the way that Jesus and the Apostles approached false doctrine or controversy in their day.

How does God call us to do this? And so I want to have a text to open up with today that has a lot to do, a lot to do, with the big picture and in fact what we're doing even now as local churches, as believers, as pastors, really around the country, and even bringing the gospel to the civil magistrates.

That's happening now. So the text is Psalm chapter 2. It's a rather short psalm. So I'm gonna go ahead and read the whole thing. Here now the words of the living and the true God. Why do the nation's rage and the people's plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs.

The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me.

You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Now, therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Obey the Son, kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way. For his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together as his people. Lord, we come before you. Lord, standing only because of Christ and his perfect righteousness, his death, Lord, his receiving in himself what was due to us.

And Lord, we come into your presence, Lord, with confidence, with thanksgiving and praise. Lord, we stand in your presence because of our salvation, the gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.

And Lord Jesus, we desire to honor you, to glorify you, to be faithful to you, to submit to you, Lord. We confess all of us now in this moment that in and of ourselves, we are unworthy of this task before us.

We don't deserve it, Lord. We shouldn't have it. We and ourselves, apart from you and your righteousness and your work on our behalf, have no right to speak for you. But Lord, we stand with no condemnation because of you.

And we confess our sins and cling to you and ask God that you would fill us with the strength of your spirit. Empower us, Lord. Give us your words. Speak through us to the world around us. Draw your sheep to yourself.

Glorify yourself through the proclamation of your message, your truth. Help us, Lord. And help me, Lord, as I speak to your people today, Lord, to have clarity of mind. Lord, I pray that it's you speaking, Lord, and not me.

Allow people to hear, Lord, your voice. Forget me and remember you. In Jesus' name. Amen. So here we are. The people of God facing one aspect in our culture of evil, sin, depravity, rebellion against the king.

This isn't the only issue before us in the culture. I think we're all well aware of that in terms of depravity, sin, rebellion against the king, people that turn away from God. It's expressed in a number of different ways.

Image bearers of God who are hostile towards their Creator will find very creative ways to exchange God for idols, to live lives apart from God, to try to suppress the image of God within them. And one that is before us, though, that is so difficult and so evil and so depraved is the issue of the slaughter of pre-born image bearers of God.

Just consider that for a moment, that key issue. Here we have people who are revolting against the king, their maker, their God that they know God has disclosed himself to. Every image bearer of God, he hasn't left any one of us without a witness of himself.

And not only do we revolt against him personally, very personally, but we find the most innocent image of him in the world to attempt to snuff out. We so despise our Creator. We are so much haters of God.

We are so much children of wrath, enemies of God, that what we do to express our rebellion is find the most innocent image bearer to snuff that out, to make it disappear, to suppress that image. We actually find among us the most defenseless image bearer to distort, to dismember, to disembowel, to crush.

That's where we're at today in our culture. And we live in the United States of America. That's where this is coming from. This message will be heard globally. We have Christians who are dealing with this in Australia, New Zealand.

It's in Africa. It's all over the world, of course, but we're speaking about our current context. We're here in the context of Roe v. Wade, a sham in terms of a law, a lie saying that what's in the womb is potential human life.

When God says people who reject his knowledge become fools, it's expressed beautifully in Roe v. Wade. What's in the womb is potential human life. Potential human life goes against what God says is in the womb and against what all modern biological science says is in the womb, to the degree that abortion advocates today actually argue, yes, we know it's human.

Absolutely, it is human. And mothers and fathers ought to be able to kill their children, period. Before it was, no, it's potential human life. And now science has caught up to the point of observational science.

It's undeniable what's in the womb from the moment of conception has all the biological components of a human being. Every bit of you, your eye color, your size, all the distinctive neat things about each one of us that God made in certain terms of your story, the book that makes you, at the moment of conception, at the moment of conception that was there, at that very moment.

But we even have video today that shows you the spark that happens, the spark that happens at the moment of conception. It's as though God is just shouting to humanity at this moment, image of God, something different, something beautiful at that very moment, to the degree that unbelievers today that argue for the slaughter of innocent unborn human beings don't deny it.

They say, yes, and we ought to be able to kill our children. All the way up to birth, of course, because why not? What's the difference? There's unbelievers that recognize that there really is no difference.

What's the difference between 20 weeks and 8 weeks and 40 weeks? We're arguing to kill human beings, for goodness sakes, here. We should be able to do it whenever. It's our choice. By decree, I can kill my children.

That is the level of depravity that we've sunk to in our culture around us. Now, I'm going to talk for a moment in terms of what God calls us to. Yes, there are explicit commands in Scripture. I think in this room you probably already know it.

Explicit commands in Scripture for the people of God to actually rescue those who are being led to death, who are stumbling to slaughter, to rescue them. And if you say that you didn't know, you didn't know that it was happening, God knows your heart.

He knows. And will he not repay man according to his work? He knows the truth. We know that it's happening around us. We can't turn a blind eye to it. And God, yes, commands us to hold them back, to love our neighbor, and to actually do something to stand in the way.

But we talked yesterday about foundations, right? Distorted Gospels, messages that do not work, pretended neutrality, specifically the pretended neutrality of the pro-life movement. But foundationally, we have to have a bigger picture.

I try to emphasize there's a truncated version of the gospel that's very popular in our current context. A truncated version of the gospel that says something like this. They say the message about Jesus is a message simply about heaven one day.

We truncate it to just escaping the physical world when you die so that you can go into some spiritual existence of heaven one day. I mentioned in passing that sounds more like Greek philosophy and pagan worldview than Christianity.

Of course, we know that the gospel at the heart of it is justification by faith alone, apart from works, in Christ alone. It's a gift from God. That's at the heart of the gospel. But listen, the good news, Jesus was proclaiming good news of a kingdom.

The good news of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom. It's the very thing that's being proclaimed in the Old Testament and the New Testament. The good news is bigger than simply your private relationship with Jesus Christ.

It's more than your intimate relationship with Jesus Christ on an individual level. God, yes, is saving sinners by his grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. And when you turn from sin to trust in Christ, you are declared righteous by God through faith, no longer condemned, credited the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and not credited your sins.

Romans chapter 4. Amen to that? Yes? Okay, all that's true. Yes? But the gospel, Jesus was proclaiming, we talked about last night in Matthew chapter 4, when he comes out of the wilderness, this temptation in the wilderness, I said that it's very interesting that the last thing mentioned in Matthew was this specific temptation where Satan brings Jesus to this very high place, and he says, here's all the kingdoms of the world.

I'll give them all to you right now. All you must do is bow. Why was that a temptation for the Messiah? Because I argued that's what Jesus came for, the world. We pointed out last night that when Jesus came out of the wilderness, it says in Matthew's gospel, a very Jewish focused gospel, demonstrating that Jesus is in fact the promised Messiah.

That Jesus was out proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The gospel of the kingdom. The good news of the kingdom. And you might be saying, what's that got to do with the issue of abortion? As I said last night, absolutely everything.

Because what we're missing in the Christian witness against the issue of abortion in our culture is specifically, A, the good news of Jesus Christ, and B, really underneath all of that is the proclamation of his lordship and his kingship.

Now listen, don't allow this to be a pithy Christian t-shirt, as I said last night. We say all the time as Christians, King of kings and Lord of lords. But I asked you to think about it in a different way by means of application.

What does it mean for us as the people of God to come into the world with the message that Jesus is the king of kings and Lord of lords? Shouldn't it impact how we fight against abortion? Shouldn't it have something to do with how we actually engage this modern-day Holocaust?

You see, we're afraid as Christians, because we're told in the book of Code and Ethics and the pro-life movement, we're told, don't mention sin. Don't call it murder. Don't use the Bible. Don't call people to repentance and faith in Jesus.

Don't make this issue about Jesus Christ. And brothers and sisters, my argument is this. That makes the pro-life movement explicitly not Christian. And we're so afraid as the church to divide from the pro-life movement generally, because we say, well, they're doing good things and amen.

Yes, a broken clock is right twice a day. Amen. I'm thankful to God for actually striking straight blows with crooked sticks. I'm thankful to God for all that the pro-life movement has done that is righteous and godly and good and all the lives that have been saved.

However, we shouldn't yield to error, simply because we see some good being done. Brothers and sisters, I'm gonna be careful how I say this, but please hear me on this in terms of we're brothers and sisters here.

This is the body of Christ. Let's talk about this. Mormons do good things, too. I live in Arizona. Mormonism is huge in Arizona. There are Mormon wards all over the place, and there are there are buildings all over Mesa where we have a church where the community can come in, get resources and help and food and all these different things.

The Mormon Church, each ward has a bishop that actually distributes food and shelter and clothing and everything else and money to families who come in to get help. Does that mean we need to yield now to the error of the Mormon Church, simply because they're doing positive and good things for the world?

As Christians, we recognize that's all wonderful and thank God for His common grace and moments like that. But you see, here's the deal. We're not just trying to feed and clothe the world. We want people to know Jesus and come to Christ as Lord.

Jesus didn't call us to go into the world with some social justice gospel to go to the nations and simply feed people and clothe people. That is a result of coming out of coming to love those people and bring them to salvation in Jesus Christ.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself calls for that, but we have a message of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Hear this. This needs to be a part of now as the church reformation in this area. We ought to be calling for a reformation in this area in terms of how do we fight against abortion as God's people.

My argument, and many here today who are veterans and have been doing this longer than me and are much better at this than me, my argument is that it has to be as the Christian Church with the message of the gospel under His Lordship.

Under the banner of His authority and His kingdom. And we talked last night about how the Apostle Paul bookends his systematic explanation of the gospel in Romans chapter 1 and 16 with that statement that the purpose was to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of his name.

So his explanation of the gospel comes with bookends to make sure he's letting you know in the beginning and the end, what's the whole deal? Where are we going? It's to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.

We talked about the Old Testament, Genesis 49 10, the very beginning of our Bibles. Of course, Genesis 3 opens up with this promise of the gospel. The woman's seed crushing the head of the serpent being bruised on his heel.

Jesus is all over that, but in Genesis 49 10, it's a bigger promise. After the promise to Abraham, descendants as numerous as the stars. Father of many nations. All that's there and that's wrapped up in the promise of the Messiah.

But Genesis 49 10, that to him, this Messiah is going to be the obedience of the peoples. That's where history is going. I mentioned Isaiah 9, 6 through 7. This son, this child who is coming, who is El Gabor, the mighty God, the father of eternity.

Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no ends. On the throne of David, listen, please. To establish it with justice and righteousness forevermore. Did you hear that? One of the constituent elements of the kingdom of God in the world, according to Scripture, is that as Jesus saves sinners, and as Isaiah 2 says, as the nations are drawn up to God's mountain, as God brings salvation to the world, one of the things that happens, and we know this as Reformed folks, amen, is that hearts change.

The law goes forth from Zion. Ezekiel 36, we quote it all the time. Reformed folks, it's like when you come and you're like, I'm Reformed now. You get sort of like a packet. You get a kit, right? And your pastor's like, you need to know this verse, and you need to know this verse.

Here's a circle of your verses. Put this in your wheelhouse. You need to know this. It's one of the things we always mention because it is glorious, and you know it to be true if you're in Jesus. Ezekiel 36, I'll remove a heart of stone and give a heart of what?

Flesh. You sounded so sad about that flesh. That was glorious. God's regenerated you like, flesh, okay. I'll remove a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. There you go. Praise God. There you go. We're awake now.

Now, I'll give a heart of flesh. That's a soft heart. It's malleable towards God. It was hard as stone before, and now it's soft towards God. And God says, I'll sprinkle clean water on you. You'll be clean.

I'll cleanse you from all your idols. Praise God. That's good news for addicts and those who worship false gods. I'll cleanse you of all your idols. He says, I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to observe my statutes.

Here we have the promise of regeneration and God bringing people to spiritual life. But what happens when God brings people to spiritual life is that now they have a desire to obey God's statutes. Now they long for righteousness.

Now they hunger and thirst for what? Righteousness. Now they long for justice. Now they want justice. You see, that's what Jesus is doing. It's not merely about saving me personally for my intimate relationship with Jesus, so I go to heaven one day.

No, God saves me now. He regenerates me now. He declares me righteous now. He tells his people, the meek shall inherit the earth. Do you stop to think about what that means? The meek shall inherit the earth.

God doesn't say the goats will inherit the earth. God doesn't say that unrighteousness and injustice inherits the earth. He says the meek shall inherit the earth, and then he tells us how to pray for goodness sakes.

Now listen, watch, pause. I gotta say this. Adiaphora. Okay, this isn't about eschatology right now, so don't freak out. You all know I'm post Mel. I'm not trying to convert you, okay? Let's just talk about what we can agree on.

How did our Lord, no matter what you say it looks like as he returns, okay, no matter what you say it looks like as he returns, what did our Lord tell us to say when we pray? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Now watch, pause. Hallowed. We say, oh, it sounds so pious and so wonderful. Hallowed. Like it sounds, hallowed to be, you know, such an old way of talking. We're like, be honest. You're like, what's that mean?

Okay, holy be their name. No, it's holied. God, you're praying. Father, listen, listen. What's this got to do with abortion? Absolutely everything. Father, hallowed be thy name. Holied be thy name. May your name be holied.

Seen as holy. May you be revered. May your name be holied. What are you praying for? God, may Africa holy your name. Not the name of some other God. Holied be thy name. May America, the United States of America, holy your name.

Canada, holy your name. My wife, my children, my community, may they holy your name. Your kingdom, your rule, come. Your will be done. Oh, here it is. On earth, as it is in heaven. Do we stop and think about what we're praying for?

This isn't about the distinctives and differences in us in our eschatology. It's what Jesus commands us to pray about. May your will be done, Father, here on this earth. Watch. As it is in heaven. Question for you, brothers and sisters.

Just how rigorous do you think the commitment is to the will of God in heaven? Pretty rigorous? Pretty intense? Jesus says to us as his people, as his children, he says, I want you to pray to the Father that people would be as rigorously committed to the will of God here on this earth as they are in heaven.

Did you ever stop to think about what you were asking the Father for? And then when Jesus ascends, you might be thinking, I don't know how to pray that prayer. Have you seen my neighborhood? Have you watched MSNBC?

Have you seen Rachel Maddow? What she's saying, right? Do you know what this looks like here? And Jesus says, don't worry, my people. I've got you. He says as he goes up, he reminds us all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore. It's mine. So what do you have in terms of a foundation and encouragement and power and strength to pray that kind of prayer to the Father? The fact that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth.

It belongs to him now. That's what the Bible tells us to pray about, to think about in terms of the world. Now, we talked about those foundations. More can be said, but I have sins in the area of time, as you know.

I didn't realize I went over 40 minutes last night. Is that right? Wow, it's a good thing. These windows are all closed and no one fell out. All right. Now we talked about Psalm chapter 2. Now again, what are we talking about tonight?

We're talking about how to approach this as Christians, as the Christian Church, faithfully. Reformation in this area. How do we bring change in this area? How do we make it about the gospel? I pointed you to Psalm chapter 2 at the very beginning for a reason.

Because that is a well-known passage of Scripture that actually identifies what the ultimate goal is and what God says to the rulers of the earth in terms of their obedience to Jesus. Do we need to listen to the talking heads in the pro-life movement and follow their code of ethics?

Their system that says don't mention Jesus. Don't make it about his lordship. Don't call people to repentance. Don't use biblical language. You can't do that. They don't believe in God. They don't believe in the Bible.

I pointed you to Psalm 2 to show you God's perspective. Here's what he says about the future. Ask of me, the Father says to Jesus, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth, for your possession.

That's what the Father says to Jesus. Again, ask yourself the question. Do we think that Jesus forgot to ask the Father? No. I'll give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth, for your possession.

And you say, okay, what exactly, Father, does that look like though, Lord? What's it look like when you give the world to Jesus? Like all of it, every aspect of it, even down to the rulers, the kings of the earth, the people who have authority even over us today.

And the Father says to the kings of the earth a warning as he's giving the world to Jesus Christ. As he's putting the authority into his hands, saying you're the ruler of the world. I'm going to give you every inch of this world.

The Father then has a word to the kings of the earth, to the rulers and authorities, those who are in power. He says this, obey the Son, or you will perish. Why are we afraid to bring the law word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ to our magistrates, to the legislature, to the rulers of our country?

Why are we afraid to bring it as though Jesus Christ is not King of Kings, as though he's not Lord of lords? This is the gut check, brothers and sisters. That's what this is. This is the gut check. Do you really believe what you say you believe?

Is this merely a pithy Christian slogan that we toss out? Or do we actually believe that Jesus is the ruler of the world? That he's ascended, that he's on his throne, that he's actually King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that all the world must come into submission to Jesus Christ?

Do we believe it? It's a gut check, brothers and sisters. I pointed you to Psalm 110 .1, not only because I believe you probably already know the verse, but because I called it God's favorite Bible verse.

And the reason why I call it that is because again, as I said last night, it's the most quoted from Old Testament verse in the New Testament. It's the most quoted from, most alluded to in the entire New Testament.

The New Testament quotes from every book of the Old Testament except for Esther and its allusions and its direct quotations. But the one that's quoted the most is Psalm 110 .1. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

That's the call. Jesus is on his throne. He's winning the world with his love and his grace and his mercy, his good news, his work. He is applying in history and real people's lives. He's drawn the nations to himself.

But that's because he's accomplished his work in victory and he sits on his throne. And God promises that all the enemies, all the enemies are going under his feet. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the Apostle Paul says this, the very last enemy to be defeated is death.

So where are we going? All enemies under Jesus feet and then death is destroyed according to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. My point there is to speak to the authority of Jesus. Now, we in November began a movement.

We tried to start a movement at End Abortion Now to go now from the abortion mill to the magistrates. So we started going to our local magistrate, filming what takes place there, and calling them to uphold justice for the pre-born, calling them to repentance, calling them to obey Jesus, and preaching the gospel in front of our local magistrates.

And that began a movement where now you have Christians and local pastors who are going around the country now before their local magistrates, and they're not saying pro-life rhetoric and language in terms of neutrality.

They're saying, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. This is sin against God. This is murder. I'm calling on you to do your duty before God and to uphold justice and to stop the murder of innocent unborn human beings in the womb.

Turn to Christ and live. That's the kind of language and it is really making waves. Our local legislature, since we started this in Phoenix, we have purposefully taken up all of the community time that we can.

We show up early. We stay late. We fill it up so that we take all the spots and we preach the gospel. This is the unique thing about the moment where we're in with our magistrates, is they don't think these are just merely pro-lifers saying, we're pro-life.

We don't like pro-choice. Can you please, you know, come with us? They know the difference between what's happening there and what happens typically in the pro-life movement is these are people that name the name of Jesus Christ and they're calling us to obey Jesus Christ.

Then there was light. There's a difference. As pastors have gone around the country to their magistrates, they've been preaching the gospel to their magistrates, telling them to obey God. Obey God and uphold justice.

It's really interesting too because as we've been able to do this and to film it and to put it up, a consistent Christian witness in this area, there is a local pastor in my area, when one of these videos went up, I saw this local pastor in my area actually say under one of the videos that he was horrified by what we were doing.

Horrified that Christians would go to their magistrates and proclaim the name of Jesus and call their magistrates to repentance and faith in Jesus. Even a local pastor that was saying you can't do that as Christians.

You've got to operate with neutrality. You can't go proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ and call them to faith in Jesus. You can't make it about the Bible and repentance and those sorts of things. Brothers and sisters, we've lost our way.

Incredibly lost our way if we think we have to abandon the Lordship of Christ in any area of our lives. All authority in heaven and on earth means all and it's not merely over spiritual things. It's here on earth.

We're told to pray for it. Now I want to point something out in terms of the difference between what was happening in the first century with a faithful Christian witness and what's happening today. And we can see the distinction in terms of why is there a failure.

In the first century, the Apostles go out into the world. The Christians go into the world. They're proclaiming the excellencies of Christ, his gospel, his Lordship. And you might think, okay, so it was hugely successful and it was just glorious and there were rose petals and amazing things.

No, you can read the text. You know in the first ten chapters, you're gonna see it's persecution. It's beatings. It's people wanting them dead. It's the Apostle Paul throughout. You see him saying he's in danger constantly.

Danger from robbers, his own countrymen, false brethren. He says this. He says at one point, you know this text. He says, I've been beaten times without number. I have to ask the question, at what point do you stop counting?

Like what number is it that you finally go, ah, I don't know. I forget. Like is it six? That seems like you can remember that. Seven, eight, nine, ten. Like at what point do you stop counting how many times you've been beaten for Jesus?

The Apostle Paul says, I've been beaten times without number. I don't know. And he says, I consider it a light and momentary affliction. Light and momentary. He might be a little crazy. But you see the difference is they understood the context.

They knew Jesus is winning the entire world. Paul says it in Romans 1 and 16. Bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations. That's where I'm going. I know what Jesus came for. I'm just a part of all that he's doing here to get to that point.

It's a light and momentary affliction because I know the end of the story. But they were proclaiming, listen closely, in a very hostile pagan context. We think we have it bad, brothers and sisters. We are cowards.

Let's face it. We are cowards if we think we have it bad. Praise God for those Christians before us in our country and in much of the West that actually believe that Jesus Christ is Lord over every aspect of life and try to put his word and his standards into every area.

That's the only reason we have the blessings that we have today that are hanging on by a thread. But they are still there, brothers and sisters. And that's because of the biblical standards of those Christians that they employed as they were developing these nations and these cultures.

It was the law word of God. The equity of his standards and justice they put into society. And so when we say today, oh, there's so much hostility. I don't know if we can do it. We can't be successful.

We huddle into our small houses. Like we act like we're on the run like the first century church. Give me a break. We're cowards. It's time to repent of our cowardice. It's time to lay our lives down.

And I'm not giving you a motivational speech. I'm not selling you anything. I'm telling you this is the truth. We are cowards. We have the truth of God. We need to go into the world and lay our lives down for the sake of his glory and the lost.

But in the first century you realize Kaiser Kyrgios. Caesar is Lord. They don't care what you worship. And you could roast it. They're pagans. We understand they're pagans in Rome. You worship anything you want.

But you have to at least acknowledge the ultimacy of Caesar. That he's the ultimate. He's Lord. And you understand that the early Christians understood that the only ultimate was Jesus Christ. Was God himself.

And what they could not do in first century Rome was acknowledge that Caesar was the ultimate. That he actually was the one who had the law word. That he's where it stopped. The early Christians recognized that Jesus is the king over the kings of the earth.

He is the one that's Lord who has all authority. He is ruling over his kingdom. And they said this. I will honor the Caesar. I will be an obedient citizen. But I cannot say that Caesar is Lord. Because Jesus is Lord.

He's the ultimate. Just a little pinch of incense you stupid Christians. That's all we're asking for. And these Christians said that's okay. You can kill me. Take my life. Nero would take Christians and round them up in the street in the first century.

Round them up in the street in the daytime. And he would use them as Roman candles in his garden parties at night. Tie our brothers and sisters to stakes. Wrap their bodies naked in pitch. And light them on fire as burning candles while he rode his chariots through the Christians.

These are the kinds of things that happened to these early Christians. And all they had to say was Caeser Curios. Caesar is Lord. How would you and I fare in that? How would we fare today? How would the average evangelical fare in that context where all you must say is Caesar is Lord?

Just say it. Just say it. Just a little pinch of incense. Just say the words. I think most of us maybe would say in evangelicalism and today we'd say, well, I'll say it and go home and repent. God will forgive me.

These early Christians recognized we have a much bigger picture. God is doing something much bigger and they wouldn't say it. How about this? There is no other name under heaven. What? Given among men whereby we...

See, we know that as Christians today because it's an amazing verse. It's the truth. But you realize when that was being proclaimed early in the book of Acts, there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved.

Jesus Christ. You realize, of course, that was a direct affront to what Rome said about Caesar. You ever seen the Roman coins? Yeah, that's what's being said about Caesar. And here's Peter puffing his chest to the government saying what?

No, no, no. It's Jesus. He's the ultimate. They were living lives of godly, risky, missionary sacrifice. And brothers and sisters, it is about the good news of the gospel, his authority, his rule. And listen closely.