Cutting & Unforgettable Sermon

Thanksgiving for Unity, the Gospel, and the Abortion Fight

All right. Well, praise God, right? I'll hold this. There you go. That works. So, we should continue to talk about significant points of agreement, right? Foundationally, we're all exactly on the same page, always have been, and that is that beards and babies are good, right?

You would all fit in. AHAers would fit in very well at Apologia Church. It's all beards and babies crying throughout the whole service. So, praise God for that. But a significant point of disagreement that I have to take advantage of right now, I cannot let go, and that's this.

You should never let me talk at 9 p .m. to start with. I have sins in the area of time, and this was a really bad choice. And after me, it's rusty. So, I said earlier, I said it's a good thing the windows are closed so that no one falls out dead.

Well, let's start with prayer, and let's get right into it. Father, I want to thank you so much, Lord, for your glory, Lord, for your power, for your salvation that we have, Lord, freely in Jesus. Thank you, Lord, for our unity in the gospel, our unity before you, the triune God.

We thank you, Lord God, for all these amazing truths that we all stand on together, and we have always. We thank you, Lord, for, Lord, not just saving us, but calling us to this incredible mission, this calling to bring the good news of the kingdom to the world, and to do it in the context of the slaughter of the unborn.

We pray, God, that you, Lord, would grant to us more mercy, more grace, more unity, more power, more strength, more endurance, Lord, to bring the gospel into conflict with the sin of abortion. We pray, God, that you would unite us around the Son, His gospel, under His rule, and that, God, you would grant to us the fruit, Lord, that we have been pleading for, and that is justice for these children.

That's what we ask for, God. We pray, Lord, that you would, by your Spirit, bring us together with humility, Lord, that we would bow before one another, Lord, and we lift up and hold up the truth of the gospel in the midst of all of this Holocaust.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Theology Matters: The Root of Cultural and Church Failure

So, I think I want to talk tonight about some of the main things in terms of what is a failure. When we talk about conflict with the issue of abortion, we talk about waking the sleeping giant, we talk about the church itself, my thoughts go towards what's the theological problem?

Theology matters, right? Theology matters. It is foundational. Theology matters. And so, all of the sins and the failures around us in the world are connected to deeply theological issues for the unbelievers who recognize it.

They have a particular worldview. They have a view of morality, and justice, and mercy, and beauty, and love, and all these different things. And they have that apart from Jesus Christ. They have an antithetical worldview.

They're not neutral. So, their perspective is fundamentally theological to start with. So, when we talk about the culture we live in today, it's an atheistic culture, at least in practice, if not by profession.

And so, we say, no God. All we are is matter in motion, bobbing along the surface of the cosmos. And so, my truth is my truth, your truth is your truth. And this is what I think justice looks like. This is what mercy looks like.

And it goes towards, has to go towards the women, not the baby. Kill the baby, protect the woman, right? And that comes from a theological perspective. No God, no meaning, no ultimate truth, no ultimate justice.

And so, it becomes, what do I say? What does Demas say? The people, democracy. What does Demas say today? Well, before it was, this person, I know it looks like a person. It's not a person. It's a black man.

I know it looks like a person. It's not a person. It's a Jew. Or I know now, this is not a person. It's the unborn. It's just a pile of tissue. It's meaningless. It's nothing. It can be killed at will.

And so, that's a theological issue. But even from the other perspective, when we talk about the failures within the church itself, in terms of not addressing the sin of abortion in the way that we ought to, by bringing the lordship of Jesus Christ and his gospel into conflict with it, that's a theological issue.

It's an issue of the gospel itself. We have giants behind us, amen? Theological giants that preach a particular God and a particular gospel. And we look back in history and wonder, where are those men?

Where are those women? Where is that revival among us? And the issue is theological, first and foremost. You want the church to arise. You want the church to awaken. You have to address the theological failures within the church.

And the interesting thing here is that it is fundamental. We're not talking about bickering over differences in carpet color and whether we should have pews or chairs or what style of worship music you have, whether you should have a coffee shop in your church, those sorts of things.

We're talking about something that is fundamental, not adiophora, not side issues. We're talking about the central issue of the gospel itself. The problem here in the issue of abortion and the gospel in conflict with abortion is the modern evangelical distortion of the gospel.

That is the problem. Now, this is not something we should just make a pithy slogan about or make bumper stickers about and just have sort of a vague idea of what the failure of the evangelical gospel is.

We should talk about it, the distorted gospel of today. One, let's talk about the one we're all familiar with and we have a face to it and everything else. It's the one that says, I don't know. I just don't really know about that.

I don't know if Jesus, you know, you just try Jesus out, right? It's the Rick Warren gospel. It's the gospel he preached on Fox News years ago. At Christmastime, I remember sitting in my dad's house and Fox News was on at Christmastime.

My dad's like that. And Rick Warren was on at Christmastime and his gospel was, give Jesus a try. Just give him a chance, right? He said, just give him a 90-day trial or something to that effect. Give Jesus a 90-day trial.

Well, that's a distortion of the gospel. That is not the gospel. There's no good news to it. Give him a chance. That's not the message of Jesus. Jesus called people to a different way. We know, of course, the fundamental verse, John 14, 6, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father but by me. Jesus is the only way to God. If you don't have Jesus, if you're not in him, if you haven't turned from sin to trust in him, if you haven't fallen on him, turned from your righteousnesses and your unrighteousnesses to Christ, if you haven't come to him, you will burn in hell forever.

That is a fact. That is the truth. There is something you cannot avoid. Jesus has a way that he calls people to himself in the gospels that we just do not hear about anymore. He says things like, well, wide, narrow, broad, right?

He says, you know, one leads to destruction, one leads to life. And he says, come to me and die. Everyone come, take up your cross and come follow me. Now, it doesn't mean a lot to us today because we don't see people doing a death march very often, carrying their cross to that place where they're going to suffer and die.

And so we don't really hear it like they would have heard it in his day, face to face with Jesus, with dirt around them, sandals, air, breathing in, their flesh and blood people hearing the message of Jesus, maybe for the first time.

And he says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate, and then he starts naming all of our favorite people, mother, father, sister, brother, wife. And he says, if you don't hate them, that is love them in comparison to me.

He says, you're not worthy to be my disciple. Don't come. Jesus would have failed the majority of seminary classes on evangelism today by turning the vast majority of his followers away. If you don't come and count the cost, then do not come to me.

Don't come. Count the cost. Come and die and rise again. That was the fundamental message of Jesus. Come die and rise again. And if you don't, then don't come. He turns people away. He goes from thousands of followers and in a moment, back down to 12.

And he turns to the 12 that God has been working on. They understand the message. And he says, do you also want to leave? And they say, what? They know. They say, where are we going to go? You have the message of eternal life.

They knew what it was all about. But we have the kind of message today that says, try Jesus. Give him a chance. Put him in a corner of your house for just, you know, decoration or something. Like, just add a little bit of Jesus to your life.

A little bit of spirituality to your life. Brothers and sisters, not the gospel. Distorted gospel. And it's part of the reason abortion fills our land. That's the truth of it. We have a distorted gospel.

The Truncated Gospel of Justification Alone

Another false version of the gospel. And this is key. It is key. And you got to be careful with how you announce this one because some blogger somewhere is going to distort your words and write blogs about you and talk about cigar smoking and all the rest.

Or Steven Anderson will get a hold of this. And there'll be all kinds of great stuff. A truncated gospel. We have a truncated gospel. And that is to say, even amongst the reformed folks in the room, we have a truncated gospel today in the United States of America and the West in particular that says really the gospel is justification by faith.

Now, freeze, pause, because you already went, wait. Because it's true. You are only justified through faith alone in Christ alone apart from any work of law. If you don't have his perfect life credited to you through faith, you have no righteousness that will avail before a holy God.

You will never add to his righteousness. It is his righteousness alone and that is only available through the empty hand of faith. Everyone got me there?

Are we clear?

But let me tell you this. The gospel in Scripture is bigger, much, much bigger than justification through faith. That's the heart of the gospel. That is how God reconciles dead, wicked sinners to himself through Christ's work, through faith, and through faith alone.

However, it's a truncated view of the gospel to say that it's just about justification through faith alone. That's what we preach. You want to go to heaven one day, little boy? Well, what's the other option?

Hell, where you'll burn in fire for all eternity.

Little boy says, absolutely, great.

Pray this prayer with me. And it's just great. Jesus punched your ticket now. Now, he'll see you when you get there. Not the gospel. We say, were you saved? Well, yeah, I prayed that prayer one day, right?

What's that mean?

Well, I had faith in Jesus. Yeah, I'm saved because, you know, faith alone, right? Listen, the gospel that Jesus proclaimed, if you look in just... Look, you don't have to go far. I'm not asking you to do a lot of reading tonight.

Just read the first book of the Bible in the New Testament. It is called The Gospel According to Matthew. It is lovely. It's an amazing book. You don't have to get but four chapters into that gospel and you see what Jesus was preaching.

We have, of course, the beautiful genealogies of Jesus, which is everybody's favorite part of the Bible. And then you get into chapter 2 where you have Matthew showing some amazing things about the symbolism in the Old Testament of Israel fleeing into Egypt and the ruler of the day trying to kill the baby.

And that was, by the way, a bad thing in Jesus' day. And then you have, of course, John the Baptist and his first message is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That was his message, warning the religious leaders in his day about the soon coming wrath.

And the spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness for the temptation of the trial, the testing of Jesus. And this is what we need to see. Jesus was proclaiming when he came out of the wilderness. He was proclaiming, listen, Matthew chapter 4, not a lot of reading.

This, the gospel of the kingdom. And that's what we're missing. If you ask the modern evangelical today, if you ask them, what's the gospel? People will talk about, well, it means you get to go to heaven one day.

Interesting, true, yes, but hmm. Doesn't sound very much like the Old Testament expectation of what was so good about the Messiah. It wasn't simply just about going to heaven one day. There was more to the story.

It wasn't the truncated gospel of the modern evangelical. It was more to the story. It was good news of a kingdom. Ask the modern evangelical in the West today. What's good news about the kingdom? What is it?

Tell me right now. Good, tell me. And I challenge you to do so. Watch the, hmm, is there a kingdom?

When?

Now?

Oh, yeah, sure, Jesus is in charge now. Ask the modern evangelical. Is Jesus king of kings and Lord of lords? They'll say, yay and amen. Is he Lord of lords?

Yay and amen.

I actually have a t-shirt that says that, king of kings and Lord of lords. It's really ugly, but I wear it, right? Well, can we do better with Christian t-shirts for goodness sake? Well, I can't wear them because they are just foul looking, right?

Okay, king of kings and Lord of lords, right? King of kings and Lord of lords. Ask the modern Christians. Say, is it true Jesus is king of kings and Lord of lords? They will say, yes. And then ask them, have you stopped to think about what that means today?

Because if Jesus is the king over the kings of the earth today, then that means that our message to them should sound something like that's true. That Jesus actually is the ruler over the kings of the earth today.

That he's their Lord today. It's interesting, we talk about the truncated gospel. I have a pastor friend who saw that our church was actually going to the city council now to proclaim the law word of God to the city council to tell God's deacons, because that's what they are, about God's law and the necessity of their obedience and to uphold justice, which is their job.

So we go, according to our biblical presuppositions, Christ is king of kings and Lord of lords. He has all authority in heaven, hold on, and on earth. That's past tense, by the way. Matthew 28, 18 through 20 is past tense.

That's about 2 ,000 years old. It was true then, it's true now. We go to the deacons of our day and say, now you must obey Jesus, uphold justice, stop the slaughter of the unborn. And a local pastor actually posted underneath the videos how much he was in horror over what we were doing.

The idea that Christians would actually now engage in the realm of the legislature and demand of the legislature that they obey Jesus Christ.

How'd we get there?

Because hashtag theology matters. It matters a lot. Your truncated view of the gospel in the West will lead to resistance when people see Christians taking those presuppositions, those very biblical presuppositions, and applying them to society today.

What's wrong is theological. And what's wrong relates to the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom. This is really important. I can't stay here all night, so I'll just give you the quick burst.

The Old Testament promised that the Messiah was coming, listen, with salvation. All of us recognize that. Everybody in here hopefully can point to Isaiah 53 and say, here's a suffering servant right here in Isaiah 53.

That's Jesus.

You can't avoid it.

It's his whole beautiful story. We thought he was being punished for his own sin, but the Lord was laying on him the iniquity of us all. He will justify the many as he'll bear their iniquities. The whole story pierced through for our transgressions.

There's our salvation, and amen to that. Yes, the Old Testament promised the Messiah was going to bring salvation, reconciliation, and peace with God. But brothers and sisters, there was good news that went above that.

And it was the good news that this Messiah was coming to rule and reign on the earth and to bring justice and righteousness and salvation. That's why Jesus was proclaiming the good news of his kingdom.

Because it is good news that this Messiah is ruling and reigning on his throne now. Because what happened in the garden is being undone now by the man who was mistaken as a gardener after his resurrection.

He came out of that tomb.

How did...

Listen, just as a quick little side note. You don't have to build anything on this, but I think it's delicious. Why do women mistake Jesus as a gardener after he's risen from the dead? What do you have to be doing for someone to mistake you as a gardener?

Perhaps you're working the ground. Isn't it interesting that one of the first things that the Son of Man does after he's raised again from the dead is he starts to work the ground? Because Jesus is bringing about the new creation.

He's bringing in that justice and righteousness and salvation that was to spread throughout the entire earth. The Old Testament promised good news of a kingdom. Genesis 49 .10, Shiloh is coming. And to him, listen closely, shall be the obedience of the peoples.

Did you catch it?

It's the same kind of theme that the apostle Paul follows in his systematic explanation of the gospel. Romans chapter 1, Romans chapter 16. Go read it later. It's how Paul bookends his explanation of the gospel.

Chapter 1, he says, we've received this grace and apostleship, he says, to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. And then he ends Romans 16 after he finishes explaining the totality of the gospel and he ends with the same statement, the command to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations.

That's how he bookended his gospel. How do you do it? The gospel of the kingdom. Our favorite passages, Isaiah 9, 6 through 7 at Christmas time talks about the son and the child given to us. Wonderful counselor, El Gabor, the mighty God, the father of eternity, of the increase of his government and of peace.

Did you catch it? Oh, we do. Watch, don't we get mellow-headed with the word of God at times? See his grand, marvelous promises? And all he does is go right past us.

Oh, that's glorious.

Would you stop to think about it? Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David to establish it with justice and righteousness forevermore. And if you think, with all of our brokenness and all the trials and all the hardships and all the resistance, how's it going to happen?

I can't do this. I'm tired.

I'm weak.

I'm sick of Facebook. Just welcome to my world. The answer is right there. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. That's how it happens. But notice how the kingdom is talked about in that respect is that it grows and grows and there's peace and there's justice and there is righteousness.

That's what the Bible says. Daniel chapter 7, 13 through 14, glorious promise of the gospel of the kingdom. Right there in that passage. He says he's looking in the night visions and he says, one comes like the son of man.

He says he comes up to the ancient of days and was presented before him and to him was given dominion, glory, and the kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

Where's he go? Up to the ancient of days and where does Jesus go after Matthew 28, 18 through 20?

Up.

And what does he say before he goes up? He says all authority. That's why I love this room. I don't have to do a lot of convincing. But it needs to be said because this is being recorded. So hi YouTube.

Okay, all authority.

Where?

In heaven and every Christian goes.

Yay.

Amen. He's king over heaven y 'all those angels those angels. They love to obey him and they will and there is no mucking around there. They do it. And then you look at the next part. He says. And on earth and he says has been given to me.

Theology matters. If that's true pause for a second if it's true. Then what we're doing here. Is absolutely necessary. You see we've lost the vision of the world itself. We say no, no, no, no, no, no heaven is the better heaven.

We got to get to the spiritual reality. God's not concerned with this. Well, congratulations 21st century Christian Gnostic. That's a theological nerd joke. You guys like that one? The Gnostic idea that you know, God's not concerned with like the earth itself.

This is icky and dirt dirty and sinful and all this God's concern the spiritual God would never taint himself with this world and the evil here. That's interesting because that sounds a lot like what evangelicals in the West believe we got to get out to the spiritual and get away from the physical and that's why our gospel only contains information that contains that actually pertains to the spiritual Jesus says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me and he says go therefore because of that and he says make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the father the son and the Holy Spirit Jesus Trinitarian.

Amen. And he says what teaching them to obey. So part of our moving through the nations to bring them to Jesus Christ is to teach the nations to obey Jesus and somebody might say well, yeah, hold on but really to do this right they need to be converted to obey Jesus and we go.

Well, yes, of course they need new hearts and all the rest but listen whether they're converted or not his law word still applies his law is his law based on his own character and it remains unchanging.

So whether the nation's obey Jesus or not God still requires of them that they do and so we go into a culture. We proclaim the excellencies of Jesus. We proclaim his perfection and his law and we call people to repent and our message ought to be consistent to say this is God's law.

He calls you to obey him obey him or you will perish the only freedom the only peace the only salvation is in Jesus and these are his commands. These are his standards now submit to the Messiah. That's the call the command to repent and believe not the request to repent and believe here's the problem deeply theological deeply theological and that is a problem of the pretended neutrality pretended neutrality.

You see it all around us mostly in the Christians mostly in Christians particularly you'll see it in the pro-life movement pretended neutrality. It was interesting two years ago. Senator silk put in SB 1118 we tried to do some stuff to try to support and try to make sure people could hear about it and we wanted to make sure we could provide some help.

I saw the videos of Russell and rusty in the in the the Capitol building and it broke my heart. We saw and said well, what can we do? Let's try to get Tony lounger on and let's see if we can get him to talk to us and sort of tell people what his position was and it was interesting there in that conversation.

You guys can go listen to that later. I wanted not to debate him which I really wanted to do but I wanted him to go on record with his neutrality and his failed policies. I wanted him to show it to everybody.

It's a few times in there. You'll see me look up at Marcus and Marcus is pulling his beard out of his face and I threw my pen up in the air and it's a good thing that Tony couldn't see my face. But in there you hear him say things like that.

They don't want to use words like murder and they want to take a backdoor.

Approach.

They don't want to talk about Jesus and call people to faith in Jesus brothers and sisters that's pretended neutrality and it's a failure. But here's the interesting thing. Have you noticed yet? And of course this room has but have you noticed that the opposition those who believe you should be able to kill the unborn they're not pretending neutrality here and you see it in New York right now.

What's interesting? Of course, we have to all confess. We see the inconsistencies in the pro-life movement. Everyone's up in arms over New York and we're at 40 weeks and up to birth and we say hey, wait a minute pro-lifers.

Why are you so upset? That's just a consistent position for them. What's the difference between the 40 and the 22 and the 20 and the 18 so we see the inconsistency but just pay attention to this when you think about what just happened in New York the power of that moment all we see there is their praise their applause their commitments on full display that they were never ever pretending neutrality.

This was what they were going for the whole time and the pro-life movement is confused. How can you do such a thing? Well, here's why because they're just staying consistent with their principles. Why aren't you?

Why aren't you because the question is is if it is a human being from conception if it is the holy image of God as our president said which by the way praise God for that the holy image of God then why aren't you protecting it from conception?

Why are you playing around the edges? Why are you failing over and over and over again? Here's the key what we're doing here. Call it abolition. Call it criminalization. Call it whatever it's consistency.

It's consistency with a Christian worldview. It's consistency with the law. Here's the key be courageous be brave you win you win 500 years from now. I truly believe this and I'm Post Mills. Maybe that has something to do with it.

But 500 years from now. I believe Christian schoolchildren are going to be reading in the history books what happened in the West and they're going to be horrified horrified and the truth will be that Christians finally rose up on a consistent position and it was with the gospel itself and the proclamation of Christ's truth that led to the end of abortion in our culture couple things quickly.

I don't want to take too much time. I want to respect you guys and we have children here. So I want to make sure I show you respect. But number one the pro-life movement isn't Christian insofar as it refuses to acknowledge the absolute authority of Jesus and his law.

I'll say that again. This is critical. It is key and needs to be heard and responded to the pro-life movement isn't Christian insofar as it refuses to acknowledge the absolute authority of Jesus and his law.

You can't tell me that your movement is from the Christian worldview and from the word of God if you refuse to acknowledge the absolute authority of Jesus Christ and his law in every area. It's not Christian.

You want biblical proof for that?

We'll be here all night.

But how about Matthew 12 30? Whoever's not with me is against me. So are you with Jesus in your education? Are you with Jesus in your legislature? Are you with Jesus in your pro-life attempts to end abortion?

Whoever's not with me is against me. Jesus does not allow neutrality with him. And so we have to ask ourselves the question. Are we playing neutral as the church? If so, let's turn away from that. Number two, the pro-life movement isn't Christian because it denies the lordship of Christ and the supremacy of his law word.

It refuses to acknowledge Christ lordship and the supremacy and ultimacy of his law. When you see pro-lifer saying don't use the name of Jesus when you come against the legislature and don't quote scripture.

They are testifying to the fact that they are not a Christian movement and brothers and sisters. If it's not a Christian movement, it's not based on the gospel. If there is no gospel, there is no life.

The Bible says, now don't let this be a pithy Christian slogan. Let's actually firm our commitments up and say, do we believe it? Romans chapter 1 says what? The gospel is the power of God for salvation.

You want your culture to change? Preach the gospel. That's what leads to salvation. That gospel proclamation goes out. The spirit of God empowers that proclamation and brings dead people to life. You want your culture to turn away from death, a culture of death?

Then preach the gospel to them. No gospel means only death. That's the truth. Number three, the pro-life movement is a failure because of its commitments. Isaiah chapter 30. Isaiah chapter 30. I should say it's unholy commitments.

Isaiah chapter 30 is a powerful text of scripture. Isaiah 31. It says, ah, stubborn children, declares the Lord, who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin.

The pro-life movement wants to make an unholy alliance with the secularists. The pro-life movement wants to make an unholy alliance, not based upon God's word, his plans, his spirit. And that's why they fail.

God's Unchanging Concern for Justice

Next, we need to talk just briefly about God's concern for justice. I want to talk about the gospel and justice. God's concern for justice. I know I don't need to speak to this group in vivid detail about this, but I want to highlight it in terms of does God have any concern today under the new covenant for justice?

I'm going to say, of course, if you just take a cursory look at God's word, you will see over and over and over again, God's concern for justice. And here's what we have to say as Christians, God does not change.

Let's say it again. God does not change. We think today with the coming of the new covenant, that I mean, somehow God's character has changed. By the way, that's how it's also preached in today's culture and evangelicalism.

You have the God of the Old Testament, who is terrorizing people, is a big, meany, wrathful God, and Jesus comes along in the new covenant to make him a little better, to sweeten it up a little bit. He's sort of the nice side of God.

That is a false, that's a false perspective about God, and it's a false view of what the gospel is all about. God is God. He is unchanging. His standards are unchanging, and God still has a concern for justice.

Just quickly, again, for the record, Isaiah chapter 1. Most of us know this in this room, but this needs to go out to the world. Hear the word of the Lord, verse 10. You rulers of Sodom, give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah.

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord. I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats.

When you come to appear before me, who is required of you this trampling of my.

Courts?

Bring no more vain offerings, incenses and abomination to me, new moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly, your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates.

Here's God dissing their worship. Here's God dissing their worship. Here's God having a hatred for their worship practices, more so than many of you maybe hate Hillsong. He says, my soul hates, they've become a burden to me.

I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of what?

Blood.

He says, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Now, what's interesting here is that God is condemning their worship. He's saying he wants none of it.

Something is wrong with his people. And here's his response to all of this false worship that he wants nothing to.

Do with.

Here's his response. He says, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. Powerful text of scripture. A lot of hipster churches today love to quote these little sections and like love, justice, mercy, all that stuff.

And you know, latte, right? But ask, well, what's that look like, my friend, to actually bring justice to the fatherless? What's it look like to cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice? What's it look like?

It's interesting, this powerful verse that's on a lot of t-shirts and a lot of oil paintings and all the rest. This text in Isaiah 118, come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are as like scarlet, they should be as white as snow.

Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. It's powerful here. That famous text of scripture, that famous section that people quote all the time about God's forgiveness and his love and his washing away of all of our sin comes right on the heels of God condemning them for their evil and their embracing of injustice.