War and Peace (Acts 6, Jeff Kliewer)

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Acts - Empowered: War and Peace (Acts 6) Pastor Jeff Kliewer April 8, 2018

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Help us, Lord, not to be conformed to our culture, but to be transformed by your word.
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Speak to us, Lord, through your word this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. The time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.
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The words of Charles Spurgeon more than 100 years ago, and I think that that time has come.
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Very much so, in the church today, there is a pragmatic kind of entertainment meant to attract as large a crowd as possible, but at what cost?
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At many cases, it's the cost of the truth itself. The Bible is not upheld and taught, and the power of the gospel is not trusted to do the work of transforming people.
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Rather, pragmatic methodologies have come into the church to change the way people think.
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Tim Challies won't have any of that. He's a pastor out in California, and he came out with a list of the five most ridiculous so -called
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Christian books ever to be published. Maybe you have some of these on your bookshelf. Each of them have sold millions of copies, and to be sure, there's probably some good biblical truth in all of them, yet there's enough error mixed in that they're dangerous to the flock.
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He lists these five as the most ridiculous Christian books of all time.
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Number one, The Prayer of Jabez. Number two,
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The Circle Maker. Number three, 90 Minutes in Heaven. Number four,
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Your Best Life Now. And number five, Jesus Calling. Tim Challies, I would encourage you to Google his short video to explain why he says that, but I felt like it was a timely warning because nowadays, false teaching doesn't relegate itself to the universities or to the
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TV set or to the conversations at the pub. False teaching creeps into our churches, and it creeps into our bookstores and into the
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Christian television that we might watch, and it's very dangerous. Charles Spurgeon says, no one can do as much damage to the church as the man who is within its walls, but not within its life.
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The most dangerous wolves are those that dress in sheep's clothing.
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Spurgeon is right. You know, Charles Spurgeon spent the last four years of his life engaged in warfare, not physical, but spiritual.
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The controversy was called the downgrade controversy. For the last four years, and he only lived into his mid -50s, probably largely because of the stress caused by this fight, modernism had come into the philosophy of England, and Spurgeon saw that that very philosophy was coming into the church.
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People who no longer believed that the words of God are inerrant. They began to make symbols of the
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Christian message, and the resurrection was no longer a literal bodily resurrection from an empty tomb, but had become a mere picture of the kind of renewal that a
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Christian can have. A denial of the virgin birth and the essentials of the
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Christian faith. Spurgeon fought hard against the downgrade controversy, or in the controversy.
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He fought against the downgrade, and he went on to say, biblical truth is like the pinnacle of a steep and slippery mountain.
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One step away, and you find yourself in the downgrade. Once a church or individual
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Christian gets on the downgrade, momentum takes over, and the downslide gets worse.
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Spurgeon was teaching that to maintain your stand upon the Bible is not an easy thing to do in the culture in which we live.
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It wasn't back then, and it's even less so today, 100 years later. It's not easy to stand upon the word of God because all of the pressure of our society would push us off that mountain, and to stand on that mountain is a slippery place to be.
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And once you begin to slide, it's easy for that slide to take you farther and farther away from true north, from the top of that mountain.
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It's a slippery slope. Well, today we're gonna turn in the
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Bible to Acts chapter six. And there we find war in the church.
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It has to do with the issue of neglect, and some people in the church complaining about feeling neglected.
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But fortunately, the godly leadership of that church addressed the situation, and dealt with that and replaced that with peace.
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However, the war wasn't over. Once addressing that situation, war breaks out with the world.
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Stephen is the solution to the first problem, and then finds himself engaged in warfare.
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And here's what I wanna call us to this morning, brothers and sisters, to war, to prepare for war, to recognize that this boat that is our
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Christian family is not a cruise ship of comfort, but rather a warship in a hostile world.
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Prepare for war, suit up for the fight, be like Stephen.
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Follow with me, Acts chapter six, we'll read it through, and then we'll take it verse by verse. Acts chapter six, one and following.
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Now in these days, the disciples were increasing in number. A complaint by the Hellenists arose against the
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Hebrews, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
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And the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word to serve tables.
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Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and wisdom who we will appoint to this duty.
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But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose
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Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.
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These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them. And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
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And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.
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Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and of the
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Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those of Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen.
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But they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking. Then they secretly instigated men who said, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.
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And they stirred up the people, and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him, and brought him before the council.
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And they set up false witnesses who said, this man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law.
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For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.
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And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
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Chapter six, verse one. We have a time of church growth.
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People are coming to the faith, and the numbers are increasing. But the growth of a church is not without problems.
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As more people came, some problems came with it. And here the complaint is that a certain group of the
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Jewish widows are being neglected in favor of others. There's a preferential treatment happening.
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Now, who are these two groups? Well, at that time in the early church, Jews were either
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Hellenized or Hebraic. In other words, the Hebraic Jews, those who are truly
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Jews and were never deported from Israel still speak the Hebrew language.
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And they still have the customs and the traditions related to Judaism. However, in Israel at the time, there are the
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Hellenized Jews, those who had at some point been deported from Israel into different parts of the
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Roman Empire and taken on the customs, including the language of Rome. So in 63
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BC, there was a great diaspora. The emperor, the leader Pompey, having conquered, sent many of the
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Jews away. And so they took on the language of Rome. They spoke
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Greek rather than Hebrew. So now many people are coming to faith, but some of them speak
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Hebrew, others speak Greek. And the true pure blood Jews are receiving preferential treatment over against the
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Greek speakers. You see the problem? That's what's happening in the church. Now the answer in verse two, the solution to this problem is wonderful.
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It is the first congregational meeting. Some of you know and why some of you laugh.
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We're a congregational church. It means that the congregation will gather to make kind of the ultimate decisions of the church.
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And here is exactly what happens in verse two. The 12 summoned the full number of the disciples.
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And notice what comes first in the mind of the apostles.
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It is not right that we should give up preaching in order to wait on tables. The apostles understood that Christianity needs to be driven first of all by the word, and in the wake of that, good works will follow.
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Very often churches will get the cart before the horse, so to speak, and begin to focus so much on good works, helping the poor, building hospitals, working to alleviate suffering in this world, that they begin to neglect the very word of God that makes us
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Christians in the first place. The apostles would have none of it. In fact, they say it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.
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Their ministry will start there, and so they appoint who become the first deacons.
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Verse three, therefore brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
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They make the decision that they will appoint deacons. Now what is a deacon? The word diakonos in the
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Greek simply means servant. Someone who can take care of this issue to serve and take care of the needs of the widows in the daily distribution.
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Now what are the qualifications for a deacon? The first thing we see here, seven men of good repute.
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Is this a gender -specific requirement? Well, notably, all seven who are chosen are male.
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But, on the flip side of that, in Romans chapter 16, verse one, a woman named
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Phoebe carries the title diakonos, meaning servant. And if you take that in the technical sense, that she was appointed in that official capacity as deacon, you could say that there were, in fact, deaconesses in the
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New Testament. So the question is not a slam -dunk case, but if you were to just read this, it looks like men means men.
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Now just a quick comment on that. Isn't that a little bit, I don't know, male -centric?
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Well, yeah. Are we bigoted to believe something like that?
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If that's what the Bible teaches, are we biblical to believe it? Yes, are we bigoted to believe it?
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The world would tell us that we are. The world would say that we are bigoted to hold to that view of leadership within the church.
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And my question for you is, if this is what the Bible teaches, and again, there's a question mark there. There is some dispute as to whether women can be deacons in the church.
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There's some dispute on that. My question to you is, if the Bible teaches that, would you submit to it?
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And for me, the issue is not really that big of a deal. However, the epistemology that underlies the decision you make on a question like that, in other words, how do you arrive at your decisions?
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What authority do you stand on in order to make decisions like that is what matters most.
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If the Bible cannot tell you what to believe on any given matter, then you do not stand on the authority of the scripture.
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Ultimately, you allow your own human reasoning to be the arbiter of truth. And I might be guilty of that at times where I don't like something being taught.
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It doesn't fit with how I think. And the question is, will I submit to the text of God's word?
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So there's some question over that, but the real issue is do we submit to revelation or do we go by human reasoning?
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The second qualification there, full of the spirit. You know this by the fruit that a person bears in their life, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self -control.
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You also know it by the zeal that a person has for the things of God. Not just full of the spirit, but full of wisdom.
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How does a person come to decisions? Do they look to the Bible? The beginning of wisdom is what?
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The fear of the Lord. Submitted to the Lord and to his word, whom we will appoint to this duty.
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So there's qualifications here, but this is not the comprehensive list. Later on, Paul will give us more qualifications for what makes for a deacon, as well as for an elder.
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That's found in 1 Timothy chapter three. Can look that up later. Moving on to verse four.
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But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
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Having appointed deacons to care for the daily distribution, this effectively frees up the pastor teachers to do what they're uniquely equipped and called to do.
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Now, the elders, the teaching leaders of the church are free to devote themselves to prayer and to the word.
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Pastor teachers are called to do this for hours and hours every week. But every one of us is called to open up the word and know it.
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Here's what I've discovered. As Christians, the ministry of the word and prayer require devotion.
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But one of those two tend to come naturally to every Christian. And the other tends to be a struggle.
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That's probably not the case for everybody. But most people naturally either open the word and read it or spend time in prayer.
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But very few Christians that I know are devoted to both. Devotion requires discipline.
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And if you know that this describes you, it's easy for me to pray. When I wake up in the morning,
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I pray. When I'm driving around, I pray. I pray all day long. I pray as I'm falling asleep.
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I pray before I eat meals. But man, I rarely open the Bible. It's hard for me to do.
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If that describes you, it takes self -discipline to open the scriptures daily and read the text.
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Conversely, some people love to listen to sermons. They love to read and understand.
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But to take time away to go kneel before the Father and devote time to prayer is a struggle.
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Whatever your natural disposition, discipline yourself to do both because here is the final solution.
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If you can become devoted, not just, you know, occasional in your praying and in your study of the word.
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If you can become devoted to both, you will be a force for the kingdom of God. Men and women, both, who study the scripture and who pray regularly become powerful tools in the hands of God.
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Do both and devote yourself. See that word in verse four. We will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.
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Verse five and following. And what they said pleased the whole gathering and they chose
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Stephen. We won't read the list again. Let's just take a moment and pause and say what happened to each of these men?
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Stephen, he goes on to dispute with this particular synagogue of Jewish people. We know the result at the end of chapter seven.
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He ends up dead in this battle. The first Christian martyr, standing on the truth.
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At war, not in the church. He made peace in the church, but at war in the world. And he lays down his lifeblood for the sake of his
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Christ. What became of Philip? Philip was a wonderful evangelist, a powerful evangelist.
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Acts chapter eight is all about how he took the gospel to those who are partly Jew and partly
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Gentile. A mixed group. And they came to believe the gospel.
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Then he took the gospel to that Ethiopian eunuch. We don't see him again until Acts chapter 21. He's raising a family in Caesarea.
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He has four daughters and each one of them prophesy. I love the picture there of a consistent man who raises a
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Christian family. And each one of those daughters is walking with the
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Lord by that 21st chapter of Acts. Well, that's all we get from the book of Acts as far as what happens to the rest of these.
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But church tradition from that first century tells us much. Prochurus, the tradition there from the early church fathers is that he became that scribe on the island of Patmos who wrote down the book of Revelation.
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He was exiled with John for the sake of the gospel. He was a bishop of Nicomedia and he also was martyred.
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Well, what became of Nicanor? We don't know anything. Very little church tradition.
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There was a gate, one of the Jerusalem gates around the temple was called the Nicanor Gate. I don't think it has anything to do with him.
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What happened to Timon? He doesn't show up again until the Lion King. What about Parmenas?
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Also a martyr, a bishop of a small city, Soli in Cyprus. Also martyred in the year 98 by the
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Emperor Trajan. And finally, take a moment with me to consider this last one,
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Nicholas. This is not good Saint Nick who later becomes
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Santa Claus. This is Nicholas, the founder of the
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Nicolaitan cult. Many of the early church fathers ascribed the
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Nicolaitans to this Nicholas from the first century, including, see if I can find if I wrote it down,
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Tertullian, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Irenaeus. They all say that this is the
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Nicholas that founded the Nicolaitan cult. What was the Nicolaitan cult?
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Well, according to Tertullian, he writes this,
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John, however, is charged to chastise those who eat things sacrificed to idols and who commit sexual immorality.
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There are even now another sort of Nicolaitans. Theirs is called the Gaean heresy.
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This leader Gaius created another heresy and the common denominator between that and the
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Nicolaitans is sexual immorality. The early church fathers allege that this leader
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Nicholas, who's at this point a deacon in the church, later becomes a Gnostic, having secret knowledge from heaven, no longer sticking with this revealed word of God, he has the secret gnosis, the secret knowledge.
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And from that secret knowledge, he departs into wild immorality, such that he had a beautiful wife, it was foretold, and the two of them decided upon an open marriage.
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And so he shared his wife with many of the men in the church. He was a proselyte from Antioch.
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Antioch had many cults which involved temple prostitution.
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It looks like they reverted back to that. Is that in the church today?
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We'll talk about that at the end. In the application section, I believe that there are Nicolaitans in the church today.
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But here's a little bit of homework. Write down Revelation 2, verse 6 and 15.
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When Jesus began to speak to the churches in the spirit, through John, on the island of Patmos, Jesus says he hates the deeds of the
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Nicolaitans, and emphasizes their sexual immorality. So we see here that Nicholas is part of the solution, when he's a deacon serving the needs of the widows, but later, as he puffs up in pride, becomes the problem, and the founder of the
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Nicolaitan heresy. Verse 6, these they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
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As a result of this, many become obedient to the faith. Even some of the priests begin to believe.
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In other words, when the church is able to find peace by different people serving within with humble hearts, then it becomes powerful.
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Many become obedient to the faith. Now that implies that the faith, the Christian message, is a command.
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Acts 17, I think it's verse 30, commands repentance and faith.
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The gospel is not just an offer which people are free to accept or leave behind.
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Yes, that offer is given to all, and people do have the freedom of religion to do what they want with it, but from God's perspective, he is the judge of both the living and the dead.
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And there are those who will obey his command to repent and believe, and there are others who will not obey, under which condition he has the right to judge.
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Here, many become obedient to the faith. They heed that command to repent and believe.
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And so there's peace in the church, but the war has only just begun.
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Look at verse eight. And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.
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Here's a man full of the spirit. Grace is upon him. He's preaching, and God begins to stretch out his hand to do healings and wonderful miracles in the city of Jerusalem.
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Now he's a threat. Verse nine. Then some of those who belong to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and of the
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Syrian, the Cyrenians, and the Alexandrians, all of these synagogues, many scholars think that there was one synagogue, one building, that housed different groups in the same building.
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The synagogue of the freedmen was probably former slaves who had received their freedom.
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They rise up against Stephen, and they begin to dispute. Now what does
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Stephen do? Does he bow out quietly, sheepishly and shyly, and go home?
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Or does he engage in theological dispute? And is he equipped to do so?
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Well, we learn in chapter seven he's certainly equipped to do so. He will basically recite from memory the
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Old Testament metanarrative to refute what these liars are saying.
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The synagogue of the freedmen. They still exist today.
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They call themselves free, but they really enslave. As it was called, the synagogue of freedmen.
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Got a great quote from somebody who will remain nameless, but I thought it was perfect.
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Here in the church today, in America, and around the world, there are many who disguise themselves as Christians in order to influence the church for political reasons.
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The quote says, they hate the church, they hate the word of God, they hate the gospel, but they pretend to be the church, to love the word of God, and to proclaim the gospel.
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The synagogue of freedmen still exists today. There are many who masquerade as Christians, but are not.
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They have political agendas, and they're trying to influence Christians towards that end.
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Beware. We'll talk about that a bit more in a minute. But let's look at verses 11 to 14.
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When Stephen stands and preaches the word of God, notice they cannot withstand the wisdom and the power with which he speaks.
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The word of God dominates the lies of the enemy. Does that mean they'll roll over and go away?
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No. Here's what you should expect. If you are willing to stand upon the word of God, and proclaim truth to the world, here is what you should expect.
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You will be misrepresented, you will be slandered, and there will be a mob mentality forming against you.
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Expect that. 11 to 14, they secretly instigate men who say, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.
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They stir up the people. That's that mob mentality. And the elders and the scribes, they come upon them and seize them, and bring them before the council.
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False witnesses to slander. This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law.
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He will refute that in chapter seven, verse 14. We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.
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Misrepresentation, slander, mob mentality. Expect to meet that to the degree that you speak the word of God.
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Fall silent, you'll probably have little conflict with the world. Proclaim truth and expect the mob.
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Expect to be slandered, expect to be labeled, expect to be shamed for your dogma and your conservatism, your narrow mindedness, your bigotry, your intolerance, expect it.
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But look at verse 15, and gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
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Try to picture that. First thought that came into my mind was my little kids when they're begging for some sugary treat and they try to make their faces like an angel.
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That's not what's in view here. Although that's cute when they do the puppy dog thing to try to get their way.
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No, I think there's something supernatural here. I think there is a peace that's resting on him that juxtaposed to the angry, gnarled faces of the world.
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Yelling at him, he has the joy of the Lord and it stands out like an angel in the midst of demons.
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I think it's a supernatural peace that rests on him and this is what I'll say to us about that. We have the truth, but how we proclaim that out there in the marketplace, in the world, is very important.
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Speak with gentleness and respect, even to the people who slander you and misrepresent you and mean to do you harm.
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Still, turn the other cheek. It doesn't mean, turn the other cheek, by the way, doesn't mean that you don't speak the truth.
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But as you stand upon the word of God, do not return hatred for hatred. Stand with enough self -confidence, not, shouldn't say self -confidence, enough confidence in the
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God whom you serve that you don't need anger to make your point.
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That you can speak gently and respectfully, even to people that you disagree with. I think that's what
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Stephen's doing here. I think that's the look of the angel on his face. So, in closing,
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I left a little extra time for application today because as I look out at the world,
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I see very specific ways in which the church is coming under attack. And believe me, we can look at the news and see problems everywhere.
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What I wanna focus on is how those lies, how the synagogues of the freedmen, how the
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Nicolaitans are coming in here. And if not necessarily this particular church, our larger evangelical family in America.
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I wanna take a few moments to make application specifically because if I'm just nebulous about them out there, then
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I think each one of our minds could apply that wherever we want to. And maybe miss the point.
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So, I'll be specific in naming some names. Not because I don't love them,
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I do. I would want them to return to the word of God. But let me give a few examples of how these heresies and these lies, these synagogues of freedmen are coming into the churches.
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Number one, the Reformation Project. Matthew Vines is the leader of that.
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He relies on some of the scholarship of David Gushy and some of the evangelicals who have changed their mind on this particular subject.
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The Reformation Project is Nicolaitan in its thinking. Here's why.
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It refuses to allow the Bible to define categories of sexual morality.
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The goal of the Reformation Project is to make the church inclusive of the
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LGBTQ community. Now, here's how the church should stand in relation to the
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LGBT community, if you want to call it a community. Lovingly.
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Not judgmentally. Recognizing that our sin that we commit is likewise sinful.
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Not pointing angry fingers. We should love as we love anybody else.
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I have a relative that's gay, and when I see her, I give her a hug, and I treat her like anybody else, because I see her as outside of the church.
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1 Corinthians 6, that's how we are to treat those who are in the world. Then he goes on to say, but shall we not judge those who are in the church?
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And by judgment, it doesn't mean that we look down our noses but rather that we stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment, in the words of Jesus.
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The right judgment is to stand upon the word of God. And for our own lives, because we're all sexually corrupted in some way, shape, or form, due to the fall of Adam, we're all prone to sin, to impure thoughts, to impure desires, to a twisting of God's created design, yet we can say that what the word of God says is true.
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And so we don't compromise truth for the sake of a love that isn't love at all.
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The Reformation Project will say, if we're truly loving, then we will recognize anybody who identifies in the
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LGBTQ community as equally sharing in the righteousness of Christ and full members in the body of Christ.
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Here's what the word of God says. Repent and believe the good news. The first thing Jesus said when he began to preach.
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So whatever area of sexual sin there is in anybody's life, we all have the same offer to us and the same way of salvation.
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And that way is Jesus Christ and him alone. The way to be saved is to repent and believe the good news.
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And I've seen it happen before. God can transform even the most hardened sinner regardless of the kind of sin.
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I know people who have been in prostitution, male prostitution, who have been gloriously delivered and saved and are now married and raising a family and no longer even desiring what they used to be enslaved to.
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You know, there's actually a proposition right now, I believe it's in California, to make it illegal for Christians to even seek counseling to be restored to biblical categories.
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It's already been called hate when counselors work with people to go back to God's original created order.
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Now it's becoming illegal to even go to someone who would do that. Is the gospel powerful?
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According to 1 Corinthians 6, there were homosexuals back then, weren't there? And what does it say?
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And such were some of you. The gospel had the power back then to transform any kind of sinner into the image of Christ.
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Such were some of you, but what? But you were washed, you were cleaned, you were sanctified.
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Church, we cannot compromise on the truth of God's word. If the Bible cannot define sexual morality, we have no gospel at all.
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How much of the sin in the Bible is sexual in nature? A large percentage of it. Read the list of the works of the flesh in Romans chapter one.
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Read the works of the flesh in Galatians chapter five. In Galatians chapter five, the first three relate to categories of biblical sexuality and what immorality is.
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If the Bible can't define what sin is, how do we know what to repent of in order to believe in Christ?
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It's not enough just to repent of what makes you feel bad about yourself or what you determine to be right or wrong.
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If God is God, then he's on the throne. If I'm God, then I can make up my own truth and my own categories of right and wrong.
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But if this word is from him, then we must submit to his word in order to be saved.
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Who has the authority to say what is true? And so when movements like this come into the church, we don't seek a fight.
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We're not out there trying to fight, but when Reformation Project comes to a city near you, resist it in the name of Jesus with gentleness and respect, standing upon the truth.
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Let me give you a second example. I tortured myself the last couple nights watching the
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Red Letter revival online. The Red Letter revival was held in Lynchburg, Virginia this last weekend.
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It was run by Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo, maybe Sojourner's Magazine and that group with Jim Wallace and a number of others.
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And I need to comment briefly on it because it's anti -gospel. They are the extreme left end of this anti -gospel, but even in the case of ordinary
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Christians in evangelical churches, their influence is strong even when they're not known.
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Let me give you a couple examples of what the Red Letter revival teaches. Number one,
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Native American pantheism. The first speaker I listened to never talked about the blood of Christ to wash away sin, never talked about the son of God.
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She talked about how we are all part of nature and nature is part of us. It was
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Hindu pantheistic theology. The second speaker I watched was a
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Nicolaitan heretic like Matthew Vines of the Reformation Project. I think his name was
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Brandon Henderson, I believe it was. I could be wrong about that, you can Google it. He preached the
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Nicolaitan heresy that the Bible has no right to define categories of sexual morality.
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The third speaker outright derided the gospel of Jesus Christ saying that any ancestor of hers that heard that message would not hear it as good news because that person was enslaved.
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And so a gospel that promises eternal life through the shed blood of Jesus is no gospel at all. The fourth speaker was
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Tony Campolo and he gave an invitation. And his invitation at the end of the entire conference went like this.
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He said, I'm not calling you to faith because I know you're already Christians. Anybody who would be here so late at night is already a
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Christian. I'm calling you to social justice. Not precise words,
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I'm not quoting exactly but that's exactly what he was teaching. To a life lived in pursuit of social justice.
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And this was his gospel invitation, proclaimed it as such. Here's what the red letter heresy does.
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Number one, it ignores a vast majority of the red letters themselves.
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So here's the concept, that we need to get away from the black letters of Pauline theology and what
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Peter and James and Jude wrote and focus instead and almost exclusively on the very words of Jesus himself.
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However, it ignores when Jesus stands against false teachings. When Jesus explains and affirms the biblical categories of sexual morality.
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So they claim to follow the red letters and yet ignore Matthew 22, for example. Usually only taking
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Luke four, Matthew 25 and the Sermon on the Mount and pitting that against the merely black letters of scripture.
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It searches for a victim in everything. That's where we get the term microaggression.
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A microaggression is some small way that a person has been victimized by another.
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Replacing the gospel of God, the gospel of grace whereby we are the sinners, this false gospel makes each and every one of us and all people victims.
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You only need to find the way in which you are the victim. Third, it focuses on for the most part, race, wealth, sexual orientation, environment and pacifism.
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I was spending some time this last week with a local pastor, it's Pastor Mark Willie from FCC and he rightly observed that most of the categories that are being pressed upon us right now have to do with anthropology.
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There is an outright attack on the anthropology of the Bible. Anthropology is the doctrine of man.
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How we are created in the image of God. And in each of these areas, there is an attack on what the
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Bible teaches about anthropology. Regarding race, at a local conference, not this one, but a different one,
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Thabiti Anawable wrote this, my white neighbors and Christian brethren can start by at least saying their parents and grandparents in this country are complicit in murdering a man who only preached love and justice.
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This man, Thabiti Anawable is saying that it wasn't just James Earl Ray that killed
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Martin Luther King Jr. It wasn't necessarily just the
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FBI, there's some theories that the FBI was behind James Earl Ray. I don't care to comment on that.
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Could it happen? Sure, I don't trust the government entirely, but I don't know if that's the case.
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His point is that every white Christian needs to acknowledge that it was their parents and their grandparents that did this.
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The anthropology of Anabwale his actual name is
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Ron Burns. He changed his name to revert back to what his African name would have been, is to make every white person in America complicit to the killing of Martin Luther King Jr.
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You know what that's called? Racism. It's to take all people based on their race and group them together as a unit and pronounce guilt on them, impute guilt to that person because of their skin color.
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Let me tell you something about skin color. It's nothing more than a melanin count in the skin.
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It is a spectrum based on microevolution from how far a person has lived in their ancestral history from the equator.
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The farthest points in Norway over the course of centuries will result in very little amounts of melanin in the skin.
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Near to the equator there will be a higher level of melanin in the skin. It's an entire spectrum, an unbroken spectrum.
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Why do I say that? Because there is no race. There's one race, that's the race of Adam.
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We all descend from the same father and mother, Adam and Eve. We are one.
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And yes, there is racism in every culture, not just America. And there is one solution to racism in the world.
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It's that new creation, that new body, that new humanity of every tribe, tongue and language that comes together and focuses not on how we are victims, not on how we have been oppressed, but says that is under the blood.
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I am looking to the cross of Jesus Christ. And that cross tears down every dividing wall of hostility.
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And makes us one. That's the teaching of Ephesians chapter three. Yet this so -called gospel turns us backwards to look into the past.
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To impute guilt to people, many of whom weren't even in America. I mean, I'll just speak for my family. My dad was in Germany.
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And on a boat here as an immigrant, as a four -year -old. How was he responsible? My mom grew up on a mission field in Guatemala.
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Many white people stood with Dr. Martin Luther King. And other racist and white supremacists stood against him.
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And those who stood against that social message were liars and blasphemers against God.
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And who's responsible for that? They are. See, you don't impute the sin of a descendant from the ancestor.
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That's not how sin is imputed. We're all imputed sin from Adam. But we stand before God individually on that judgment day.
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So my question to you regarding race is, do you have racism in you? If you do, it's a sin.
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Repent of it and turn to Christ. But get your eyes on the cross and he will bring a people together that worship his name.
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Couple more examples. Wealth. The social justice gospel of the red -letter
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Christians. One time they took $10 ,000 to Wall Street and dumped $10 ,000 from the top of a building on Wall Street executives as they came out from doing their stock brokering.
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What did that say? It was meant to be a condemnation of those who have money.
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First of all, it's foolish. But secondly, it ignores that money itself is not good or bad.
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The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And there's greed in our heart that we need to guard against.
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But to pit rich against poor ignores the fact that some money is gotten through oppression.
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Other money is gotten through hard work and industry and intelligence and investment.
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It's neither good or bad, it's a stewardship. But what we're seeing today, hear me on this, is the reintroduction of Marxism.
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It's a cultural and economic Marxism that's coming into the church. And listen,
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I'm telling you this because I've seen it with my own eyes. I know people that we have led to Christ, we thought they were born again.
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They went off to college, they listened to their cultural Marxist professors, they got into social justice, and it wasn't a year or two after graduating from college that they abandoned the faith altogether into atheism.
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Known several who have done that. I also have seen many who have come to know Christ and have stood upon the word of God and accepted what the
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Bible says. And they've remained in the faith, they've remained true to Christ, they've grown in grace and knowledge.
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Hebrews 13 .7, listen to those who have that testimony.
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I'll stop with the examples and close by citing a few verses.
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Many people hate to contend for truth. They don't even like when Christians stand up to say what's true and to refute those who contradict the
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Bible. But I will tell you right now that the
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Jesus of the New Testament was a warrior for truth. And every book of the
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New Testament commends this for us, and this is the takeaway this morning. If you think you're on a cruise ship just waiting for that day when
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God takes you home, if you think that this Christian life is about comfort, your ship is gonna be sunk.
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If you realize that you're on a warship and there are enemies who are seeking to destroy you, you'll learn the word of God, you'll learn to stand.
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So consider this. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all present Jesus battling for truth.
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Matthew chapter seven, beware of false prophets. The book of Acts chapter 17 verse 11, the
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Bereans are more noble than the Thessalonians because they examine the scriptures to see what's so.
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Paul warns in Acts chapter 20 to beware of wolves who come to you in sheep's clothing.
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First and second Corinthians, as Eve was deceived in the garden, I am concerned for you that your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
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Galatians, I'm astonished that you are departing so quickly from the gospel I preached to you.
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If anybody preaches a different gospel, let him be accursed. Ephesians, the winds and waves and doctrines that will come and will lead many astray.
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But you, chapter six, put on the belt of truth. Philippians, watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.
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For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship in the spirit. He says in chapter three verse 17 and following, there are many who live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
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Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, their mind is on earthly things, but you have a citizenship from heaven.
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Colossians chapter three, those who have mystical visions and puff up with their sensual minds, saying that you have to be ascetics in order to follow
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Christ. Continue on to first Thessalonians, second Thessalonians, chapter four, not to be deceived, we're told.
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First Timothy chapter four, there's an apostasy coming where people will no longer follow the truth. Second Timothy chapter four, the tickling of ears.
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Titus chapter one verse nine, elders are not only to know the truth but be able to rebuke those who contradict it.
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And not only elders but all of us have that responsibility. The book of Hebrews is against Judaizers.
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James warns that not all should be teachers because many false teachers will incur a stricter judgment. Continue on to first John chapter four, test the spirits to see if it's really from God.
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Second John, the warning of the Gnostics. Third John, deatrophies, loves to be first. First Peter warns of the same thing.
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Second Peter chapter two, the false teachers. First Peter chapter three verse 15, always being ready to answer those who oppose the word of God but do it with gentleness and respect.
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What about Jude? Jude sat down to write a letter commending and confirming the salvation we share in common.
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But in the third verse he said he wanted to do that, he was eager to do it, but he felt that it was necessary to write to you telling you to contend for the faith.
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Contend for the faith, he said. And the whole letter is against false teachers. And then we've already spoken about Revelation and the
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Nicolaitan heresies. The entire New Testament tells us to prepare for war and yet most
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Christians in America are asleep in the battle. Don't you realize that our kids are at stake?
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We protect our kids from every physical disease. We protect our kids from every physical danger.
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And yet we don't realize that there is a spiritual danger that will destroy our kids if we don't ground them in the truth.
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Prepare for war. Be in the text daily, studying to show yourself approved, a workman who rightly divides the word of truth.
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Let's close in prayer. Oh Father, I think of this song, the church is one foundation,
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Jesus Christ our Lord. In that song we see that the church is at war, we await a time of peace.
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I pray for myself and for my brothers and sisters here that we will wake up to the war that's going on around us and we will engage in battle.
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In this day and age with the internet and with all Christians having access to the same information, every one of us needs to be prepared in the spiritual truth war.
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So I pray for us Lord God, that you would make us mighty in the scriptures, willing to fight against the forces that are bent to destroy us.
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I thank you for Stephen and his example to us, for he stood up and disputed with the so -called synagogue of freedmen.
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Help us Lord to stand upon your word. Give us strength, give us courage for the battle.
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Lord let not any of our children or our young, our old, let not any of them be lost.
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Let us stand upon your truth in Jesus name, amen. Let's stand and sing the church is one foundation.