I'm going to read verses 19 through
verse 22, and then we'll back up and deal with points number
3 and 4 in our outline, God working through Joshua and then man's
choice, which is always wrong. Verse 19, the Apostle Paul speaking
to his Jewish brethren in synagogue in worship, he says, and when
he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided
their land to them by lot. And after that he had gave unto
them judges for the space of 450 years. He did that until
Samuel the prophet. And afterwards they desired a
king and God gave unto them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the
tribe of Benjamin by the space of 40 years. And when he had
removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king,
to whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David,
the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, which shall fulfill
all my will of this man's seed, have God, according to his promise,
raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus. So we continue in our
study. We are dealing with the Apostle
Paul contextually in the church in Antioch, a synagogue where
he's doing ministry at. And the auditors to whom he's
speaking are very familiar with the word of God, very familiar
with the scriptures. So he can do it historiography.
He can talk about the history of Israel. He can talk about
scripture. He can comment from the scriptures
because his auditors are acquainted with the scriptures. Last week,
we left off at verse 19, where it says that God had destroyed
seven nations in the land of Canaan and he divided their land
unto them by a lot. This was up under point number
three, God working through Joshua. And you recall that we dealt
with the concept of first causes. You guys remember that? First
causes. It's a theological consideration. It is a critical truth to underscore
and embrace as a Christian that God is the first cause of everything.
To substantiate that, you and I would say that he is the first
and he is the last. He is the beginning and he is
the end. God is the beginning of all things. All things were made by him and
all things are upheld and are held together, consisting by
his power. And when the world ends, God
will still be there. And so God is first cause. Subsequent
to the first cause, we said that God always does what? Uses means. So while we acknowledge God as
being the ultimate and primary source of all things made good
and evil, this becomes a difficulty in the world of debate and discussion
around who made evil. God did. Why do I say that? Is evil a made thing? Yes. Then God made it. There's nothing
that was made that God did not make. So when you and I put evil
in a category, as it were, outside of the realm of God's sovereignty
and God's decree and God's purpose and God's control, then you and
I are creating a whole nother problem theologically. Technically,
it's called dualism. We would be asserting that there
is an aspect of creation that's independent of having its origins
in God. and having this purpose in God,
even though that thing that we are contemplating, that subject
is evil. You don't ever want to so contrast
something over against God as if God somehow didn't have anything
to do with it. The moment God doesn't have anything
to do with anything that's made, that which we are contemplating
and considering is equal to God. Either God made it or it's not
made. When we take absolutes, like
the gospel of John chapter one, all things were made by him.
Or when we read Colossians chapter one, around verse 15, all things
were made by him. Or when we read the book of Acts,
Acts chapter 17, and God who made the worlds. Or when we read
Psalm 25 or 24, where it says, the earth is the Lord and the
fullness thereof. Everything that's in it, God
made. Or when we read Proverbs chapter 16, verse one, the Lord
made all things for himself, even the evil, even the wicked
for the day of evil. So when we talk about evil, never
contemplate evil as being so in a class by itself that God
says, I didn't have nothing to do with that. Logically and rationally,
that would not follow if God made all things. And even the
person who is not a believer would find that that would be
an unacceptable contradiction or paradox or tension for us
to assert that just because it's evil or bad, God didn't make
it. Well, propositionally, what you and I would know is we have
multiple scriptures that assert God's direct intention and declaration
that he made evil. We have way too many Bible verses.
God devises evil. God brings evil. God does evil. Psalm chapter or Isaiah chapter
45 verse, um, seven or eight where God speaks
to the fact, behold, I create good. I create evil. I make the
light. I make the darkness. Pull that
up. Let me see if I haven't been
there for a while. Isaiah chapter 45 or seven. Let's see to affirm
that. And then we'll go back to our
text just to show you that God is sovereign and he, because
he's sovereign and in control and because he declares his attributes
to be all that is Omni, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, then
he understands that he has to own to some degree everything
that's happening in this world. Does that make some sense? I
mean, God doesn't just get to get away with saying, well, you
know, I didn't do that. Well, if you're God, somehow
you got to be able to speak to it. There it is. I was wondering
whether my memory had lapsed me. I formed the light. Do we
believe that? And I create what? And we're
talking about creation now. So creation now is about to become
a parallel to the spiritual dimension. I make peace and I do what I
create evil as a very clear declaration of what we call first causes.
First causes. God doesn't shrink away from
the fact that he is he is the author of everything that's made
in the world. Even things that fall apart and
disintegrate and go into chaos, like the devil, who used to be
one of God's holy angels. He is now a demon. God is fully
aware that that was going to occur. That was within the framework
and prerogative of his decree and his sovereignty. The devil
is God's devil. So Proverbs chapter 16 would
say that God made all things, even the wicked for the day of
evil. And so the devil too is under
the auspices of God's sovereignty, his decree, his purpose. Now
that may be difficult for us to grasp, but to divorce yourself
from that absolute sovereignty is to set up more trouble for
yourself than you want to bargain for. I'd rather know that God
ultimately is in control of the evil that's taking place than
that is not. I'd rather struggle with how
it is that God allows things to happen within the framework
of second causes and tertiary causes and remote causes than
for me to contemplate the idea that there are aspects of God's
creation that God is so hands-off on that it's possible that he
doesn't have any control over it. For us to draw that conclusion
is to make something that he has created to be in contention
with God in the truest sense. That, too, is dualism. We would
say that there's nothing in the creation that God doesn't have
absolute control over. Wouldn't we say that? Absolutely.
And so other passages, the scriptures would come to mind. The Lord,
the Lord does all things. He has created all things. And
for his pleasure and his purpose and his will, are they created?
The Lord is sovereign and he is in control of all matters
as Psalm 115 would assert. And so when we think about the
mess that we are in, in this world, understand that this mess
still is within the rubric in the framework of God's ultimate
objectives. He is able to explain how he
can allow these things to be, even ordain these things to be,
and even in some cases directly decree these things and they
not be a blotch on his character and nature. That's right. So
when you become a believer in God, one of the things you will
discover if you come to know the true and the living God is
indeed that he is sovereign. But because he has loved you
and he has sacrificed for your soul, you can trust him. The
sovereignty of God is not a trust factor by itself. If you and
I were just thinking of God in terms of him being all powerful
and in control of everything, that might not be a comfort to
us in the day of our calamity. But when you think of him being
in control and all powerful and at the same time, a covenant
keeping God, who will make sure that he takes care of you. Now
I got a God that loves me and is in full control. The key for
us as weak and feeble sinners is to get to know God and then
his attribute of sovereignty would not scare us or create
any kind of trepidation. Does that make some sense? Right.
But God is certainly sovereign And it's important for us to
know that because evil seems to have its way in our world
in such a manner that it brings about the question, God, where
are you? Does it not? It brings about that question
and you and I can avoid it. It is a theological aspect and
doctrine, a full body of doctrine that we can't get away from.
We can't just sweep evil under the rug or put it in its own
category and tell us to focus over here. Not when evil comes
up upon you and me. And it does. And so as we are
working through our outline, we do want to know that. So we
are dealing with point number three, going back to point number
three, God working through Joshua. We dealt with Joshua being the
means or instrument, as we said last week, by which the seven
nations were subdued in the land of Canaan, and Joshua divided
the land to the people. We dealt with the typology. I
think we went through a full sort of redemptive Historiography
of how God used those Old Testament examples as a type of our redemption
in Christ You guys saw that right and they were rich rich realities
of I of Psalm 40 verse 7 lo I come in the volume of the book is
written of me is when we're teaching the Word of God. We really want
to center in on Jesus Who is the key to the scriptures? but
sometimes you have to get the big picture of the historical
account and all of those factors that are playing into that and
to see how God works then, and then how God works now, which
is what we're about to do in this next point. So under God
working through Joshua, we saw that Joshua was a great type
of Jesus Christ, right? He's a great type of Christ.
Not only in that his name, Yeshua, also is the name of Jesus, which
we would say in the Greek is Jesus, which means he shall save
his people. But Joshua then becomes the predecessor
of Moses and brings the children of Israel into the promised land.
And under point number B, we saw that he was given power to
drive out all of God's adversaries. And we looked at that last week
in Joshua 11, 22, 23, and then in Joshua 10, 24. Again, if you
haven't ever studied the book of Joshua, here's how you can
sum up the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is the power
of God working through his servant to bring to pass God's covenant
promise to give the land to Israel. The power of God working through
his servant to bring to pass the promises of God that he had
given to Israel. And so long as Joshua was there,
Israel prevailed everywhere they went. So long as Joshua was there,
each man received their inheritance. So long as Joshua was there,
the other word that we dealt with last week, which we're going
to fast move away from, but this is critical. The people had,
what was the word? Rest. We saw that in Hebrews
chapter three, but this is the term that really underscores
the promise of God to all his people, and that rest ultimately
will be experienced when you and I are with God. If you're
a believer in Christ, on the last day when he comes to bring
us to be with him, we'll be delivered from everything that seeks to
thwart our rest now. We will enter into a full Sabbath
period, an eternal rest with God. But Israel saw that under
Joshua, And then the last point was faith lasts a generation
or what? All right, so I wanna make an
application here. This is very important for you
and I to grasp as we are contemplating Paul's recollection of those
historical events, because he's about to transition now into
verse 20 into the days of the judges. And actually the end
of the judges where Samuel is the final judge in Israel over
all the people of God. Faith lasts a generation or two. That concept is worthy of us
to consider because when you go to Judges chapter two, verses
seven through 12, one of the things that you have repeated
in those five verses is, and Israel could not route out their
enemies. They could not subdue their foes. They could not take the land. The operative phrase was could
not, could not, could not. What's happening between the
time when Joshua is there and all the land is taken and all
the kings are subdued and all the land is divided to the people
of God. But then after Joshua dies and the generation after
Joshua who knew Joshua after they die, now all of a sudden
the children of Israel are struggling to not only retain what they
have, but to advance in what they have. The book of Judges
is really a miserable commentary on the weakness and impotence
of Israel. You guys following me so far?
This is the difference between Joshua and Judges. Joshua, triumph
and victory and success. An advancement into the kingdom,
everybody receiving their inheritance, everyone resting. Joshua dies,
that generation that was with Joshua was very much successful
in retaining the land and they correspond to the apostles era. Because Joshua is a great type
of Christ. When Christ was here with the disciples in the first
century, everything that Christ did was good. Every place he
went, he succeeded in ministry. Every encounter he engaged in,
he was victorious, was he not? And the disciples enjoyed successful
ministry with the Lord Jesus Christ. When Christ went back
to glory, he sent his spirit to dwell with and in and upon
the apostles and the apostles had success. Did they not? The
apostles are spreading the gospel throughout Asia minor and the
Roman empire and the gospels being established, not without
conflict, not without trouble, but they are succeeding. Why?
Because they correspond to that generation that lived during
the times of Joshua and they understood how God had worked
through Joshua. This speaks to the necessity
of leaders having a close relationship with Christ and or having a close
relationship with men who had a close relationship with Christ.
So if I were to take the Joshua period and the Judges period
and demonstrate how we have a decline after Joshua dies from the days
of the Judges all the way to Samuel, I would make that parallel
to the first 600 years of church history, where the first 100
years of church history, we're dealing with what we call the
apostolic age. Obviously, John is still functioning
up to almost the first 100 years AD. And after John, we have what
we call the patristic period, where we have people like Polycarpin,
Athanasius, and Arrhenius, and others who are functioning as
it were the elders after the apostles. These men were valiant
in defending the truth. They were very much apologetic.
They were defending the doctrine of the Trinity. They were defending
the doctrine of grace, the doctrines of scripture. They were defending
the word of God, preserving the truth of the gospel. But by the
time we get to the fourth century, 300 AD, the church is already
compromising on biblical truth. Now we're moving into what we
call church councils from the Council of Trent, the Council
of Nicene and many other councils. I don't want to bore you with
that. But the church now is starting to reason through What biblical
truth is because the church has now prospered under the Roman
Empire and what was fundamentally an organic body operating by
the power of the spirit in local regions. Trusting God has now
become more socialized, more aristocratic, more what we would
consider rationalistic. They have now experienced the
blessings of the Constantinian period. And so Constantine makes
the Christianity the official religion for the whole state
of Rome. And you gradually see the spirit of God leaving the
church. And now the church is operating
out of sort of an ecclesiastical orthodoxy, just dead orthodoxy. And around the fourth century
AD, what's starting to creep in now are very, very clear pagan
practices. We call it syncretism. And this
syncretistic process was that by which the Catholic Church,
not Roman Catholic yet, but Catholic Church, the Christian Catholic
Church is operating under the authority and auspices of Rome,
and they're using carnal and earthly methods for conversion.
Well, we're losing Christianity even though we're creating converts.
But those converts are not really being saved Their sins and their
idolatries are simply being whitewashed in the name of Christianity.
Are you guys following me so far? Give you a little church
history just to see how when the scripture says there's nothing
new under the sun, that which has been is and that which is
to be, even that has already been. In the first century, we
saw the apostles fighting for the truth. We saw the early patristic
fathers preserving the truth. But when they passed away, that
next generation that was living in relative privilege and comfort
started drifting away from defending the faith, which is where we
are today. We have drifted away from defending
the faith. And as a consequence of comfort and privilege, we
are relatively superficial. for that last point, faith lasts
about a generation or two. Historically, that's true for
churches too. The one era of church history
that you are probably familiar with if you study church history
is what we call the Reformation. Any of you guys heard of the
Reformation? All right, a few of you. And that's unfortunate
because in a room of over 100 people, for you to not know about
the Reformation really does mean that we are far away from deep,
study of the Word of God. It really does show us how poor
a job our churches are doing in teaching the historic roots
of Christianity, going back to that marked seminal period, that
seismic shift that brought the Word of God back into play when
it was gone for almost a thousand years in what we call the dark
ages of pagan Christianity, where all they did was recite Latin
verses and Latin liturgy, leaving the people in utter darkness
around the word of God until the days of Luther and Zwingli
and Knox and Huss and Wycliffe, where brothers got a hold of
the word of God and started fighting for the truth again. And the
doors were open for the word of God to spread. And we had
what we call a reformation. And that reformation reached
all the way up into Europe and to Germany and Switzerland and
France. And this is where the evil John
Calvin, this is our present day churches who despise Calvinistic
theology, don't understand that Calvinistic theology, even though
we can throw that term away, is biblical theology. You cannot
deny when you face Calvin's soteriology that it is rooted in the truth
of the word of God. You have to like the man. But
the truth of the matter is, is that in the Reformation period,
when Luther established the clear doctrine of justification by
faith alone apart from works, which is a doctrine every person
must believe unless you are Catholic. A person must believe in justification
by faith alone apart from works. for in saying that I believe
that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, you are abandoning
yourself to his work and not your work as the grounds of your
salvation. But if you are asserting that
Jesus did his part and I have to do my part, you are actually
a Catholic. Right, and people don't know
that because they have not taken that much interest in the study
of the word of God and church history to know. I'll give you
an analogy before we move on to our fourth point, it'll be
good. This one here comes home a little close. It's like you
meeting a young man or a young woman and y'all date for two
months. And y'all so in love that you decide to hitch up and
get married. in love and you get married and then six months
into the marriage, things start coming out of the closet, right? Well, that's how it is with folks
who join churches and get involved in Christianity, not actually
understanding the history, not understanding where we are in
the present season in the church and not understanding the struggles
that the church has gone through to even make it possible for
you and I to hear the word of God. And what happens is when
you and I are bereft of that type of rich history, we are
not as acutely sensitive to the cost that people paid for the
true gospel to be preached freely to you and me as it is today.
Secondly, you don't know. One will not know when they are
in error, when you are not searching the truth of the word of God
seriously. One of the things I've experienced in my ministry
over the last 20 years is how the kind of preaching that I
do really does interrupt people's theology and traditions and teachings
and assumptions. And they really find themselves
struggling with me making the kind of statements I do repetitively. And I do it intentionally seeking
to demolish false notions around what salvation is. And people
get really disturbed. Well, that disturbance is a consequence
of people not having discernment as to what they have embraced
initially as their Christian beliefs. And you need to have
it tested. You need someone come along saying,
is that an assumption or is that a biblical fact? Can you really
demonstrate from the scriptures that speaking in tongues is valid
for today? Can you really affirm through
the scriptures that God has called us to the law of tithing? Can
you affirm through the scriptures that salvation is by grace alone
apart from works? Can you affirm many of the things
that we hold today as sacred cows in the church? Do you understand
what I'm saying? So, but the nature of the gospel,
whether you know it or not, is designed to naturally contend
with all false notions against God. That's the nature of the
gospel. This is why for me, a lot of
people are offended by the way I teach and what I teach, because
I seem to be opposing virtually everything that people hold to.
And I am. Because I know that there's a
lot of false teaching that just goes by undetected. And what
I'm really trying to do is wake up Christians from a very deadly
position that they hold. And that's this. They're all
right with God because they think they're all right with God. When nothing could be further
from the truth. And if your theology is not worth being challenged,
you are in trouble. If your theology can't be put
on the table and deconstructed is shown to be solid biblical
truth. That's rational. That's coherent. That's rooted in the word of
God. Then you're holding on to a false refuge. You need to have
that gospel exposed right away. You need to be exposed right
away for actually assuming something instead of knowing something.
Is that true? Right. And the sooner you get
a hold of a theological system, you better really challenge that
system for your own self. So the Bible tells us in first
Thessalonians chapter five to prove all things and to hold
fast to that which is good. Today, people are holding fast
to things they haven't proven, whether they are good or bad.
But the Bible says first, prove it, test it, examine it, challenge
it, put it to the acid test of scriptural truth. Is it really
true that women have the right to be pastors today? Are you
guys hearing me? There are a lot of salient issues
going on today. And whether or not you know which
is the truth or not, it's based upon your commitment to examine
your own presuppositions. Well, you know, this is all about
eternity, ladies and gentlemen. This is about eternity. And just
for me, to be honest with you, I've been fighting these in-house
battles for decades. I'm actually now more targeting
the existential challenges that are coming against Christianity,
wanting to just give my brothers and sisters some breathing room
to even discern whether or not they have the true gospel while
I fight against the world rushing in. Because the world is rushing
in with its scholarship now, ready to challenge us on epistemology,
ready to challenge us on the assumption of biblical authority.
I mean, they're ready to go right at our Bibles. They don't care
about what you believe. They want to go at our Bibles.
So my job now is to go at them and expose them for their faulty
assumptions and their arguments and their lies over against the
scriptures just to give Christians enough time to get right with
God. Are you guys hearing what I'm saying? Now you and I are
in danger if the only place we want to be is in church where
nobody can touch us. because that's not Christianity.
See, real Christianity is out there in the world. Real Christianity
goes out of the door and said, this is what I believe, test
it, come challenge me. So, and it's not about picking
a fight. This is about proving all things.
Because if you actually accept the Bible to be true, if you
actually accept this claims, you've got a book filled with
outrageous claims. These are outrageous claims.
There is only one God. There's only one truth. There's
only one way to God. Well, we can say that easy with
our lips, but can we defend that proposition of absolute truth
over against a culture that is plainly saying everywhere in
the world, all roads lead to Rome. Right? And so forceful is the momentum
of our present culture, that it has penetrated past proposition,
that is arguments on a propositional level, to it being impacting
our very DNA and our very nature, because ideas have impact. Ideas have consequences. So now
you and I are seeing the world taking its arguments and its
positions and saying, listen, because we are relativist, And
because we are pluralist and because everything is true to
whomever it is true to them, now we can just redefine ourselves
and redefine everything the way we want to. So you see how ideas
now have actually reshaped the whole culture. It's reshaped
the culture. Like unless you are really clear
on truth, and really clear on arguments and debate and understand
how to observe and how to identify rational versus irrational arguments
and to help people understand when they are thinking foolish
and then when they're being inconsistent and when they are contradicting
themselves. Unless you're ready for that debate. When you listen
to people say foolish things like that's my truth and that's
your truth. That's the most foolish statement you can make. Your
truth can't be true and my truth be true and they both be opposite
truths. But see, because we believe in
pluralism today and relativism, everybody is kind of isolated
within their own world. And for them, their truth is
their truth. I've told you before that defines insanity. Right. That defines insanity. The moment
we are atomizing into these sort of individualistic sort of bubbles
of autonomy. There's no way for us to have
any kind of real unity. Nothing coheres. If everything
is relative and true, cannot be tested to be right or wrong,
true or false. If it's all true, but it's not
the same, then we have just produced chaos. and conversation means
nothing. There is no cogency to our dialogue. I mean, right in front of my
face, you can tell me, you know what, Jesse, I'm a horse now.
And therefore the conversation you and I are having is absolutely
nonsensical because I'm talking and thinking in horse language.
And here you're all talking in human language. So I'm far advanced
ahead of you because I'm way down the road, bro. So once you
are allowing that kind of idiocy to dominate basic conversation
and dialogue, you have now just challenged reason and reason
is what God gave us in order to get to the truth. Do you understand
that? God gave us reason to get to
the truth. You and I destroy reason. We're already in hell. And so it's very important for
us to understand that the job of the Christian is not to just
kind of hide in a bubble and kind of eat grapes and fan himself
until he gets to glory. You're in a fight. You're in
a fight. I was working on this all week
long. I'm trying to now construct a way to communicate this battle
that we're in so that people can see it, that you don't have
the luxury of going AWOL. You actually don't have the luxury
of saying, I'm a Christian, but I don't get into any of those
debates. You just contradicted yourself. Well, whether you get
into those debates or not, they're coming after you. If you're a
Christian that is not willing to actually stand on truth proposition,
um, um, you're going to be retreating everywhere you go because they're
going to challenge you. They're going to test you, your
closest friends, your coworkers, your peers, and your schoolmates,
and even your relatives. Here you are a couple and you
guys got teenage kids. In the next couple of years,
your teenage kids are going to tear your theology to shreds. To shreds. If you don't know
how to answer the questions, the interrogative with they have
been challenged in high school and in college by those who are
prepared to debate the plausibility of biblical truth, Mom and daddy
going to look like fools to them because we don't even know how
to defend our own truth. Are you guys hearing me right? And it's your job to tell your
children the truth and you can't just pull rank on them. You know
what pulling rank is. I'm your mama. Shut up. Oh, that's
easy. And they'll shut up and they'll
know that that was a fundamentally ad hominem attack that had no
basis of argument behind it. You're just running. That's called
begging the question. Do you guys understand that?
Well, I know you're my mama, but still, can you tell me how
can you prove that the Bible is right in terms of its claims
of creation? When we have all of these artifacts
and all of this data all this information that says this creation
has been around for hundreds of millions of years and all
the scientists believe that how can you get me to believe what
the bible says when the bible is contradicting all that You
see what's going on and that's why they come out of college
not really paying us any attention anymore So for me, long ago,
because I had a bunch of kids and I realized that while the
Bible says these were quivers, were arrows in my quiver, blessed
is he whose quiver is full of them. I thank God for it. But
I would not suggest anybody in this generation have as many
children as I did. And I'll tell you why, because
you have to be the kind of person, the kind of man that is willing
to deal with eight eternity bound souls for 40 to 50 years as you
raise them up. in a world that is furiously
hostile to God. And one child will wear you out,
let alone eight. And if you're not serious about
demonstrating before them truth claims and are willing to deal
with them in terms of science and biology and physics and sociology
and world history and then religion and all of that stuff, they will
have no reason to take you seriously. Are you guys hearing me? Actually,
what I'm saying to you right now is this, that Christians
really were called upon to be diligent thinkers and students
of the word of God, and therefore students of everything that exalts
itself against the knowledge of the truth. That's 2 Corinthians
chapter five, by the way, you know that, right? 2 Corinthians
chapter 10, verses three through five, that we are to cast out
every imagination Every idea, every set of assumptions, every
set of arguments, every set of teachings, every philosophy,
every doctrine, every creed, every dogma that would oppose
the truth. We have to be willing to address
it. Is that true? Otherwise, what happens, ladies
and gentlemen, is our Christianity gets reduced down to religion. And what we mean by religion
is they're telling us, keep your religion in the four walls of
your church. You can go to church and you can hoop and you can
holler. You can run around the aisles. You can shout. You can
foam at the mouth. You can act like God is really
in your life. But unless you are willing to
demonstrate propositionally that your truth claims have plausibility
in that world out there, we don't want to hear it. See what I'm
getting at? This is why you'll see the intellectual,
the folks who've got multiple PhDs and they're working in the
echelons and cutting edges of science and technology and business. These people don't believe in
God. They don't believe in God. They can't believe in God. They've
got too much information to believe in God. Are you guys hearing
me? And what the scripture says is, knowledge does what? Pops
up. Knowledge pops up. And so when they think about
all of this information, all this data and all of this power
that comes with knowledge, because with knowledge comes power, with
knowledge comes power and the advancements and the promotions
and the money they make. And then the collective accomplishments
that come out of all of the science and disciplines in our culture,
whether it's medicine again or whether it's politics or whether
it's sociology. When you look at the advancements
that we make, these people get to pop their collars and say,
where's religion at now? Is that true? They get to pop
their collars and say, where's religion at now? And if you and
I don't know the goal of true religion, we won't have a conversation
for them. Am I making some sense? There's
no conversation if you don't know the goal of true religion.
The goal of true religion is the soul. In relationship to its maker.
not the physical life with all of the benefits and potentials
that it can actually experience. The goal of Christianity is not
to contend with whether or not a man can be a great scientist
or whether a woman can be a great lawyer or astronaut or doctor. The goal of Christianity is not
whether or not the secular world can't make phenomenal advancements
in things in the natural. That's not the goal of Christianity.
The goal of Christianity is to identify the core and essence
of humanity and expose them to that reality of which daily they
are suppressing in unrighteousness. The goal of Christianity, if
you are a careful thinker and a careful reasoner through, is
to catch that proud, arrogant, self-righteous, presumptuous
person who is protecting themselves by all their degrees, catch them
in that part of their armor, where they're exposed in the
show them that right there is your problem, right? There's
your problem with all that money. You got, you still haven't been
able to solve your drinking problem with all that money. You've got,
you still haven't solved your adultery. You haven't stopped
your point of your pornography. You haven't, you haven't solved
your addictions. You've got a ton of addictions and nothing that
you have accomplished technologically or financially has even come
close to addressing that. Follow this saints. This is free.
Follow this now. It is a moral issue. It's a moral
issue. The gospel is about the core
of what mankind was created to be. And it's moral. and people shroud that over with
the busyness of life, like Adam and Eve hiding among the trees.
They work, work, work, work, work, work, party, party, party,
party, party, party, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, laugh,
laugh, laugh, play, play, play, play, play, sleep and wake up
to do it again. They're running. They're running. For them, they
hope one day that we can create a solution to this thing that's
unavoidable and that's death. Because they're going to end
up still meeting in that hospital room the poor beggar that's in
a bed over here and them that's in a bed right next to them.
And they will have all of their accolades and accomplishments
that they can talk about. And the poor beggar won't have
anything to talk about other than the fact that he's lived
and now he's about to die. And as Solomon said, the rich
and the poor meet together. And now they're laying both on
their deathbed with the same disease. And riches do not profit
in the day of evil. What does it profit a man if
he gains the whole world and lose his soul? Christianity has
to be able to actually meet people at the core of their identity
and help them see that they're not facing the truth about who
they really are in the sight of God. Am I making some sense?
Otherwise, what you'll do is you'll be debating and arguing
about things with which they can make moving targets and get
away from you. Christianity is about the soul.
And so that's where you and I have to keep the work going. We have
to keep, we have to keep talking about what the Bible says is
the life after this life and the consequences of dying without
God. Like I said, on my vacation about
a month ago, I had the chance to be, uh, in the secular world,
they would call it harassed. And atheists followed me all
over the ship on the cruise. wanting to debate over this matter
of, is there a God? So vociferous was his pursuit
of me that he wasn't even embarrassed that other people were embarrassed
for him for following me everywhere and talking loud and getting
people's attention. Now, if I wasn't already in a
position to deal with the agnostic and the atheist and their flawed
assumptions that there is no God or that we cannot know, then
all I would have did was run. But I addressed him point by
point all the way up to getting to my cabin. And I finally gave
him the last final what we call the what if hypothesis. After
he tried to divert all of my arguments because he saw I wasn't
getting he wasn't getting anywhere with me. He's just his points
weren't even valid. He was he was coming up with
the same old junk. I tell him those things have already been
debunked. Have you been reading the articles? We've debunked
everything that you said. Good sound Christians have debunked
most of atheist arguments. I said, well, let me ask you
a question, dude. I'm getting ready to go in my cabin and meet my
girl. Let me ask you a question. What if what we've been telling
you guys is true? But what if it's true? Now, just
give me the benefit of the doubt. Now, you do believe that there's
a remote possibility that it could be true. I mean, if you're
arguing that it's not true, I can argue that it is true, and there's
no way you can cancel out that. We just don't agree. And he said,
well, okay, what if it's true? Then I said, if it's possible
that it could be true, what if what God said was right? What
if when God said, if you die without Christ, you're going
to hell? What if that's true? Then he said, well, if that's
true, then we're all in trouble, aren't we? Kind of laughed it
off. I said, yeah, you are in trouble. I said, yeah, you are in trouble.
And then I said, now let me, let me ask you one more question.
I said, wouldn't you want a person like me, pastor Jesse at your
death bed when you're about to die and go into this eternity
that you don't know anything about? You know what he said?
Well, yeah, I guess I would want a pastor or a priest or somebody
to come talk to me about God, to be honest with you. We were
dealing in just basic logic and logic that is inseparably connected
to our humanness. I mean, you you can be like,
you know, Hawkins and some of these other guys whose arguments
are so abstract and so out there that they aren't even worth debating. Here he is dying in front of
us and he won't even think about the plausibility of meeting God.
Or you can be human and honest. What you gonna do when you die
if it's true? What you gonna do when you die and it's true? What you gonna do if you're on
your deathbed dying and God allows you to have a slow death from
a long period of cancer where you have to look up and think
about this God you have said wasn't there, no God. What you
gonna do? Wouldn't it even be rational
to accept somebody coming in? See, I told him, I said, now,
you know, based upon our discussion, I'm sincere in my faith and my
belief. He said, no question about that. No question about
that. I said, so then would I not be sincere when I come to you
laying on your deathbed and wanting to appeal to you to trust Christ,
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, to acknowledge your sins,
You would have to acknowledge your sins. You would acknowledge
that you have broken God's law. You would have to acknowledge
that God says there's only way, one way that our sins can be
forgiven. Wouldn't you want me to lead you down that path to
the possibility of entering into heaven on the grounds of having
received the Lord Jesus Christ as your only hope for glory?
And he said, yes. And then I shook his hand. You
know why? I said, see, you're still human. And I appreciate
that. His heart is hard and he's debated
with a lot of priests and a lot of preachers who didn't really
want to go that far with him. But the reality is he puts his
pants on the same way I do. He gets sick like I do. He has
fears like I do. There are days when he's not
all that cocky about what he believes. Are you guys hearing
me? There's days when you have to think about eternity. And
what I was able to share with him is God is able to save to
the uttermost. He's able to meet sinners at
their deathbed. He's able to catch them before
they breathe their last breath. He's willing to snatch you out
of hell. If you just say, remember me, if the gospel is preached
to you, which the gospel was preached to him. So he's in good
shape because should he find himself slipping into hell and
in God's mercy, you know how it is when we're facing death.
That's a long time. He remembered the conversation
he had with that one preacher that wasn't, that was willing
to let him know what if, and what to do when you hit that
spot. You see what I'm saying? In terms
of Christianity being very serious for us, this is not a play game.
It's very serious. And it's on the brink of shrinking
and disappearing in our culture, largely not so much because of
the world, but because of Christians. because of Christians that are
not serious about God. Anyhow, let's go to our fourth
point and work our fourth point through. So Christ witnessed
by John, killed by the Jews, I'm sorry, point four, man's
choice is always wrong, good. I didn't know I had gotten that
far. Here's what we read over in point number four, verses
20 and 21. And then we'll deal with this
proposition for 15 minutes. I'll open the floor for questions
if you have any, I hope you do. Verse 20, 21, after that he had
gave unto them judges for the space of 450 years unto Samuel
the prophet. After Samuel the prophet, during
the time of Samuel the prophet, they desired a king. And God
gave unto them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of
Benjamin by the space of 40 years. Verse 21 opens up a proposition
that we have in our point. Man's choice is always what?
You don't have to agree with me. You really don't. But I think I'm on good biblical
grounds. When you and I are left to choose,
we choose wrong all the time. And every time we choose wrong. Let me see if I can make this
good. Cause I know that seems outrageous. You mean not once do we ever
get it right? No, you never get it right. Where you and I are left to ourselves
without the light of God and the assistance of God, we always
choose the wrong thing. What I love about God's word
is again, there you go That's one of those statements that
people would just walk get up and walk out of the church on
me on You know people do that all the time Because what what
the Word of God does is sets man in a very bad light, doesn't
it? It makes man stupid That's right because he is There's
a way that seems good unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways
of death That's Proverbs 16, 25. Proverbs chapter 16, 25. When you and I choose and our
choice is not advised by and informed by the word of God,
it's always wrong. So I'm going to just kind of
inform you around the concept of choice for just a second.
Choice is the lauded, coveted virtue that mankind believes
that he has a right to engage in. Choice falls under the rubric
and the doctrine of freedom of the will, which is another doctrine
that I openly oppose as being a fictitious sort of mythical
virtue and apparatus within the soul of man. The notion that
we are free to choose good or evil Um, it's, it's something
that the Bible does not teach and nor is it the evidence of
human experience as, as I am asserting that every time you
and I choose, we choose the wrong thing without the grace of God,
you can't choose the right thing. So I'll start my argument with
our first parents. Okay. So I'll start right there.
So God had created Adam and Eve. Let's see that right there. The
atheist would say, man, dude, come on, man. God created a man
and a woman. He started this thing up with
just two people, they're not buying it. But it makes all the
sense in the world to me. Everything in creation to me
leads back to an original source. There had to be something that
started that one seed, that one plant, that one tree, that one
animal, right? There had to be one parent, one initial set of
parents to reproduce all these parents inherent in our creation
is that argument for that first cause, right? So somewhere Adam
and Eve had to be created. And what God did was tell them
what they were to do. You notice that what God didn't
do was sit down and negotiate with Adam and Eve. Right. He didn't he didn't say, now,
you know, how do I want to work this out? He didn't do that,
did he? Follow the logic. Follow logic,
because the book of Genesis establishes the rule of what we call first
mention. It gives us the paradigm of human
nature. So God said, I'm going to give
man dominion over everything. He's going to rule it. He's going
to reproduce. He's going to replenish the earth,
subdue it, have control of it. He'll be my image bearers. He'll
be my, my vicar on the earth. And so when he created man, what
he did was command the man to run the garden and I E everything
that would proceed from the garden. And then he said, I'm going to
give you a helper to help you run the garden. So God's the
CEO. All man is, is the manager, right? And he's the servant son working
for God, but he's not sitting at the table with God saying,
God, you know, I think we ought to put the petunias over here
and the, and the lilies over here. I think we ought to have
the sycamore trees over here. Nope. Nope. God tells him what
to do. And God says, by the way, enjoy
yourself, but There's one thing I want you to do. Don't mess
with that tree. We got that. So Adam and Eve
woke up one day and decided to choose. There you go. They decided to choose. Are you
guys hearing me? They decided to choose. Because
God didn't choose that for them, and neither did God say either
or. God didn't say you can have the
tree of life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and
exercise your free will. He didn't say that. God says,
don't mess with that tree. Now, have they been obedient
to God as sons should be obedient to God as daughters ought to
be obedient to God? They would have never chose.
They would have just enjoyed their inheritance. Is that true?
Are you guys following? I'm trying to keep it simple
without going into deep theological terms and concepts. See, when
you read your Bible, here's what the Bible says. When man is left
to his own choice, he always makes the wrong choice. So there was a tree called the
tree of life in the middle of the garden, and in the middle
of the garden was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You
could eat of every tree in the garden. Just don't mess with
that tree. There was no option. There was
no choice. The choice they made we call
sin. Are you guys following this?
So I'm gonna say it one more time. As we work through the
argument for what's about to take place here. When you and
I exercise our free will, all we're doing is sinning. That's exactly right. The evidence
that we are free is that we sin. You got that? The evidence that
we are free is that we sin. In other words, if God had made
us immutably righteous without any capacity for sinning, we
would have never sinned. But because he made us free at
the beginning, the only thing we could do with our freedom
is choose that which was wrong. And we did. And when humanity
fell into sin, everything in Adam and Eve that came out of
the womb, came out of the womb going astray, going the wrong
way, sinning against God. The history of mankind is rebelling
against God. All of our freedom that we laud
in this world is nothing but sin. all of the advancements,
all of the technology, all of the accomplishments, everything
we do is simply one thing, sin. And we call it free will, free
will. You'll notice that man is not
sinning and then loving and obeying God and sinning and loving and
obeying God and then sinning and loving and obeying God. They
would call that what we call arbitrary free will. Like you
have the ability to choose good and the ability to choose evil.
No, we chose evil and that's all we choose until God himself
enters into our life and turns us around and we don't turn ourselves
around. Are you guys following that logic?
You don't wake up one day thinking, right? You don't wake up one
day saying, you know what? I'm going to do right today.
You can only do right by grace. We do wrong by nature. There's
none that do it good. You guys got that? No, not one. That means the whole human race
is bent on choices rather than obedience. You guys follow that? And what
we have done in our deceptive ways is shroud over our disobedience
with these innocuous terms like my rights. My rights. Everything that we claim to be
our right today, sin. Sin. It's simple, but it's a
profound revelation, isn't it? It's so simple you don't want
to even get on this train with Pastor Jesse. You don't want
to agree because it's too simple. Pastor, it can't be that simple.
It's just that simple. It's just as simple, but you
don't want to get on this train. You don't want to believe that the
diabolical entities that blind the hearts and minds of men at
the highest levels of intellectualism have learned how to take phrases
and terms and use them to actually shroud over that which is nothing
but sin. civil rights and human rights
and my rights and our rights. They have usurped the word right
when everything they're doing is wrong. This is how deceptive
humanity is. Did anybody get that revelation?
Did you get that revelation? Cause you need to get up and
see, this is how radical biblical truth is. And if you don't have
an understanding of the, the profound nature of biblical truth
around these realities. You're going to you're going
to vacillate when you're challenged. You're going to vacillate because
what we call good, God calls evil. What we call right, God
calls wrong. Right, right. And we have a pattern. This is a pathology of human
nature going all the way back to Adam. Where we are today is
the persistent choices of mankind that is leading them further
and further away from God. You guys understand that? Even
to the point of insanity. We're insane today in our irrationalism,
but it's because of a perpetual choosing that which is wrong.
We're building a system of lies. This is what God calls it. God
actually calls the two spheres in which we operate. One, truth.
The other one, the lie. These are two big terms the scripture
talks about. The truth and the lie. These are two big terms. See, one of the things about
your Bible, this is the other thing that the intellectual has
a hard time with. The intellectual has a hard time with an infinite
omniscient God who is the epitome of wisdom, giving us a Bible
that's fairly simple in its expressions. But the reason why the Bible
is simple in its expression is because God views us as morons. So Jesus wasn't going around
using five syllable terms and six and seven syllable terms.
And Jesus is the epitome of wisdom. He gives wisdom. He could have
ran off a litany of seven, eight, 10, 12 syllable fickle words
for us to struggle through. Why didn't he do that? Because
he wasn't trying to win us intellectually. He wasn't trying to get us to
say, well, the thing to do is to get wisdom, to get knowledge,
to be intellectual, to be able to talk rhetoric in terms and
phrases. No, what you and I are supposed
to be going after is the truth. And truth is simple. The problem
is it requires humility. This is why I met the intellectuals
that are running our nation. do not see the truth because
they're way outside of the scope of what is required to see the
truth and that's humility. So God resists the what? Right. And he leaves them in the darkness
and the morass and the chaos and the obscurity and the labor
of their own complicated notions and ideas. And they're just lost
in it. And when they hear a simple truth
like I'm sharing, with you. Here's the simple truth that
I'm sharing with you. Apart from God's grace, because of the fall,
you and I always choose the wrong thing. That's a simple truth. That's a radical truth. Even
Christians don't hold to what I'm saying. That's unfortunate,
but it's true because it's biblical and it's necessary for you to
see your desperate condition. Cause propositionally, if, if
you could do one good thing, If you could do one right thing,
you ostensibly could help God save you. Are you guys following me? So
let's go right back to this coveted free will that entered into the
church like a Trojan horse and stole God's glory from him and
actually put the glory on man's decision rather than God's grace. Let's demolish that for a moment.
If you actually think you have intrinsic goodness and a compass,
a moral compass, that given the right circumstances, you will
swing into a proper position and accept that which is true,
then you actually have assisted in saving yourself. Because you have employed your
own energy in conjunction with God's energy to bring about a
saving condition for yourself. Are you guys following that logic?
Right. If we had time, I would teach
you. Salvation is a monergistic experience where God comes in
and saves you. And when he saves you, he gives
you an understanding of your salvation. And because of the
disposition of a new nature, you agree with God. But that's
a work of grace that God does, bringing you to a place where
you agree with him. Am I making some sense now? In other words,
it takes a new nature to say yes to God. The old nature always
says no to God. No one can come unto me except
the father that sent me draw him. No one, no one can come
to me. And no one is willing to come
to me except he is drawn. There's none good. No, not one. There's none that doeth good.
There's none that doeth righteousness. There's none that are profitable.
They have all gone out of the way. This is God's assessment
of the whole human race. Follow this now when God looks down,
He doesn't find one person doing it God's way. You guys know your
Bibles, right? You know what I'm saying is true,
right? Do I have to go to these Bible verses? Do I have to go to these
Bible verses? No, I'm not doing that. I'm not
going to the Bible verses. I ain't got about 15 minutes
to go. Some of y'all been in church all your life. You're
supposed to know these Bible verses. See, this is what I mean, see? Now,
if I knew you knew your Bibles, I wouldn't ever have to say Isaiah
chapter 62 or Isaiah 63, verse three, God looked down and he
didn't see any. And so by his own arm and by
his own strength, did he become a savior for human beings who
turned their back on all we like sheep have gone astray. All of
us have turned to our own ways. Each and every one of us. This
is biblical doctrine. So biblical Christians don't
look for any man to come to God on their own strength. Are you
hearing me? So when we are witnessing, I'm
moving over into evangelism now, you want to see sinners get saved,
you better ask God to go before you. If you think sinners are going
to turn and receive Jesus and accept Jesus and pray the sinner's
prayer and receive Jesus into their heart, just because you
are a slick witness, both you and they are still lost. Both
you and they are still lost. You're using your strength and
they're using their strength. And the Bible denies both. Salvation
is not by words of righteousness, which we have done. I can get
you saved. I'm deluded. You can save yourself. You're deluded. God saves us
all by himself. And the evidence that we are
saved is that we actually believe God and follow God. and obey
God. And we realize that that was
a work of grace that initiated a change in my heart, a change
in my volition, a change in my thinking. Now it's synergistic,
but the initial work is monergistic. Are you guys following that logic?
I'm going to talk about that on Sunday. It starts with God
entering in. and the union of his life with
your deadness raises you from the dead and brings you up out
of that darkness into his marvelous light, shows you his glory, and
gives you the ability to receive him. For as many as received
him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God. Greek
language is technical. It often speaks of the outcome
before it gives the source, but the scriptures are clear that
there's a source before the outcome always. Are you guys hearing
me? There's a source. So we'll tell
men and women to come to Christ, follow Christ. Now, receive the
Lord Jesus Christ. We will say that because the
scriptures say so. They are compelled to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. But unless God enters in and
help you to do it, you won't ever do it. Am I making some
sense? Right. So it's important for you to
know these truths, lest even in the matters of salvation,
you steal God's glory. It's humbling to tell someone
that God has to save you. Right? Now, an honest person
who've been going to church all their life and know they're still
in hell will admit that they've tried religion. They didn't been
baptized 15 times, sprinkled, dunked, poured upon, immersed,
drowned. They've been baptized in baptismal
fonts. They'd have been out to the ocean.
They didn't went to the river They didn't flew to Jerusalem
and got baptized in the Jordan because they wanted it to work
But it was all a human work and God wasn't in it. Are you hearing
me? God wasn't there and they know they're still dead They
know they still hate God hate his word love to live what the
life does they want to live? They know that they know that
nothing has changed They know that You know what God's doing? He's telling them, you can't
do it. You can't do it. Salvation is
not that simple. Salvation is impossible with
you. With men, it's impossible. Are you guys hearing me? If folks
were saved through incantations and ceremonies and these kind
of sacerdotal activities, We would utterly diminish the work
of the cross, the infinite price that Christ paid for eternity
bound souls. What would the Holy Ghost be
doing? Teaching us to use these fickle perishing means by which
we would still his glory. So we've been through the book
of Acts, haven't we? And we saw how that the spirit of God moves
sovereignly through the preaching of the gospel. This is where
I love to get at my tongue speaking brothers and sisters who keep
on making a sacred cow out of speaking in tongues. And that
if you don't speak in tongues, you're not saved. That's so dumb.
That's so dumb. The Bible plainly says, don't
say that. Isn't this what it plainly says? Not all speak with tongues, not
all interpret. Not all have dreams. Not all
have the same gifts. Don't tell the whole church.
Everybody got to speak in tongues. That's ridiculous. You guys hear
what I'm saying? You making the door to the kingdom
tongues. The door to the kingdom is faith.
The door to the kingdom is faith in Christ, right? Isn't that
the door to the kingdom? The way in his faith in Christ.
So we have to demolish these sacred cows in the church too,
because the devil comes in and blows up a gift and makes it
your salvation when there's nothing but a tool when properly used
when properly used. So it's important for you and
I to understand, understand these things. I said, I was going to
open the floor for some questions. I'll come back and deal with
this next week. So my, I've just argued for the last 30 minutes
that men's choice is always wrong. And God would prove this with
the nation of Israel. Because when God had called Israel
out of Egypt, I'm going to open the mics for a few questions
here, then we'll close. He said, I'm going to be your king. He
didn't tell them or ask them, would you like for me to be your
king? Nope. He brought them out, he redeemed
them by blood, purchased them. He brought them into the wilderness,
cleaned them up, and then he gave them a covenant. And that
covenant was a covenant treaty written by a king to his servants. You know what that covenant said?
I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods
besides me. Stay with me now. Did he give
him a choice? No choice. Do you see what I'm
getting at? God just showed up, took over,
brought you to himself, and told you you were his. And then he
said, by the way, I'm Lord. I'm Lord. That's it. That's it. Now see, as soon as you go to
choosing, you're going to get in trouble now. Now you, you, you ought
to, you ought to know I'm pretty powerful. I'm the one got you
out of Egypt. And I didn't ask you when I showed
up, you notice that I didn't come knocking on your doors and
say, you know what? I'm getting ready to start a campaign to
tap Egypt. And I was just wondering, would you, would you want to,
would you want to be on my side? You notice he didn't do that,
right? All he said through his instrumentality was let's go.
Got that? You know what we call that? Sovereignty.
When a God you never knew in your life shows up in your life
and says, let's go, that's sovereignty. And then demonstrates power to
bring you out of bondage, that's sovereignty. It then takes you
out in a masterful way through the Red Sea, showing you miracles. Such nature that only God could
do it. That's power And then when he
gets you into the middle of the wilderness says look here. I'm
marrying you that's power Is that power and that's how God
came to you and that's how he came to me and When we saw the
power of God in the cross work of Christ And the Spirit of God
revealed who he really was and why he did what he did it broke
our heart It made us love him And we said, yes, yes, I think
I will marry you. Yes, I think I will marry you.
You have persuaded me to marry you. I think I better marry you. I'm out here now. I'm out in
the middle of the wilderness, stuck in the middle. I think
I better marry you. I'm the Lord, your God, which
brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other
gods besides me. You shall not bow down to them,
neither worship them. You shall not make unto you any
graven image in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in
the water underneath the earth. You shall worship the Lord, your
God only. This was a covenant, not a choice. And this is what you do. You
love me. You serve me. You worship me.
You love your parents. Don't you steal, kill. Don't
you commit adultery. Don't you commit idolatry. Don't
you covet. And I will give you everything
you need for life and godliness. I am the Lord, your God. No choice. No choice. You know what those fools did? They said, give us another king. Give us another king. That was
a choice. Now God didn't say, now, you know, after so many
years, if you want to, you can have another king. He didn't
say that. Did he say that? But in Deuteronomy chapter 17,
you know what God told Moses? He said, now these knuckleheads,
soon as you get into the land and they realize how hard it
is to walk by faith with a God they can't see, they're going
to start clamoring for a king. That's Deuteronomy 17. This was
hundreds of years before they actually clamored for a king.
Are you guys hearing me? Guess what they did? They made
a what? A choice. Y'all tracking with me? When
God says, I'm your king. Was it choice right or wrong?
It was wrong. It was wrong. All right. Anybody
got any questions? All right. What do you want to
ask? I ain't running with the mic. Somebody can run with the
mic if they want to. Cause I can hear your question. Go ahead. I can hear your question. I'll
repeat it. You're asking two different questions because you're
bouncing off of the influence of parents on children and asking
what about maturity in terms of getting married. Yeah, those are two different.
So I'm trying to see how does your parent, who should be able
to advise you in right choices in a mate, connect with the idea
of spiritual maturity? Who's doing the considering?
You or your parent? You're sitting right next to
him. Do you understand his question? You don't get it, huh? Exactly.
So you have to reframe it. Reframe it. Somebody else? Anybody
else got a valid question? My brother right here. The 501c3
status? He's asking about the decision
that the Supreme Court is making on opening the door for gay marriage
as being constitutionally right. And this is actually probably
one of the reasons for which, when I opened up, I talked about
how important it is for you and I to be solid in the word of
God. Um, because until that is there until we're solid in the
word of God, you can't fight these battles. You just, cause
the battles are fought at the highest levels of judiciary now. So Christians can't just quote
a Bible verse. They have to demonstrate how
those Bible verses are relative and germane to the culture and
how they impact the culture. And we do have people who are
engaged in those debates. And those debates are being won
in the public square. They are. You can easily demonstrate
the consequences of redefining marriage the way that it's happening
and the outcome. You can demonstrate that. But
what you and I are struggling with is a war of propaganda. And what I mean by that is, because
the media is such a strong arm of the government, its ability
to shape opinion by the way they frame the debates and give you
images and pictures that the homosexual agenda is massive
and large and ubiquitous and making headway everywhere, It
causes Christians to be fearful of having discussions at school
and fearful of having discussions on their job and afraid because
you actually see the opinion of common folks being tilted
in that direction everywhere because people are feeding more
on their televisions and media sources than the word of God.
So actually what you guys are seeing is folks being transformed
by the media and not by the word of God. Are you hearing me? And so there is this, what the,
what the secularist knows is this. They know that the vast
majority of Christians, right along with the vast majority
of Americans are AWOL in the fight. So, so I'll give you this,
this, this picture, and then I'll take a couple more questions.
We'll shut it down. And this has been part of what we have
called, and this is not something that is original with us, but
I have been teaching this for years to my guys and my girls,
the dialectical process. Who understands Hegel's dialectical
process? There's a handful of people who
understand Hegel's dialectical process. The process is rooted
in the doctrine of phenomenology where Hegel viewed the progress
of the cosmos as being represented by a thesis, antithesis, and
a consensus outcome. that there is this conflict element
that exists within humanity that's necessary for change. So you
have your theorem of a thesis, an original design, and then
an antithesis, something that opposes it. It comes up and opposes
it, and the two go to war. And the outcome of a thesis-antithesis
conflict is a synthesis, a compromise. And that model has been used
in education. It's been used in politics to
sway people's opinions incrementally. For instance, the, uh, the dialectical
process is the whole framework for politics. So Christians have
been duped in my opinion, by choosing sides when they say
I'm a Democrat or Republican. Because when, once you accept
that you are a Democrat or Republican, you have now bought into a game,
a paradigm, a model that's already prefabricated, that's already
structured, where you actually cannot be original or implement
any kind of alien thought. You've got to be part of the
larger scope of that party, its agenda, its platform. And because
that party has has its own entity, no matter what your views are,
they have to actually correspond with their overall platform or
plank. And so for me, I've had real problems over the years
with Christians who are Democrats. And I've said, OK, you're a Christian
and you're a Democrat. You know, the Democratic platform
holds to abortion. You know, the Democratic platform
holds to same sex marriage. You know, the democratic platform
holds to a lot of things that are anti-biblical. You know that.
So help me understand, help me understand how you Christian and embrace these anti-biblical
concepts. Now, hold on. Now I'm going to
go over to the Republicans too. Cause within the Republican ranks,
we have a level of hypocrisy and duplicity and incoherence
in their philosophies as well. But the Republicans had a premise
that was much more biblical years ago. But the game is not so much
as Republicans right, Democrats wrong, Democrats right, Republicans
wrong. The game is the battle between
the two, just going to war, going to war. And what happens is as
a part of what we call the process, the proxies, the practice, what
people become willing to do is compromise. So you have seen
the trends over the years, and we have our polls and we have
our data. This is called sociology, where people have been influenced
by debates, influenced by discussions, influenced by the fierceness
of one position over against the other. And because politics
is the greatest mass deceptive system in the world, and really
it is, Politics is of the devil. It is the greatest mass system
of deception on planet Earth. It is dirty. It's filthy on both
sides. I had an opportunity to go to
Washington, D.C. about eight years ago when I
was one of the representatives for KFAX, because all radio,
all large radio ministries, all large radio conglomerates, because
radio is large around the world, has to meet up with the leaders
of government and actually get talking points from the government
in order to tell the society what the government is doing.
So radio drinks at the troll of government in order to tell
the people what the government is saying and what radio ministries
are willing to sleep with the politicians they'll get more
benefits and cookies out of the relationship by telling the people
this and telling them this, this much, because they understand
sociologically. When you tell people the same
thing over and over and over again, a hundred times, you begin
to shape their thinking in that direction. Am I boring you? I'm going to share with you a
couple more points on that. Show you how diabolical the devil
is. this is the reason why we are losing ground as the Christian
Church because the reality is is that Americans spend a lot
of their pastime listening to what everybody else says but
God and gradually what's eroded when
you spend more time listening to Obama or listening to any
of the Republican candidates or listening to the debates and
the argument. And inevitably, because you care
about your country, you say, you end up actually being really
excited about a particular politician and his platform and his views
and stuff like that. Even ones who will profess to
be Christians and want to uphold the biblical model, you want
to get on the platform with them and help them fight. Let's try
to overcome this. Let's stop this. I was watching
a whole program today where they are making a mass movement to
oppose the same sex marriage thing. And so this group of people
are making a movie. I forget what it's called. If
I get it, I'll say it here in a moment. But after having watched
The Runner, and having thought through the whole presentation,
what I realized is that still after they put in their efforts,
what's going to happen is nothing but compromise. Because until
you and I are willing to die for the truth, we won't spend
any time significantly opposing that which opposes the truth.
I'm telling you now. So, so, so, so watch this now.
Uh, the secular world has pushed Christianity onto the reservation. So we're reservation Christians
like my native American brother and I'm part native American.
You don't see them anywhere. You know why? Cause when they
took over America, you know what they say? Stay on the reservation.
We'll take care of you. Don't make no noise. Don't fight
for your land back. Don't fight for your rights.
We'll take care of you. We'll let you get high that you
drink. Just, we'll just, just stay irrelevant.
Anybody hearing what I'm saying? And this is what has happened
by and large with Christianity too. So what they'll let Christians
do is they'll let Christians get into the rhetorical element
of the discussion, but not really make any kind of significant
impact. Like here's what you'll notice.
This is my observation. You can challenge me on it. The
mic's still floating around. When a professing Christian ends up
in politics, inevitably he compromises. And the higher he goes up the
rank, the more he compromises. Now, some of y'all can get upset
with this, but I really don't know how any of you ever believed
that Obama was a Christian. Uh, don't clap. Don't clap. Don't
clap. Don't clap because it's a shame
because what we do is we vote based on feelings and emotions
and, uh, retribution and not on Christian principle. I've
lost a lot of black friends over Obama. Cause all I asked him
to do was don't bloat, don't vote cause he's black. Then they
cut me off. Did you guys hear what I just
said? So I tiptoe around it cause I like my black friends, but
I know they're operating out of cognitive dissonance. You
guys understand what cognitive dissonance is when you have two
opposing views running in your head at the same time and you're
not willing to admit it. All of the bad policies that
you and I know are wrong, he's for. Are you guys hearing me? He's for gay marriage. He's for
abortion, third trimester divorce, abortions. He's for all that
stuff that the Bible would be clearly against. But because
Christians are too corrupted to be able to see through that,
They don't have the ability to go. Wait a minute. I like the
man, but I don't know why I like him because everything that the
Bible teaches in the critical areas of morals, he's a guest. Are you guys following
this? This is where God tells the Christian,
you cannot be a respecter of persons. Because when you are
a respecter of persons, you will throw out judgment. But that's
what politics has done to the Christian church. And so all
my black people are liberals, with the exception of a handful.
They are liberals. Do you hear me? They're all liberals. They jumped on the democratic
way, a democratic way, a bandwagon several decades ago and been
riding his sense. I'm a Democrat. I'm going to
be a Democrat till I die. You better stop that because
the Democrats have showed their colors when it comes to apostasy,
a biblical scripture to all of these platforms, Republicans,
same thing over on the other end with my Republicans, they
law themselves about being moral. but they're not moral when it
comes to dealing with poverty and real substantial change. They're good at talking, but
they're not willing to come out from their ivory palaces and
come down to the hood and kick it with the brother. These are
my conservative brothers. These are my conservative. I
went to school with my conservative brothers. We all talked, you
know, Reagan and Bush and all that and Cheney and all these
cats. They all profess to be Christians, killing folks all
over the world in the name of Jesus. I know I'm stepping on
your toes. Some of you won't come back.
That's okay. I don't care. Don't clap. Can I share with you why
I, I I'm what we're going to see when we work through a man's
choice of a king, I'm going to show you, I'm gonna put the mirror
up and show you that the days of Samuel through the Chronicles,
is where we are as a church today. We have bowed down to a human
king in the presidency and in politics, rather than the King
of Kings and Lord of Lords. We bowed down. And we've lost
so much ground that we don't even reflect Christianity today
in the church anymore. Are you guys hearing me? You
don't have to agree. It's called the dialectical process.
And the goal of politics is just to get thinking people to just
keep thinking. Did you get that? Long as you
don't act, we cool. You can think, you can even disagree,
but don't act on that. Because so long as you don't
act, they can take 30% of the people who will act and shift
the numbers and get the outcome they want. Do you know there's
only 30 people, 30% of Americans that participate in the process. Do you hear me? Only 30 to 35
percent. Out of 300 million people, only
30 to 35 percent actually participate in the process until it comes
to the presidency. Then in the presidency, we might
muster up 45 percent. We must have 45% because we are
able to work through the propaganda to get one person to look like
a devil and the other person to look like an angel. Because
you get all this stuff going in your head and in your ears,
instead of cleansing your heart and your mind through the word
of God and making a judgment based upon objective truth. Am
I making some sense? This stuff is, the politics is
a very demonic thing. and it causes Christians to sever. Are you hearing me? This separates
Christians. How can we allow the political
systems of the world, which are beasts, according to the word
of God, designed specifically to swallow up Jerusalem, to swallow
up the kingdom of God, to go after the woman and her seed.
How can we let those systems corrupt us to where we're divided. Am I making some sense? It's
done it. I've watched over the years.
I was, I just got through watching Selma the other night. I said
I wasn't going to watch it when it first came out because I don't particularly
care about artistic license. I like facts. When you watch
a movie, it's filled with artistic license. You do know that, right?
It's Play-Doh. You can shape it any way you
will make a big head, little body, big body, little head.
got Oprah Winfrey and then she's one of the biggest demons I know.
See, I'm gonna lose somebody over that. I don't care. I've been for years
telling my sisters, you need to wake up from her delusion
because she didn't put a spell on you. And now she goes around
openly blaspheming God because she has no fear of Christians.
God is a her. Hallelujah. But see, this is called receiving
the mark of the beast whether you know it or not. This is called
receiving the mark of the beast. Because the mark of the beast
is not a literal mark. The mark of the beast is not
a literal mark. It's when souls are sold out to lies. This is called receiving the
mark of the beast. This is very serious what I'm talking about
at the end of the day. So what will happen at some point is
that true Christianity, true Christianity will rise up out
of the fluff and foam of all of this craziness. And it will
be one little pure body of believers who will be obviously set apart
from this craziness and willing to do what Christians were designed
to do for cultures to change. You know what that is? Die. Die. The solution for error and
sin is death. Christ never promised that you
were going to win political debates and get into our positions of
power in offices of prestige and prominence and and take over
the world for Jesus. He never said that. He never
said that. He said, you I send you out there
as sheep among wolves. And like Herod swallowed up John,
that's the closing of our texts. And then Herod and Pontius Pilate
swallowed up Jesus and Nero swallowed up Paul. And the church combined
with the state under Constantine swallowed up Christians, the
Waldensians and every other Christian that was committed to biblical
truth that saw the church and the state as beast one and beast
two and said, no, they're both wrong, was swallowed up. These
are Christ's sheep. That's the book of Revelation.
That's the book of Revelation. Are you guys following me? That's the book of Revelation.
This is why we're not winning the trend. Now, can I make one
more caveat and you can go home? If I keep you too late, you don't
have to come back next week, honestly. I'll just toss this
out. So we've had an experiment here
in America called politics rooted in constitutional principles
that are like no other. Because at the foundation of
those principles are freedoms that were given to us, affirmed
to be our inalienable rights. Freedom of speech, freedom to
assemble, freedom to bear arms, freedom of religion, freedom
of a number of things, right? You guys know that. And all of
those are being taken away incrementally. You guys understand that? through
the dialectical process, not all at once through the dialectical
process, through the dialectical process. And because the enemy
has all the time in the world until Jesus comes back, his goal
is to simply get Christians to argue and then to choose sides
in the vote. And when we go, Oh man, he didn't
give us everything we needed to get. We'll try again next
time. Wow. You and I are hoping for
the next one. The enemy in these political
systems is making more headway. And we see our nation corrupting
more and more. And we see the prevalence of
immoral, ungodly policies of such nature that even 30 years
ago, you wouldn't have believed this. Now, you know why that
happened? Because the dialectical process
that really requires fighting tooth and nail, philosophically,
rhetorically, debating in the public forum, willing to go to
task with scholarship in universities, debating on television and all
that. We didn't have that much energy. You understand that?
We don't have that much energy. We work and paying the bills,
trying to raise our kids, wrapped up in entertainment. We just
want to live our little Christian life. We don't want to go out
there and protest and really see a change. You guys follow
what I'm saying? For all the disapproval of Martin
Luther King's epistemology in biblical theology, he finally
decided, you know what? I'm going to go head on and die
for this cause. You guys follow me? And when
once you cross that line, you can see that the truth that
without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin.
comes to pass. He knew that the only way that
change was going to come is for protests to occur at the level
of bloodshed. You guys understand that? And
so there was enough bloodshed on the part of people who protested
in the civil rights movement that shame set on the nation's
conscience. And our politicians couldn't
look their relatives in the face and say that they're Christians
like they were saying. and be honest about it. And change occurred
after the killing of a whole lot of people. But that's biblical.
Are you guys following me? That's biblical. This is the
way it works all around the world. Am I telling you the truth, brother?
All around the world, people have to die for truth. So until
we are at that point of willing to die for truth, you and I are
irrelevant to the process. You guys understand that, right?
You're irrelevant. All politicians like the, uh, some of you, some
folks are scared of the homosexual agenda. They talk about, I get,
I get email pass. I'm praying for you. Like they
got, uh, uh, somebody go to 30 odd. Six is up on the building.
Just can't wait for me to pull out to shoot me. Well, let me,
let me tell you something. I am, I am no threat to them. All I'm doing is talking. Do
you hear me? That's all I'm doing. Now, when once I stop talking
and start acting and then there are thousands upon thousands
of people acting with me, then the CIA will kill me too. Because now we are exercising
our constitutional rights for change. All the rest of this
is just talk. I can go home, I can see some
of my congressmen, some of my assemblymen. I was meeting, I
met up with a group of people a couple of months ago who were
politicians. And they actually had come to
a funeral that I preached. And for some reason I waxed eloquent
against the politicians and didn't know they was there. And they
came to me afterwards and said, man, man, you make us politicians
sound real bad, pastor. And I said, you guys are you
guys are a mess. And he and he said to me, well, you know, after
listening to that message, I'm going to try to do a better job
of being a politician. Now, think about think about
that in terms of. The brown nosing that church
folk do with politicians. How we kiss the butt. And when
we have them in the church, we actually put them behind the
sacred pulpit. Isn't that ridiculous? Politicians need to be next to
the font, not in the pulpit, because politicians have to lie
for a living. They have to say one thing to
one people and another thing to another people. Do you understand
that? They need the blood like we do, but they don't need to
be up here making promises, trying to talk about knowing Jesus.
But that's because of the brown nosing of church folk. I know I'm hurting somebody's
feelings, but I hope I'm saving somebody from hell because the
thing that will send you and me to hell is thinking that politics
is the answer. Let me pray. Father, thank you
for this time. Thank you for my brothers and sisters. Thank
you for an opportunity to contemplate your truth. One day is coming.
And it will be difficult for us to believe that it will be
illegal to talk about your word in the way that we're doing it.
But then we will have learned that we wasted our time not standing
for the truth in the salient areas and holding back the hordes
of evil that would strategically take away from us our rights
and also therefore our peace. because when once our rights
are taken away, we don't have any peace. And so we cannot openly
talk freely about our agreement or disagreement with certain
policies and legislative judgments and things that are taking place
in our government and among our leaders now, because we're afraid
that one day is gonna come back. We're gonna lose our jobs, lose
our positions, lose our funding, lose our benefits. And you've
already told us, that we should have never entered into league
with them in the first place. So help us understand, oh God,
where we are and help us individually to begin a journey of commitment
to biblical truth and to reason things through and to be willing
to debate our brothers and sisters who are trapped by deceptive
political practices that actually compromise your truth as well. Forgive us for our sin. We pray
in Jesus name. All right, you guys, God bless
you.