All right, we're in Acts chapter
9. Let me see if I can back up and kind of lay a context with
you. We're going to start at verse
17, maybe go through verse 23. We'll build our consideration
tonight from there. This is Ananias and his obedience.
Last week we worked through the implications of Christ's response
to Ananias in verse 15. After Ananias had informed the
Lord of the possibility of creating a real stir in the church, the
Lord simply told him to do what? Go your way. And we looked at
that statement and we understood it according to our outline as
being the way of the believer in Christ, a way that God has
carved out for us, a way that results in a walk of faith and
obedience because of the grace of God. He told Ananias to go
his way because he knew what Ananias would do. And we saw
over in verse 17, part A, and Ananias went his way. What way was that? Obedience
to Christ. And verse 17 says, and he entered
into the house and putting his hands on him, that is Saul, he
said, brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus that appeared unto
you in the way as you came, hath sent me that thou mightest receive
your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost And immediately
there fell from his eyes, as it had been, scales, and he received
his sight forthwith and rose and was baptized. And when he
had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with
the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway he preached Christ
in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. But all that
heard him were amazed and said, is not this he? that destroyed
them which called on his name or on this name in Jerusalem
and came here for that intent that he might bring them bound
unto the chief priest. Verse 22, but Saul increased
more and more in strength and confounded the Jews which dwelt
at Damascus, proving that this was the very Christ. Verse 23,
And after that many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel
to kill him. So we'll stop right there. And
we'll now consider a number of things. Ananias' obedience to
go to Saul in his assignment to now assist Saul with a proper
transition into the kingdom of God. And you'll notice what he
did. Immediately he went into the
house And he did what? He put his hands on Saul. So in your outline under point
number three, the laying on of hands, it's something worth at
least a small mention as we deal with this, because Luke did not
have to, he did not have to, he didn't have to mention it.
He could have just said that Ananias did what Christ had told
him to do. But no, he says he laid hands
on him. Now in the Bible, the laying
on of hands is symbolic of a number of things. One is, in the Old
Testament, the laying on of hands had to do with the conference
of a particular, laying on of hands, a particular rite or a particular right or a particular
inference or conference of judgment on something. In the Old Testament,
the priest would lay their hands on the sacrificial lamb or the
bullock. And when they laid their hands
on that bullock, the bullock now became an object of transference. For instance, on the day of Yom
Kippur in Leviticus chapter 16, the high priest would go into
the Holy of Holies every year with the blood of a Bullock. And he would lay his hands on
that Bullock as a representative of all of Israel. And what would
occur would be symbolically a transferring of the sins of the people on
to that Bullock or that lamb. And that Bullock now would be
the object of God's wrath. And whereas God should punish
the people, God would punish the Bullock in their stead. So
the laying on of hands often symbolizes a conference of something. Sometimes that conference is
a good thing. On other occasions, it's an evil
thing. In your Bible, you will find
the term used with regards to authorities, like a king will
lay his hand upon someone and put him in prison. Herod laid
his hands on John the Baptist and put him in prison. Now, he
didn't lay his hands on John the Baptist literally. but he
did symbolically, correct? Meaning that his will, his authority,
his purpose was to bind John and put him in prison. So when
once the laying on of hands is taking place, an individual now
becomes the object of the will of that authority that's imposed
upon him. Now what makes this significant
is this, and I think we've talked about this before, Very seldom
will we see in the scriptures anything occurring where God
is working minus a means to accomplish a goal. Very seldom will you
see God directly working where is God himself working on the
object to accomplish his goal. Generally God will always use
a what? A means. Now that's a rule in the scripture
that's almost inviolable. almost inviolable. It is such
a prominent penultimate principle that we don't want to disregard
it. Meaning, I think I've told us this before, you don't want
to go around saying that you and God have a relationship all
by yourself apart from some mediation. You don't want to imply to people
that somehow you have a special in with God where God did not
utilize a mechanism or a means or a process, a methodology by
which you then become the object of his goal. You and I are objects
of God's grace. If we're believers in Christ,
is that true? But that grace was conferred on us by a means. Is that true? So, When we talk
about God, who is the subject, and we talk about the people
of God who become the object of God's intentions, which is
grace, we must talk about the process of conference or the
means of grace by which it's done. In our context, who is
the means of grace by which the apostle Paul, or Saul rather,
is about to be brought into the kingdom? Ananias, exactly. In Ananias, by the way, in the
Greek, his name means gift of God, gift of God. So quite frequently,
the persons used will have names or titles that will be consistent
with their calling and purpose. In a minute, we're going to meet
a man named Barnabas. Barnabas will serve as another
means of grace, and he is called the son of consolation. He will
be a type of the spirit of God as well in this context. But
Ananias being the gift of God points to whom? Christ is not
Christ the gift. And then Christ really is in
relationship to the nature of God and the purpose and will
of God to the people of God. Christ is the ultimate means
of grace. In other words, it's always by
God, the father, through God, the son, to the people of God,
by the agency of the Holy Spirit. If we're going to receive any
gift from God, it's going to always be through Christ. He
becomes the means of conferring grace. We can say, in a very
legitimate way, the human mediation of Ananias upon Saul was really
Christ through Ananias upon Saul. Is that right? Right. And this
is important because it's kind of humbling, but it's critically
important. Ananias was what? in terms of
his office in the church? We don't know. I mean, we don't
know Ananias is not, he's not a archbishop. You know, he's
not a Pope. He's not the right Reverend Ananias. He doesn't, he's not the, you
know, the great prophet Ananias. See, all of these titles of which
we're speaking are things that men use to puff themselves up
and often obscure the process by which God works. And generally
He works through humble means. Now, what I love about the process
here in the book of Acts, and we've talked about this before,
is that the book of Acts will give us patterns, but those patterns
will not always be inviolable patterns, meaning you cannot
turn them into methodologies by which God is bound to always
work. And what I mean by that is the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit is not seen in the Book of Acts
as something that's done one way so that you can package it
and sell it saying the only way you get the Holy Ghost is by
the laying on of hands. We would be able to refute that,
wouldn't we? And so the Book of Acts, while
it gives you these different mechanisms or means of grace,
it never packages it in such a fashion as that you and I can
market that methodology and use it as a means of cajoling people
down our road of methodology. However, I think this rule is
almost inviolably consistently used. God uses means to confer
upon his people who are the objects of his grace, that very grace
necessary. And God often uses the means
of his own people. So if you want to take a point
away from our study at this point, here's what I would say. Please
understand how involved the infinite God is in the use of human beings
to confer his blessings upon other human beings. Please understand
and embrace the biblical truth of how intricately God is involved
in the use of human beings to bless other human beings when
it comes to God's purpose. See, we often play down the human
element, don't we? But God doesn't play it down.
Remember God's first promise? He says, let us make man in our
image and in our likeness, didn't he? Genesis 1, 26, 27. To me,
that is a profound intentionality on the part of God. To me, actually,
that's at the height of the revelation of God's infinite love and purpose
to commune with mankind. I mean, that's where we start.
So as God reveals himself to us, here's how he reveals himself.
We are going to have a fellowship and communion and partnership
with mankind on this level. They will be created in our image
and we will have the kind of communion with them whereby they
reflect us in the earth. In fact, they get to embrace
the title sons of God when no other creature doth possess that
title. Again, the inferences of that
is this, that God has chosen at the very beginning of time
to work through human beings to manifest His glory. So Adam
and Eve become the first human mediation by which God's glory
would be populated through the world. Is that true? This is
what makes marriage such a profound institution of which we are going
to be enjoying seven weeks of significant and deep analytical
study around that. God's purpose was for mankind
to enjoy him and to enjoy him forever from the time of conception
till the time they hit the grave. And so he set up a framework
of safety, of pleasure, of enterprise, of success, of mission in the
context of marriage by which it would be done. So now as we
proliferate and have children all over the place, Those children
are to be, as it were, protected by the bonds and framework of
a covenant model that God himself set up in order that we might
fulfill the task of being human mediators of God's glory. Ananias is actually playing that
role. If you will, we can quickly jump from this human contemplation
of Adam and Eve in the garden to Christ in the church in the
world. Ananias here could be considered
a midwife. Ananias here could be considered
that extension of the bride of Christ by which Saul now is going
to be birthed into the kingdom by the collaboration of Jesus
Christ and his bride, the church. Am I making some sense? You can
immediately adopt that framework and understand that the Genesis
account, let them have dominion, let them multiply, let them replenish. The earth has much more of a
redemptive connotation and has everything to do with sons and
daughters of God being made into the image of God through Jesus
Christ by the gospel. Now that raises the level of
your and my participation in the ministry of the kingdom.
I want to be a midwife for Christ. I actually want to be a fruitful
bride for him. I want to be the means by which
men and women are birthed into the kingdom of God. Don't you?
I want to be the means by which my own children, my grandchildren
and great grandchildren are brought into the kingdom. I want God
to use me to lay hands on all of them. Are you guys hearing
what I'm saying? So see, what I don't want to
do before we move on to the next point is to kind of just make
this a pedantic sort of light reflection of what Ananias is
doing. That's why we spent three weeks
on Ananias. I mean, we could have quickly
run through the narrative and really not notice Ananias. But
Ananias is a sharp brother. I love him. I thank God for him.
And in God's own sort of secret counsel, he knows much more about
Ananias than we do. God did not arbitrarily choose
Ananias. He chose him for reasons that
we have no scriptural evidence, but God knows, doesn't he? Doesn't
Christ know his servants? When the master was walking through
Jewry for three and a half years doing ministry, the disciples
were always miffed by certain realities. Do you know what those
realities were? Christ had people on his side
that they didn't know. Lord, You didn't tell us about
her. You didn't tell us about him.
And our master would say to them, watch this. What's that to you?
I'm the Lord of the church, right? And Luke chapter nine, they say,
Hey, Lord, there's a bunch of brothers over there, casting
out devils and healing this sick and preaching the gospel. And
they're not with us. And Christ says, right. Yeah.
And. And. because you and I make the massive
fault of asserting, not even thinking it through, that this
is about us. And what Saul is about to do
is become the object of destroying and demolishing that sort of
selfish notion among the Jewish people of God, among the Jewish
people, some of which will become the people of God. So the laying
on of hands constitutes a couple of things, the right hand of
fellowship, Galatians chapter 2 9 let's look at Galatians 2
9 just show you one or two more things and then we'll go on so
what's what the Ananias is doing with Saul is remarkable and it's
going to be effectual into in the bringing of Saul into the
kingdom of God on a practical level where the Saints will have
a They will have the credible evidence of the means of grace
by which Saul now is a legitimate partner in the cause of the gospel. And they cannot simply say, well,
he just walked into the front door. He didn't have any substantial
grounds of admission. How did he get in here? Well,
he got in there by a servant of God who was obedient to Christ,
obedient enough to make sure that that Saul would come through
the front door of fellowship. Galatians chapter two, listen
to the way the language is put here. And we're gonna be coming
back to Galatians tonight a couple of times because of the historical
reference of our text. The apostle Paul speaking concerning
his ultimately meeting the 12 apostles some 14 years later,
and we'll see that in about Acts chapter 11, 12, 13. He says over
in verse, six. But of these who seem to
be somewhat whatsoever they were, it makes no matter to me. God
accepts no persons for they who seem to be somewhat in conference
added nothing to me. But contrary wise, when they
saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to me as the gospel
of the circumcision was unto Peter, for he that brought effectually
in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was
mighty in me toward the what? Paul is arguing for his authentic
apostolic calling to be on a par and equal with the Jewish brethren,
the 11 apostles in Jerusalem, verse 9. And when James, Cephas,
and John, who seemed to be what? So now this is quite remarkable.
You guys know I'm sort of hesitating in fully developing the promises
in the seven churches of Revelation, because I want to do that as
one whole message. Where at the end of the seven churches, he
says to him that overcometh, I will do this, right? Every
church, he says to him that overcometh, I will give to him that overcometh,
I will do to him that overcometh. These things will be conferred
upon them. I want to wait and deal with
that as one sum total message, because it's an enormous reality. of which Christ is communicating
in those promises. And we would not do it justice
to kind of deal with it without dealing with the bigger picture.
But may I say something? Listen to what he said here about
Peter, James, and John in verse nine. And when James Cephas,
that is Peter and John, who seemed to be what? Ah, seemed to be,
they were pillars. in the church, were they not?
Remember what Christ said in Revelation chapter three to the
church of Philadelphia, I will write your name upon the pillars
of my temple. Remember that? And I just kind
of halted you guys there, froze you in suspension and just said,
we need to deal with that because we're talking about an imminent
honor, an imminent honor for all eternity for your name to
be written on the pillars of the temple where everyone must
see your name when they enter in. Well, we know that John James
and Cephas were part of the pillars of the church because they're
written on the foundations of the New Jerusalem in Revelation
21, are they not? This is massive truth. What we're
doing right now is we're connecting heaven with earth. What do I
mean by that? The apostles operated out of a revelation of the finished
work of Christ and that eternal kingdom that they already comprehended
by virtue of being transmitted into that dominion, or that dimension
from time to time, as was the case with Paul, as was the case
with John, as was the case with John Cephas and James when they
were on the Mount of Transfiguration. The apostles knew something about
the eternal kingdom that I think Christians don't even spend any
time reflecting today. And they use the language of
the eternal kingdom in the present kingdom and biblical nomenclature
when you go through the scriptures. In fact, here's what Paul said
in second Timothy chapter three, around verse 15, 16. He says,
the church is the ground and pillar of the truth. The church
of the living God, which is the ground and pillar of the truth. That's a huge honor bestowed
upon the church. Huge honor. which again brings
you and I back to the point of contemplating and reflecting
on this truth, that when we gather together around God's word, you
and I are not dealing with simply a human social club. These are
about real eternal matters of which the only way you and I
can be convicted that this is so is to go deep with Christ
in order to have that assurance that we are talking about eternal
verities here and not some passing fleeting institution that one
day will disappear from the face of the earth. The church of the
living God, according to Galatians or Ephesians chapter three around
verse 21, is the world without end, amen. Remember that? I showed you how in the Old Testament,
Israel was called the world without end and Paul used that same language
concerning the church of the living God. The church of the
living God, world without end. Huge implications around that
type of terminology. But here we have the language,
watch this. And they gave to me and Barnabas,
what? The right hands of fellowship
that we should go into the heathen and then to the circumcision.
So the right hand of fellowship is the reaching out and the embracing
of a person into your communion and them being your fellow equal
with you. You with them them having all
of the rights and privileges of the Commonwealth as you do
Going back then to our text so that we can start working through
Acts chapter 9. This is what happens with Saul
So Saul is headed to Damascus to hogtie Christians bring them
back to Jerusalem and have them destroyed And here he is now
being brought into the kingdom of God to become a major servant
for the cause of Christ. And Ananias is the means by which
this process takes place. So notice what it says that Ananias
says to Saul. He says, brother Saul, you guys
see that? Didn't we talk about that last
week? And I know I was a little bit pastoral, but it was important
for us to do so and to think through the character of Ananias. Ananias, shortly before he went
on his mission, struggled with this assignment, didn't he? He
struggled with laying hands and conferring acceptance upon Saul
when the history of Saul was he was a maniac against the church. But by the time Ananias gets
into the house, he is so settled down that he reaches over and
touches the man and calls him brother Saul. So you understand
how he brought his weaknesses and his fears and his anxieties
and his doubts into subjection to the obedience of Christ. So
this demonstrates what it means to be a servant. I told you before,
this is one of the ways you know that you have an assignment from
God, because it will require a counterintuitive response to
that assignment, where your physical nature, your flesh, your assumptions,
your comfort zones are gonna be challenged when God calls
you to a mission. And in order for you to execute
that mission, you have to take on a servant's role, a doulos. Oh, what is that? That's a person
who is a slave owned by someone else. Well, why are you stating
that? Well, a slave doesn't have his
own will. He's completely bound to the
will of his master. A slave can't say to his master,
hey, Masa, I don't feel like doing that. That's like your
last day on earth, you know? When you're a slave, you simply
go, yes, master. This is so important in the area
of Christianity today, when for you and I. Emotions are almost
more sovereign than explicit commands and in propositions
given to us by our savior, like our emotions will challenge Christ
when Christ says do this. That's the world we live in now.
As a consequence of many things, our emotions have risen to the
level of almost being truth. They're not true. They may be
facts, but they're not true. But what we have done is allowed
our emotions to be equal on a par with propositional truth so that
we say, I don't think that's right because it does not feel
right. How absolutely abhorrent is that
thought that we would elevate our emotion to a level of concrete
authority with the word of God. And yet, ladies and gentlemen,
be honest. Our emotions have a whole lot
to say about a whole lot of stuff a whole lot of times, which really
does impede our capacity to enjoy fellowship with God or do the
will of God for which we were made. Now, I'm not saying avoid
or deny or ignore your emotions. I'm saying put them in their
place. Here's what you can say to your emotions. We'll go back
to our text. Emotions, you are a slave just like I am. Shut
up. I'm a slave to Christ and you're
a slave to me. Does that work? No, it doesn't,
but that's okay. We got to keep going. So under
the laying on of hands, the right hand, I'm just telling the truth,
Janet, don't worry. Soon as some of these husbands
and wives leave here, emotion's gonna be driving the car home. Running all off the road back
and forth challenging pastor Jesse The right-hander fellowship
Brother saws a clear indication that Ananias has capitulated. He sucked it up He's walking
in the spirit and now he becomes the human mediation for what
is to follow notice what it says Brother saw the Lord even Jesus
that appeared unto thee in the way as you came as he sent me
That you might receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
What an assignment Ananias you're gonna open his eyes You're gonna
be the vehicle by which he receives the Holy Ghost and Saul will
be on his way Look at verse 18 and immediately there fell from
his eyes as it had been Scales see verse 18 now watch this Ananias
laid hands on him and the Spirit of God wrought a miracle right
there That was a miracle wrought Right there. That was not the
natural passing of time where the skills that were on Saul's
eyes, you know, got hard and scaled up and fell off. There
was an immediate healing where the skills that were there because
of the blindness of the son of which Christ had done himself
to teach Saul that he was a blind Pharisee and had never seen the
glory of God at all until Christ revealed himself to him. Now,
Christ is opening his eyes for the first time in a new light. and Ananias is the vehicle by
which it is done. And he received his sight right
away. Isn't that amazing? So he didn't
receive his sight by praying and fasting. He received his
sight by the laying on of hands, the human mediation of the servant
of God, by which now he can say, it was Christ who opened my eyes.
And then he arose and he was what? which means that faith
was already resident in Saul's heart, right? Ananias did not
have to sit around with Saul and do what we're gonna be doing
tomorrow morning, talking about evangelism, what it means to
reach someone with the gospel, communicating the gospel until
a person becomes a disciple. And discipleship is the premise
for being baptized. When a man or woman says they
are a believer, they're talking about entering into the teaching
life of Christ. And one of the first evidences
of discipleship is to be what? Baptized. So Paul, our Saul rather,
is already committed to the faith and so the process moves forward.
Immediately there fell from his eyes as there had been scales
and he received his sight forthwith and arose and was baptized. Powerful,
powerful. And when he had received meat,
he had fasted and so obviously he was hungry. He was what? Strengthened. So verse 18 and 19 does not even
remotely give us a hint of the sort of chronological process
This could have taken a few days. It didn't take a long time, but
it could have taken a few days obviously to execute all this.
And the latter part of verse 19 says, then was Saul certain
days with the disciples, which were at Damascus. And this is
Luke's sort of way of saying, it's not my objective to give
you the full days, but I am here to let you know, Saul spent some
time with the disciples that were at Damascus. You guys got
that? Very important to know. So Ananias was able to bring
him into the local fellowship of the believers, the disciples
that were at Damascus. Now, verse 20 will now bring
us into another mode. And let me back up and just touch
on point number four in your outline, the anointing, the anointing
is that's critical. So when when Ananias lays hands
on Saul and his eyes are open and he receives his sight and
he arises and is baptized all of that language underscores
the messianic objective of Jesus Christ as is outlined in Isaiah
chapter 61 verse 3 the spirit of the Lord God is upon me and
he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor he has
given me the capacity to open the eyes of the blind to let
the captives go free right to bring joy to mourning hearts
and to proclaim the day of our Lord and the year of vengeance
and so on in Isaiah chapter 61, three. That prophecy was fulfilled
by Jesus Christ, was it not? Over and over and over and over
again, the question was raised in Matthew chapter 11 by John,
are you the Messiah or do we seek another? And what did Jesus
say? Go back and tell John these things. Here's the credentials
of the one Messiah who has come and concretely fulfilled the
scriptures. The eyes of the blind are open.
The lame walk. The lepers are healed. The dead
are raised. And the gospel is preached to
the poor. Those are what we call messianic
signets. And those signets continue to carry themselves all the way
through the New Testament. And they are present with us
today in their ultimate manifestation. You and I are still in the days
of Messiah. Do you believe that? Let's see
what we can do with that. So the first part of the verse
is speaking of Jesus. He's speaking himself. The spirit
of the Lord God, the father is upon me, the son, because the
Lord has anointed me. That is the father. And the anointing
is the spirit of God to preach the good tidings unto the meek.
Meek here is the word for humble or broken or submissive. He had
sent me. That's apostolic. You guys see
that? To bind up the broken hearted. These are the ones that Jesus
said, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who are broken
in heart, blessed are those who weep and opine over their sins
because he will bind them up. And to proclaim liberty to the
captives, the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
This is the work, ladies and gentlemen, of the gospel. Verse
two, just one more verse, and then we'll go back. To proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of the vengeance
of our God, and to comfort all that mourn, and if you were to
read it in the New Testament, in Zion. And so what is the ministry
of Christ? He used to come to lost sinners
through the preaching of the gospel to reveal his glory to
them by the ministry of the spirit of God. And they are brought
into the kingdom of God by having their eyes opened and then acknowledging
the crown rights of Jesus and affirming those crown rights
by being baptized and now made disciples. Paul went through
the front door like everyone else did, didn't he? He went
through the front door like everyone else did. And Saul didn't have
the apostles laying hands on him. He had a common servant
in the church. Love it, because this destroys
this sort of apostolic succession that the Roman Catholic Church
would try to force on us to say that they have their succession
from Peter. First of all, they don't. History
has demolished that faulty notion that they can show that the papacy
goes all the way back to Peter. But secondly, who cares? Who
cares? Our text teaches us that God
will use anyone he wants to to bring the most prominent man
or person into the kingdom that he's going to use. Ananias will
be blown away in about five years as to how prominent this man
Saul is going to be in advancing the gospel. You and I are going
to touch on it a little bit tonight because I'm fascinated about
what's about to occur. It's going to have some interesting
implications for us. Saul is baptized and the text tells us
he was with the disciples Certain days certain days and when he
was with them verse 20 says he straightway preached Christ in
the synagogues that he is the Son of God Now see we have had
a major pivot here. This is a critical point for
you and me because Saul comes into the kingdom through a calamity
a crisis of revelation and God reveals himself in Christ as
his massive light, brighter than the sun, blows him away, destroys
his vision, heals him, brings him into the kingdom, and immediately
he starts preaching in the synagogues. This is Saul's methodology. So
I would ask you as I'm reading the scriptures, I would say,
what is compelling this man to rush to go talk to his Jewish
brethren about Christ? The revelation, the experience
of grace, that his own heart has now been overcome with. He's
been overwhelmed by the reality of Jesus. Is that true? Okay,
so stay with me for a moment. I want to try to make this as
tangible as possible because the next part is going to be
a little more technical. You know something about it,
but it's going to be a little bit more objective. So I raised
the question, what will compel the apostle or compel Saul to
straightway go into the synagogues knowing that the synagogues all
were under assignment to oppose Christianity. What is working
inside of this man to go into the lion's den immediately? A major revelation, watch this
ladies and gentlemen, a major revelation, one, is that he was
wrong about Jesus. He was utterly wrong about Christ
and that his brethren are wrong about Jesus. And they need to
be told just as urgently and as quickly as the dynamic that
brought Saul to his knees and crushed his whole world, destroyed
all his reference points and built him a brand new worldview. They need to be as urgently confronted
with this revelation as he was. Saul was compelled to go into
the synagogues because Christ had met him with power. He had
changed his mind so radically that he couldn't just hold it
in. There were some things that are working in his life that's
going to be interesting as we work through his methodology.
But here's what I'm saying. There's something to telling
people about Christ as soon as you be born. There's something
about telling people about Christ as soon as you be born. Obviously, we see the evidence
of the impact of grace in Saul's life, right? But we also know
that objectively speaking, he's called to this true. Well, but
I'm not going to let you off the hook because you're called
to it just like he is. We're all called to it. So Saul
is a lesson for me because I think that a lot of times Christians
will come to the faith and they will kind of just find this little
sort of space where ain't nothing going on. And they just hang
out there for years before they actually go to work telling people
about Christ. Can I use an old secular colloquialism? Strike
while the iron is hot. Strike while the iron is hot.
and ask God to give you grace to strike while the iron is hot.
Can I tell you why? The sooner you get at the practice,
remember the book of Acts is about the what? The practice,
that's the Greek term praxis. The sooner you get about the
repeated practice of telling people about Jesus, the better
you will be at it. And the sooner you will do it
every time you run across somebody that you sense there's a mission
to talk about Jesus. And the sooner you start dealing
with the most difficult assignments first, the less difficult ones
are much more easy. Saul understood the ethic of
going back now into his own people group and just starting the battle
right away. Why? Why a halt between two positions? Why roam around, meander around
Damascus, kind of hiding and running from his Jewish constituents
and play games with the Christian church? And in fact, as a third
point, I think that not only is he compelled by this massive
revelation of Christ in his life, is what we mean by conversion.
Not only is he committed to wanting his brethren to know that they
were wrong, just like he was wrong. But I just think that
as he's going into these churches, he himself knows that they need
to understand the scriptures are right. Because these are
people of the book. and they actually think that
they are on solid biblical foundation with what they're doing. He now
wants to go back with them and wrestle with them over matters
that they are absolutely convinced they're right about. Here's their
premise as we get ready to deal with Saul's approach. Here's
the premise of the Jews. The premise of the Jews is Jesus
is a heretic. I want you to stay right there.
That's their premise right now. They've crucified him and they've
told everyone, don't preach in his name, don't believe him.
He's the leader of a sect. He's a heretic. Secondly, the
scriptures are not about Jesus. So the primary premise is he's
a heretic. The second premise for them,
which is a set of assumptions is the Bible is all about the
Jews. And I want you to think that
through for a moment. Cause see what Saul knew was the way that
the Jewish people thought was that the promises of the Old
Testament were about them. And so they clamor and cleave
to Old Testament prophecy as having their ultimate fulfillment
in them. And thus that set of faulty assumptions
allows them to hold onto a flawed premise that Jesus could not
have been the Messiah. Are you guys hearing me for a
moment? Jesus couldn't be the Messiah because those passages
are about us. Jesus can be the Messiah because
those passages talk about the nation of Israel and Jerusalem.
And so Saul now having actually seen Jesus Christ in his glory
is compelled to confront a set of assumptions and faulty premises
on the part of his Jewish brethren, hoping that somehow they will
turn around. And so now watch the next couple
of verses. We're gonna get into this for
a little bit tonight. We're gonna deal with some technicalities
of it and then actually, you know, challenge you along these
lines, too. In verse 20, it says in straight way, he preached
Christ in the synagogue that he is the son of God. Those are
called fighting words. OK, those are called fighting
words. Now, you know, he could have
went in there and talked about Jesus of Nazareth. But to call
him the son of God is to go straight to the heart of the debate. to
go straight to the heart of the debate. Why? Because they killed
him because he made himself the son of God. So when it says here
that he went into the synagogue and he preached that Christ was
the son of God, what Luke is saying is that was his primary
objective, his one primary. There may have been several subjects
that he approached it from. but his ultimate objective was
to prove to them that Jesus was the son of God. That means he
didn't go into any synagogue without stirring up this major
issue that the Jews were struggling with. Profound, profound. Again, I asked the question,
what is in Saul driving him to do this? Point number five, we'll
go to work now a little bit. Point number five, preaching
Christ. That's in our PowerPoint. Preaching
Christ and I I want you to think this through with me a little
bit. This is gonna be very important For years as I've been part of
ministry One of the things that my constituents and my brothers
in Christ in the family here at grace have learned and This
is a hard pill to swallow, but this is a critical truth for
you to consider that much of Christendom today Many of our
evangelical churches today are guilty. They are guilty of not
preaching Christ. Guilty. So stay with me a little
bit because we're getting ready to go to work on something that
I know is a big elephant in the room that evangelicals don't
like to talk about. And that big elephant is this.
Any human being, any law center, any religious center, any safe
center can go to the average church in a month's time. And you will hear all sorts of
sermons about all kinds of stuff. And if you're fortunate, you'll
get a little Jesus in it. But when we say that Jesus is
not preached in our churches, we are not saying that they don't
use Jesus name. We're not saying that they don't
tag Jesus on at the end of the sermon and get you to come up
so that they can make you a convert. They do that in most of your
Baptist churches in your church. Come on up if you want to receive
Jesus, right? Jesus was nowhere in the sermon,
but at the end of the sermon where you can come up and meet
this Jesus you never heard. And what I am getting at is this.
People are so ignorant today of what's missing in the church.
that they don't know it's missing. And this is the fundamental basis
for the divisions in our churches. So I'll share with you, the only
way that we can have unity in the churches is when we all make
Jesus to be what he is, absolute sovereign Lord. Where he is diminished
and minimized and shrunk down to a little addendum along the
plans of our schemes and agendas, we all each have a doctrine,
a tongue, a revelation, a vision, a goal, a plan, an agenda, a
method, and none of it corresponds with biblical evangelism. None of it. So this is where
there is a loss of unity among evangelicals. because we have
rejected the fundamental purpose for our existence, which is preaching
Christ. And what has that, what has it
resulted in? Now I want you to mark this,
because this is the terrible, terrible state of the church.
The church is so anemic today that the preaching of Christ
in its absence, its lack of presence, is not even a problem for the
average Christian. The average Christian is not
opining or are concerned with or burdened by or struggling
with the fact that Christ is not being preached. This is how
bad it is in our churches today. They don't even know that Christ
is not being preached. It's a terrible thing because
I can tell you what should be the objective of every church.
That should be to teach and preach the person and work of Jesus
Christ so incessantly that every member of the church is taught
to crave Christ every time the teaching goes forth. And when
Christ is not preached, even though that sermon may have several
good points of application, they must say that message filled
totally short of an evangelical objective. See, so when we don't
preach it consistently, we actually destroy the people of God's healthy
appetite for wanting to know Jesus. And then they get wrapped
up in all of this other stuff and call it church and call it
worship. And it's not. This is why we are at the Laodicean
church and Jesus is on the outside knocking on the door and say,
hey, I haven't been inside with you for years. Are you guys hearing
what I'm saying? So what's taking place with Saul
is going to be this smooth transition from the ministry of Peter, as
you had learned, he's a pillar and an apostle to the circumcision. Saul is gonna be a pillar and
an apostle to the uncircumcision, to the Gentiles. We're getting
ready to shift to, and Peter is gonna diminish, Saul is gonna
be magnified as he becomes the apostle Paul. And the one thing
that Saul is gonna teach us is the critical necessity of maintaining
the primary subject in all your preaching and teaching. And that
is Jesus Christ. That to not preach Christ is
to not preach Christianly. To not preach Christ is to not
be evangelical. It doesn't matter what the subject
is. We'll be dealing with marriage for seven weeks. Every class
you will be looking at Christ. Because marriage points to Christ
in the church. And without that foundation as
the basis for the structure and the framework and the goals and
the success and the benefits and the blessings of what marriage
is, marriage is a mess without Jesus. Are you hearing me? Marriage is a total farce without
Christ. Marriage is impossible to do
without Jesus. Not biblical marriage. You see
what I'm getting at? And so the same goes with the
preaching in the church. So preaching Christ, there are
four things I want to call your attention to briefly and work
them through with you tonight. And so I would be, I would encourage
you to establish for yourself a legitimate biblical litmus
test, a legitimate biblical litmus test. When you sit up under the
preaching of the word, What is your primary objective? What
is your goal when you sit and listen to preaching? Are you
mesmerized by the delivery of the preacher? Are you jazzed
and entertained by his or her antics? Are you comforted and
cajoled or brought into a place of complacency because they are
your kind of preacher? All of these are radically false
motives for going to church. These are all your popularist
ideas that derive themselves from the culture. This is what
we do in politics. You can actually become the president
of the United States by simply being popular. You don't even
have to have anything running around in your cranium. All you
have to do is be popular. They can give you all the talking
points necessary. Tall dark and handsome and keep
got the gift of God you can make it in and most of our preaching
is nothing but gift of God that's all that it is and Consequently
our churches are in horrible conditions. And so you have to
ask yourself when you go to church Am I coming to church today to
be entertained? or to worship God And if I'm
coming to worship God, how is that worship going to be invoked?
Is it going to be invoked merely by the aesthetic atmosphere of
the church, by the great music, by the programs in the church?
Or will that evoking of my soul to worship God be a consequence
of the mystery of biblical preaching and teaching? that opens my heart
and opens my mind. It shows me over and over and
over again, the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
Are you hearing what I'm saying? Very important. Very important. Very important. So under four
things, here's the first thing that inspired the apostle and
it should be operating in you and me. It's called the spirit
of faith. Second Corinthians chapter four, verse 13. Just
listen to it. Second Corinthians four, 13. The apostle explained
why he was so committed to preaching Christ to the church at Corinth,
along these lines, chapter 4, 13. And you can actually adopt
this principle for yourself. And while you're going there
and thinking it through, what do you mean by preaching Christ?
Well, technically speaking, preaching is what I am doing even right
now, because what we do in our churches, We adopt terms and
phrases, and sometimes those terms and phrases are, they're
brought in by the culture. Let me see if I can help you
with this. Kerygma is our Greek term for preaching, proclaiming,
keruso is its root word. It's the method of proclaiming
or heralding as an ambassador, a message from the king to the
people. To preach is to herald a message
from the king to the people. That's the classical definition
of preaching. When someone stands up, they
are not standing up there having fabricated a story out of whole
cloth by the fertile imagination of their own vain mind, which
is 90% of most preaching. Biblical preaching is not going
to newspapers and articles and stories and finding quaint sayings
and phrases and building a body of rhetorical speech point by
point by point to mesmerize the people with your intellectual
acumen or your ability to communicate or to tug at the heartstrings
of individual and call that preaching. That's not preaching. That's
manipulation. A little while along the journey
of that excursion, if you are a Christian begotten of the Spirit
of God, the Holy Ghost comes and scoots the person next to
you out of that seat and sits down with you and says, psst,
psst, you know this dude is full of BS, you know that, right? Baloney sandwich. You know, they're filling your
head with junk, don't you? It's been 20 minutes now, and
you have that uneasy feeling that Jesus is not in the house.
And when he does show up, he's going to be wearing a tuxedo
and a cane and kind of just prancing around the floor, making you
feel good. See, biblical Christians know
when they're simply being hoodwinked by entertainment religion. because
it's all the same everywhere. Are you guys hearing me? It's
all the same everywhere. It's all the same everywhere.
And you get to see whether or not your heart is corrupted when
it comes to your desire to truly worship God in spirit and in
truth, or simply to be entertained by your form of religious entertainment. Here's what Paul said about communicating
biblical truth. Here it is, we having the same
spirit of faith, according as it is written, this is Old Testament,
I believe, right? The present conviction of biblical
truth being informed by the word of God, having resident in the
soul, occupying the mind, engaging the mind, informing the mind,
building the mind up in the knowledge of God. That's what faith is.
I want you to get that now. Faith is not just a leap in the dark.
I believe. What do you believe? I don't
know, but I believe. That's not biblical faith. Biblical faith
is a conviction of information, data. Biblical data communicated
to you that is occupying your thought and your mind, causing
you to resonate with this proposition. It's forceful truth. It's forceful
truth upon your mind. And your soul is saying, yes,
yes, yes, yes, yes. And you are building now a life
of truth when it comes to God. In your soul, you are agreeing
with God by virtue of the knowledge of God. That's what biblical
faith is. Are you guys hearing what I'm saying? Now, when the
heart is full of that kind of faith, it's impossible for it
not to leak out your mouth sometime. We have in the same spirit of
faith according as it is written. I believe, and therefore I have
what? See, premise believing, response speaking, premise believing,
response speaking. We also believe in therefore
we speak. What Paul is saying is the reason why I'm speaking
is because I believe this thing. That's amazing. That's amazing. He's simply saying, well, believers,
we speak. This is how you know you're a
believer. At least with a vital depository of truth in your soul
in such a way this gives us a little indication of the nature of faith
Really it does And it gives us a little bit of an indication
of why I often say that when we talk about being evangelical
We're not talking about methodologies and techniques tomorrow. I'll
be doing a three-hour class on evangelism For two of those hours. I'm going to be talking about
the philosophy and theology of biblical evangelism And for the
last hour, just talk about a little bit about how to approach people
and deal with them, understanding their worldviews, understanding
their temperaments, to be able to actually introduce the gospel
to them with the objective of that gospel getting a hold of
them. But I'm talking for two and a half to three hours about
the biblical concept in a comprehensive way of what it means to simply
be a Christian. Are you guys understanding what
I'm getting at? Evangelism is not about techniques.
Evangelism is about a lifestyle. That's right. To be an evangelist
is to be a Christian on fire for God. That's all. Do you guys get that? Every Christian
on fire for God is an evangelist. That's just what that means.
And then it works itself out in a lot of ways. I'm getting
back to the kerygma, the thing of preaching. Because preaching
is the authoritative expression of biblical truth, that depository
of truth that's given to us in the word of God, summed up in
the person and work of Jesus Christ. We are not rightly preaching
if we don't preach Christ, since he's the subject of the scriptures,
right? But that can be done in various modes, forms, and situations. A mother can preach to a child.
Child can preach to parent. Peer can preach to peer. We can
sit down around a cup of coffee and you can begin to explain
scriptures to people. And as you are explaining biblical
truth without putting on the sort of preacher or preacher
at mode, ah, you don't have to do that. Now that's just your
friend. Now don't go to preaching to
your friend. Don't go to wax and all like
that. But what will occur is that the
spirit of God will gradually come in on the conversation and
lift the communication to a level of eloquence and clarity and
coherence to where both the host of the truth and the object of
the truth are apprehended for a season of authoritative communication
from God. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? Authoritative communication from God. That's what we call
a moment. That's where God is present, working powerfully through
that word. That's what you want to happen.
and you want it to happen in the most unpredictable way. You want God to just move in
on you because your heart is prepared because you feed on
Christ consistently enough that you are ready like Ananias, Lord,
here I am. That's what you want. And that's
how God works. That's what we're talking about.
So the apostle gives us our ethic. The reason why he speaks is because
he what? He believes. Our next point then
under this proposition of preaching Is back at Acts chapter 9. This
is gonna spend the last 10 minutes here Just opening up this can
of worms for us and next Friday Saturday and Sunday is going
to be in my opinion if God honors my prayers a phenomenal blessing
for us I would that you Show up and invite as many people
as you possibly can because what we're talking about now is what's
gonna happen next Friday next Saturday and next Sunday you
will be exposed to the preaching of the gospel by two ministers
each night. And then on Sunday morning, this
will be, if God is pleased to join us, a massive banquet of
Christ to our souls. What a blessed way to close out
the year. Wouldn't that be wonderful? But
God just shows up and reveals his glory through the preaching
and deal with some of our issues. and get us back on point with
Him. Wouldn't that be wonderful, Mike? And that's what we're hoping
will occur next week as it has been so many times for us. The
Apostle Paul now is about to enter into an activity and Luke is going to give us some
language that I'm just going to touch on a little bit. This
is going to be quite interesting. I'm actually going to just explain
the language today. Two weeks from now we're going
to come back and unpack it exegetically a little bit more. So here's
how this goes. In verse 21 and 22, we have the
response of the people who have observed Paul's ethic. What is
his ethic? Every opportunity he got, he
went into the synagogue to preach Christ to his Jewish brother.
That was his ethic. So I taught this in our Greek
class. That's the Greek word ethos. Ethics and morals are
two different things. Just want you guys to know. Morals
are what we believe. Ethics are what we do. Morals is the framework of our
worldview as to what is right. Ethics is our response to what
is right by a customary lifestyle consistent with what we believe.
You guys got that? Morals is what we believe. Ethics
is what we do because of what we believe. The word is translated
in the scripture customs. And so you'll read this. And
it was Paul's custom to go into the synagogue every Sabbath and
look for somebody that he could preach Christ to. What a wonderful
custom to go jack somebody life up every Sabbath day. What a
wonderful custom. It was an ethic that flowed out
of his morals. In his mind, it was only right
for him to find somebody to actually bring the gospel to. That's what
I want. See, he was an evangelist. Powerful,
powerful, powerful stuff. But all that heard him were what?
Amazed. Now, you need to know that the
ones here now that Luke is talking about are not the Jewish Christians. These are the Jewish Jews who
don't believe the gospel. Okay? The Jewish Christians aren't
amazed at the message that they have already been preaching and
dying for. It's the non-Jews, a non-Christian Jews who are
Judaizers, who are amazed that Saul is preaching Christ. The word amazed here, again,
means to be out of your wit. Stay with me. Cause see, what
the spirit of God has just done is started a mess of which I
don't have time to unpack fully. What you see taking place right
now is a storm. This is a massive storm because
they are all taken back by not only the fact that it is Saul
who's doing it, but the manner in which Saul is communicating
is blowing them away. They are amazed and said, now,
is this not he that destroyed them, which called on this name
in Jerusalem? See what they're doing? You know
what we call that in, in, in, in, uh, in philosophy and logic
is called rationalizing. You know what you're trying to
do? You're trying to save yourself. Because now you've been confronted
with a testimony that is so powerful, so overwhelming, so consistent,
so pervasive, so threatening to you that you need to back
up and get some objectivity. Can I help you? This is the same
spirit that was on Jesus in his first sermon in Nazareth when
everybody in the church said, ain't this Joseph boy? See they
were backing up from him too because they could not handle
the level of eloquence and clarity and power in which he preached
See when the heart is not ready to bow to Christ it makes every
argument it possibly can not to submit to logic to Eloquence
to clarity to the power of the word, but Paul is Saul is dropping
it on these brothers. He's dropping it and they are
struggling enormously. Our word amazed there is getting
ready to get worse. But this corresponds to what
happened in Acts two, when the Jews came and saw these 17 nations,
all hearing the gospel declared in their own language by those
Galileans. And they were saying, what is this? These men are drunk.
They were amazed. They were astonished. They were
taken back. because they were on the outside
of something that they could not affirm or would not affirm. See, Saul has now been a grenade
thrown right in the middle of the war. It's not this he that
destroyed them that called on his name in Jerusalem and came
hither for that intent that he might bring them bound unto the
chief priests, verse 22. But Saul increased the more in
strength. So I want to work with that for
a moment. Because here's what Luke did. Luke gave you and I the
theater. He gave us the arena. And what
he said was, in this arena, Saul now is the object of the assault
of the whole Jewish band. See, they are not receiving Saul.
They're not accepting his word. They're challenging him. They're
discrediting him being an authentic Christian representative because
he used to be among the Pharisees. And so they're saying, no, he
can't be credible. He can't be credible. And against
that opposition, guess what he's doing? He's getting stronger
and stronger and stronger. Literally in the Greek, increase
the more in strength, literally means that he was empowered from
the inside. to have the kind of clarity of
mind and boldness of heart upon every opposition to challenge
that opposition and to overthrow that opposition with sound biblical
teaching. Stay with me for a moment, this
is powerful. Because see, you and I, we'll talk to people as
long as we ain't got no opposition. But then as soon as somebody
challenges you, you can see how strong you are. Am I telling
the truth? And if they're solid in their
Bible, like a lot of people don't open the door for Jehovah's Witnesses.
They don't open the door because the Jehovah's Witnesses will
tie you in knots if you don't know your Bible, if you don't
understand some doctrine or truth. Jehovah's Witnesses will tie
you in knots because they studied their Bibles far more than evangelical
Christians. Most evangelical Christians are
phonies when it comes to being committed to the Word of God.
The best they can do is hide in the church. I'm telling you
the truth. Here's what's happening with
Saul. Saul is under such an anointing of the Spirit of God. that every
assault coming from every angle of the Sanhedrin simply pushes
him into his knowledge base, which he had acquired as a child.
The Holy Ghost now is doing something on the inside. It's the Greek
word dunamis with the preposition in on the front, power on the
inside, working to order his thoughts and order his mind and
bring clarity to the doctrine so that when he opens his mouth,
he has a clear and compelling answer to every question they
bring up. Powerful. Powerful. He ain't going nowhere
He's standing his ground taking the hits and as he's taking the
hits he's experiencing the work of the Spirit of God on the inside
Illuminating his mind giving him a backbone Telling him what
Christ told the disciples. Don't worry in that hour. I will
give you what to say. I Will give you what to say The
powerful, this here is in a, almost a part of simple form.
He increased more and more in strength. Here's the net effect.
Are you ready? He confounded the Jews. So here's
the Jews. You were, you were a part of
us a while ago. You believed in Torah. You believed
in words. You believed in legal. You are
the ones that were killing Christians. He says, I know, but I was wrong.
And here is what the scripture say. So this back and forth,
that Saul was having with his Jewish compadres created in them
a confounding. So the implications are these. They came with the scriptures
to him, and he came back with the scriptures to them. They
said, this is what the Bible says in Malachi. He says, but
this is what the Bible says in Zechariah. They said, this is
what the Bible is saying in the Psalm. He said, but this is what
the Bible is saying in Isaiah. This is what the Bible is saying
in Genesis. He said, but this is what the Bible is saying in
Numbers. And he would demonstrate to them that their approach to
the scriptures were inferior and invalid. And he would show
that they were wrongly interpreting the word of God, wrongly exegeting
scripture and had a wrong conclusion. And then he would come behind
them. And the word in our text that you're looking at is the
word prove. See the word prove. Here's what he says. But Saul
increased the more in strength and confounded the Jews which
dwelt at Damascus. Proving See the word proving
See you got to be this is why when it comes to to the gospel
historically This affirms the statement statement. I've made
for the longest this thing called the ministry is a manly ministry
and Here's what I mean by that That the gospel has always been
part of a battle a warfare So stay with me for a second. And normally, all things being
correct, we don't send our women to war.
We die for our women when you're a real biblical man. Stay with
me for a moment. So it's only in our 21st century
that we have started now adopting a massive worldwide neo-Roman
model of men and women can strap on uniforms throw grenades and
go blow themselves up. Is that true? That's right. But biblically, God would never
endorse us putting our women on the front line. That would
be so abominable in the sight of a holy God. And it would be
anti-male. Any man that would allow his
woman to go in front of him and get blown up knows nothing about
biblical manhood. This is what you're gonna learn
in the marriage class. This is what you're gonna learn in the
marriage class. But as we are gonna be dealing with spiritual
wars, this is my message next week, in spiritual wars, it is
fundamentally the same way. Why? Because God already has
a set of domestic frameworks that he is protecting and utilizing
in the cause of the kingdom of God. See if I can develop this
right quick, then y'all can go home. We'll talk about it in
two weeks. So what God has done is he's taken the earthly structures
that he has given humanity, family, business, work, commerce, institution. We do all that, right? But family
is the number one entity that God has established. You guys
believe that, right? So with the number one entity that God
has established, God has great concern for the mental, emotional,
psychological, and spiritual welfare of every human being.
If he didn't have concern for them, he would not have made
family the ultimate institution that would be the depository
of his presence and his truth. Can I say that again, just in
case you didn't get it? Without family, everybody's an animal. Family is designed to protect
the children psychologically, physically, mentally, emotionally,
spiritually, until they're strong enough to actually handle this
jungle that we're in. That's why in our marriage seminar,
the first class is marriage on Mars, second class, marriage
in hell. Got that? Marriage in hell. That's
where you and I are, marriage in hell. Well marriage in hell
is doable when you build a biblical framework that has your priorities,
right? Where you don't throw your children
to the dogs And you certainly don't throw your wife to the
dogs Are you guys hearing what I'm saying? Christ doesn't throw
his bride to the dogs You know what? That means he doesn't strap
on every person that he brings into the kingdom armor that they
would fight on the front lines. He strategically places us all
in positions to fight this battle according to his wisdom. So when
you go through the Bible, the men were the ones who were called
upon to fight. Women served, but they served
in the appropriate place of support, support. Y'all got that support
so that men were willing to lay down their lives for their men
and their women. so that the women and children
can perpetuate the seed. Most important to God was the
perpetuation of the seed. Do you guys get that? That's
why we have the Kismet Redeemer principle. that if the man dies,
the woman was to be taken up by a next of kin in the family
to continue to perpetuate the seed because in God's program
and his purpose, perpetuation of the seed was the highest objective.
He doesn't have a military where men and women and children just
get thrown on the front line where everybody get blown away.
You lose your whole society that way. So I'm simply saying this,
that as we are dealing with the idea of biblical preaching and
teaching, one of the reasons I believe that our churches are
in the mess that we're in today is because we have succumbed
to a secular model of government even in the church. We have capitulated
completely to the world's model. And as such, the same devastations
that are in the world are in the church. This is, this is
not, this is not argue. You can't even argue with me
on this. And people try to argue that we are in better times.
I would argue that we are not. I would argue that we've had
bad times in the past where the patriarchal model model has been
abused without a doubt. But I would say that where we
are now is demonically chaotic, demonically chaotic. and that
the things that are on the brink of unfolding in our culture are
a direct consequence of the enemy getting in, infiltrating the
camp and destroying homes. So destroyed are the homes that
we don't even know our identity, which is a major element of discussion
in the marriage class. Because if a man doesn't know
what it means to be a man and a woman doesn't know what it
means to be a woman, how are they going to know what it means
to raise a family? Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? And these questions are, these are both valid and pressing
questions on young people's hearts today. One of the things I'm
gonna talk about tomorrow in our class, in our evangelism
classes, being able to identify when a person is a pluralist,
a relativist, an individual who says, hey, your truth is your
truth, my truth is my truth, and hey, it's all cool. Well,
that individual is simply saying they don't even know what's right.
Now stay with me for a moment, just for a moment, I'll be done
here. That person that doesn't know what's right needs someone
who is proficient in understanding why they are where they are and
helping them with answers that actually truly satisfy the soul.
Did you guys get that? And sometimes Christians don't
know how to do that. So like a Christian don't know how to
help a person understand the ontology of their being as a
human being. So like when they come to you
and say, you know, I don't know who I am. I don't know what I
am. I don't know what I'm supposed to be. Am I the sum total of
my feelings? Because sometimes I feel like
this and sometimes I feel like that. And if a Christian doesn't
understand biblical anthropology, how are you going to help that
individual? Are you hearing what I'm saying? These things are
critical because people are asking the questions. They just want
satisfactory answers. And so you have to be able to
know where they are and reach them where they are in order
to bring them where they should be. But the Christian church
has demonstrated a very, very, very poor, uh, modeling of even
knowing itself. We, we don't even know who we
are. Here's the story of the Christian. This is a joke. So
here's a man, he's a secular individual woman, secular individual.
And she bumps into the Christian and the secular individual says,
can you help me? Say, sure, sure. What do you
need? Well, I'm trying to figure out who I am. I don't even know
who I am. Christians say that's good. That's a good question
because I don't know who I am either. Maybe we can both work on trying
to figure out who we are. And in a nutshell, that's what
I'm talking about. You got a lot of Christians who, if they were
honest, will tell you they don't know who they are. Father, thank
you for this time. Thank you for my brothers and
sisters in Christ. Thank you for this study as we go our way.
Give us traveling mercies, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. God bless you.