Is Slavery in the Bible?

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

We are here to worship God. That’s what we’re doing corporately worshiping God, not the speaker, not the singer is not, you know, God is the issue that we’re here for. And so from Psalm 124, verse eight, our help is in the name of the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Give praise those servants of the Lord who stand in the house of the Lord in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord for the Lord is good. Sing to his name for it is pleasant. Your name O Lord endures forever. You’re renowned O Lord throughout all the ages for the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants. The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak. They have eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear. Nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them.” Psalm 135, 1 through 3, and 13 through 18, and that was the English standard version.

Father, we come to you praising you. You are the God who created the universe, created each one of us, created our very being and sustains us, keeps the molecules in our very bodies and the wood of this pulpit and just everything together by the power through your Son. We come here today to come together as a congregation to worship you and give you praise. Help us to honor you in all that we do over this next period and through your spirit enliven us, make us receptive to what we need to hear and just thank you that you are able to do that in our supernatural existence with you through your son Jesus Christ. Amen. Now time comes the time before we start to worship to confess our sin. I think this is one of the most powerful parts of the the liturgy that we’ve chosen to follow here.

And it’s amazing how God’s Spirit can bring things to your head even different than what Shawn or like myself may say that maybe you need to confess and get right. I think it’s wonderful. It’s one of the great paradoxes of the Christian life that the more holy and saint-like you become, in other words, the more mature you are, the more evil you will know you are, which is just an amazing paradox, but it is one of those truths in the Christian faith.

The thing I really wanna confess today for our congregation, and I think for all of us who are shepherds of the congregation, is we are repenting and trying to move away from our dualism. The idea that on Sunday and in church, When I’m reading my Bible, I’m being very worshipful of God. But then when I go off to work on Monday, that part is my business, not really his. And I think over the last four or five years, we have really started to weed that out of our being. But in that same thing, as each thing comes out, you recognize another layer of that as something that you have to correct in your own life, or maybe the life of our church.

This week we had a situation where John Piper wrote that this, when was it, Saturday, was the day where all the churches across America would go and protest the abortion clinics. And Gail sent me the link, I read the link, and then I came out to her and said, well, we should go. And she and Jolie had already started to get people to go down there. And so I said, well, I’ll go too. So we showed up yesterday to do that, and there were over 400 people in Everett that came to that. And out of our little congregation, 23 people came. And we stood there for about an hour and a half, two hours, and the guy that organizes that spoke and they had another guy that is suing Planned Parenthood here in Washington and he looks like he has them pretty dead to rights that they have abused their funds and stolen from the government from Medicare.

And it’s fascinating to hear the stories of how all these different people from very different denominations, it was quite the unique gathering. We had very charismatic people, just nice people, fundamental type people. And we had at the end, the doxology started to be sung by a guy. It was really great. And then everybody’s saying that, and that’s how we kind of closed it out. But in a lot of churches I’ve been in before, it was OK to go to that. But it really would never be announced from the pulpit, because that’s kind of the worldly politics, and we’re above that. And of course, we as Christians should vote and all of that.

But that’s part of what I want to talk about today and part about why we’ve gotten to the point of abortion. So there’s that to forgive us for or forgive yourself if you haven’t been involved in that. We have some older saints here that have done that and continue to do it. The James’s have been doing that for a long time. And I went back and told her that we actually did something yesterday. She’s quite excited because she’s been doing it for years, right? So it’s really exciting to see that. The other thing is those personal things in your family that cause those hiccups. We do have people that are in trouble that we’re still praying for.

We have a person in first stage discipline, and God is really turning the screws on her at the moment, and just that we can be a witness to them, but also to check ourselves to keep our relationships with the people in our families and our spouses and all the rest of it, keep that in right order. So if any of those things come to mind, ask forgiveness for that.

And then take a moment to quietly examine and confess your sins, and you are able and interested are invited to kneel before the Lord and we’ll do this for about a minute or so and then I’ll get up and I’ll close us. Father, the one great sacrifice of your Son even allows us to come to you with our supplications, with our confessions, with anything. And the amazing thing is you know our hearts intimately even before we speak which is a great comfort and a great convictor. So help each one of us as we confess these things to live them out better and to be more like your son. And the glorious thing about that is you promised that also in 1st John 3. So help each one of us to be that way and we thank you now for your forgiveness and the ultimate sacrifice of your son Jesus Christ on our behalf. Amen. You may stand and the passage I’ve chosen is out of Isaiah on forgiveness.

Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him apportion with the many. He shall divide the spoiled with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sins of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53, 11 through 12. We have several passages this morning so instead of playing sword drill, I’m just going to encourage you to go ahead and listen. Feel free to thumb through your Bible if you want, but I’m going to go through them pretty quickly. And I’m also reading from the ESV And when I hit some of the New Testament passages, when you hear me say the word slave, Dave’s going to make the point in his sermon that’s probably better translated.

Or when I say read the word servant, it’s better translated as slave is the better translation. So let’s go ahead and get to it. The first passage is Exodus 21, 1 through 2. Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go free for nothing. Exodus 21, 16. Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death. Romans 1, 1. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

Jude 1-1. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. And then 1st Timothy 1, 8 through 11, and then listen for one of these particular sins in the list we’re going to read. Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, and slavers, liars, per jurors, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Let’s pray. Slavery is a word that evokes many strong negative emotions given our cultural history. As is typical, men use your word to confuse the issue and have perverted what you have said on this topic. Today, those who advocate normalizing homosexuality distort what the Bible says about slavery so as to advance their sinful lifestyle. And while slavery, as we know it, is revolting to us, we cannot escape the fact that your word describes believers as slaves of Jesus Christ and tells us that we were bought with a price. Indeed, all men are either slaves of sin or slaves of righteousness. There is no one who is truly free.

We pray that you would guide Dave this morning as he teaches us on this important topic so that we might better understand what your word says and what the historical truth is so that we would not be fooled by those who distort the truth. We thank you for the tens of thousands of protesters who showed up at over 300 Planned Parenthoods across America yesterday to pray for an end to the scourge of abortion in our land. May you amplify their voices in the ears of our elected officials and cause them to lose the will to continue funding and supporting this evil in our land. We pray that you would rebuke and bring to repentance those churches which have abandoned the inerrancy of God’s word and provide aid, comfort, and cover to those who embrace sin.

We also pray for those churches which hold to what is right but largely sit by and just watch as the culture continues to slide into all manners of wickedness. Forgive your church for being passive when it should be bold, for being obnoxious when it should be winsome, for preferring ease over sacrifice. May your church once again be known for turning the world upside down rather than just another antiquated and obsolete world religion. We pray for the various needs of our own local body. We ask that the Weinberg home would sell quickly and for a great price, guide them in the decisions that are to follow. We pray for Hank Massey.

His health has taken a turn for the worse and he is becoming less responsive. We ask that you might yet grant this man saving grace, strengthen and comfort Craig and Lila as they spend time with Hank and look after his care. We lift up Mary Kay, who has been battling some kind of ongoing viral infection. We thank you that she’s beginning to feel a bit better, and we pray for a full and complete recovery soon for her. We pray for our college students as they prepare to head back to school. Help them in their studies, but more importantly, help those attending secular schools to resist the devil’s attempts to undermine their faith.

May they prepare well for the responsibilities that await them after graduation. Father, we live in a time that our ancestors could never have imagined. Good is evil, and evil is good. We know we are not the first culture to ever experience this level of decay. Thank you that you are a God who is merciful and quick to forgive. Please bring revival to our homes, our churches, and our nation while there is yet time. We thank you that come what may, we are yours and you will ultimately bring us safely into your presence where there will be no more sorrow but only everlasting joy. And help us now to offer up worship that is pleasing and acceptable in your sight.

We pray all this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Is slavery in the Bible? Or you better believe slavery is in the Bible. read the verses and told you part of the things that I wanted to hammer out of those verses and especially in the New Testament the word doulos is used 117 times and it’s the basic word for slave not servant bond servant all the different things that they layer in the English translations of the Bible it’s hardcore slave and the problem with that is it makes us uncomfortable. If we think about that, do we want to be slaves? Isn’t that bad? Isn’t the world trying to get rid of slavery? But as Jim stole a little bit of my thunder, we’re either slaves of sin or we are slaves of God and righteousness. It’s one of the other and And each time you choose, you’re choosing that path.

So as we look into this subject, keep that in the back of your mind, and I’m gonna be skating around a lot. This sermon is on apologetics, it’s on the Bible, it’s on history, it’s on how we got here, and basically by talking about slavery, how we’ve gotten to the place of homosexual marriage and basically abortion on demand in a country like ours that was founded on Christian principles and some of the reasons why that may be and as we think about these things a lot of the stuff I’m going to give you you’re going to go what is he talking about but you just need to look it up read the books that kind of thing a lot of this in our thinking has been driven by us starting our classical school. We started off right away by teaching a course called Omnibus that reads the great books of the Western world and they do it in six years and you do ancient medieval or middle history and then you do modern history and you do it three times and it’s an incredibly heavy-duty reading I mean like ancient you read Herodotus. This is a major book, okay?

You read about the Roman Caesars you read all that kind of thing well this year we were into the modern and That started with a lot of discussions on America its founding Rousseau’s the social contract Edmund Burst’s reflections on the revolution in France the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, a lot of things like that talking about how America enduring the time it was created, how it got to be where it was. And what this brings to mind is the whole discussion of slavery because that was part of the world when America was founded and when we came over here and what you do with it. And there’s an interesting book that’s been written by Doug Wilson on this subject and I highly recommend it to anybody. This is the book that drove me about a year ago. It’s called Black and Tan and the subtitle is Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture, War, and Scripture in America. And I’d like to start off with a little story that Doug relates in this book about Jerry Falwell. Dr. Jerry Paulwell was once in a television debate with a liberal Episcopalian bishop. And sad to

say, the liberal bishop mauled Dr. Falwell. They were debating some issue like abortion or sodomy, and Falwell was maintaining the biblical position, and the bishop responded by saying, yes, but the Bible allows for slavery. Now, what was Jerry Falwell to do on national television. Does he say the Bishop is correct? The Bible does allow for slavery and that he has no problem with it? We can see the headlines of the New York Times now. Fallwell fires on Fort Sumner, the start of the Civil War. Or perhaps he could have said that the Bishop was wrong but the good Bishop was right. So he did the only thing he could do in such a a situation which was to him and Haw. He got beaten in the argument because he didn’t know his Bible well enough to jump in the middle of it and say, well, of course, but is this the slavery you’re talking about? And give the man a Bible lesson.

On another occasion, a Christian man was handing out tracts at a gay and lesbian dance. Those attending the dance did not appear to be pleased with this, and someone apparently called a liberal Methodist pastor to come and deal with him. The minister came down and in the course of the discussion the Christian man said that Leviticus condemns homosexuality as an abomination. The liberal pastor responded by saying yes, but the Old Testament allows for slavery. The Christian responded by saying yes, it certainly did. So what’s the point? So the idea is that if you’re apologetic stands on what God’s word says, and that is called presuppositional apologetics, so you presuppose the Bible is the source of truth and only by faith can you understand it, you can stand there and look the guy right back in the face and say, yeah, of course.

Now would you like to talk about slavery or do you want to talk about what it says about homosexuality or whatever other thing you’re in? The idea is that most people don’t even know this, and so they want to skirt around those hard topics in the Bible. Well, Paul, he never condemns slavery in the New Testament and all the rest of it. Well, you just read the verse. And the verse there in 1 Timothy, the enslavers, is a Greek word that literally means men-stealers. If you have a King James, that’s the way it translates it. I love that. men’s dealers. And the idea is we have to understand what slavery is. There were two types of slavery in the ancient world. There was indentured servitude, okay, was a labor system whereby young people paid for their passage to the new world by working for an employer for a certain number of years. It was widely employed in the 18th century in British colonies, in North America, and elsewhere.

And as you see by the reading back in Exodus, that is exactly what the Hebrews had. You indentured yourself to a household and in the year of Jubilee you were set free. And the interesting thing is a lot of slaves did not want to leave. And they, if you read further in the Bible, if they wanted to stay in that household, they would go over to the doorpost, put the lobe of their ear on the doorpost, and pound and all through it showing that they wanted to stay in that house and be part of it forever, basically. Which is, I think, interesting that we come to the Lord thinking we chose Him and as we go along we realize He chose us and then all of a sudden we’re in and we want to get our earlobe up to the doorpost and be with Him forever, be His slave forever.

John MacArthur wrote a book back, I think it was published first in like 2010, but we were still down at Grace Community when MacArthur, Sean came down for this, so it must have been a Shepherds Conference in the early 2000s. And he bent over in Russia, and he was staying in a dormitory thing as they were taking him across the 11 time zones, and he was preaching at each of the seminaries there. And he mentioned that he’d started to think about the translation of doulos and how it’s bondservant and all these things and what a trick it is really on the people of God. And so he wrote a book summing it all up saying slave the hidden truth about your identity in Christ and then he goes on for a couple hundred pages beating this drum.

But he we heard the first sermon that he gave and I turned to Sean because I’m one of these guys, it’s always, I get upset. And I’m going to give myself away a little bit here. If you’re reading in the Greek, it’s like if I’m writing in English and I choose a certain word and a person’s reading it and they want to translate what I said in French, I don’t think they should really change my word that I wrote. I think they should translate it close to what I’m saying and then consistently use that word. What happens in a lot of English translations is they’ll take a Greek word and take its base meaning and then start modifying it according to the context or if it sounds too harsh.

And evil is one of those words. If you look up the base word for evil, raw, in the Old Testament, and start looking up all the places it’s used, you’ll find it’s very interesting how raw can turn into calamity and all kinds of different things. But the base root of the word is evil. The same thing with slavery. And MacArthur wanted to pound this point home. Because obviously, by the thing, if Paul is a slave of Christ, Jude is a slave of Christ, and you can go through all the New Testament books. It goes over and over like that. And Christ talks about it as he talks about his followers. You’re either going to follow me, or you’re going to follow Satan.

A great theologian, Bob Dylan, wrote a song in 1979. You’ve got to serve somebody. And that was on the slow train coming album. But you’re going to have to serve somebody, yes indeed. You’re going to have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re going to have to serve somebody. And that’s upfront and close and personal, and that’s the thing. And the amazing thing to me is how this has applied as we have built our church on the principles of reform and still reforming. And as you do that, and you become reformed, and you still become more reformed, and you still reform your life, and then you realize, oh, I’m really doing good this week.

And then the next week you realize, uh-oh, another layer of the onion’s got to come off. I’ve got to reform even better in this direction. So it’s a continuous process. And it gets back to that thing that I said, that one of the paradoxes of the Christian life, the more holy you become, the more wicked you know you are, which is crazy, but that’s the way it is. And it works that way till we get to heaven. And when we get to heaven and face God face to face, we’re gonna be so blown away that that holy, holy, holy thing in Revelation doesn’t seem to be that big a deal to me. I think we could be happy doing that for eternity because the very God that created all of this and creates us, we will see a whole spectrum of Him that we never saw before, and by faith we see that now.

So the idea is, why should we be ashamed that the Bible says this? I mean, if it truly is condoning indentured servitude, well, then it doesn’t sound bad to me. I mentioned it in our life to life group. Some of us work for companies, and you might be under contract to that company. You signed a contract that you’re to show up for four years or even Ron, he goes to a job and he signs a contract, I’m going to come for two weeks at your house and you’re going to pay me this much and I’m going to do this stuff and then once it’s done, we’re done. And that’s what the Bible talks about, okay? Forms of that. What would be so wrong if somebody wanted to come to America, got a sponsoring family to sponsor them, came and worked for them, got the green card, that whole thing, then became the citizen.

That’s the way immigration properly works. We give people a green card to come and be part of us. They work that off. They can work out a situation to pay for their passage or their family’s passage, all those kind of things. It’s still done today, even though people get all uptight. The Bible preaches slavery. What they’re trying to hang on the Bible is that the Bible approves what is called chattel slavery. Chattel slavery is an enslaved person who is owned forever and whose children and children’s children are automatically unsaved. Chattel slaves are individually treated as complete property to be bought and sold.

Chattel slavery was supported and made legal by European governments and monarchs and has been practiced in the world ever since the world began. You read the old books, Herodotus and all those things, armies would capture people and immediately they were men stealers stealing them, their whole families taking their wives, maybe killing the husband, bringing them into their family by force, none of their will. The Bible clearly rejects that. That’s the issue in men stealers and the rest of it. So then Jesus comes along into this wicked world, Rome with the first century running the world with all its slaves, all its chattel slaves, and these people start coming to Christ.

And Paul’s preaching to their masters who have been indoctrinated with this kind of thinking, this is my property. And all of a sudden, this guy comes to Christ. And in certain places, that man brings the gospel to the master. The master then realizes, oh my goodness, who’s the master here? What’s happening? And realizing God is the master. And that’s why slaves have to submit to their masters and all of that. But what’s the proper Christian thinking? And that’s where the book of Philemon and Paul’s advice that he paid the debt. And when he returned the slave, the slave was to be freed. And that appears to be the way it goes in that writing.

But the idea is as the gospel influence comes to the world, there’s no way that Christians can do this. So then you ask, well, what happened here in America? What happened in Europe? They had all these slaves. The British were actually capturing a lot of these people. And remember, the other thing that’s always fascinating to me is that it’s a huge big thing that we white people enslaved these African people. Do you know who captured the African people in Africa? Other Africans. They men steeled those people to take them to the coast to sell to the Arab slavers or the British slavers or the French slavers who came down to buy those people that property, to buy that shadow slave from that African captor.

A lot of them were Arab slave traders also. And then bring them to America to sell to other people. So they were just trading property. And the incredible thing to me is how we get blamed for it when the African nations themselves were enslaving those same people that did that. Now, I’m not saying there were good people that wanted slaves and all the rest of that. Because if you’re a good Christian, you look at that and say, I can’t do that. So during this time, though, the gospel influence is permeating the culture here in America and in Europe. And another point that I’ve talked about before when talking about Kuyper and Kuyperian Calvinism and the way that the gospel is starting in the east, starts in Israel, Christ comes to that tiny little nation to be that example, dies for our sins, and then as Christianity spreads, it spreads from the east to the west.

So it then goes up into Europe and then from Europe, the colonies to America. And now it’s moving to China and all the rest of those things. It moves from the east westward around the world. As the gospel gets lived out in a good Bible believing, what I would like to say Calvinistic look at things, the society has to change. Those people, you cannot come and worship God and not be changed. So as you’re changed, you can’t sit still for that slavery. So what do you do? Do you then revolt or do you reform? And what does the Bible teach? Uh oh, we got slavery, let’s go get a gun and start shooting those guys. No. What is the most powerful weapon we have, the Gospel, to reform that mind actually changes the thing?

Killing an abortion doctor will stop that abortion doctor from doing an abortion, but there’s another one that will just step in and do it. But when you start changing those people’s hearts, God working inside of them, they then become a huge megaphone for what not to do. And the interesting thing is that America was founded by, quote, the American Revolution. Well, as you look into this and you open up different history books, all of a sudden, and even Wikipedia does this, it’s called the War for American Independence. That’s different than the American Revolution. And this was really pointed out this year as we read through these books in their order.

I mean, Rousseau is talking about the social contract in the 1740s. Burke is talking about the French Revolution in the 1790s. And the American War for Independence had occurred in between that. Edmund Burke was an Irish parliamentarian in England who was in favor of what the colonists were saying. He tried to argue in favor of the colonists because all they were saying is they were citizens of England and that they wanted Representation that they were promised by the government they got over here and all of a sudden they reneged on the deal that they gave So they weren’t in revolt They were begging to for the people that actually made the deal with them to do the deal Stick up with your deal. So they were trying to reform that thinking and it reached a point where the whole thing blew up.

At that point, we created America. And when we created America, there was a strong Christian influence. Everybody knows that. It’s so obvious when you see it. Even people like Franklin that weren’t Christian or Jefferson or Deos, they still recognized a supreme authority and they recognize that that supreme authority had relationship. Even if they weren’t Trinitarian Christians, they realized that God wanted a relationship with us. To worship God is one thing, but to worship the Trinitarian God is a whole other thing. And that’s why when you study ancient history in the documents of the early church, that’s why the Trinity is such a big deal.

God forever was with himself worshiping himself. And then God says, let’s make a whole creation that will do what? Reflect my glory back on me. That’s our job to be those reflectors of God. And we are acting in Trinitarian fellowship when we reflect that on each other, reflect it on our society, and live it out. When you live that kind of thing out, you start changing things. Your household will change, your neighborhood will change, your neighbor will zorowski, why are you doing that?

What are you being nice to me for? I’m just some clown. And you all of a sudden you have these open doors to reflect what God is doing in his tridentarian existence. So at the first of our country it was founded that way. There were more abolitionist organizations in the south before the Civil War than there were in the north. The Southerners knew they had to get rid of slavery. The actual Confederate Constitution in Article 9 outlaws foreign slave trade. They knew they had to stop it, that generation. So the Confederate Constitution outlawed slavery before the American Constitution ever did. Fascinating when you start getting into these things. And as you research these things, and I invite you guys to burrow down into some of these discussions, it’s fascinating. Now, am I saying that the South was right on some things? Was the South wrong for slavery? Absolutely. So you have to balance this out and be smart about it, but there’s a whole problem here that just gets blanketed over.

Well, the Bible approves slavery, so therefore you Christians are a bunch of idiots, so He can’t listen to you. Not true at all. So as the problem started to magnify, they started the nation. They knew they had to deal with slavery, but they knew they couldn’t get the states to agree and come to an agreement. So they put it on the back shelf because they needed them to unite to stand against the abuse from Britain. So after that, it still kept bubbling along. But an interesting thing happened in America in 1805. The two major seminaries and schools of higher learning in America that had been developed were Princeton and Harvard.

And Princeton and Harvard were Calvinistic seminaries, basically. These are the seminaries that produced Jonathan Edwards and people like that. And remember, in those days when Edwards showed up to go to seminary, he already knew his Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He didn’t have to take language classes. He showed up knowing that being able to read the documents in their original language. This is something that maybe a couple generations from now, our students will be able to do. We’re already starting to indoctrinate him in Latin at a young age and that kind of thing. But we’re working in that direction so that you don’t have to read a translation of Rousseau.

You can actually read it in the French or whatever. So anyway, as this comes along in 1805, Harvard appoints a Unitarian theologian to be head of its Divinity School. So basically, it took its Trinitarian, Calvinistic, Christian seminary and turned it on its head and turned it over to a Unitarian pastor.

At that point, Harvard becomes humanistic in its thought. And it starts to go sideways. And the thinking of those generations after 1805, they keep cranking them out, starts to put Trinitarian Christianity on a back burner. Now, I’m not saying that everybody in America, as soon as some clown gets appointed over a seminary at Harvard in 1805, that all of North America goes, you know, sideways. It doesn’t work that way. But that seed has been planted where the best and the brightest are going, listening to that trash. At that point, they’d given up from the leadership of believing in a Trinitarian Christian God. So out of that, the Northeast then starts to become industrialized.

The whole industrial movement that was going through Europe came to us. The South was considered one of the richest places in the world. matches Mississippi and New Orleans were one of the richest cities in the world from the cotton trade and everything. And who were they selling that cotton to? To Britain, to be woven into cloth and all the rest of it. All that trade was going on. So everybody’s kind of hudged-mudged in this thing. But the industrial north wanted to dominate and hold the thing together. During this time, in Europe, Rousseau’s writing the Social Contract, which is making an argument for revolution instead of reformation.

You can read certain parts of that and see that he was saying, no, we need to reform our government, other parts of it. He’s definitely calling Gittin’ the streets and break the thing down. So that whole debate was going on for like a hundred year period before we became a nation. We wanted to do it through reform, but we needed a war of independence. And in Europe, France goes the full tilt revolutionary thing. Totally unbiblical. What they do, Burke and other people in Europe watch the French Revolution and go, whoa, this is really bad. You do not want to do this. And it goes on, this whole book is one paragraph after another of the dangers that happen from that.

During this time, America is sitting across the Atlantic and all kinds of things are being brought to our people and from 1851 to 1861, Karl Marx is one of the lead writers in the New York Herald Tribune. If you look it up, you can read the articles. There’s a thick book of all the articles that he wrote. The founder of the Russian Revolution and communism and that whole thinking of turning everything upside down is infecting the thought of those people up there. During this time, all kinds of people in the South are trying to quit their slavery, trying to figure out how do we stop this, because the problem is you have generations and how do I train the generation.

There were all kinds of school teaching slaves to read and stuff. You know, you see all these things on roots that nobody was being taught or anything. It’s just not true when you start studying it. The other interesting thing is just type in black slave owners before the Civil War. It’s amazing how many of them there were and how many people they owned. Black people owning black people in the South and in the North. So as you look at this thing, it’s a more convoluted thing for our country. But here comes the next problem.

To cure it, the politicians and the leading among them, Abraham Lincoln, say we need a civil war in order to hold the union together because of this issue of slavery bubbling around. Did we need a civil war? I don’t think we did. The South, like I said, had all these abolition groups in the South. They knew they had to give it up. And even when they’d been pushed to create the Confederate States of America in their Constitution, they forbid enslaving other people, foreign slave trade, forbid it, and forbid their people to be doing it. We didn’t do that. The North didn’t do that. So anyway, we have this problem. And this is where the real revolution in America came, our civil war. Europe got rid of its slavery by reformation. Now, I am sure some people died in certain little squabbles or whatever across Europe to eliminate slavery. But it was nowhere near the over 600,000 that died in our Civil War over this issue.

Was that necessary to do away with slavery? No. And we’re going to sing Amazing Grace, John Newton’s Hymn. And that was a anti-slavery abolitionist kind of song. But the thing is, as you study it, you realize all these people realize they had a problem and good Christian people were trying to get themselves out of it. And if they would have gone the reformed route, we would end up with not 600,000 dead. But out of that thinking became crushing states’ rights and the individuals in their states to decide what they wanted to do for themselves. So then federal thinking trumps state thinking. And at that point, you’re setting the stage for the federal government to dictate to you and our state and your community what you need to do.

That wasn’t why America was founded. It was a confederation of states together that came together to make the union, but the union was being held together because they wanted to be there, not because they were forced to be there. The whole thing, if you read all the documents and the way they signed it and the debates, the federalist papers, the anti-federalist papers, always in there was the option to opt out. But we now have been sold a bill of goods for the last 100 years. No, it’s America, and nobody can opt out. And those people like the Texans that are ready to have Texas succeed and stuff are, that’s just crazy.

You can’t do that. Well, it really is fascinating, isn’t it, that the people are the ones running that kind of thinking, and that the people of Texas created jobs, the best economy, all the rest of it. because they don’t want to be part of that nonsense that’s being dictated all the way down. And when you start thinking about this, who is better to run your own community but yourselves? And who are we better to influence our community by salt and light and reform to do that? And that’s why I was really convicted that I needed to go down on Saturday to the abortion protest and just be there, be part of that. And the reason is, we don’t need to be silent anymore.

There’s no reason we shouldn’t be out there trying to be salt and light in our community. And if we are, you don’t know what God is going to do with that. You don’t know who you’re talking to or what person is going to come by or who’s going to get convicted by some testimony. And we had 23 souls out of our tiny congregation going there that is affecting something. And I’m going to speak for the elders now. I think that we ought to be part of this. And I think that the guy that started it, Josh has a coin pickup that he goes to in an apartment building near there. He sees a little table there every day there, there, at the parking lot doing this.

And we’ve got women that want to do something and want to go down there. And I think men should be down there too. To do shifts and help those people to be able to hand out the pamphlets or just be there for counsel, or just to remind those people as they drive by those signs. I mean, they had posters yesterday that were really graphic, coins with little tiny baby body parts put on them, you know, simplifying that they’re selling these body parts. It’s amazing. I mean, it caused me to look up STEM Express, the one that’s where they’re doing these videos of. You just go on their website and then it says products, and you click the thing and down comes the menu, and livers.

And you click on livers, and there’s all these fetal livers for sale there. And they range in price from $24,000 to $1,200 for a baby liver, depending on what kind of cells it has in it. And there’s the price list right there on the internet. I mean, I could have punched the thing and sent him a MasterCard, and they would have sent me it. That’s crazy. And yet Planned Parenthood says, oh, no, we’re not selling baby parts. And they get around with it, but a bunch of lawyers create things, oh no, we’re just getting money for transportation or handling fees or something like that. So they’re not really selling the parts.

It just so happens that in the box they’re shipping, they got this baby part. That’s just, you know, how much of this insanity are we going to live with? It’s just nuts. And so anyway, that kind of thinking is convicting me and I hope it’s convicting all of you. That’s just plain wrong. Now, I’m not saying go get your .45. I brought this up in our life-to-life group a couple weeks ago. I said, okay, they’re committing murder in there. You got a gun. Let’s go down there and shoot the guy before he murders that baby. Ho, ho, may it never be. All right? That’s happened. People have blown up abortion clinics and all of that.

But the thing is, no, what do we have? We have the most powerful tool in the world.

The thing, that’s why those Christians under ISIS can give their testimony and their heads are being cut off because they are the power of the gospel of God that will change those things. Now we do everything within our legal right to try to stop it. I think that’s totally no problem. But the idea to become a revolutionary and not a reformer, no. When you start to become a revolutionary and do things outside what the Bible prescribes, now you’re in big trouble. Now, some of you would say, but we started this church on a revolution. We revolted from the mother church to create our church. Did we? We operated within the rules of that church, appealing to the leadership to engage in the conversation. We don’t talk about that. Just trust us. We don’t talk about that. Just trust us. If we ever, ever tell you that in this congregation, get out, go away. We are responsible in a certain way for your souls, Hebrews 13, and we need to have explanations for what we’re doing. And anybody can ask us. Kids can ask us, you can ask us, anybody can ask us. What we are doing here,

we are a corporate body. All parts of the body, the little finger, the eye, the leg, the mouth, all of it, that’s us. And if we’re not operating together and thinking that through, we are straight from the pit, okay? So we want to be that kind of open body. When you’re When you’re in a church that doesn’t operate that way, what do you do? You have no recourse. There is no discussion. I mean, and all the rules are clearly laid out. You know, in 1 Timothy 5, if you have an accusation against an elder, bring two or three witnesses and that accusation should be said and argued out in front of the body if need be. Now, obviously, most of the time those things should be cured. And it’s the same thing with If you’ve got a brother that sins against you, you go to him and you say, hey, you know, you’re screwing around with me. What’s a problem?

Oh, I didn’t even realize that. I’m sorry. You know, okay. Now it’s been cured. But if it doesn’t get cured, you bring another witness and correspondingly tell the story and see that it’s right. And the guy still says, ah, I’m not doing anything with you. Okay. At that point, then the pressure of the body brings that to bear on that person to repent. That’s just part of body life, and that’s a glorious part of it. And the thing is, it doesn’t need to get to that if you’re repenting and constantly following our liturgy and that kind of thing. So as a shepherd, I want to see us follow our Worldview Wheel illustration.

You’ll notice on our kids’ corner today, we have our Worldview Wheel, diagrammed out there for the kids. And the whole idea is there is kind of a diagram of how you should look at your life. We operate on the axle of grace. God’s grace is the axle which the wheel turns on. The lordship of Christ is kind of the tire or the whole encircling thing of that. But inside of that there’s narrative, catechesis, symbol, liturgy, lifestyle. That’s the way we live our life. We’re rolling on the lordship of Christ by the axle of grace with all these ingredients in there. Catechesis is sometimes just pure teaching of the word.

To understand what this phrase means, that phrase means putting together your theology. Our liturgy. I defy anybody that’s come here for a long time that you are not a changed person from watching our liturgy week after week. changes me more than anything else we do, just that we practice the worship of God every week. And we culminate it when we get down to our communion time, when we commune together to praise God and enjoy in a banquet, mini banquet, of what he has done for us. And we’re looking forward to the great marriage supper of land that will happen, you know, at the end of time. So that’s the kind of thing we want to inculcate into you. The other thing to always remember too, and keep this in mind because some of us have Unitarian thinking being truthtubers.

Sean kind of, you know, invented that phrase. But the idea, I come here with my little tube and I’m gonna stuff this more truth in here. Now I got all this truth and I’m going to go out there armed with my truth so I can punch somebody in the face. No, no, no, no. Trinitarianly, I have this truth, but this truth is convicting me to, in love, embrace that person and try to engage them and be kind and all the rest of it. I mean, it was amazing yesterday how most all the people there holding these horrible signs, doing all this, some people coming by, you know, giving lip. But most of the people smiled and said, good morning, how you doing, that kind of thing. Smiling, engaging them. You don’t need to be screaming at them, you’re going to hell or whatever. Anybody who’s got half a brain looks at that picture and goes, eww, I don’t like that picture, but you guys are jerks, you’re taking away freedom, you know, and that kind of thing.

So just to keep all those things in mind and run a balanced life. Another thing that I’ve spoken on before is Kuyper’s Lectures to Princeton in 1901. And Glenn Wainwright has read the book and we have it on our website so you can get the MP3, plug it in your car and listen to it. Those are amazing lectures and it really sums up in a big bunch of time how we should respond in our business, in our art, in our family, in our politics. And this is written by a guy that was a theologian, prime minister of the Netherlands, great writer, lecturer, all kinds of things. I mean, the guy was nuts. He started newspapers, all kinds of things like that, and had incredible influence in the Netherlands.

Kuiper’s theology was part of, now I just spaced her name, the concentration camp lady, Corey Tamboon. Those theology books of Kuiper were in her family. And if you guys haven’t read the story of Corrie Timboom, she was in the prison camps and the Nazi guards became Christians because of her testimony and her sisters and all of that. And it said that Hitler, when he invaded the Netherlands, said find anybody that’s a follower of Kuiper and kill them. Those instructions were given to the SS because they did not want anybody to survive that because he knew what a danger it was, somebody that believed those things and could practice them underground.

So that kind of thinking is what we wanna cultivate and have happen. So I’ve filled up the time and I didn’t even get through my little pages and notes, much less the 18 that got smoked. So here’s the thing. There’s also an apologetics message here. Don’t be ashamed of the Word of God. If somebody asks you a stumping question and you think they got you in a box and you’re gonna have to desert the Word of God, just say, you know what, that’s a good question, but let’s set up a time where I can get back to you. I don’t know the answer to that. And don’t try to run a bluff. If you don’t know it, don’t jump in the fray.

But that should convict us to know it better. And I want you to remember that we are, or at least we espouse, that we are presuppositional apologists, okay? Not evidentialists. Now, somebody doesn’t know that. And evidentialists, you guys have probably heard of Josh McDowell’s book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, popular back in the 70s and 80s and stuff. And those books are written that you just keep stacking the evidence in front of that non-believer, and pretty soon the stack’s going to get so heavy that it’s just going to shift his thinking and he’s going to go, oh yeah. Now, even the evidentialists will say he doesn’t understand that till what?

Till God through his spirit opens that person’s eyes to that truth. Presuppositionally, we see that the truth is the Bible and we presuppose that faith needs to happen before any of these truths can be understood. Now, does that mean I don’t speak it to that person? Well, that depends because there’s a classic verse that’s used by the apologist, 1 Peter 3.15, and it says, have a reason for the hope that is within you to what? To everyone who asks. Not to everyone. You don’t just start grabbing people off the street and say, hey buddy, let me tell you about all this. You guys can look at what are you nuts? But when somebody comes up to you and says, why are you different?

What are you doing this for? Now they’re asking, now you have an open door and God is probably prompting that person’s heart or tickling his curiosity or whatever. So that’s the idea of where it is. That’s why we’re not down at the local laundromat grabbing everybody and giving them the gospel. Now if you have the gift of evangelism and you have a relationship with somebody, have at it. The guy that brought me to the Lord used to go into supermarkets and hang around the checkout lines and watch if people looked at all the rags that have, you know, this one’s getting the sixth divorce and Elvis is alive on Mars and that stuff.

And they’d pick the thing up and start reading it and Daryl would go up to him and say, that’s really interesting. What do you find interesting about that? Oh yeah, I think Elvis might be on Mars. Really? Have you ever thought about the God that created Mars? And he would get the conversation into a gospel presentation. But if they didn’t respond and move in that direction, he’d just say, no, it’s interesting you read that magazine. You’d look for somebody else where you’d have a live wire. So in effect, he’s still looking for that person that asks. So anyway, that will help your evangelism to remember that. Now does that mean if you live next door to somebody and they never ask and you have a 10-year relationship with them that you don’t bring up, that you go to church, and what runs?

No, obviously. I mean, we have a neighbor like that, and it’s interesting. He’s given us opportunity for those discussions at certain points. The other thing, not be ashamed of the Bible. The Bible has pristine facts. No other book on the planet does. Okay? That’s it. Every other history book has error in it. But the Bible, if we believe what we say, that it’s inerrant, that it has pristine facts. And what’s the one event in history that defines history? Christ’s resurrection, victory over death, and victory over our sin and our path, and our only path to heaven. So on that, that was a whole bunch of stuff I know, and disconnected, and whatever.

I just want to encourage you that I want, as one of the shepherds of you guys, for you to really think outside the box and to be involved. We want to change our community. We’ve been saying that. We started a school. And I saw we can change this community. There’s a lot of people that are up to here. And like Doug has said, it’s one of the great blessings that the pagans have brought to us. the internet and all this stuff. And because of that, the truth can’t be tapped down. We don’t depend on a newspaper to publish a story so we can cut it out and send it to our friends here and there. Immediately across the world, everybody can watch the video.

Everybody can see what a guy says in his speech. You know, don’t necessarily believe the newscaster. Go on a guy’s website and watch his whole speech. It’s always interesting, you know, what they pluck out and stuff. I mean, I saw Ben Carson just this morning as I was putting this together, he was down in Arizona. He went along the border, and they accused him because he said, we could use drone planes here because I don’t notice any border guards, any border police, going up and down this road along this fence, and anybody could climb it. So we could use drones to patrol this and photograph it and report back. Of course, the left-wing press immediately came out with the headline, Ben Carson recommends drone attacks on people trying to get across the border.

You know, just going to nuke these guys that are trying to climb over the fence. And they had him on his program and the guy, you know, confronts him with this. And he looks at him in that calm way, and I believe it’s because of his Christian, you know, testimony. He just looked at him and he said, are you nuts? Are you? You know, he just shot this guy down totally and said, well, of course I’m not talking about that. Didn’t you listen to what I said? And then he just explained it. So there’s all kinds of opportunity. And I think God wants to bless us. And we have a lot of sin to repent from. But once you repent, turn and change and move on.

All of us have a lot of history. There’s a lot of history right in this room, just on the abortion thing. We have people that have had abortions and all the rest of it. Not a problem. Repent, move on, be a light unto the world. So with that, I’m going to close because it’s just about right. I’ve actually ran it to the right time, and I’ve actually gotten people to stand up and sit down at the right time, so we’re really doing good on that. So let me pray, and then we will stand and sing, and we’ll have the offering. That’s our next thing. And we don’t pass the offering plate for those of you that are visiting. We have that bucket in the back and then Andy or somebody will bring it up and put it here.

We do that as a corporate thing and we want you to have free will giving not to have this plate that you’ll go, oh, should I put something in? Somebody’s going to see me, da da da da da, or that bag where you put your hand in. I always wondered in that bag because I got saved and went to a brethren church and they had the bag and I always asked Darrell, I said, how do we know that guy’s not performing some kind of sleight of hand and putting 20 in and taking 50 out? I’ve seen magic shows. But anyway, okay. So we don’t go for that. We like right up front here. And so anyway, that’s going to happen. So let me pray and then we’ll stand and sing and have our offering.

Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for the way that I felt you gave me the ability to speak my heart. And I ask, as I often do, that through your spirit cause people to forget stupid stuff I said, but to remember the good stuff and to ingrain it and even sharpen me and hone each other as we move ahead in these exciting times. We thank you for the saints that have done this a long time. We thank you for the new ones. We had little kids, our kindergarteners in our school there yesterday, and they could be part of this. We want each generation to see that, and we want to be those examples. So we thank you for those things, and of course, thank you most of all for your word.

And it’s in your son’s name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. So now we’ll sing and have the offering brought up. Now comes the best part, celebrating communion together. This one always, it’s amazing to me how the supernatural experience of all of us coming here and accepting the elements and then partaking in them, I start to become somewhat Lutheran in my thinking because something beyond just symbolism is going on here. And I don’t want to say that it’s obviously transubstantiation, but I will say there is some consubstantiation. In other words, together with the elements, we are becoming united and we are becoming closer to God in some supernatural way.

And I’m not saying that’s Christ’s blood and his body and all of that. And we’re not going to carve a niche out of the wood if you spill some grape juice on the thing. In one of these days, we’re going to repent from our using of grape juice, but that’s another discussion. But the idea that we’re coming together to celebrate what God did for us, not to be ashamed and to sit there and think, I’m so unworthy I can’t come forward, I can’t touch this because it’s too holy and that sort of thing. God has forgiven our sin if you are one of his. And if you are one of his, we come to celebrate what he’s done for us. Remember, in the first part of our liturgy, we’ve confessed our sins.

So we’re pretty good. We’re at least only an hour and a half worth of sinning by the time we get to here. So the idea is the celebration, not to be ashamed and to come and strengthen yourself. Because by this food, we are becoming stronger and more united in the body of Christ. And that universal body, that’s the other thing too. We are not the only place in town that is doing this. There are other believers here and across the world everywhere. Some say there’s more people that are believers in China and house churches than there are maybe in all the western world. And that’s pretty exciting if that’s going on.

That’s incredible that God is doing a work wherever He wants. And we just need to be those faithful people that are living that out. And as we do this, I want you to really feel that and understand it. As you do that, most of the times the songs we sing, I can’t keep a dry eye, I know Chuck has trouble. And that’s part of the problem. These guys say, looking back at you guys when you sing, the enjoyment you get out of that is just, that’s all part of this. And that’s really cool. So as we do this, let’s remember that. This is an open communion. We are not a closed communion, which means that if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and that he died for your sins, you are welcome to come up here and participate.

And the way we do it is we stand and then we come through the center aisle and circulate back and then we take it together. So let’s start that off. So here’s the charge for today. And the charge is just be a Christian in every way. Go out and in a reformed manner change our world, change our neighborhood, change it for the better. Give us the hope that we need to display and the joy that we need to demonstrate to the next generations that are coming after us. It’s a wonderful thing to live and see with my children and my grandchildren and to see the influence you can have on those generations. So help each one of us understand that and be that to the next generation.

So return, O Lord, how long? Have pity on your servant’s slaves. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your slaves and your glorious power to your children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. Amen and be warm and be filled. Thank you.