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The Evil That Stuns Heaven · Pastor John Piper's answers

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of evil in the world, stunning
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  Speaker 1: evil in the world, and you can see it just
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  Speaker 1: about daily in your social media feeds if you want
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  Speaker 1: to phone cameras, live streams, security cameras, body cameras. The
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  Speaker 1: evil that we commit against one another gets captured and shared.
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  Speaker 1: But this violence and hatred towards one another is not
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  Speaker 1: the evil that most stuns Heaven. Now there's a greater
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  Speaker 1: evil behind all of this other evil, and we saw
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  Speaker 1: it in our reading yesterday in Jeremiah two, verses twelve
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  Speaker 1: and thirteen, and it's an evil that deserves more headlines.
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  Speaker 1: To that end comes this question from Lisa. Dear pastor John,
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  Speaker 1: thank you for your diligence and taking the time to
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  Speaker 1: help people all of the world work through difficult questions.
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  Speaker 1: I have one, Why do we need a savior in
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  Speaker 1: the first place? I consider myself to be a good person,
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  Speaker 1: and when I look around at most people, I would
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  Speaker 1: say the same about them. I know I am not
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  Speaker 1: perfect and I cannot hold God's law perfectly, but I
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  Speaker 1: don't consider my thoughts and action to be so terrible
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  Speaker 1: that they need to be punished by death. Should I
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  Speaker 1: really need to die? Because I disobeyed my parents as
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  Speaker 1: a child or told a lie. I have a difficult
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  Speaker 1: time seeing myself and those close to me as being
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  Speaker 1: wicked and utterly depraved. There is certainly great evil in
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  Speaker 1: the world, such as war, rape, murder, racism, oppression, etc.
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  Speaker 1: But most of the world doesn't need God to see
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  Speaker 1: these things as evil or to make a positive change.
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  Speaker 1: I certainly don't see how someone innocent dying a horrible
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  Speaker 1: death somehow makes my wrongs right in the sight of God.
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  Speaker 1: Can you help me make sense of this seemingly twisted
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  Speaker 1: justice and help me come to understand why I need Jesus.
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  Speaker 2: I think Lisa speaks for millions of people who quietly
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  Speaker 2: don't feel comfortable to it, mildly don't feel comfortable with
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  Speaker 2: Hell or with the Cross of Christ. And I would
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  Speaker 2: state the problem like this, Where God is small and
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  Speaker 2: man is big, Hell will be abhorrent, indeed absurd, and
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  Speaker 2: the Cross will be foolishness. So where God is small
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  Speaker 2: and man is big, Hell will be abhorrent and the
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  Speaker 2: Cross will be foolishness. The most telling thing about Lisa's
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  Speaker 2: question is that her conception of evil can never be
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  Speaker 2: big enough to make sense of Hell or the Cross
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  Speaker 2: of Christ, because she defines evil only in relation to
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  Speaker 2: what harms man, not what demeans God. She says, for example,
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  Speaker 2: I have a difficult time seeing myself as being wicked
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  Speaker 2: and utterly depraved. And then she defines evil like this.
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  Speaker 2: There is great evil in the world, earl, such as war, rape, murder, racism, oppression.
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  Speaker 2: But the majority of the world doesn't need God to
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  Speaker 2: see these things as evil or make a change. So
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  Speaker 2: what are the great evils in the world according to
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  Speaker 2: Lisa and the answers war, rape, murder, racism, oppression. Now
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  Speaker 2: all of these are ways that man harms man. You
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  Speaker 2: don't even need God in the picture in order to
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  Speaker 2: call those evil. Lisa doesn't seem to have a category
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  Speaker 2: for evil understood as the dishonoring, demeaning, disparaging, insulting of
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  Speaker 2: God as infinitely worthy of honor doesn't come into her picture.
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  Speaker 2: So let's do a thought experiment. Suppose there is no
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  Speaker 2: God and Lisa is a super successful Adolf Hitler. I'm
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  Speaker 2: not saying she leans that way at all. This is
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  Speaker 2: just an experiment. Super successful Adolf Hitler, she is able
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  Speaker 2: not only to kill all the Jews in the world,
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  Speaker 2: but all the other non aryans, everybody in Africa, she
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  Speaker 2: kills everybody. In China, she kills everybody in India, she
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  Speaker 2: kills everybody in South America she kills. So she succeeds
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  Speaker 2: in orchestrating the murder of about seven billion people. And
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  Speaker 2: the question is would she deserve eternal punishment in hell?
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  Speaker 2: And my answer is no, she wouldn't for two reasons. First,
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  Speaker 2: if there's no God and we are simply complex, chemical
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  Speaker 2: and material animals, then there's no such thing as right
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  Speaker 2: and wrong anyway, or dessert or merit, blameworthiness, just different
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  Speaker 2: chemical reactions. But second, and more importantly, for my point,
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  Speaker 2: she wouldn't deserve an infinitely long punishment because seven billion
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  Speaker 2: murders are still finite, and a finite number of finite
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  Speaker 2: crimes doesn't deserve an infinite punishment. In other words, when
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  Speaker 2: God is left out, there's no way to have an
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  Speaker 2: infinite crime deserving of an infinite punishment like hell or
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  Speaker 2: the cross. They would simply be unjust. But this is
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  Speaker 2: why God has spoken to us in the Bible. We
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  Speaker 2: will never understand the depth of our sinfulness without God's
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  Speaker 2: telling us what the problem is, which he has very clearly,
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  Speaker 2: Lisa and I would never come up with this truth
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  Speaker 2: on our own. We must learn it from the Bible.
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  Speaker 2: And what God has said is this the essence of evil.
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  Speaker 2: What makes evil evil is not harm done to man,
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  Speaker 2: but indignities done to God. Harm to man is horrible,
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  Speaker 2: but it is meant to be a vivid parable of
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  Speaker 2: the outrage of failing to honor God, failing to glorify God,
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  Speaker 2: failing to thank God as God. So ask this question.
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  Speaker 2: If God is of infinite value, infinite beauty, infinite greatness,
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  Speaker 2: with all of his perfections uniting in an infinitely satisfying
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  Speaker 2: panorama of personal beauty and glory, then of what is
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  Speaker 2: he worthy from the human soul? That's the key question.
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  Speaker 2: And Jesus answers, you shall love the Lord your God
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  Speaker 2: with all your heart, and all your soul and all
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  Speaker 2: your mind. And Paul answered, whatever you do, whether you
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  Speaker 2: eat or whether you drink, not one minute of your life,
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  Speaker 2: but do it to the glory of God. And in
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  Speaker 2: another place he said that he aims that Christ be
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  Speaker 2: magnified in his body, whether by life or by death.
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  Speaker 2: Over and over again in the Bible, it's made plain
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  Speaker 2: that God created the world so that his infinitely valuable
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  Speaker 2: glory would be manifest in creation by the worshipful enjoyment
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  Speaker 2: of His creation. The essence of virtue. The essence of
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  Speaker 2: virtue therefore, is to love and desire and prefer and
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  Speaker 2: treasure and enjoy and thus honor God above all things
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  Speaker 2: in this world. And the essence of evil. Essence of
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  Speaker 2: evil is loving and preferring and desiring and treasuring and
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  Speaker 2: enjoying anything above God, it's treason. And since God is
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  Speaker 2: of infinite worth and beauty and greatness and honor infinite,
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  Speaker 2: the failure to love and treasure and enjoy Him above
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  Speaker 2: all things is an infinite outrage, worthy of infinite punishment.
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  Speaker 2: This will make no sense where God is small and
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  Speaker 2: man is big. It will only make sense where people
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  Speaker 2: see God as great as he really is, and see
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  Speaker 2: man see ourselves and our outrageous God, belittling self, censuredness
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  Speaker 2: for what they are. Paul said, both Jews and Greeks
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  Speaker 2: are under sin. It is written none is righteous, No,
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  Speaker 2: not one, And then he explained what this failure is.
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  Speaker 2: This sin, He says in verse twenty three of Romans three,
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  Speaker 2: all have sin and fall short of the glory of God,
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  Speaker 2: and you see how he moves imediately from the concept
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  Speaker 2: of sin to failing to embrace the glory of God
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  Speaker 2: is our supreme treasure. And the reason I put it
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  Speaker 2: like that, failure to embrace the glory of God is
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  Speaker 2: our supreme treasure. The reason I put it like that
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  Speaker 2: is because just earlier, back in chapter one, verses twenty
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  Speaker 2: two and twenty three, Paul describes the human race as
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  Speaker 2: claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the
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  Speaker 2: glory of God for images. There's the essence of evil.
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  Speaker 2: The outrage of the human race is not humans killing humans.
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  Speaker 2: That's not the outrage of the human race, but humans
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  Speaker 2: exchanging the glory of the immortal God for anything less.
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  Speaker 2: That's who we are. We are outrageous, treasonous, god belittling,
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  Speaker 2: self exalting, rebels against God. And we are this way
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  Speaker 2: even in our so called moral efforts to do good
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  Speaker 2: to they're people, while giving almost zero attention, zero affections,
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  Speaker 2: zero admiration to God, and taking no delight in his glory.
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  Speaker 2: God gave a glimpse of his rage toward such evil
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  Speaker 2: in these words from Jeremiah to twelve to thirteen. Be appalled, Oh, heavens,
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  Speaker 2: this is God talking. Be appalled, Oh, heavens at this,
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  Speaker 2: be shocked, Be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my
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  Speaker 2: people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me. This
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  Speaker 2: is the great evil. My people are forsaken me. The
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  Speaker 2: fountain of living waters and hewed out for themself. Cisterns broken,
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  Speaker 2: systerns that can hold no water. The great shock, the
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  Speaker 2: great appalling reality in the world is that humans have
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  Speaker 2: turned from God, as the all said is fine fountain
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  Speaker 2: of life and joy, and tried to find it, not
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  Speaker 2: in God but in what He made. It is high
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  Speaker 2: treason and worthy of eternal punishment. That Lisa, That Lisa,
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  Speaker 2: is why we need a savior. And I tremble with
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  Speaker 2: thankfulness that God in mercy sent his infinitely worthy son
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  Speaker 2: to do what no mere man could ever do. Only
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  Speaker 2: a god man can bear an infinite punishment for all
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  Speaker 2: who embrace him for the glorious one that he really is.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is the gospel hope for evil hearts like ours. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the murder of seven billion people would not warrant an
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  Speaker 1: eternal punishment in hell. That's a potent thought to think about.
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that from this episode, Thank you, Pastor John.
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  Speaker 1: And another way to ask this whole question is from
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  Speaker 1: another angle. Was God unjust to kill his son? That's
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  Speaker 1: where thinking about two. If this topic is on your
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  Speaker 1: mind and you may have other questions on similar issues
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  Speaker 1: like this one, Was God unjust to kill his own son?
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  Speaker 1: Was the crossoverkill for sin? To the APG book on
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  Speaker 1: pages three fifty six to three fifty eight for more
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  Speaker 1: on this topic. Thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for
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  Speaker 1: joining us today. Have a question to ask Pastor John.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Find a link to email us and find our complete
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: episode archive at the same place. Ask pastor John dot com.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Work as Worship, how do we bring God into our
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: nine to five? That's up next. I'm Tony rank Cool Monday,