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Strengthened - Footers Twelve Feet Deep · Passing On The Faith

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, if if you're heading to be, you know, light it up like a candle in Nero's garden.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think Romans 8's gonna cut it for ya.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just go there.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and and so what do we get?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: But nothing can separate you from the love of God.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, or sword, no matter if you are a torch in Nero's garden, nothing will separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: And these intensive trials will work like a tensile test.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: When we were in engineering material science, you do the tensile test.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Remember that, some of you engineers?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: You these tensile tests on the iron, and you pull them apart and it just pulls at 10,000 megapascals, and then you go to 30,000 megapascals, and then you go to 140,000 megapascals, and so that the love of God is tested in Nero's garden as to whether or not the love of God will hold.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Integs to help you build a strong biblical foundation for your family.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: This week's episode is a sermon from Reformation Church of Elizabeth entitled Strength.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But ears 12 feet deep by Kevin Swanson.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Romans 1, verses 7 through 13.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if by some means now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gifts so that you may be established.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: That is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you, but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: This is the very word of God.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Our Father, we thank you for this word.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And Father, we pray this would apply as much to us today as it did to the church in Rome some 2,000 years ago.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: Father, we know the application comes by your Holy Spirit and by your voice speaking to us, to our very souls this day.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Impress these things on us now.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Please be seated.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: I want to begin this morning with verse 7.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Let's cut right to it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Paul is addressing this epistle to all who are in Rome.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's where the verse begins.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: To all who are in Rome.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: This epistle is to the church at Rome, the people of God who are assembled at Rome, and you need to know something about Rome to better understand this book.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to give you some background as to the addressees for this particular book.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is Rome?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Rome is the largest power center on earth to this point in human history.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know that much of what happened before the flood, but any time after the flood, if you study all the way back to the Egyptians and to the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Greeks, you're going to find that Rome is the apex of world power.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: More so than China, more so than anywhere else.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: To date, Rome is at its zenith.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Vespasian, the general, has already made it into Britain.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's secured control over Britain, upwards north of London, modern-day London.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: So the Roman Empire was huge, the largest empire on earth.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And Rome is the very center of it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: So when he says to all who is in Rome, he's speaking of those Christians who are right there in the very center of Satan's citadel.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think that's an exaggeration at all.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, Nero had just come to power in AD 54.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Committed suicide in AD 68.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: He was in power for 14 years.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Nero was a madman.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Even historians, secular historians, agree to that.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: He was a madman.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Filled by satanic influences.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Following Augustus, the Caesars just got worse.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: They were known for their extreme sexual immorality, constant intrigue, murder, and mayhem.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Caligula murdered his mother and brothers.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Claudius killed 35 senators and some 300 knights.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: And Nero murdered two wives, his mother and his stepbrother.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: This is not a nice time in the history of the world.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: To put it mildly, Nero arranged the first homosexual fake marriages for himself.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: He is the beginning of the neuronic vision for the world that was finally consummated in the world about ten years ago.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Very dramatic change in all of world history, occurred ten years ago.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: But the idea was to copy Nero.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Nero, the worst leader in the history of the world, who came up with the idea of homosexual marriage, eventually burned down Rome, which is the very next thing that happens, and then persecuted the Church of Jesus Christ.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: He's best known for these three things.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what we refer to today as the neuronic agenda, which has been unleashed upon our world as well.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's one reason why this book is so relevant to us.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, finally, Nero committed suicide in A.D.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: 68.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Paul most likely was executed in AD 64, just months before or after the great fire of Rome.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: So just to give you a sense for what was happening at that time, the Roman historian Tacitus described Nero's reign as, quote, a period rich in disasters, even in peace, full of horrors.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: So even from a secular perspective, this was the most horrific living nightmare on planet Earth that human beings had ever experienced to this point, at least post-flood, as far as we can tell.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a very difficult time.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's why the background for this book is important.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: You need to know it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Many church historians consider Nero the beast of Revelation and the persecutions of God's people outlined in Revelation 14 through 18, referring to Nero.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: The mark of the beast is oftentimes a reference to Nero or at least to one of the Caesars.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I realize there's some other applications.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Some people take it to some future Antichrist or some future beast that might come and affect the world.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: I basically say the beastly principle just doesn't go away completely.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: We certainly have seen that with the resurrection of Nero in just the last 10 to 15 years of Western history.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: But nevertheless, the dragon was unleashed in unrelenting persecution upon the churches in the empire under Nero, and Rome was ground zero for all of this.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: The game is on.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: The war had begun between the Church of Jesus Christ and the dragon.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Remember that there has been a serious shift between the pre-Christ era in the world and the post-Christ era, where he's come and he's brought his kingdom and his church to the world.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: And let me ask you a simple question: given that Claudius Caesar killed 35 senators, how many senators has Joe Biden killed in the last three years?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I'm trying to impress on you what Christ has done.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to shock you into realizing that Jesus Christ has come into the world.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he has made a difference.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And he didn't throw me into the lion's den.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: He was very upset with me after the debate.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: He was angry with me after the debate.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: But he didn't put me in the lion's den.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Why is that?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because Jesus Christ has come and he's made a difference.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: If you study the history of the first 800 and 900 years up to King Alfred, and these are key years, you need to really spend some time studying what Christ did over the first 900 years of Jesus coming into Europe.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Significant changes occurred throughout Europe over the first 900 years.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I encourage you to study, read those books that tie in the rise of a Christian influence in the world, especially in the Western world.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Be sure you understand the history of it, to give Jesus the honor and the glory that's due to him.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: We ignore it because the heathen have called this era of time the Dark Ages.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: They call it that because they despise Christ.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: They utterly despise what Jesus has done.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And they have brainwashed Christians into thinking that Jesus hasn't done anything in our world.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: But read about the first 900 years of Christian history.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Get into it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Get all the books, get all the references.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Look through all the footnotes.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Read the books attached to this.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: The reason why Joe Biden has killed zero sinners, as far as we know, is because Jesus Christ has come into the world.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's not to say occasionally somebody, maybe Bill Clinton or somebody else, might kill somebody.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: But he doesn't make it obvious.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: You see, again, I'm giving you examples such that we will give Jesus Christ credit for what he has done.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: The real dark ages were the Greeks and the Romans.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: You see, we've got this impression that somehow the Greeks and the Romans were the high point.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then when Jesus comes during the frontier age of the church, it was nothing.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was dark.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was a time at which the empires of men failed.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: And there was nothing glorious in the world.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, Jesus Christ came into the world and he made a difference.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And this is fundamental to our history as Christians.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: We give him the glory and the praise and the honor that is due to his name.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, we commit cosmic treachery against Jesus.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to do that.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a reason why the President of the United States has not killed 35 senators as Claudius Caesar did.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: But nevertheless, these are hard times for the people of God.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Paul has already shared some news as to the dangers in Romans 16, verse 3.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risk their own necks for my life.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Probably in the wider Roman Empire.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: But he refers to the dangers that are certainly very, very real and present at the time of the writing of this book.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: The most dangerous attacks on the church, of course, are always internal.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's always somebody sitting in the congregation who wants to bring some kind of division, an offense into the body of the church.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we have to strive like gladiators to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's a full-time job for the elders coming together on a daily or a weekly basis for prayer.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: But there are internal spiritual attacks going on.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Verse 17 of chapter 16.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned and avoid them.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: So there's this gigantic cosmic war that's going on, and the center of it is right there in Rome.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or right here in Denver, either way.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: We have our Nero as well.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: We have one of the only Neroes in the world right here in Denver.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we are as close to modern-day Rome as anybody could be.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: So this book certainly applies to us.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: There is this gigantic cosmic war that's going on between the devil and the church of Jesus Christ.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the promise comes at the end of the book of Romans, chapter 16, verse 20.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we hold on to that promise here in Denver as they did in Rome.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: We believe that somehow the church is going to prevail.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Again.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Again, even as they did.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you've got to understand the heat of the battle was on, the game was on.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: The devil had declared war.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: The dragon had declared war on the seat of the woman.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: It was happening there in Rome at this time.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is a sideline just for a second.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was considering this as I was preparing this message.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: But it's instructive that Nero is never mentioned in the Bible.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Claudius is, Augustus', but not Nero.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever wondered about that?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: I thought about this for a little while, wondering why.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Paul appealed to Nero.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Paul appealed to Caesar.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: But they neglected to name him as Nero.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: His name is never used.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: The scriptures refuse to give him recognition.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think for a couple of reasons.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: One, in the book of Revelation, you find code language used, most definitely to protect the people of God.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: No question in my mind that there's code language, perhaps even in the content of 666, that code language used.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: It does appear that there is a code language used.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you were caught reading a book that associated Nero as the enemy of God, the prime enemy of the living God in AD 66, man, it was over for you.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that may be one reason.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: But Scripture does not give Nero recognition as it does to Augustus.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: But more importantly, here's the other thing that we need to take away.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: Nero's not the problem.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Satan is the problem.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's the more fundamental issue.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've got to remember that if we get too focused in upon Nero as the issue, we don't realize, you know, we wrestle against Principites and powers.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is a much more fundamental battle.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is a hot battle.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: This is an intense battle.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: We are up against Satan himself as the church of Jesus Christ.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: So Satan is behind this persecution.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's no question about that.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's what Revelation chapter 12, 14 brings out for us and all the way through.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is the work of the beast and the work of the dragon.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: And Nero is a tool used by Satan.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: He's a sworn enemy of the church, the devil himself.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: To all who are in Rome.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's how this thing begins in verse 7.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: To all who are in Rome.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Peter refers to them as Babylon.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: He writes from Babylon.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody from Babylon greets you.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Here he is in Babylon.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: The picture of Babylon is again brought out in Revelation 18 and 19.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: We see it again.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: Babylon's burning to the ground one more time in human history as it does.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: But it's the idea of being right there in ground zero.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: That there they are, right smack in the middle of Babylon.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Terrible place.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: To all who are in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a letter to all who are in Pyongyang, North Korea, to all who are in Denver, to all who are in the dragon's lair, the lion's den.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: To all who are in Nero's Denver, Paul is writing a letter.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now do you see the criticality of this kind of revelation that comes to the Church of Jesus Christ at such a critical time?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: This is in some respects the worst case scenario for the church of Jesus Christ, at least in the first centuries of the church.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Nero is the worst case scenario.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Kim Il-Jong to the third power.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Nero is a hard guy.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to move into Pyongyang.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to develop your first church in Pyongyang, but there you are in Rome.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: You're dealing with the church of Jesus Christ at a critical time in the development of this fledgling little body of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: And here's the point Paul wants to go there so badly.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to go there.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just got to go to Pyongyang.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm attempting every opportunity I can to get on the next ship to go to Pyongyang.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: I got to come to the believers in North Korea.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to be there with him.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: He so cries out for him.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: He desires it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to be there.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: I got to be in Rome, in Pyongyang, to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ into that city.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: The gospel has got to go to the Imperial City.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: The crown rites of Jesus Christ absolutely must be proclaimed just outside of the throne room of Nero himself.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, from these six verses, we find Paul has a vision, a goal, an objective for the church.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: But first, seven things that define the church in Rome and Denver.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: So let's go over the seven things and we'll get to the final objective, the overall goal, what Paul wants to see in this letter and what's he want his goal, his vision for the church here in the Denver area.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: So he has a he has a vision for us.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: But first, seven things defining the church in Rome and Denver.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Seven things.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: First is this children, we are called to be saints.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: That is the holy ones of God.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're called to be the saints of God.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: The church is called to be saints.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you're in the church, you're called to be a saint.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you're a baby, a little guy, a teenager, an adult, if you're a member of the church, you're called to be a saint.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: 1 Corinthians 7 involves any child of a single mom who's a believer.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: They're holy ones.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: They're saints, hagioth.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Same word used.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we absolutely, as Christian parents, must refer to our children as saints.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because the Bible does.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: No getting around it.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: God's got his mark on them.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: God calls them his own.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: God says, these are my hagiash, these are my holy ones, these are my saints.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, the little ones are saints as well as we are.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: They're called to be saints in the sexual cesspool of Rome.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the grossest forms of sexual immorality surrounded the church even back in those days.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was a calling, though.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: God calls us to be holy.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Not to be conform to this world, but to be holy.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: What is it to be called?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: Just for a second.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: If the U.S.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: government calls you to be a soldier and you sleep until 11 o'clock on Saturday morning, what happens?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Not good.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: Not good.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you're called to be a soldier of the United States of America in some war and you go a-wall, what happens?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: You get court-martialed and possibly executed.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: If you're called to be a holy one as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, and you go AWA, what happens?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to talk about that.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to talk about it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: We don't even want to think about it.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: And there are those who go AWA.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: But let's not even talk about it.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: You read about it in Hebrews 6 and a few other places in Scripture.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're called, now in the providence of God, you are in this church and you're hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: You are called to believe it.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: You're called to be a saint.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: You're called to be holy and to come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: It says, Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then verse 14, almost a parallel passage here.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: You also must be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, Be holy, for I am holy.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: So this obedience is a All to holiness, not conforming yourself to the licentiousness and the lusts that are so familiar in our world around us as well as in Rome in the first century A.D.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: We are called out of the thing that characterizes the world's movies, the world's music, the world's attitudes, fashions, marketing programs, viewing habits, presentation of themselves to others, and so on.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: It goes.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord says, come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we don't want to look like Hollywood stars.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Think like Hollywood stars or act like them.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because we don't share their values.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'll never forget the pilgrims walking through Vanity Fair.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Will you buy this lustful thing?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: Will you buy this proudful thing?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Will you buy these wonderful values that the world considers to be so important in their marketing programs and everything else?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Will you buy our stuff?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they say we buy only the truth, to which they put faithful to the torch and burned him to death.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: The world doesn't appreciate you saying, uh-uh, we're not interested in this.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is where the clash occurs.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: We don't share their values.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's not cool, it's not beautiful, it's not us.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: See, that's the honest perspective of those who are called to be saints.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: The world walks into this place and they feel out of place.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: They do.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: The world just says, I feel out of place in here.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: This is different.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Not just in the external sense, but in the internal sense.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: They see it so different.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: They want to condemn us because we've rejected their pride, their ostentatiousness, their discontentment, their lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, the pride of life.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we just rejected that.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: It just doesn't, it's no real poll.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't really pull us in.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's nothing we're really all that interested in.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now, immediately, of course, the world responds with they're just all those holier than thou's down at Reformation Church up on the hill.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: Or they're just legalists down there.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, anytime you mention the word holiness, it's equated to legalism.
• 28:18
  unknown: Right?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's that's we've heard it a hundred times, a thousand times.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: You hear it over and over again, and then God steps in and says, Yeah, but I want you to be holy as I'm holy.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then they say it again.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: God, you're a legalist.
• 28:31
  unknown: Right?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: We hear it thousands of times, all the time.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you respond to that?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we are called to be better than the world.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: We're called to that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Brothers and sisters, I'm telling you, be better.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: Be holier than they are.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's what the Bible says.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it's true.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: We are to be holier than they are.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're called to it.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we're supposed to be.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there's no getting around that.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: But remember, it's all by the grace of God.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Peter said that in Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter 1, and then twice already in verses 1 through 7, we said it's by the grace of God.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: And here we're gonna hit the grace of God one more time in this passage, verse 7, a little bit later on.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, it's all by the grace of God.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: We're not after salvation by works, and that includes being justified by works and sanctification by works.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: We're not sanctified by works, we're sanctified by grace through faith.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: We're justified by grace through faith.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: The whole thing is by grace through faith.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's all by grace through faith.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: So if somebody says, Well, I'm holier than they are, praise be unto me.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's a problem.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's a huge problem.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's also interesting.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I pointed this out to so I just read this recently.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody said the Pharisee said, Thank God, I'm not like other men.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, just stop for just a moment.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thank God, by the grace of God, I'm not like other men.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: What's the problem here?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the problem is one, he's comparing himself to men, and secondly, he's saying it's by the grace of God, but not really.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: And they're so so much easier for the pharisaical attitude to creep up on us that perhaps we have repented of a sin, had a pornography problem 27 years ago, by God's grace delivered from it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, now can we say anything but it was the grace of God?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, we acknowledge the grace of God all the way through.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: We don't just say, thank God I'm not like other men.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: We say, praise God, he did it.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Praise God, I'm no longer a prostitute.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: Praise God, I no longer have an alcoholic issue.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: Praise God, I've been saved from some idolatrous issue in my life.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Praise God, it was all by the grace of God.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay, we can say it that way.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: But you can see a false humility creeping in as the Pharisee compares himself to other men.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: And when the focal point shifts from God as the standard to other men as the standard, we got a problem.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Even if we've improved somewhat, we've got a 0.001% improvement on our spiritual life, and perhaps we are obeying some of these instructions.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Friends, we still have 99.99999% way to go.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: So there's not a whole lot to boast in, but that God has given you some grace to get to where you are today.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: We're also not interested in this thin-coated externalistic humility and holiness, where we look holy, but inside we're full of dead men's bones, and still visiting the wrong websites in secret, lusting after this or that on the inside.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's another form of legalism.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we recognize this that there are those who are very much in the legalistic perspective of things.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then they hear the message of grace and they swing over to antinomianism, and so they're constantly in this faithless position.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Faithless legalisms where they're content with a few external niceties about the way they look and the way they act.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then when they're done with that, they flip over into an antinominism where they're just living a licentious lifestyle because it's all by the grace of God.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have these two versions of apostasy that are so common in America today.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's all faithlessness, it's the legalisms and the antinomanisms, but all of it denies the grace of God and the power of the life of God working in the human soul.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty rough out there.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: But brothers and sisters, we're called to be saints, holy from the inside out, and heart and mind, as well as in external appearances, language, habits, and so forth, all by the grace of God.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: First John again, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do you love the world?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Can you say I hate the world?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: I hate the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: I hate it.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: I hate it.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you look back at Sodom as it's smoking and it's smoking today?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: The thing's just burning up, it's burning to a crisp.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: Today, you look back, longing eyes going, ah, such beautiful cities.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: You love the world?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you love Jesus?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: Can you hear the call of God in your life?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: Be holy, as I am holy.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: Do you love the utter devastation of the world that brings about such terrible things by its terrible lusts?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Hollywood is all about Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Hollywood is all about Harvey and Jeff.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: They won't admit it.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: But that's what they've been doing.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: That was their gig in the 1970s and 80s and 90s, and then the Me Too movement comes up and tries to shame them a little bit.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: But that's the whole deal.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's what the world is all about.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: They'll pretend that they're really nice.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: We are big MeTos and stuff.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, it's all about lust.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's all about desiring that which God forbids.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: Whether it be animals, children, same sex, Hollywood is all about Harvey and Jeff.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: But we're told, love not the world, nor the things that are in the world.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: For the world passes away and it's lust thereof.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: But he who does the will of God abides forever.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Be holy in all your conduct.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: And the homosexual Nero will hate you for the rejection of all his lustful stuff.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we're called to be holy.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: Number two, if you are in the church, you're the beloved of God.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Children, you are loved of God.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: We have a calling, we have an identity.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: We are the beloved of God.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: Our calling is to be holy.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: Our identity is that we are loved.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: So both those issues are important for us before we get on to other things.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: We talked about this a little bit last week.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: But first, to be called to holiness.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: This is who I am.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the soldier of Jesus Christ.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm enlisted.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: I can't sleep into 11 a.m.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm called to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm called to be holy.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I am the beloved of God.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever been loved?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: Children, have you ever been loved?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: I want to just step on this for just a second.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever been loved by somebody?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: What's better than being loved?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now, some reject love.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Some children reject love.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: They run away from love.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen this from time to time.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Not sure why.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I would say the average person loves to be loved.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a great thing to be loved.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: You get married to somebody who loves you.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, right?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Some of you folks just say, wow.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: Say that in church.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: You said that on your wedding day.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Can you say it today?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's all I'm saying.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's great to be loved.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful thing to be loved.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everybody likes to be loved.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: To be loved, to have everything you'll ever need, and everything you could ever be desired.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: From God.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: God wants your very best.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: Someone who loves you is desiring the very best for you.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's the definition of love as I see it.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's more to it, but I think that's basically it.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody loves you, wants the very best for you.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: And God loves us.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: He wants the very best for us.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: God has placed his love upon you, and he just wants to give you the very best of the very best of the very best for all eternity.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's his commitment.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: To be loved of God is the greatest thing in the universe.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: To be beloved of God, and this may be the point of the message, I'm not sure.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: Check it out if you would.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: To be beloved of God, it doesn't matter who hates you.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, the same thing happens in a marriage.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: You go to work, you know, come home, people have been throwing stuff at you, and your wife says, I love you, honey.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think the most of you.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you're like, oh yeah, I feel good now.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: How many of you guys ever experienced that?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, your wife, wow, she's your biggest fan, and you're like so encouraged by her and so forth.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't matter.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody at work, who cares about them?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care how they say about me or whatever.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just so happy.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: My wife loves me and she thinks I'm her hero.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: That just feels good.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: That feels so good to a guy, doesn't it?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: But now I'm saying, if you're loved by God, does it matter that Satan hates you?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Does it matter that Nero hates you?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: So you go to Romans 8, which, you know, in scripture, if a pastor, you know, is counseling or he's preaching and he sees his people are going through the very hardest trials of all, where do you go?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: Romans 8, right?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Romans 8! We always go, everybody goes to Romans 8! Why do you go to Romans 8?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's the most encouraging passage in the Bible.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think I'm exaggerating there.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, the language is phenomenal.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: If I want encouragement, I go straight to Romans 8.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: But see, this is the most encouraging, the most powerful passage for Roman Christians who are gonna be burning like torches in Nero's garden in about six years.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, if if you're heading to be, you know, lighted up like a candle in Nero's garden, I think Romans 8 is gonna cut it for you.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just go there.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so what do we get?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: But nothing can separate you from the love of God.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: Neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, or sword, no matter if you are a torch in Nero's garden, nothing will separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, and these intensive trials will work like a tensile test.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: When we were in engineering material science, you do the tensile test.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: Remember that, some of you engineers?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: You do these tensile tests on the iron, and you pull them apart and it just pulls at 10,000 megapascals, and then you go to 30,000 megapascals, and then you go to 140,000 megapascals, and so that the love of God is tested in Nero's garden as to whether or not the love of God will hold.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there's something powerful happening when the beloved of God is being tormented by Satan himself, and the love of God sustains them through it.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty cool.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Let me say that's pretty cool.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just amen, but the love of God sent his son to the cross for us.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: It is love that will withstand all possible and the crucible of the tribulation.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: Number three.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: We are called to be holy loved of God now.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: Number three.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: This church is given grace and peace.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is what we need more than anything else.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: We need God's grace and peace.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Trying to add it to our emails more often.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, we will.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: This is what we need.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: This is the blessing, this is the prayer that we all need every day.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Graciousness of God and the peace of God.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: What we're all about is the church.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: Go out to the shopping malls, look into the faces of the masses.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: What do you see?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Try to describe it.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: Put it on paper.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: You see the peace of God that passes all understanding, keeping their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: You see graciousness.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: You see a gratefulness.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: You see a deep commitment, contentment, peace with God, solid hope, indefatigable joy.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what we see, you know, in the world around you?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you ever take a moment.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Just just people watch.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: Don't be too obnoxious about it.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: But people watch.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you say, What is it?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: Define it.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Never mind the tattoos, never mind this or that.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not talking about externals.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't matter.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Look into their eyes and be honest.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: You see the peace of God.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: You see grace just flowing in gratefulness and contentment and peace.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what we see?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: The rush of it all?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: People graced and pouring grace all all over everybody else?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Hardly ever.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: Hardly ever.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Henry W.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: Longfellow wrote that Christmas carol when his son went off to war, he lost his wife, she burned to death.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, she she snagged her dress onto the lantern and burned herself up, and it was a horrible, horrible story.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: And his son was off to the Civil War, got shot up, and um and so he went home and wrote that poem.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Henry W.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Longfellow.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Then in despair I bowed my head.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: There is no peace on earth, I said.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Then peel the bells more loud and deep God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: The wrong shall fail, the right prevail with peace on earth, good will to men.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is what Jesus came to bring us the goodwill, the grace of God, the peace of God that passes all understanding.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the world is one mass of division, dividing on stupid things, coming up in the November election.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, the division is out of control.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Back to civil war, back to a war war, back to taking the wrong sides, back to this or that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a disaster out there.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's exactly what Henry W.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: Longfellow came to view himself.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, with God, there is peace through our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's our only hope.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: Only through God will we enjoy this peace.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: God lavishes his peace upon his people.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: He lavishes his grace upon us.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: There's no anxiety, no worry, no guilt, no inward tossing to and fro.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: None of that goes on in our hearts and minds as God has poured out that peace and that grace upon us.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how we can survive in the middle of Rome.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: In the middle of the conflagration.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's how they made it.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: See, how do they make it through seven persecutions?
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: By the peace of God.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: By the grace of God.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you know the church never went away in Rome.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: They had a pastor, they called on the bishop, they had the bishop of Rome nonstop for those 400 years.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you do it.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: In the very cradle of Satan himself, 40 feet off the dragon's lair, feeling the fire from the dragon's mouth, licking at the sides of the buildings, they survived through seven persecutions over 300 years.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Phenomenal.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: By the grace of God.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Move on to number four.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: These holy ones in Rome have a faith that's spoken of in the whole world.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: That characterizes our church.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: That characterizes the church in Rome.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's a phenomenal faith.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it's spoken of everywhere.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: The faithful in Denver, the capital city of Nero in America.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: People speak of our faith everywhere around the world today.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know that?
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, maybe not yet.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: But the faithful in the heart of Pyongyang.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: What about them?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: People speak of their faith everywhere around the world today.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the faith to remain there.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Not the faith to run away, but the faith they had to stay there.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: Think about it.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: They stayed in the very lair of the dragon himself for 300 years.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Not the faith to run away, but the faith to stay there.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Their faith is spoken of all over the world.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: There are many dangers in the world around us, partially because there's so much hatred.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: Hate is strong and mocks the song, right?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: People hate other people.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: But let me tell you this: there is no hatred, there is no animosity so great and so powerful and so intense as the hatred that Satan has for this church.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: No hatred so much as Satan himself hates us and will do everything he can to destroy us.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: Number five.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: That shows up in verse 9.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: Look at what Paul is saying here.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: When he says my spirit, he's saying, I am all in at the core of my very being.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: I am so passionately and at the very core of everything I am, I am engaged in this prayer for the church.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: I make mention of you always in my prayers.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now listen, the strength of a church is directly proportionate to the degree to which we have passionate, determined, unrelenting, spiritual, soul-deep prayer lifted up to God for us.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: The strongest church in Colorado.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: The very best church in Colorado.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: You find it, please go there.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: But if we were to define a strong church, it's primarily defined by this.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean I don't know where we are.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thankfully, we don't need to compare ourselves to others.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: We can compare ourselves to where we were ten years ago, or two years ago, or last month.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: We can do that.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: We can see ourselves hopefully growing in this area.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: But this is really defining whether we're going to make it and whether we as a church are going to be strong to the fight that's coming.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's prayer.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's the prayer life of the church.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: Too many churches are dead meat to the devil.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's so easy.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: They fold like a cheap suit, as they say, get a little persecution, they get discouraged, they fizzle out.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: Happens all the time.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I hate to say it, but it's going to happen in our denomination too, just like it works.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: It happens everywhere.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: But how do we develop a rock solid, strengthened, encouraged church that can get through the 17 category eight hurricanes we're going to get through in the next 20 years?
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: It will be by prayer.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: Being watchful to this end, with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: Ephesians also, Peter says something similar.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: 1 Peter 5.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: Basically, what he's saying is, pray, pray, pray.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: Casting all your care upon him.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: For he cares for you.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: And be sober, vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, is walking about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: And this is Peter writing from Rome.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: That is Babylon itself.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: So he understands what's going on here.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: The devil is afoot, and he will be out to destroy.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: So pray, pray, pray.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: Cast your cares on him.
• 50:43
  unknown: Okay.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we just need to pray.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: And brothers and sisters, you want to pray?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone want to pray afterwards?
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like we didn't quite pray enough?
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: Ever get that sense?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there's one more thing.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: We gotta get together and pray.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: Grab me afterwards.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: More than willing.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm on board.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'll sign up.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Anybody want more prayer on a Sunday afternoon?
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: We need it.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Pray with me.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
• 51:17
  unknown: Okay.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: Number six, we're cruising through these things.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_02: These are all defining characteristics of the church in Rome and Denver today.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: Number six, they are in need of spiritual gifting.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: They're in need of spiritual gifting.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I see this is the question I think Paul is answering.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: How will these saints survive as torches in Nero's garden?
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's being reasonable here.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: Here we are in the very heart of the lion's den, in the lair of the dragon.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: How are these people going to survive?
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe that's what Paul is bringing in here.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: There's commentators that don't agree with me.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: They think maybe the gift is a charismatic gift of miracles, you know, or healing or something like that.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Paul's going for something greater than that.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know a lot of people involved in healing, and they fold like a cheap suit, and next time they get into some tribulations, next time they get diseases or something like that, their faith just collapses in on themselves.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of people super into the charismatic gifts.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: But when it comes to the real stuff, I'm talking about faith in the fire.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about hope no matter what happens.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about loving all the way to the end.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's a gift.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big gift.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: The greatest of these is love.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: 1 Corinthians 13.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: So Paul, I think, is pulling out the big guns here, and he's saying, brothers and sisters, we're going to need a gift.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're going to need a gift.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: And here's what I found, and I think this ties in.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't see this in the commentaries, but I think this ties in because the same word charisma gift is used in 2 Corinthians 1.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize that.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because 1 Corinthians 1 is very similar.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: Paul is saying, man, we're in trouble.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: Don't be ignorant, brothers.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: The troubles we're coming into in Asia.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: Man, we were burdened beyond measure, above strength.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: We despaired even of life.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: We should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivers us from so great a death, and does deliver us, in whom we trust that he will still deliver us.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then he says this.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_02: Then he says this.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: Verse 11.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: You also helping together in prayer for us that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the charisma, for the gift granted to us through many.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, without this ultimate gift to enable us to get over and get through the fact that we're going to be lighted up like candles in Nero's garden is going to be a spiritual gift, unlike any gift you've ever seen before.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is going to be a real charisma.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is where the church turns massively charismatic.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: Not some low-level, we've got a healing service going on.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: People are going to be killed in the spirit and rolling around the floors.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: Forget that.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're way beyond that now.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: We are going to survive the persecutions when we're going to be lit up like candles in Nero's garden.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's going to take some faith and some hope and love like you have never seen before.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to need to get downright charismatic.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to have to get downright charismatic.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the word used in 2 Corinthians 1 and verse 11.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: The spiritual gift here is spiritual life.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: Hope that burns brighter, loves more, loves Nero.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: Loves Nero.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_02: They're burning at the stake.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a spiritual gift.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody can say, Wow.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: If they want to, that's a big gift.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's big.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_02: Number seven, finally, they are encouraged by mutual faith.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: Verse 12.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: And Paul says, I just want to come and I want to be encouraged together with you.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: I want to come to Pyongyang.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: And man, I am going to be encouraged by your faith.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's going to build me up.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: Man, faith plays on faith and encourages one another.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: Again, some of the commentators said impossible that Paul should need encouragement from anybody else.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: The power colleo word, again, it's the coaching, it's the encouraging that we need when we're on the field.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: Just give you one illustration before I'm done, because I think this helps.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was student body president of a major West Coast University in the mid-1980s.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: I took a moral stand on an issue relating to whether the student government should approve of sexual promiscuity on the campus.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: The matter was all over the local newspapers.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_02: I had no support from the Christian clubs on campus.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_02: Zero.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: I had no support from the local churches.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: I had no support from my own church.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was almost entirely alone.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: I understood that leadership is extremely lonely.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: It just is.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm not standing in front of you.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's what the university president told me.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_02: So there I was, completely alone as to what I was going to do.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: And there was this woman, she worked as a secretary in the administration.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: She came over to me during lunchtime.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: She said, let's just go to lunch in the cafeteria.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: And she prayed with me.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: And man, that was all I needed.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_02: Praise God for this woman of faith.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: She was right there with me.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'll never forget who she was.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: She came to our wedding.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful woman of God.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: And um I vetoed that measure.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_02: I left town that day.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: I was so scared.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: They could not override my veto by a single vote.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: But praise God.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so the question that the commentators ask is: would Paul's faith be bolstered by these lowly Roman Christians?
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_02: By an elderly sister in the Church of Rome or by anybody else?
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: The answer is yes.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_02: Sisters, we need you.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: We need you.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: We need your gifts.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: Your faith bolsters my faith.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: Your prayers bolster my prayers.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is the message I think it comes from this.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_02: At just one application.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I believe there are elder sisters in the churches that are stronger in faith than the pastors.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes the prayer life of the church is even more vibrant, not because of the men of the church, but because of three elderly ladies that get together.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: I know that happens with my mother.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: They get together once a week and they pray, and it's phenomenal.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_02: The sorts of things that happen because of the mutual faith, the encouragement, the filling up of one another with courage for the next week, for this week.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: We need it, brothers and sisters.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's close on the objective.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: The vision, the goal.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's all in mind here.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked about the seven characteristics, but now the overall goal, and that is this Paul just uses a single word, that you may be established.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: The same word is used at the end of the book as well.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_02: Verse 25, chapter 16, now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and so forth.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: So again, the goal of what we want in the ministry is deeper roots, footers 12 feet deep, standing strong, children to stand strong in the storm.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote that in your notes.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: That we need those roots that just sink deeper and deeper into the soil.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: Rooted and grounded in love.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: Those roots going even deeper in the love of God, that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: To know the love of God.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: James 1, similar.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: Let anybody who asks in prayer ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: Let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_02: He is double-minded, unstable in all his ways.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: God wants us stronger in knowledge, yes, but more than knowledge.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: Stronger in knowing Jesus, believing the love of Jesus, experiencing the love of Jesus.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is what makes us stronger.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_02: Not just the head knowledge.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: As my brother mentioned.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just the head knowledge.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's knowing in relationship, the love of God that will continue for us.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: The Roman Christians are heading for a Category 9 hurricane, and it's just a big deal.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: But one thing is needed to stand in the storm.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: Deeper roots, better establishment, footers that go down 12, 20 feet into the soil.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that's because our faith will be challenged.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_02: Our love will be challenged.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: Our hope is challenged.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes these trials are breathtaking.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_02: I interviewed an author.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: Probably the most intense interview I've ever had.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was maybe two months ago.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_02: He's an elder of a reformed church up in the Northeast.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty solid guy.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_02: He's a brother in Christ.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: In his family of four, he went through the worst trials that I've ever considered, beyond anything I've ever read concerning persecuted saints, etc.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was mind-blowing.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: He wrote a book on it.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: My wife bought the book.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: We looked at it.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: We read it through.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: She couldn't read it without crying.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_02: She cried the whole way through.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: My wife cried through the whole book.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: But I interviewed this guy, and he said his family suffered for so many years with unrelenting, torturous pain, physical, emotional, neurological, spiritual, demonic attacks, suicidal attacks, endless pain and suffering, it seemed, nightmarish torment, week after week, month after month, year after year.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: The crying, the screaming of his daughters, the terror.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_02: Night after night, torturous, watching his daughters writhing in agony, hundreds of trips to the emergency rooms.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: His daughters would go through uncontrollable and sometimes violent convulsions, gyrations, the inability to breathe for frighteningly long periods of time, hallucinations, severe, inexplicable anxiety and terror.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_02: The diagnosis came over a number of years, and God eventually brought them through it.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: Now, off-air I asked him, what was the big takeaway?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_02: What did you learn?
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: And he shared his heart with me a little bit, also a little bit on air, but he said this, and this shocked me.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: He said, I learned how much God loves us.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_02: I still am grappling with that.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not understanding it very well.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: He said, I learned about the love of God.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: That nothing could separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I learned.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I haven't experienced this like he has.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just not sure I understand that, but I'm just quoting what he told me.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_02: I learned how much God loves us.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: I learned the power of his love.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: The power to sustain, the power to keep us alive, even when I didn't want to be kept alive.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: The power to wean us from the love of the world.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: And to understand what real love is all about.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_02: I just didn't understand it until I went through these conditions.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: I learned to believe that though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_02: I learned how to believe with a faith I never believed I could ever have.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: I learned to hope that these sufferings are not worthy to be compared with.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that statement became stronger and stronger and stronger as the pain got worse and worse and worse.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, brothers and sisters, the goal of this church life, the great goal of our Christian lives is to make us stronger, to solidify our faith and love and hope.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's the goal of it.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why we're going through these trials.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now some grow bitter, yes.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_02: The Esau's grow bitter.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: But not us.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: Not us.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: We grow stronger.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_02: The next set of trials are not as formidable, not as fearsome.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of inspiring doubt, now they inspire more faith, more love, and more hope.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: We have faith now in the victory of Jesus, that He's already won.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_02: The church, though we go through setbacks, I think our church is a story of hundreds of setbacks.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: Hundreds of setbacks.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're constantly being set back.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: We lose an arm.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_02: Hobbling, face barely recognizable from the wounds.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: But still, the gleam of victory, the gleam of hope in the eye, burning brighter and brighter and brighter, no matter how wounded, no matter how much lamb to the slaughter.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_02: Still, the hope that the sense that we've got this by Jesus' death and resurrection, by the power of God working through us, we've got this.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: The victory is ours in Jesus Christ.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_02: The sting of death is sin, the strength of sin is the law.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that the labor is not in vain in the Lord.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_02: Amen and amen.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_02: Father God, we thank you, Father, for your great grace that sustains this powerful love that will not let us go.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_02: This love that no matter what comes will still hold fast to us.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: And we will better know, we will better know the intensity of your love as we come through the trial.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: Father, impress these truths on us.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_02: Grow us, establish us.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: Father God, we pray the prayer life of the church, the faith life of the church, the love life of the church would only increase, putting those roots even deeper and deeper.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is the vision that Paul laid out.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_02: God is Jesus' vision for this church too, as we sit here so close to the lair of the dragon ourselves.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_02: But this is our faith that overcomes the world.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_02: Father, we believe in you.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: We trust you.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: We hold to Jesus, our Savior, our victor now, our Lord and Master.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: We pray this in his name.
• 1:06:49
  unknown: Amen.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: As we come to the table, those of you visiting, encourage you to take a look at the back of our bulletin.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_02: We have a little piece on how we celebrate the Lord's table here at the church.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to focus in on the question of trials one more time.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_02: I know we asked the question, why me?
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_02: Why these trials?
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's the big question.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_02: It just tends to be overwhelming sometimes in our minds why we have to face these tribulations.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the fact is there are thousands of reasons why.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_02: And here's the point I think I want to make is that suppose God gave you all of the thousands of reasons why that trial happened to you.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_02: Would it help you?
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking that it would really help us any.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, okay, I gotta look through 700 pages of all the reasons why this has happened to me.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just not sure that's therapeutic for me.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_02: I just, you know.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_02: But let me say this there's one thing that would help me, and that's Hebrews chapter 13, where Jesus tells us, I will never, never, never, never, never forsake you.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_02: If I was reminded that Jesus is the fourth man in the fire, that I, like Stephen, can look up and see Jesus.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe as Jesus is standing there looking down on Stephen at that moment, he's standing for a reason.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_02: The reason is that he loves Stephen.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_02: He loves Stephen.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's his man, and he's engaged with him.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's eye to eye with him, and Stephen is loved by his Savior in that scene.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that's the answer.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: Moreover, of course, he promised this.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_02: I will never.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_02: There's five negatives.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_02: Five negatives in that in the Greek, in Hebrews 13, verse 3.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_02: I will never, never, never, never, never forsake you.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_02: You never see five nevers in Scripture.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_02: But that one time.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_02: Paul delighted in the coinania of Christ's sufferings.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_02: Whether in the dragon's lair or the fiery furnace, either way, we need to know that there's a fourth man in the fire.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's interesting, Nebuchadnezzar knew it.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_02: Did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego know it?
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_02: But that's the point I want to bring to us.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's one thing for a pagan king to look down and say, There's a fourth man in the fire, appears to be the son of God.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_02: But it's quite another for you to be one of the four guys, or three guys, in the fire, and you say, Well, it's nice to have all four of us together here.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: You see the difference?
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_02: The difference is that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would really.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_02: That Jesus is with them in the fire.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_02: To know his presence, to know the fellowship of his sufferings, to know that he is with us makes all the difference.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_02: So my theme as we come to the Lord's table is just to understand the witness of Jesus.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_02: What does he say at the end of the commission?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_02: He says, go to Rome, go to Pyongyang, take the gospel everywhere.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Behold, I am with you even to the end of the age.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_02: I am with you.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_02: I have all authority, all power over all these things, and you're building my church and my kingdom around the world.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And here, one more thing.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_02: I am with you.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_02: All authority, heaven and earth, and I am with you all the way to the end.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm engaged.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_02: I am right there.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the right there of Jesus is something that I just want to impress on all of us.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_02: That Jesus is with us in the tribulation.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_02: He loves us in the tribulation, in the fire.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he will not let us go.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_02: He will come with us all the way through it.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's a tough love that will never let us go all the way through.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not alone.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_02: He loves us in the pain and the suffering, in the distress, the persecution, the famine, the nakedness, the peril, and the sword.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_02: He's with us.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's with us all the way to the end.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_02: And you need to believe it.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is the key thing.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to know it and believe it that he is right here.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Romans 8 holds true.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's one thing to say, hey, neat passage.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Hope it's encouraging to everybody.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_02: But it's another thing to say, you know what?
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_02: I am persuaded.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_02: I am persuaded.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Not Paul.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Not this is really good for everybody else, but I am persuaded.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_02: That neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Including yourself.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes people say, well, well, I could remove myself from the love of God.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, you can't either.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_02: You can't remove yourself from the love of God.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Satan certainly can't do it.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody, no created thing can remove us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is the measure test for us.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Will we believe this as we enter into the trial of fire?
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Will we see him, the fourth man in the fire?
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting to me that several have seen him.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Stephen saw him.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_02: So did John G.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Payton.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_02: But we need to see him too.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_02: In the fire.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_02: In the fire.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so, as we come to the table, remember he has come to be with us now.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Does he care about this church?
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_02: Does he care about you?
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good question that we ask sometimes because we're suffering so much.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Does Jesus care?
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yes, he does.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_02: He feels it.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_02: He knows the pain.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: He died for the church.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_02: His relationship with the church is as the ultimate bridegroom to his bride.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Not yet married yet.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_02: But still that commitment, that love is still there.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: He's very concerned with how we look out for the least of his brothers.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_02: He feeds us with his body and his blood for the very spiritual life that's going to get us through tomorrow and the next day.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_02: This here is called the koinanea of the body and the blood of Jesus.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now, okay, you're not Calvin and you haven't figured this all out, and you're not going to get into an intense theological battle over it.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_02: But when I say this is the koinanea of the body and the blood of Jesus, that's pretty intense.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's one thing you could say.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_02: You want to dismiss it with some theological wandering, but you have to say that's pretty intense.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus is actually fellowshipping with us through his body and his blood.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's how close he is to us.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's how much he cares.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_02: He's very present now.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Very present, extremely present.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus is right here, right now.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_02: Father God, send your Holy Spirit to us, confirm these things to our hearts.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_02: We know that we will only feast upon Jesus by faith and by the work of your Holy Spirit.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_02: We know it's a spiritual thing, and there will be something of an intensive communion with the very body and blood, the very physical human nature of Jesus at the table here.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_02: We want to know his presence.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_02: We want to know more of his love.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Lord, we know this is it.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_02: You're here with us.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you want to affirm that, confirm it, seal it with a sacrament.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_02: You want to seal that witness that you are with your church.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_02: We pray you do that now.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_02: By your spirit in Jesus' name.
• 1:14:45
  unknown: Amen.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_02: This has been a production of the Generations Media Network.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_02: For more information, go to generations.orgslash media.