40 Burst results for "Greeks"
The Mason Minute
Corned Beef Hash (MM #4630)
"I've often said it's the simple things in life that bring me the most pleasure. Last weekend, we were in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and we went to a Greek diner for breakfast on Saturday. And on their menu was corned beef hash. Now, it's one of my favorite foods. I don't know why. I had a restaurant I used to go to in Ohio called Charlie's that had a good corned beef hash. And I love a good breakfast, so I used to get it all the time. But when I moved back south, I had a hard time finding corned beef hash. But when I saw it on the menu last weekend, something said, order it. So, I did. And it was incredible. In fact, the hash I had was some of the best corned beef hash I'd had in a long time. Because it was crispy on the edges and just firm enough and just mushy enough and a lot of flavor. And wow, it is the simple things in life. I often wonder where I start liking things like corned beef hash. When was the first time I ate it? It's not one of those things, unless it's like a family tradition, that you try. I saw it on a menu and I tried it 30, 40 years ago. I don't know. But every now and again, I got a taste for it. Now, of course, I had great hash last weekend and I want it again. I'm nowhere near that restaurant. Boy, corned beef hash sounds real good.
Hearing Jesus: Daily Bible Study
Fresh update on "greeks" discussed on Hearing Jesus: Daily Bible Study
"Hey friends, welcome back to the Hearing Jesus Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Grohl. Today we are in Matthew chapter 19. We're picking up at verse 16. We're picking up where we left off yesterday, and if you're just joining us, I'd encourage you to go back at least to yesterday so you could hear the beginning half of this message. But what we're doing is we're going through this gospel, the introduction to the gospel series, where we're going through the gospel of Matthew, and I'm explaining the history and the background and the culture to help you have a better understanding of the scripture, not ever to replace, but to supplement your Bible reading. And so if you'd like to dive a little bit deeper, we have a bunch of resources for you. You can find those in the show notes, or you can head to shehears.org. I do daily journaling prompts to help you get this information from your head to your heart. I do family discussion guides, and we also teach this information to kids on the Hearing Jesus for Kids Podcast. So again, just all extra resources to help you hear God's voice more clearly. So picking up at verse 16, and I'm reading from the NASB version right now. And someone came to him and said, Teacher, what good things shall I do so that I may obtain eternal life? And he said to him, Why are you asking me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter, keep the commandments. Then he said to him, which ones and Jesus said, You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to him, all these I have kept, what am I still lacking? Jesus said to him, if you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. And come follow me. But when the young man heard the statement, he went away grieving for he was one who owned much property. And Jesus said to disciples, truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, then who can be saved? And all things are possible. Then Peter responded and said to him, behold, we have left everything and followed you. What then will there be for us? And Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, that you who have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you shall also sit upon 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children, or farms on account of my name will receive many times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last verse. So the situation that opens up this scene is a situation that was actually pretty common at the time, both with the Jewish population and with the Greek tradition, where there were these young aristocratic young men who wanted to study under a famous teacher, but they were often too entitled or spoiled to actually do what the teacher asked of them. And this conversation is initially starting with questions about the law. So the man is asking Jesus which of the laws he needs to keep. But then Jesus goes in to talk about a few of the commandments and then he impacts one more specifically. This phrase that he says, go and sell your possessions. This section has almost nothing to do with the keeping of the law, even though that was the initial topic that they were discussing. But instead what Jesus is doing is something that he did frequently, which is expose the things that were in somebody's heart that was blocking someone from their path of transformation. So for this man, it wasn't the law, even though that's what he had started that conversation as. For him, it was money. And Jesus was testing this rich young man in this area. And that was the area that he was the weakest, the most vulnerable, his money. And let me make it clear that money in and of itself is not a to go in the mission field. I need money to sponsor children in Africa. We need money to buy a Bible. We need money to take my kids to school. We need money for gas in a car. So that's not the problem. But for this man, his wealth was his place of security. And that is the one thing that was really keeping him from following God. So this man is wishing he could do some kind of, what's he say, good thing to get eternal life. And we know that there's nothing you can do to earn your way into heaven. It's a matter of surrendering your heart to Jesus. But this man was not willing to put Jesus above his wealth and his possessions. And so let's not take this out of context and try to say that all believers should sell all their possessions and get rid of them. And I've actually heard that taught where there's this call to just live missionally and sell everything. That's not what this is saying. There's not anything wrong with having nice things as long as they're not getting in the way of your relationship with God. And they can't be taking a higher priority than God. So chasing after wealth should be secondary. Now if wealth comes and if we are blessed and the favor of God is upon us and we have wealth, that's one thing. But us chasing wealth is something completely different. See, God expects us to provide for the needs of our families and the needs for others. That's part of that kingdom mentality. And so a blessing of finances is not inherently evil. But when we start elevating that above God in our lives, it can take us on a really dangerous path.
The Mason Minute
Corned Beef Hash (MM #4630)
"I've often said it's the simple things in life that bring me the most pleasure. Last weekend, we were in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and we went to a Greek diner for breakfast on Saturday. And on their menu was corned beef hash. Now, it's one of my favorite foods. I don't know why. I had a restaurant I used to go to in Ohio called Charlie's that had a good corned beef hash. And I love a good breakfast, so I used to get it all the time. But when I moved back south, I had a hard time finding corned beef hash. But when I saw it on the menu last weekend, something said, order it. So, I did. And it was incredible. In fact, the hash I had was some of the best corned beef hash I'd had in a long time. Because it was crispy on the edges and just firm enough and just mushy enough and a lot of flavor. And wow, it is the simple things in life. I often wonder where I start liking things like corned beef hash. When was the first time I ate it? It's not one of those things, unless it's like a family tradition, that you try. I saw it on a menu and I tried it 30, 40 years ago. I don't know. But every now and again, I got a taste for it. Now, of course, I had great hash last weekend and I want it again. I'm nowhere near that restaurant. Boy, corned beef hash sounds real good.
Bloomberg Daybreak Europe
Fresh update on "greeks" discussed on Bloomberg Daybreak Europe
"Is Alice Atkins and how it's been playing out markets in is also her focus Alice it's really great to have you on air with us how has the investment community reacted to these diverging outlooks well the tables have really turned since the European sovereign debt crisis over a decade ago you know back then parts of Europe's periphery like Greece Portugal Ireland and Spain faced huge debt loads and many required heavy bailouts and now the years of of austerity in the aftermath to those bailouts has seen those countries reform their fiscal situations to the point they where are outshining some of their traditionally safer peers like Germany and France and this is being reflected markets with some global investors opting to buy into parts of the periphery over the traditionally safer from the region's core with the view that these parts of the market will outperform next year and bring better returns so you've got the likes of JP Morgan who's overweight Spanish debt Newberger Berman and also like Spanish debt as well as Portuguese and Greek debt and then Goldman Sachs and Stockton have also been forecasting that these parts of the parts of Europe's periphery will outperform next year Now Alice it's not a universal opinion on the markets either some investors are holding back somewhat from leaning into peripheral debt what's driving their view? So while it is an attractive investment opportunity with with many of these parts of the periphery boasting stronger fiscal positions, less debt issuance next year and stronger growth rates the issue is that there is just much less debt available from some of these smaller European economies because of all the reform and austerity programs that they have been So for example Greece 76 % of its debt is funded by the European stability mechanism. So there's not as much for investors to get their hands on. There is also still quite a lot of concern around Italy and despite Moody scrapping its negative rating on Italian debt there were jitters around potentially it being downgraded to junk and there are fears that if there were to be a deterioration in Italy would that seep through into a wider peripheral sell -off because of the sort of historical risky correlations with that part of the market. But then again some investors are saying that would be a buying opportunity because the fundamentals are so much stronger and it's just a historical correlation not a reflection of where the markets are heading so it certainly seems we're shifting away from looking at Europe through the lens of these country buckets and it's less about the periphery versus the core and much more idiosyncratic. Yeah you had to wonder where there was a little bit of garden froyder when Giorgia Maloney met Olaf Scholz back in Berlin last week but thank you for that analysis. Bloomberg's That's Alice Atkins our FX rates cross asset reporter. Thanks for that. Now it's time for London the London Rush where we carve out time to highlight businesses that are making announcements here in London and joining us is Bloomberg's breaking news editor Leo Kern -Sherpa. Leo let's start with EasyJet. They've had results this morning. Can they ride out the turbulence? Yes so first of all it has to be said that EasyJet flag customers held in recent weeks. Of course that's due to the tensions in the Middle East and Israel and Jordan flights are already paused so they definitely saw an impact there. Nonetheless shares are up as much as 3 .7 % and this is I think mainly due to the strong outlook they gave or for summer bookings. They also said possibly looking at Ryanair here that their rivals struggled get to enough planes to meet demand. So that was an interesting one and they also confirmed their reinstate, get dividend and also increase the payout over time. You know what shareholders definitely like perhaps most annoyingly they also said that their revenue from baggage fees is up significantly. Well it's only annoying if you're paying it of course if you're just packing lightly you're going off the fine. Oh my god my husband won't pay to have a check -in bag. Can I just get that off my chest? I think you just did. It's London the rush and therapy this morning okay easy jet shares up three percent leo let's go to rose the cars. Exactly they holding an investor day today and set out at 7am this morning ambitious medium -term targets of course higher cash flow higher return on capital and they also said they are now looking to sell assets that don't meet their profitability goals and of course this is all part of the CEO to fund acting biggish's plan to turn around the performance and shares are up 4 .8 percent. Meanwhile who'd have thought it drama at saga the over 50s cruise yeah business let's hope this doesn't turn into a bigger saga here. They are an over 50s business that's what they call themselves they they provide cruises package holidays insurance. There was a report yesterday by Sky who said they hired Lazar to the investment bank to evaluate options including a possible sale of their insurance underwriting business and this morning they came up with a very surprising statement CEO that their here in Sutherland is stepping down immediately and he will be replaced by the CFO. The shares are down 1 .4 percent and I think it's definitely one to watch going forward. Okay Leo Ken Shepper thanks so much taking for us through those stories in London this morning for the London rush. You can read more about all these stories on the London rush newsletter on bloomberg .com and of course on the terminal as well so thanks to Leo Ken Shepper markets for you next. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe. The story of the UK is an economy that has got real momentum. I feel very positive about the long -term growth outlook for the UK. 2024 is not going to be an easy year we're not doing a recovery in GDP growth. The UK is proving to be very resilient we're not in recession and everyone predicted we be would in recession. The one thing we won't do is any kind of tax cut that fuels inflation. We've done all this hard we're not going to throw that away. Bloomberg Daybreak Europe on Bloomberg Radio. And it's 8 a .30 .m. here in the city of London I'm Lizzie Burden. And I'm Stephen Carroll this is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe. On the markets the stock 600 is half a percent lower. The FTSE 100s down by four tenths. The CAC Caron down by four tenths. The DAX in Frankfurt two tenths of one percent lower as well. Looking at the individual shares that are moving the best performing share the on stock 600 is Rolls Royce Holdings. We were just hearing there from Leo Kouncer but their shares up 6 .6 percent this morning. And it's Argen X that is the worst performing share falling
The Mason Minute
Corned Beef Hash (MM #4630)
"I've often said it's the simple things in life that bring me the most pleasure. Last weekend, we were in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and we went to a Greek diner for breakfast on Saturday. And on their menu was corned beef hash. Now, it's one of my favorite foods. I don't know why. I had a restaurant I used to go to in Ohio called Charlie's that had a good corned beef hash. And I love a good breakfast, so I used to get it all the time. But when I moved back south, I had a hard time finding corned beef hash. But when I saw it on the menu last weekend, something said, order it. So, I did. And it was incredible. In fact, the hash I had was some of the best corned beef hash I'd had in a long time. Because it was crispy on the edges and just firm enough and just mushy enough and a lot of flavor. And wow, it is the simple things in life. I often wonder where I start liking things like corned beef hash. When was the first time I ate it? It's not one of those things, unless it's like a family tradition, that you try. I saw it on a menu and I tried it 30, 40 years ago. I don't know. But every now and again, I got a taste for it. Now, of course, I had great hash last weekend and I want it again. I'm nowhere near that restaurant. Boy, corned beef hash sounds real good.
Bloomberg Daybreak Europe
Fresh "Greeks" from Bloomberg Daybreak Europe
"The ceasefire has been, well the truth depending on what you want to call it, is delivering life -saving results the in view of the US president. This is absolutely crucial because the positive feedback loop out of Israel, out of the United States and sort of out of the rest of the Middle East and the rest of the world. We're watching these tragic images since October 7. Clearly this is giving a little bit of room for stabilization and public opinion and the keenness to get this extended, maybe even definitely maybe it will open the door to a meaningful conversation on how to structure a longer term rather solution than getting this rolled over because at some point you're going to run out of hostages right from the side of Hamas. Of course the U .S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also going to be traveling to the region on Thursday as well as and that's key seen in the timing of this too. We have a truce until that day when Antony Blinken is set to arrive. How important are the diplomatic efforts now and the hopes of extending that truce further? It's very important and he's been in the region several times now since October to have a jet setting between the Arab and Israeli capitals. The Egyptian and Jordanian sides has been very heavily involved with brokering the deal together with the Qataris. It will be interesting to see what position the Saudis take who only recently, through the crown prince, were very vocal, very critical of the state of affairs and that nothing substantial had been brokered. So we'll see whether there's a reassessment of that and they're able to bring more voices around something that has common more ground. Amid the war, Elon Musk was pictured in the Israeli prime minister. He's been to Israel on a visit pictured in military -type gear. He's offered to help rebuild Gaza. It was perhaps an offhand comment but, you know, an important conversation and the ex -boss clearly is quite clear. What did you make of his comments? Yeah, it was surprising to see the images. I think we all understood that he was going to go to see the Israeli leadership but to see him actually meet not just Israeli officials but also touring the Kfar Azek but where some of the worst violence occurred on October 7th when Hamas militants broke through the country's border barriers and attacked civilians. Must describe seeing the bullet shell markings and cribs on the tour and the Israeli Prime Minister also saying that there needs to be a de -radicalization of some parts of the Palestinian territories before you could reach something in terms of meaningful progress as far as the Israeli side is concerned. But the fact that you have Elon Musk involved who has an enormous amount of resources that he can deploy, not just in terms of public opinion but of course in actual funding, that's a huge relief especially after some of the controversy about the debate and the opinions on that platform. Yusuf, looking forward from here, of Qatar course has played a really important role in negotiating the truce so far. What are their other regional players saying about the prospects for being able to extend that next in Gaza? It's going to come down to the two -state solution really and that is something that Arab leaders have repeatedly vocalized, that you can create a mechanism political to steer into that. Yes, you're going to have these fires of the truce and and everything else that leads up to that. But Palestinians need a home and it needs to be done a in way that is acceptable to the international community and that lives up to the expectations of all the stakeholders involved. And so when are we going to get diplomatic traction on that in the next couple of weeks? That's still an open question, but I wouldn't rule it out because of the number of lives that have lost been thus far and the green shoots of progress that we're seeing today. Okay, so thank you so much for being with us this morning. Bloomberg's Middle East TV anchor Yousef Gamal -Eldin with the latest on the Israel Hamas extension of that ceasefire temporary truce for another two days. Well, let's turn to weather news news now and just over a decade since a series of fiscal crises almost broke the euro, a remarkable role reversal is underway across the region. Back then it was the so -called periphery countries running up massive debts. core Now it's nations the of France and Germany which are facing a deadlock over budget positions and testing the Union's European fiscal guidelines. Joining us now is Bloomberg's Alice Atkins who's been looking into how this has been playing out across markets. Alice, how has the investment community reacted to these diverging outlooks? Well the tables have really turned since the European sovereign debt crisis over a decade ago when parts of the periphery like Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain faced huge debt loads and many of them had bailouts. But now the years of austerity in the aftermath to those bailouts has seen these countries reform their fiscal situations to the point where they are actually outshining some of the traditionally safer peers like Germany and France and this is being reflected markets in with some global investors opting to buy into parts of Europe's periphery over the traditionally safer bonds issued by the likes of France and Germany with the view that the peripheral bond markets will outperform next year and bring better returns. So you've got the likes of JP Morgan who's overweight Spanish debt, Neuberger Berman also likes Spanish debt as well as Portuguese and Greek debt and then Goldman Sachs and Soc Gen have also been forecasting that parts of Europe's periphery will outperform next year. Okay why? What do they see as supporting that outperformance? Well the ballooning debt burdens and the question of how the supply is going to be absorbed is something that's been rattling bond investors globally. We've seen it in the US Treasury market and it's certainly in play here in Europe too and it seems that these investors are taking confidence that there's much smaller level issuance of coming from Europe's periphery next year. So there's around 50 billion euros coming from Spain, Portugal and Greece compared with almost four times that from France and Germany. So you know and alongside these better fiscal positions with parts of the periphery on course for stronger budget balances. They're also on course for better growth rates. Ireland, Greece and Spain are set for double or even triple the German GDP growth rate. At least that's what the European Commission is forecasting. Now not all investors agree fully on this point. What's holding some back from leaning into peripheral death? So while it is an attractive investment of opportunity in of terms the stronger fiscal positions and better growth rates, the issue is that there is just much less debt available to buy from some of the smaller European peripheral economies because of all the form and austerity that these economies have gone through. A lot of the debt is still owned by official debt. In Greece's case, 76 % of the debt is funded by the European Stability Mechanism. So there's less available for investors to get their hands on. There's also around Italy, despite Moody's scrapping its negative rating on Italian debt this month, there were jitters around it being downgraded to junk because of the fiscal outlook. And so there are a few worries that if there were to be a deterioration in Italy that would seep through into a wider sell -off of peripheral debt due to the historical risky correlation. Also, if there was a big global risk -off move, the safe haven status of German debts unlikely to be questioned. But then some investors are saying that this would be a buying opportunity because the fundamentals are much more attractive in the periphery and it would just be a historical risky correlation and not a true reflection of the outlook for those markets. So it certainly seems like we're moving away from looking at Europe through the lens of those traditional country buckets. It's now not all about the periphery versus the core and it's become much more idiosyncratic and about relative value trades. Thank you so much for being with us. Alice Atkins there just taking us through the picture for the European markets bond really interesting update and the change really from worries around the periphery countries to sort of concerns more around the core ones I think is really interesting. Alice Atkins there. It's now easier than ever to get the latest from Bloomberg you're while on the road with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. You can access every Bloomberg podcast. Tune into us on Bloomberg Radio live listen to the latest articles and get the headlines from Bloomberg News now it's free with latest the version of the Bloomberg business app just downloaded on
The Mason Minute
Corned Beef Hash (MM #4630)
"I've often said it's the simple things in life that bring me the most pleasure. Last weekend, we were in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and we went to a Greek diner for breakfast on Saturday. And on their menu was corned beef hash. Now, it's one of my favorite foods. I don't know why. I had a restaurant I used to go to in Ohio called Charlie's that had a good corned beef hash. And I love a good breakfast, so I used to get it all the time. But when I moved back south, I had a hard time finding corned beef hash. But when I saw it on the menu last weekend, something said, order it. So, I did. And it was incredible. In fact, the hash I had was some of the best corned beef hash I'd had in a long time. Because it was crispy on the edges and just firm enough and just mushy enough and a lot of flavor. And wow, it is the simple things in life. I often wonder where I start liking things like corned beef hash. When was the first time I ate it? It's not one of those things, unless it's like a family tradition, that you try. I saw it on a menu and I tried it 30, 40 years ago. I don't know. But every now and again, I got a taste for it. Now, of course, I had great hash last weekend and I want it again. I'm nowhere near that restaurant. Boy, corned beef hash sounds real good.
Bloomberg Daybreak Europe
Fresh update on "greeks" discussed on Bloomberg Daybreak Europe
"So the timing of the visit is interesting because it might mean that you can see continued US pressure on Israel to end the truce. He was already in the region, he's going to a NATO meeting in Europe and likely then on to the COP climate summit. So it does make sense to be stopping off but it is I think his third visit there already since the war broke out. Absolutely, NATO foreign ministers convening in Brussels Amid the war, Elon Musk was pictured and we heard an excerpt there of his conversation with the Israeli prime minister. He has said he would like to help rebuild Gaza and Starlink of course has become hugely important, certainly in the Ukraine war. What do you make of Elon Musk? Well it's interesting to see that Elon Musk made that visit in the end after weeks of claims that his site Twitter known as X was sort of not doing enough to damp down on anti commentary in the aftermath of Israel's move in to Gaza, but it seemed to to me be a bit of a throwaway line. He did it in an X space with the Israeli prime minister and he said oh sure I'd like to help rebuild, but he didn't offer any specifics around what that might look like in terms of of aid. We've also seen him say similar in Ukraine and not a lot of follow through there so far. What he does do is deploy Starlink to great effect. That's helped Ukraine on the battleground. He's talking about Israel's use of it in Gaza. Equally at the same time he does get to then learn from the battlefield through Starlink. So it's not a completely humanitarian donation on his part to be doing that. It enables his business to learn and grow as a result on the battlefield. yeah, But not a lot of specifics from him so far about what he would like to do to help. Well, I was thinking about the diplomacy across the region on this as well. You mentioned the importance of Qatar in negotiating this truce and the extension of this truce. How are those relations now between Israel and its neighbours as we look the to extension of this pause and to what might happen next Well, it's interesting because you did hear the Israeli Prime Minister yesterday in that x -space talking about the future briefly of the relationship with Saudi Arabia and saying that he believes that there's an opportunity still there to reset completely ties. That had been on a bit of a delicate path in the run -up to this There war. have been some steps for them to move towards potentially normalisation. He seems to indicate that he still thinks that's possible at some point down the track. We do know that Qatar is seeing pretty there's a decent broker in all of this, Egypt as well. Certainly they're able to carry messages between Hamas Israel. and There has been that role of those dates in all of this, we but do know at the same time that the Arab states in particular have been expressing strong concern about Israel's activities inside Gaza and of course the humanitarian situation there and demanding an extended ceasefire. So that's certainly something where the pressure is coming also on that states. Yeah. Roz, thank you so much for being with us this morning, Bloomberg's EMEA news director Rosalind Matheson on the extension of the Israel Hamas temporary ceasefire. I want to turn to another story now. It's been just over a decade since a series of fiscal crises almost broke the euro, a but remarkable role reversal is now underway across the region. Back then it was the so -called referee countries running up massive debts. Now it's the coronations of Germany and France, which are facing a deadlock over budget positions and testing the European Union's fiscal guidelines. Joining us now to discuss Bloomberg's Alice Atkins, who's been looking at how this has been playing out across markets. Alice, great to have you with us on the programme. How has the investment community reacted then to these diverging outlooks? Morning Stephen, well the tables have really turned since the European sovereign debt crisis over a decade ago. You know back then parts of Europe's periphery like Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain, they had huge debt loads and many of them faced bailouts. And now years of austerity in the aftermath of bailouts those has seen these countries reform their fiscal situations to the point where they're actually outshining some of the traditionally safer peers like Germany and France. And this is being reflected in markets and global investors are opting to buy into parts of Europe's periphery over the traditionally safer bonds issued by France and Germany on the view that parts of the periphery will outperform next year and bring better returns. So you've got the likes of JP Morgan who's overweight Spanish debt, Newberger Burman also like Spanish debt as well as Portuguese and Greek debt. And then Goldman Sachs and SocGen have been also forecasting that parts of the periphery will outperform next year. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of staggering, isn't it, that change? What do they see supporting them, the outperformance? Why? So ballooning debt burdens and the question of how that supply is going to be absorbed is something that's been in global bond markets globally. We've seen it in the US Treasury market and it's certainly in play here in Europe too. And it seems that these ambassadors are taking confidence that some of the smaller peripheral economies next year than there is from the likes of France and Germany. So there's around 50 billion euros coming from Spain, Portugal and Greece next year, but there's almost four times that from France and Germany. And alongside these better fiscal positions and less issuance with parts of the periphery on track for primary surpluses. They're also on course for better growth rates. So Ireland, Greece and Spain are set for nearly double or even triple the German GDP growth rate next year according to what the European Commission is costing. As always, there are divergent opinions in markets as well. What's holding some investors back from leaning into this peripheral debt? So while it is an attractive opportunity in terms of the fiscal position and better growth rates, the issue is that for some of these smaller peripheral economies, there is just much less debt available to buy. So because of all the reform and austerity programs economies that these have gone through, there's much less debt available for investors. So for example, Greece, 76 % of Greek debt is still funded by the European Stability Mechanism. So that's why, even though it might be an attractive opportunity, there's less issuance available for investors to get their hands on. There's also still quite a lot of concern about Italy's fiscal situation and the possibility of there being, you know, if there were a deterioration. Moody's recently scrapped its negative rating on Italian debt, which there were a lot of jitters around it potentially being downgraded to junk. So if there were a deterioration of Italy's fiscal situation that some investors are concerned, that would seep through into a wider sell -off of peripheral debt due to the sort of historical risky correlation of the the region. Similarly, if there were a big global risk -off move in markets, the safe haven status of Germany is unlikely to be questioned. But then, you know, some investors are saying that would this be a buying opportunity, any sort of historical risky associated sell -off of peripheral debt because the fundamentals are much more attractive in parts of the periphery and so it wouldn't actually reflect the outlook for the market. So it certainly seems like we're moving away from these country buckets of thinking about Europe as core versus periphery and it's become a lot more idiosyncratic. Okay, really fascinating. Alice, thank you so much for bringing us that story focused on European bond markets. Bloomberg's Alice Atkins. Coming up next on Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, we'll hear why the CEO of Blackstone is feeling confident about investing in the UK. Steve Schwartzmanson speaking to us at the UK Global Investment Summit. We'll bring you that interview next as we look towards the start of European trading today. Eurostox 50 futures. 1 % lower, FTSE 100 futures down by a tenth as well. More on the markets and that interview with the CEO of Blackstone on and in your podcast feed. On the latest edition of the Bloomberg Business Week podcast conversation with Nicole Patel, founder and master chocolatier at Delicia Chocolatier on the chocolates and infections business. So we launched Delicia Chocolates here in 2008. Good timing. Good timing. It was excellent timing. How hard was that? Well, at the time it didn't seem difficult because we were starting from ground zero and we just thought this was going to be party favors and wedding favors. You know, once a month I'd make some chocolate and have a reason to sell it and no deal. big And then the food industry took off in Texas. Things just started to expand, almost out of control, kind of not to
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from I Will Seek the Salvation of the Unconverted
"Good morning. I counted a privilege to be here today in front of you and pray this would be an encouragement and very practical for us all. If you wanna turn, open in your Bibles to Ephesians 6, familiar passage, Ephesians 6. For most of us, our greatest focus in all the world is ourselves. If we're honest, particularly in the Western world, we spend most of our time and most of our money on earth striving to be healthy and wealthy and increasing our collection of things that help us to become more comfortable here on earth. Our sin nature drives us not to serve others but to serve ourselves first. If I was to ask you this, what does your calendar show and what does your bank statement show is most important to you? God has put us on this earth for a specific purpose. It's to live for Him and to point others to Him. As Pastor Nate said, we're gonna be preaching through our church covenant if you've got one of these. We're on number four and five here. We encourage you to grab one off the table if you get a chance even after the service. Our covenant sets before us the biblical commitments I will bring up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord such as may be under my care and I will seek the salvation of the unconverted. God wants us to bring up our children in the gospel and also share the gospel with the lost. So in Ephesians six where you are, starting in verse one, familiar passage. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So we'll continue with the same template that Pastor Nate's been using. First, we wanna make sure that we realize that our church covenant, and if you're not familiar with this is, this is a covenant that members of Omaha Baptist covenant together to uphold as long as you're a member here but it's not just a man -made document that we picked out of the sky. We wanna show that it's biblical and it's root. So the biblical commitment that God wants to keep the gospel first at your home. In the passage here in Ephesians six, we see that raising children is broken down to a couple categories, discipline and instruction. If I was to ask you which one of you desires to be disciplined, who here has ever said, yay, I get to be disciplined today? I'm going to assume no one. My younger brother was the only one who was never disciplined in our home. Because he's sinless is what he would say, that's not the case. The desire not to be disciplined is nothing new though. We see this all the way back to the garden. It's rooted in our very sin nature. If this wasn't the case when Adam and Eve fell in sin and Adam was confronted, he wouldn't have immediately turned to blame his wife Eve and he certainly wouldn't have deflected to blame God for making Eve. So knowing that discipline is not generally enjoyable and it's not something we desire to have, is it negative and should be avoided at all costs? In Hebrews, in Hebrews 12, verse 11, we read a verse that would clear that up for us. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. So we see the negative. But, as we continue, but later it yields a peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. So what does proper discipline yield? It yields a peaceful fruit of righteousness. Take notice as well the link between discipline and training. Right living is something that's trained into a person through the process of discipline. It's not something that they just organically have when they come into this world. They have quite the opposite. So here we can see how by continually pointing our children to Christ, and when we bring them under the authority of God's word, we're training them in a life through the lens of the gospel. If you look at Ephesians 6 again, we see that it addresses both parties at the home, both the children and the parents. For the sake of time, we won't tackle the children's side of things, but it does start with children. And children, I would just say this, that by honoring your parents, whether you see them as honor worthy or not, you are honoring the Lord who put them in that position of authority. Though it speaks to both children and parents, fathers specifically are pointed out in verse four. It says, fathers do not provoke your children to anger. Fathers are held responsible for leading the charge in the home, just as Adam was specifically addressed in Genesis 3. Though Eve was the first one to sin, God said, Adam, where are you? Fathers are called to discipline their children, but not in a way that causes anger and resentment. The purpose of discipline, and when God disciplines us, it needs to be restorative in nature and never done in anger. It's been said, and this stuck with me when I heard this, I thought, is this not true? It's been said that in a home, if you have all rules with no relationship, you end up with rebellion. But if you have a home that has all relationship with no rules, you end up creating resentment. A father's discipline needs to be carried out in the context of a loving relationship where you have a relationship, but also the clear expectation of what God's word calls us to do. If you find yourself disciplining your child as a hypocrite, doing something that, asking them to do something that you wouldn't do or not modeling it before them, you will provoke your children to anger. But it's not just discipline, and there's also, it speaks to us in Ephesians about the instruction also in home, so gospel instruction we wanna bring in home. I realize that many of you here don't have children, or maybe your children are now out of the home. It's important to think of this call in our covenant not limited only to the child -parent relationship. The exhortation is much broader than that. I think the word it uses here is such may be under my care. It could refer to our relationship for Christ with virtually any relationship that we have. Other people looking to us, whether to raise them physically or even in the spiritual sense. If you wanna turn with me to 2 Timothy 1 .5, I think we see a really interesting illustration of this, how it's played out in scripture. So 2 Timothy 1 .5, this is Paul speaking to Timothy, I'm reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother Eunice, and I'm sure dwells in you as well. Timothy's father's not even in the picture, we're not sure, we're not told why, we don't know what happened to him, but his mother, pardon me, his grandmother, Lois, stepped into the gap and is played a part in Timothy being brought up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. The apostle Paul also played a huge part in training Timothy without a father in the picture. Both the books, 1 and 2 Timothy, are letters from Paul to this young pastor, training him in the way he should go, just as a parent would train a child. Paul shows his heart towards Timothy by referring to him as his true child in the faith. So whether you've got biological children or not, we're all called to provide gospel instruction to those that may be under our care. There is, however, special onus on parents bringing the gospel into their own home. You'll notice when we read Ephesians 6 that it's not, it's parent -child language used, it's not Sunday school teacher child used, or pastor child, or government child. It's parent -child. God's design is for a father and a mother to raise their own children and pointing them to the Lord as their primary responsibility, not a responsibility they pass off to somebody else. So if I was to ask these questions, are you modeling the gospel at home before your children? Actions speak louder than words. If I was to ask your children what they see in your home, what would they tell me? Do your children know the gospel? Ask them to explain the gospel to you and then check. Is it on point or is there things they're confused about? This is a great question to expose whether we understand what that gospel actually is. It's quite possible that you can be here thinking you know it and don't, or believing some kind of version of a false gospel. That's skewed. When somebody's sinned against in the home, does the gospel that saved you shape how you respond to that? Do our kids, when they sin against each other, does the gospel speak into that relationship? Does it speak into how we correct that behavior? Does the gospel come up regularly in your conversation at home? If the gospel is the lens that we wanna give our children to see the world, then it should be commonplace in our conversations. Let's meditate on those questions as we move on. God doesn't just want us to keep the gospel first at home. He wants us to keep the gospel first in all of our relationships. You can flip over to Matthew 28, very familiar passage, the Great Commission, Matthew 28, verse 16 is where we'll start. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when he saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age. So here God clearly calls us to go make disciples. If you're a follower of Christ here today, I'm assuming that you agree that making disciples is a clear teaching of scripture and you agree that we should be doing it. The million dollar question is, are we doing it? We'll get to some of the reasons why we don't do it and the reasons that threaten us in a minute, but let's look at first what a disciple is. The Greek term for disciple in the New Testament is mathiteus, I'm no Greek scholar, but we're going with that, which basically means student or learner, but a disciple is also a follower, someone who adheres completely to the teaching of another, making them his rule of life and conduct. So if you're a disciple of Christ or if you're to make disciples of Christ, a Christ follower is someone who adheres completely to the teachings of Christ, making Christ his rule of life and conduct. So how do we make disciples? Well, in verse 19, we read that we're commanded to go. We're not told that potential disciples will come and find us and seek us out. No, the disciples were charged with the command to go. Don't just sit around and wait for this to happen. And if you're familiar with the start of the church in the book of Acts, this wasn't something that they were super keen on doing until they were more or less forced to do that through persecution. I was thinking of an illustration of this, and I was meeting with a young man once who was of the age that he'd finished school and was in the workforce now, and he explained to me that he was desiring to find a godly woman, which was a noble desire, so I said, well, how's that going? And it wasn't going well, so I said, well, what are you doing to make this happen? Nothing, just crickets. So I said, well, you realize the chances of a godly woman coming to your house, breaking in, coming into the basement, interrupting your video games, tapping you on the shoulder and introducing yourself, it's not real high. So maybe it would be smart if you went, go, and did something, took some initiative to find a godly woman, and it's the same with evangelism. There is times where the Lord and his providence will literally draw people in our lap, but generally speaking, it has to be something that we're willing to do, to go, a desire that's gotta come from within. Second, we don't need to go, we need to make sure that we're pointing people to Christ and not to ourselves. It seems obvious that this is the case, but it's something that we often miss the mark on. We might feel the pressure of closing the deal, so to speak, as if you're a salesman on a sales call and you gotta close the deal and make that sale. But if we're to make disciples of Christ, we just need to show them Christ. So how do we do that? If you wanna turn, Romans 10, we'll be going through this a little bit here, 10, 17, where's where we'll start, and then we'll step back a bit. Romans 10, 17 says, so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So if somebody's to come to saving faith, they need to first hear the word. Not my words, not the words of Greg and whatever clever thing I can say, but God's word. So that's 10, 17, but if we were to back up a few verses, let's look at the context of what Paul's saying here. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, you notice the Great Commission language here, that going to all nations, both Jew and Greek, everybody. There's no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How will they call on him and who they have not believed, and how are they to believe in him and who they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So we need to point them to the only thing that can pierce their heart, the heart of any sinner, it's God's word, and the only thing that pierces that is the sword of the spirit, and this verse has already come up in previous messages, but Hebrews 4 .12, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any tumbled sword, piercing through the division of soul and spirit and joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Give the people the word of God and let God's word do the work. But God doesn't just say, go make disciples, he says to teach the disciples. So if the Lord in his mercy does open the eyes of somebody that we're evangelizing, even if that's our own children or somebody outside of the home, in so many ways the work is just getting started. This idea of teaching is an ongoing interaction, right? In verse 20 it reads, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. This is only possible through ongoing fellowship, doing life together. Remember I said, if it's not like the salesman who's closing the deal and then onto the next deal, if that's not what it is, think of it more like a journeyman -apprenticeship relationship, a relationship where you're bringing somebody along, somebody new in the faith, to come and do life together. You're modeling before them what it is to live for Christ and the way that they should go. If you're doing this properly, you should be able to do as Paul did, or that's what Paul was doing with Timothy, and should be able to say, be imitators of me as I imitate Christ. So it's a biblical commitment, but if we move on, it's also a very threatened commitment. So we see this commitment threatened in our own home as far as raising our children in the Lord. We can all be very guilty of just assuming that our children will just organically come to Christ sort of by living with us, maybe coming to church, maybe you generally just hang around most of the time with Christian people, and you might figure that that's good enough. If you want to turn with me to the Old Testament, passage you're probably less familiar with, judges, judges two, we'll see a sobering account here of why this isn't the case. So the Jewish people have, God's people have just come into the land, and the land that he miraculously gave them, the promised land, and a generation, the first generation is coming to an end. We pick up in verse seven. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had sent all the great work the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at age 110. Now if we jump down to verse 10, we read these sobering words. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. So we see in one generation, the people of God, God's chosen people, went from following the Lord, and seeing him work in unbelievably miraculous ways, and bringing them into the promised land, to not even knowing the Lord, or even recognizing the work that he had done. I know when I read that, I was thinking, how is that even possible? There's probably lots of reasons why this is possible, and this speaks to our own home. There's probably lots of reasons why our kids can be in the same place that God's people were there. Let's just look at a couple of them. First off, I thought, in my own life, what are the things, it's just, first thing I thought of, it's just easier not to. Parenting is hard work. Life is busy, and parenting is hard. Being intentional in your parenting, and takes discipline of yourself. None of us like to discipline ourselves. It's sometimes easier to discipline somebody else. If you're like me, and you've worked all day, and you come home, the last thing you probably feel like doing is having intentional gospel conversations with your wife and kids. That's probably at war with your own sloth. It's just easier maybe to turn your brain off, and turn the TV on. I think we can feel like, maybe like the Israelites did when they got into the land finally, that the worst is behind us. God's been good, let's get comfortable, and mail it in. But when we do that, we fail to notice that if we're not intentionally teaching our kids, don't be deceived, somebody else is. Somebody else is gonna fill that gap. Joshua obviously felt, that generation obviously assumed that their children would just learn through osmosis, being around them, that they would learn what it was to follow God. And they did learn through osmosis, the scripture tells us that, but they didn't learn from mom and dad, they learned from the pagans around them. They learned to worship Baal instead of the living God. I think another threat we have to this, and again I'm speaking to myself in this, is we're just too distracted. We live in a world that's never had more distractions. This smartphone alone has the ability to take our complete attention at any time. Funny cat videos, need I say anymore? My wife and I often talk about just how different it is as we're looking to raise kids now when we grew up. And I know there's people here with grayer hair than me. But we had no TV or TV with three channels that were all fuzzy. No stores were open on Sunday. The stores that were open closed at five o 'clock. And I could go on and now my smartphone alone allows me to watch more videos than I could watch in an entire lifetime even if I wanted to. I can buy whatever I want from all over the globe and have it delivered to my door in a day or less. The battle for our focus on being intentional in anything in the Lord, especially parenting, is real and it's not going away. And the next generation is gonna face it in a way even more difficult than ours. So I think it's also important though too that some of the distractions that we have as far as being intentional in parenting, and keep in mind when I'm talking parenting, again, this could be discipling somebody that's not your own child. That some of the stuff that's at war with us can be good things. We can be distracted doing all kinds of good things for or people even pouring into other people at the very neglect of our own children and our wives. I think the log spec principle in Matthew 7 where we're to make sure to get the giant two by four out of our eyes before we remove the speck out of our brother's eyes to make sure that we're pouring into our family at home. If you're a father in particular, that's your primary goal to be pouring in at home and not busy fixing everybody else's problem and neglecting your own children. I think you see this, unfortunately, in a lot of pastors' kids who resent the church, I think because dad was never around, busy helping everybody. So it's something that's real, not just for pastors. Another thing that causes real war in this area is parents not being on the same page. And this is a particularly hard one and I'm gonna be sensitive here because I know there's lots of people here that have unsafe spouses. But you can have, we can even be both safe parents at home and we can be just biblically unaware or maybe unconvinced that the scripture has much direction in this area. If this is you and you're not certain what the scripture says about parenting, there's more than just Ephesians that are brought up here. We're actually currently in table time, so after the service, we're doing a parenting class and this is our third time through it. It's not our own class that I dreamt up, don't worry. It's a paltra parenting class, but it's speaking specifically about the heart of the situation. So the heart of the child, which is desperately lost, can only be saved through the gospel. And it's a 10 -week video series and it's been fantastic in growing my own understanding of what it is to be a parent. And my wife and I talk about how it would have been great to have watched this 17 years ago. But I would encourage you to do that. If you're a saved couple here, put the time in and grow in your understanding of this. The Bible's not silent in the errand of parenting, so treat it as such and pour some time into it. But it's possible too that there's friction at home because your spouse isn't a believer and I know that's a lot of people here. And maybe you deeply wanna raise your kids in the gospel, but your spouse is pushing against that. And there's obviously no quick fix, easy answer here. Your first priority is to pray for the salvation of your lost spouse. That's the heart of the issue right there now. And I know there's many of you that have been doing that for years. So continue to do that, but I think what can be more difficult even than praying for a lost person for years is particularly in a home is living in a way that points them to Christ on a daily basis. So to model that devotion to Christ in a kind way before them, 1 Peter 3, this is speaking of wives, but 1 Peter 3, 1, calls on believing wives to live in a godly fashion so that their lost husbands might be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
Fresh update on "greeks" discussed on Evangelism on SermonAudio
"Well redemption brings spiritual life or redemption comes through the spiritual life by the Word of God. And we see that in many places but one of the clearest is in 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 23 and following. In 1 Peter chapter 1 it says, Having been born again, not of corruptible or perishable seed, but of incorruptible, of imperishable, through the Word of God, which lives and abides forever, because all the grass withers and the flower falls away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the Word which by the Gospel was preached to you. That life comes by the Word of God. And last week we looked at the illustration in Ezekiel 37 of the valley of dry bones. And as Ezekiel is taken into this valley he sees all these dry bones and he's told to prophesy to the bones. And as he does life comes. And the point of Ezekiel 37 verse 4 is hear the Word of the Lord. That faith is central for salvation and the Word is central for bringing that faith. So evangelism is not about human persuasion. It's not about clever devices. It's not about how well we can form the argument and pull people in. It's giving the Word of God clearly and understandably that the Holy Spirit will make it understood. And the result is faith is more than simply a decision or emotion. If all we focus on is faith in faith, then people are trusting an emotion, they're trusting an event, but they're not trusting the person and cross work of Jesus Christ. And salvation is in Christ alone. And so what I want you to see from this is that those who share the Gospel are providing the prerequisites for salvation. That's the first thing that we understand in recognizing that God's Word brings saving faith. In verses 13 through 15 we really saw the path of what brings that saving faith. And we saw it in reverse order. That whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Well how will they call in him of whom they've not believed? How will they believe in him of whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach unless they be sent? And the emphasis here in this statement is in verse 17 is the culmination that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. But how's that going to happen unless these pieces are in place? That someone needs to tell them to preach. And we really see several things in this and I want us to just again keep these in mind. The first is they have to believe into. The idea here as we've seen this is the believing into is the attachment to. It's not merely knowing the facts mentally. Well I know Jesus came. I know he died. I know the facts. It's trusting the believe into. You cannot call in saving faith without believing. Calling without believing is really what we would refer to as a false profession. So you can't force somebody into a decision. We don't make it simply to please somebody else. It's believing into. This belief is not merely knowing facts. It's trusting the person of Jesus Christ. And as I said last week there's a difference between saying I believe you and saying I trust you. Trust is a volitional emotional aspect. So we believe into. It's hearing him. That hearing Christ, the message is heard through the word of Christ. That is it is Christ himself who is speaking when the gospel is proclaimed. Now I realize with the context here in verse 17 depending on how you take the Greek text if it's an objective genitive it would be the word about Christ. I think it's really the word of Christ but either way however you take it what we see is the content of preaching is from God. It's not of human invention. It's the gospel of God. And this is the pattern through Scripture. So in Acts chapter 17 as Paul goes from Philippi to Thessalonica and when he's in Thessalonica according to 1 Thessalonians 2 it says when you receive the word of God which you heard from us you welcomed it not as the word of men but as it is in truth the word of God which also effectually works in you who believe. And so Paul gives the gospel in Thessalonica. The Jews rebel against that. He has to go to Berea and when he gets to Berea the Jews in Berea are much more open. They are listening. They're examining what Paul is saying. They look at it in light of Scripture and it says in Acts 17, 13 the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea. It's God's word. So the cognitive communication is necessary. And I'm laying this out because we have to understand God has to reveal Himself to us. There has to be the word going forth. You may have a dog and have a wonderful relationship with your dog. And you could say you know we don't really need words. We've got a good relationship. You talk to him. He wags his tail. You call. He comes. When you're sad he seems sympathetic. He looks at you with those big eyes. He's loyal. And you may say you know he really understands me. And you figure that words aren't necessary in that relationship. But if you were to go home from church today and you walk in the door and the dog looks up at you and says so how was church? I guarantee your relationship will change at that moment. When words are involved it changes a relationship. God's word changes the relationship. So we have to share the truth. Preach the word. And share it with others. We have that opportunity. And in order for that to happen we have to be sent. And Jesus said and we saw this all authority is given unto me in heaven and earth. Go into all the world. So there are no closed countries for the gospel. Some are just more difficult to get into. And that's why we pray for our missionaries and those going there. That's why Tri-City Baptist Church is a sending church as we send out missionaries. And while faith is our response to the gospel it's also the message of the gospel that awakens that faith within us. So we have to send and share that people would believe. And that's what we seek to do. The second thing that I want us to see in this first point is that those who share the gospel are attractive in God's sight. It said in verse 15 how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace. Who bring glad tidings of good things. You know we at times in our culture will hear about the beautiful people. Well what do they mean when people talk about the beautiful people? They're not talking about their feet. And really understand in this context the feet are representing the person. That it's not simply their feet it's the person who is doing this. You may have heard it prayed at times sometimes the prayer is bless this food to our bodies and bless the hands that have prepared it. Why just bless the hands? Why not the whole person? Well because the hands are representative of that person. It's a representation of the work that went into the preparation. And that's really what we're seeing here. The feet represent the person who goes, the sent one. And in God's eyes that is true beauty. So what is it that makes their feet pretty? Well it's not their pedicure it's their proclamation. It's the message that as Christians we are to be ambassadors. And it's really the message that is appealing. It's the message that is attractive. What is that message? It's the gospel of peace. That God and sinners can be reconciled. That's one of the songs we sing at the Christmas season. That is good news because without that reconciliation, without the gospel, sinners and God are enemies. Whoever will be a friend of the world makes himself the enemy of God, James 4-4. And so when sinners refuse to be governed by God to do it themselves, they're setting themselves up at enmity with God. And so that's why verse 16 says they've not all obeyed the gospel. There's not a heart of surrender. And recognizing the importance of the attractiveness of the Word as we take that forth. But we also see that those who share the gospel should be saturated with God's Word. And we really see that in the general context of this passage. That there are a number of quotes that Paul is going to use. He's writing under divine inspiration. I mean this is the Word of God, but the human instrument is Paul. And part of inspiration was the preparation of those human instruments. If you were in our summer growth series class when we talked about how we got our Bible, we talked about the preparation of the individuals. So this is why Peter's epistles sound different than Paul's. It's God's Word, but different human instruments. Well part of the preparation was Paul knew the Word of God. And understand we see that. In fact from verse 15 through the end of the chapter there are six Old Testament quotations that Paul is using in his discussion. And I've put them on the screen. You can see these. That in verse 15 he's quoting from Isaiah 52 verse 7. Verse 16 Isaiah 53 1. Verse 18 Psalm 19 4. Deuteronomy 32 21 is in verse 19. Verse 20 and 21 are Isaiah 65 1 and then verse 2. And it's interesting because Paul mentions a couple of these that Isaiah said. He mentions Moses said, but he doesn't mention the book. Well what do we see from that? Paul knew the Bible. Paul had been diligent to learn scripture. So what about us? Are we diligent to know God's Word? How important is God's Word in your life today? You know it's not just necessary for personal growth. It's not just for our comfort and guidance. It's not just holding on to promises. All of that is good. But we need to know the Word so we can tell others. How beautiful are the feet of those who share the Gospel. And in Hebrews chapter 5 verse 12 there's actually a rebuke there to people who should have been teachers of others, but they needed somebody to still teach them. They needed Bible basics. They were doing remedial Bible and if you've not grown up with the Bible and you're a new Christian that's where you start. But we ought to be students of the Word. And it says in Hebrews 5 12 they're unskilled in the word of righteousness and it was because they hadn't exercised to discern good and evil. So are you a person that can guide others into spiritual truth? Dads, can you guide your family spiritually? You know I encourage or I've said many times don't take spiritual advice from unspiritual people. They need to know God's Word. They have opinions, but is it based in God's Word? Say well you have to understand I didn't grow up in a Christian home. Okay, so what are you doing to be a student of God's Word today? You know we have amazing opportunities here at Tri-City. We have the morning service and then we have an adult Bible fellowship where we try to take that and personalize it and make it practical. We have care groups during the week so we can study the Bible again. We have other Bible study groups. We have classes that are offered there. There are so many things available. What are you doing to know God's Word? When we look at this list and see the various aspects, Paul was familiar with God's Word. We are a blessed people today. We have God's Word in our language. We have it in our hands. We have it in our pockets. We can listen to it. We can read it. Familiarity with God's Word is important to be a witness. Our children memorize 2 Timothy 2.15, be diligent to present yourself approved to God a worker who does not need to be ashamed because we correctly handle the Word of truth. That ought to be the goal of every one of us. And whatever our excuse is, do we really think they're going to stand before the Lord when we are such a blessed people today? We need to strive to know the good news so we can share that gospel of peace. You know it's interesting in Acts chapter 8, toward the end of that chapter, the first part of it is talking about the death of Stephen and how Paul, Saul, was partnered to that. But toward the end of chapter 8, Philip is directed by God to go to the desert of Gaza. A place that's in the news a lot right now. And there he encounters a man from Ethiopia. This man had great authority under the queen of Ethiopia. He was really the secretary of the treasury for Ethiopia. And he had come to Jerusalem to worship and now he's headed back. And there's still this emptiness in his life and so he's writing in his chariot and he's reading the Bible and he's in the book of Isaiah. And the Holy Spirit tells Philip to go to him. We talked last week of the Spirit motivated evangelism. That is definitely the case there. And so Philip runs up to the chariot and he asks him, do you understand what you're reading? And the man says, how can I understand it unless somebody guides me? How shall they hear without a preacher? And so Philip gets up into the chariot. The man is reading, the Ethiopian is reading at Isaiah 53, a key messianic psalm. And Philip begins at the very verse where he is. It says in Acts 8 35, then Philip opened his mouth and beginning at this scripture preached Jesus to him. That's evangelism. Opening God's Word and preaching Jesus. And understanding that this is where we have to know God's Word to remember the context of this passage. That Paul is concerned about his Jewish countrymen. But we need to be able to share God's Word, define the terms, to point them to Jesus. So with that background Paul's going to say, okay now there's some excuses that may be raised. That Israel, okay they're zealous, but not according to knowledge. There's a zeal and they're trying to establish their own righteousness, but they're ignorant about Christ's righteousness. And so God's actually raising arguments at the end of this passage that he's going to answer. And the first one is, well maybe God's Word wasn't available. And what we see is God's Word is available. That's verse 18. Well okay, so if faith comes by hearing the Word of God, maybe they didn't have the opportunity. Have they not heard? And the answer is yes, they had adequate opportunity. Now in the Greek text, the answer is assumed in the way the question is given. It'd be like us saying, they did hear, didn't they? You know what the answer's going to be. Have they not heard? Yes they've heard. Yes indeed. Their sound has gone out to all the earth. And here Paul is quoting from Psalm 19. And it's actually an interesting Psalm because it begins with the general revelation, and then it moves to specific revelation. Somebody said it's the Psalm about the sky and the scripture. The heavens declare the glory of God. And in verse 4 it says their sound has gone out through all of the earth. Their words to the end of the world. Well in that context, it's actually speaking of general revelation. That God's glory, His greatness, His power, His beauty, His complexity, His diversity, His unity is all displayed in nature. His eternal power and divine nature are revealed so all humans are without excuse. That's back in Romans chapter 1. And we understand cultures across the centuries and around the world have a higher power. They recognize there is a God. And so they worship. And those that deny the existence of any God, they bow at the altar of humanity. Of humanism. And they trust their own beliefs, their faith system. Sometimes they call it science, but it's still a faith system. They say well this is how the world began. Well was it observed? Then it's faith, it's not science. And they can't answer key questions like how do we get from nothing to something? How do you get from non-life to life? How do you get from simple life forms to complex life forms? And just throwing billions of years into the pot and stirring it with a spoon of time and chance and calling it science doesn't make it so. It's a faith system baked in the oven of human audacity and arrogance. Because the Bible says the fool has said in his heart there is no God. See sinful humans don't respond in faith, they're disobedient. And it's interesting because this passage in Psalm 19 4 is about the firmament. It's the voice circling the words going out. But Paul is taking that and under Holy Spirit inspiration seems to be applying that to the that they've had a chance to hear. The Jews have had adequate opportunity to hear the message both in general revelation and in special revelation. And it's interesting because when you read about the gospel going forth after the resurrection and when Jesus tells His disciples stay here in Jerusalem the Holy Spirit will come upon you not many days from now. He ascends into heaven and then 10 days later we have Pentecost and the birthday of the church. And you've got at Pentecost Jews gathered from all across the Roman Empire and they're there for the Feast of Pentecost. And it says in Acts chapter 2 verse 5 and there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews and devout men from every nation under heaven and they were amazed that these Galilean apostles were speaking in their languages and the Greek word is the word dialect. So where had these people come from? They had come from all over the Roman Empire in fact let me just show you where they were in verses 9 through 11 it gives specific places and I think that these have come from. The red box is where Jerusalem is and all of those circles are places that are named and in Acts chapter 2 9 through 11 16 different places named where there were representatives that heard the gospel. The word has gone out across the known empire of the Roman Empire the inhabited world at that time. The problem was not the availability of the word it was they would not avail themselves of the word. And so on many occasions Jesus challenged his audience. He that has ears to hear let him hear. So the argument well maybe they didn't heard doesn't stand up. If they didn't hear it was their fault. We have the availability of the word today as well as I've already mentioned we have God's word in our hands and our language. We have the opportunity. We are a blessed people you know and now we have the internet and our sermons are posted on sermon audio dot com from and so far this year we've we've had almost eighteen thousand eight hundred sermons from our our from tri-city listen to in all fifty states and seventy five countries. There have been over a hundred plays in countries like China South Sudan we've reached places that I had to look up Lesotho Mauritius I mean places like that Burkina Faso OK I've heard of some of these some of my heaven like where well they've heard the word from tri-city and there are a lot of other places that have sermons there that that we've been heard in Myanmar and Sri Lanka and Malawi and Latvia and even Israel.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Paul's Testimony of Jesus
"Acts chapter 21, beginning at verse 37. As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, may I say something to you? And he said, do you know Greek? Are you not the Egyptian then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the 4 ,000 men of the assassins out into the wilderness? Paul replied, I am a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people. And when he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the steps, motioned with his hand to the people. And when there was a great hush, he addressed them in the Hebrew language, saying, brothers and fathers, hear the defense that I now make before you. And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even more quiet. And he said, I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel, according to the strict manner of the law of your fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day. I persecuted this way to the death, binding and delivering to prison, both men and women, as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them, I received letters to the brothers and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished. As I was on my way and drew near Damascus, about noon, a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And I answered, who are you, Lord? And he said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting. Now those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me. And I said, what shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said to me, rise and go into Damascus and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do. And since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me and came into Damascus. And one Ananias, a devout man, according to the law, well -spoken of by all the Jews who lived there came to me and standing by me, said to me, brother Saul, receive your sight. And at that very hour, I received my sight and saw him. And he said, the God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the righteous one and to hear a voice from his mouth, for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard. And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name. When I had returned to Jerusalem, I was praying in the temple and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him saying to me, make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly because they will not accept your testimony about me. And I said, Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another, I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. And when the blood of Stephen, your witness, was being shed on my, was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him. And he said to me, go for I will send you far away to the Gentiles. We can all recognize, I think, the weighty significance of the fruitful labors of those high profile missionaries who were and still are used so mightily of God in the hardest of places in the advance of the gospel, while at the same time, perhaps failing to appreciate the same weight and significance of the witness borne by those persecuted and imprisoned saints who are no less used of God to testify of the reality of the gospel through their patient endurance of suffering in chains for Christ's sake. Well, it is the case actually that in the life and ministry of the apostle Paul, we find both of these dynamics as the remainder of Luke's account is now given over to Paul's time in chains. And in light of that, it is good to recognize the amount of space that the inspired writer gives to Paul's years in the custody of the Roman authorities and to the several defenses that Paul makes as he is dragged from one jurisdiction to another. In doing so, Luke is in no way detracting from the importance and significance of Paul's three missionary journeys that came before. However, at the same time, Luke is highlighting for us, I think, the importance and the power of faithful gospel witness in the midst of patient endurance of suffering for Christ's sake. And oh, what an example we have in the apostle Paul, in the imprisoned Paul, in the way that he has peacefully placed himself under the mighty sovereign hand of his God and consciously is constrained by the love of Christ for him. In order to fulfill this call that is now upon the apostle Paul to suffer in chains and to preach Christ, to bear witness to Jesus, no matter the cost to himself. And before us this morning then is the apostles very first defense, a defense I would submit to you that is not a defense of himself in the end, but rather a defense of the Christian faith, a defense of the way. For reasons that if Paul's chief concern here was simply to make a defense of himself to the Roman Tribune that now held him captive, surely he would not have addressed the crowd here in Aramaic but rather would have continued in Greek that his Roman captor might actually appreciate his defense, understanding what he was saying. However, Paul's chief concern here, even while in chains and even after almost being killed by the very Jews before which he is now speaking, Paul's main concern here is not his freedom but rather the salvation of his kinsmen in the flesh. And so Paul speaks directly to the crowd here, directly to the Jews and in that Paul labors to offer no unnecessary offense to them, addressing them as brothers and fathers, chapter 22 verse one and addressing them as well in their native tongue, not the speech of the Gentile nations. And I would have us analyze Paul's defense of the way under four headings this morning. Number one, Christianity is no direct threat to Rome. Christianity is no direct threat to the state. Number two, Christianity as a direct threat, however, to all other religions. And number three, Christianity as a religion of conversion. And lastly, Christianity as a religion of hope for any. Christianity as no direct threat to the state, Christianity as a direct threat to all other religions, Christianity as a religion of conversion and Christianity as a religion of hope for any. First, Christianity is no direct threat to the state or in the words of our Lord Jesus to Pilate from John 18, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from this world. While it might not have been initially on Paul's front burner at this point to make a defense of the Christian movement as not a direct threat to Rome, it is fair to assume, I think, that it is in the scope of Luke's apologetic in writing this account. For it is actually the Roman Tribune that forces the issue here and Luke is careful to record the details. Verse 37, as Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the Tribune, may I say something to you? And he said, do you know Greek? Are you not the Egyptian then who recently stirred up a revolt and led the 4 ,000 men of the assassins out into the wilderness? The Jewish historian Josephus tells of this Egyptian Jewish rebel that the Tribune is referencing here. This man was basically a false Messiah who only a few years before this had gathered quite a following to himself. And he did so with his claim that he would stand upon the Mount of Olives and bring down the walls of Jerusalem in Jericho fashion and then march on the city and overtake the Roman guard within the city. And he indeed gathered thousands to himself and gathered them to the Mount of Olives but was quickly overrun by the Romans. Hundreds of his followers killed, many imprisoned, he himself fleeing and escaping. Now, Greek was widely spoken in Egypt and so as Paul addresses the Tribune in Greek, the Tribune concludes that Paul must be this same Egyptian rebel. Return now to Jerusalem and the Jews having found him out are for good reason enraged by his returning to them. And so in response, Paul will make it clear to the Tribune that he is no threat to Rome. And the point here is that Christianity as a religious movement is not like those many political religious movements of the day. Christianity is different. As the leader of the way, Jesus Christ is not like those many false messiahs. Rather in Jesus Christ is the true Messiah come to deliver his people from their own sins. Christianity is in no way a threat to Rome, not a direct threat, not then in Paul's day nor should it be in our day. The church is not called up to take arms as the sword belongs not to the church but to the state and does so according to the will of God, the sovereign decree of our God. Our God in whose sovereignty we Christians patiently endure whatever suffering he would ordain. The same Jesus who on his way to the cross stated, if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting but my kingdom is not from this world is the same Jesus whom we now follow after. Brethren, to our cross, the followers of Jesus do not kill. Rather we are killed. All the day long we are killed. All the day long we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Introduction to Philippians
"Brothers and sisters, I would encourage you to open up your Bibles this evening to Philippians. We're going to be taking a look at Philippians chapter 1 and verses 1 and 2. We are beginning the book of Philippians. Today will be more of an introduction to that particular book than anything else. I will attempt to talk about the author, the themes, the aim of the epistle, the things that we can learn from it without spoiling too much of the content so that later on as we preach on individual portions, it becomes anticlimax after anticlimax. I don't want to give away the entire book, but I do want you to have an idea of where it came from, why it is so very important to us today, what we can learn from it, and to see the similarities that exist between this book and indeed our own time. As I'll be discussing in the sermon, Philippi was actually a military colony, and you may have noticed we live in a military colony for the most part. So the resemblances between us and the Philippians, apart from the fact that we have microwaves and cell phones and things like that, and they did not, are very strong. They are still the same kind of people who deal with the same kind of difficulties. They too had a state which was sometimes nice to them and sometimes which oppressed them very badly. They also dealt with the problems of relationships and all of the things that the fall has brought in. So as we look at Philippians and we hear Paul writing to this beloved congregation of his, let us seek to apply it to our own time, but before we come to the word of God, let go us to the God who has given us this word and let's ask him to bless it. Please join me. Oh sovereign Lord, we do pray now that you would be the illuminator of our minds, that you would help us to understand your word. I pray that you would help me to divide it to write, that you would give me liberty and power and unction as I do so, that oh Lord, I would not say anything that goes against your word. I know I am a man with feet of clay. I am capable of interpreting the word or wrong, but I pray Lord that you would prevent me from doing so. I do pray also Lord that you would give me the sustaining power to go through this book, a right, and to apply it to your people. May you give us ears to hear and hearts to receive all that you have to tell us. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen and amen. Philippians chapter one and I'll be reading verses one and two. It says the word of the Lord. Paul and Timothy bond servants of Jesus Christ to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons. Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. I wonder if say 10 or 11 years from now, if I was in jail in Washington for my preaching of the gospel and possibly facing the federal death penalty and this congregation had sent me a gift in jail to help me along and I was writing a letter in reply to your generous gift. What would that letter sound like? What would I say? How would I come across in writing to you? Would it be complaining about the government and my situation? Would I be going on and on about the unfairness of it all? And speaking about how my liberties had been infringed or would I be writing to you to know a little about how I was doing and then spend the vast majority, not talking about myself and my own situation as dire as it was, but to spend the vast majority of my letter attempting to stir you up to joy and in the Lord to encourage you to be full of peace and grace and joy even in the midst of adversity. Would I think so little of myself that my letter would seek to lovingly correct problems of disunity that I knew about in the congregation? Would I push back against those who perhaps were on the fringes or in the congregation itself who were teaching bad doctrine in the community? And above all, would I urge you to keep the person and power of the Lord Jesus Christ at the center of everything you did? I hope that I would. I hope I would not send you a letter merely of whining or a simple thank you note that said very little. In my case, though, we're going to have to find out. But in the case of Paul and the Philippian Christians, we already know how he spoke in the midst of those circumstances because that is the letter that we have in front of us. Paul is in the midst of serious adversity, serious difficulty. He is struggling, we know, with loneliness, with persecution, and he writes a letter to his much beloved Philippines that is full of joy and encouragement in spite of all of those difficulties that stood against him in the world. So much so this letter is so full of joy that it has been often called the epistle of joy. Paul writing from jail, remember, and a Roman jail was not like the jails today. We speak today of jails as being three hots and a cot. You have TV, recreation yards, things like that. In Paul's day, that was not the case. You either had to pay for a place to stay if the charges weren't that serious yourself or if you were thrown into a Roman dungeon, you could often die of exposure. You went in with the clothes on your back, and if your friends and your family did not provide you with the things that you needed, including food in jail, you could die very, very easily while awaiting your trial. But Paul, writing from that kind of jail, he uses the Greek words for joy and rejoice, imploring the Philippian saints to rejoice. He uses those words kara and kairo more than a dozen times, and this is just a four -chapter letter, remember. So joy is one of the most prominent themes in what he is writing. He is, as I said, in a Roman jail. This is possibly the second time. I think it's probably the first time that he was there. He is waiting a trial on a capital charge of treason, and the people who will judge him are members of Emperor Nero's brutal and corrupt administration. And as we know, Paul was not somebody who was going to give them a bribe, so there's no way out of his imprisonment that way. And yet, as we shall see, Paul is able to look well beyond the circumstances that surround him, and he's able to actually see Christ in heaven and the work that Christ is doing in the world and indeed in Philippi and throughout the church and to know that God throughout is in control and that all of God's promises are coming to pass. Let me just stop and ask that question right now of you. Do you know those things as well? Do you have that solid trust no matter what your circumstances are in the Lord Jesus Christ, that no matter what afflictions, adversities, difficulties, diseases you're dealing with today, yet still you know that the Lord is in control and that his will is coming to pass and that none of his promises will ever fail. I pray that that is the case, and if not, I pray that you will take encouragement from Paul. He was writing to encourage the Philippians, but we remember that he wasn't writing just to the Philippian congregation. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he was writing to us as well. And so I pray that he would be encouraging you in whatever situation you are in. But we see him trusting absolutely in God, trusting in the Christ whom he knew and that therefore there was this inner principle of joy in his heart, an inner principle that no one could take away and that he still wants to share with others. He wants that joy inexpressible that we heard about this morning to overflow to others. The Romans might take his life. They could do that, but they cannot take away his joy or his peace. That is one of the great promises that is given to the Christian. Nobody can take away the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. Nobody can take away your salvation, and nobody can steal your joy and your peace in those things. But let's take a moment now to discuss how all of this came to pass, how he came to be writing this letter from jail. Where is Philippi? What was it like? Who were the Philippians, and how did Paul come to know them? Incidentally, this is a picture of the Philippian ruins that you will find in Macedonia. I am told they are amazing. It is a UNESCO historic site. Maybe one day as I got to see Ephesus, I will also have a chance to see Philippi. But in the meantime, let's talk about the city. Philippi was originally founded as a colony in northeastern Macedonia by colonists from the island of Thanos. They were called Thacians in 359 BC. But it was captured by Alexander the Great's father, Philip, and renamed Philippi three years later. So it didn't have much of a long run of independence. But in saying that, I have told you very little about Philippi itself. Because the Philippi that Paul knew came along much later on. It is like me telling you that Fayetteville was settled by colonists from Scotland. Because almost 400 years had passed between the founding of Philippi and the time that Paul was writing. Just as almost 400 years have passed between the time of the founding of Fayetteville in our own time. So the Philippi that Paul first visited in around 51 or 52 AD was a very different place. The Romans had captured it from the Macedonians in 168 BC. And in 42 BC during the Roman Civil War that brought an end to the Roman Republic. It was the scene of the final defeat of the forces of Brutus and Cassius by the forces of Anthony and Octavian. Who later of course became Augustus Caesar. And that final battle occurred just outside of this city. This was critical because after the city Octavian turned Philippi into a Roman colony and a military outpost. They released some of their veteran soldiers. The war to defeat the men who had stabbed Caesar had finished as far as they were concerned. And they released some of their legionaries from Legion 28 to colonize the city. Which was founded and I apologize for my terrible Latin here. Colonia Victrix Philippensium meaning the colony of the victory of Philippi. From that point onwards it was a place where Italian veterans from the Roman army were given land. And it sat upon an important Roman road called the Via Ignatia. Which was a road that was constructed by the Romans in the 2nd century BC. Incidentally I learned while we were on our trip that the Greeks joke particularly in Cyprus. That the only roads in Greece that last were built by the Romans. The modern ones all fall apart. It crossed through Illyricum, Macedonia, Thracia and runs into the territory that is now part of Albania. North Macedonia, Greece and European Turkey. Why is that important? Well it's important because it meant that Philippi was a center not only of trade. And they had mines we'll talk about in a little while where they mined gold and silver. But it was a place where it was possible to go from Philippi to other areas of Macedonia. Or to turn south and to go into Greece. They had their own route 95 so to speak running right through the city. That allowed them to have concourse with all the people in Greece and up in Macedonia and into the Roman Empire. This meant that the Lord in founding his church there. Put it in a place where the inhabitants could as they did their daily trade. Carry not only letters to Rome but they could also carry the gospel to the surrounding areas. Now the citizens of this colony were regarded as citizens of Rome. And they were given a number of special privileges that ordinary inhabitants of the empire didn't have. It was in many senses a miniature Rome. Literally because they were under the municipal law of Rome. It was as though they were a colony that was in Italy actually attached to Rome. That was the way the law functioned. And they were governed by two military officers the Duumviri who were appointed directly from Rome. And the colony itself although it was relatively small. It was only about 10 ,000 people when Paul reached it. It was very wealthy as a general rule. They had gold and silver mines just outside the city. And those mines were still productive in Paul's day. It was as I said a little Rome in the midst of Macedonia. And not just in the government. It was laid out like a Roman city. And so to this day you can see that they have a Roman forum in addition to a Greek Agora. But how did Paul get to this city? How did he get there? Well let's read a little from Acts 16 which actually tells us. So if you would turn in your Bible to Acts chapter 16. And I want to begin with verse one which will tell us that Paul was actually when this all started. He was in Asia Minor. He was over in modern day Turkey on his second missionary journey. We read then he came to Derby in Lystra and behold a certain disciple was there named Timothy. The son of a certain Jewish woman who believed but his father was Greek. He was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to have him go with him and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region. For they all knew that his father was Greek. And as they went through the cities they delivered to them the decrees to keep which were determined by the apostles and elders of Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily. Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia they tried to go into Bithynia but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia they came down to Troas and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him saying come over to Macedonia and help us. Now many people have speculated just as an aside that this is Luke who was speaking to Paul in a vision. Now after he had seen the vision immediately we sought to go to Macedonia concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Therefore sailing from Troas we ran a straight course to Samothrace and the next day came to Neapolis and from there to Philippi which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony. And we were staying in that city for some days and on the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul and when she and her household were baptized she begged us saying if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord come to my house and stay so she persuaded us. And we know that Paul and Timothy stayed with Lydia for some days. They had some other encounters. I'm not going to read the rest of chapter 16 but I would encourage you to actually read all of chapter 16 tonight. It won't take you that long but you will read about the exorcism of the demon possessed slave girl which unfortunately got them into trouble because the demon allowed her unfortunately to know about things that men didn't know about. And so her owners used to get money from her that way. We'll also tell you about Paul and Silas's unjust imprisonment and then the household baptism of the Philippian jailer which is marvelous and of course one of those household baptisms that shows us that we are to be baptizing not just parents on their confession of faith but also their children. This was the first church established in Europe. Note that. And that at the explicit direction of the Holy Spirit who made it very clear that Paul was to turn the direction of his labors from Asia Minor which is modern day Turkey to Europe. He goes through Macedonia and then after that he goes into Greece and brings the gospel into Europe. Now the bond as you will read through the Philippi you can't help but notice the friendship, the love that exists between Paul and this congregation. It was peculiarly close though others had abandoned him in his imprisonment as we shall see these Philippians had not. They continued to pray for him and they continued to provide for his needs in this world. They sent him a gift. As I said I don't want to give away too many spoilers but they had sent a man by the name of Epaphroditus with a gift for him in jail and then he had sent Epaphroditus back to them with this letter. That's how he got it. And as I mentioned this letter was written from Rome during his imprisonment. The beginning of that is related in Acts 28. The reference to Caesar's household which you will read in Philippians 4 22 and the palace in Philippians 1 13. In the Greek it's Praetorium. It was probably the barrack of the Praetorium guard attached to the palace of Nero and that confirms this. So I tend to think it was during his first imprisonment at Rome. That would tend to sit with the mention of the Praetorium and that he was in the custody of the Praetorium prefect and his situation agrees with the situation in the first two years of his imprisonment that you can read about in Acts. In Acts 28 30 and 31. It's not that important whether it was the first or the second imprisonment. The fact is he's in prison. He's in prison for his faith. He's in prison for his preaching. But he does not allow that to destroy him or even to to drive him down or to change the nature of his ministry. Many people might have switched over perhaps to a martyr's ministry at this point in time and yet he does not. He continues to encourage the people to go about their their business preaching the gospel and being members of the church no matter what the circumstances are. Now the tone of this letter as we go through it you'll notice this. It's unlike most of his other letters. It contains no long doctrinal discussions. It contains no rebukes of evils that were festering in the particular church. But it is an outpouring rather of happy love and also confidence in these brothers and sisters. He loves them. He is confident in them and he wants them to be confident not in themselves. He wants them to be confident in Christ and in his promises. Like all of Paul's epistles, as you saw, it starts with a salutation. Our letters, of course, and with the identification of the person who's sending it. But the letters back there started with who this letter was from. And like most of his letters, it also starts with a prayer for the people that he is writing to. He isn't just in intending to give them information. He wants to bless them, to bless them with his letter and to bless them with his prayer. And one commentator calls the entire letter a long gush of love towards the Philippians. And it is. There's nothing wrong with that. Verses 1 and 2 that we read there, they contain an apostolic greeting. The senders are identified there. Timothy is associated with Paul. Timothy was with Paul, therefore, in his imprisonment. We remember from 2 Timothy in his second imprisonment that Paul noted that only Timothy had stayed with him. Or rather that he wanted Timothy to come to him in his imprisonment to bring things to him. Timothy remained loyal to Paul no matter what. Timothy also, you remember, was going to become very important to Paul in the Ephesian church and building them up and so on. Timothy was a genuine, he was more than just an amanuensis or a secretary for Paul. He was a helper to Paul. He was a brother in Christ, somebody who would stand with him in thick or thin. Now, Paul mentions him and he often does that. He brings the friends who are about him into prominence. That also indicates that the people in Philippi knew of him and would be interested to hear how he was doing. Timothy is in Rome with Paul when the letter is being dictated. And although Timothy is not the one who is inspired to write the letter, Paul is using him as his secretary to take it down. It's very possible that Paul had an eye disease, which made it very difficult for him to write. He calls Timothy and himself, he addresses himself as a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Now, that's a nice little word, bondservant. It conjures up the idea of indentured bondage, the idea that we're just working off a debt. But when he says bondservant, he's actually using the Greek word doulos. Doulos means literally slave. He is a slave of Christ. Some prefer the translation bondservant to kind of neaten it up. We don't like the idea of Paul calling himself a slave of Christ because of the bad connotations of that. But we remember that most of the Roman Empire, in fact, 20 % of the city there, and this would have had, as a Roman colony, a military colony, Philippi would have had a lower than normal slave population, more free men than slaves. But they still speculate that at least 20 % of those 10 ,000 people within the colony were slaves. And here is Paul saying, I too am a slave. But who is he a slave of? He's a slave of Jesus Christ. He and Timothy are slaves, and they aren't complaining about that. They understood that they were bought with a price by the Lord Jesus Christ in his sacrifice for their sake, and therefore they were owned by their master. They are completely dependent upon him, and they give him their undivided allegiance. They love this master of theirs, the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul clearly, he views it as the highest honor that we can attain to serve Christ, to have his light yoke upon us instead of the heavy chains of sin which he takes away. And he is bound to absolute submission to this Lord who is all worthy and who gave everything for his sake. Paul, note in all of his letters, never forgot what Christ had done for him, never forgot where he was when Christ found him, how he was an enemy of the church, a persecutor of the church. Somebody whom Christ, you remember, addressed on the road to Damascus saying, Paul, Paul, or rather at that time, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Jesus associates himself so keenly with his people that to persecute them is to persecute him. I was thinking about that as we were hearing about how the Pakistanis are wretchedly persecuted. What their persecutors in Pakistan, the Muslims, do not recognize or realize is that in persecuting them, they are persecuting God the Son. And it will not go well for them to be counted amongst the persecutors on the last day. But he had once been a persecutor. Now he is no longer. He is a slave, a willing servant of the Lord Jesus Christ who loves him with all of his heart. Now note also at the beginning, he doesn't mention that he's an apostle. And so there's a great contrast here between letters like Galatians where he asserts his apostolic authority when he's teaching them. This is a very friendly letter. He doesn't actually need to. He knows they know that he's an apostle of the Lord. Jesus greets all of the saints in Christ. Jesus, who are in Philippi, and he abused them. He calls them saints. And what is he talking about there when he calls them saints? Haggai, literally holy ones. These are people who he considers as they are in Christ. Have you ever thought about this? We may think of ourselves as wretches. We may think of ourselves as people in whom there is nothing worthy of praise. And yet the way that the Lord looks at us is his holy ones, his ones who are set apart. His chosen ones who are even now being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. If you are in Christ, that is who you are. You are one of his special people. In the Old Testament, the word was segula, his special treasure. Brothers and sisters, the devil wants us to think of ourselves as only what we can accomplish by our meager efforts. And let's face it, that's not much. Isaiah, at the end of his long, his long prophetic letter in Isaiah 66, he talks about righteousness, the righteousness that a holy man like himself might be able to accomplish by himself. And he says these things, our righteousnesses are but filthy rags. But Christ, what does he do? He endows us with robes of righteousness. He enrobes us, as Luther put it so very well, so that when we stand before God on the last day, the saints are seen as they are in Christ. That is who Paul sees them as. They are people who are called to be holy and who are being made holy. We have been saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are also, and this will come out from this letter, we are also being conformed to the image of Christ. It is as that example that was given to us a little while ago of the, as we were going through the Bible study of the princess who had been made, or rather the commoner who had been made into the queen. She was given the title, but then gradually she was taught the courtly graces and made into somebody who everybody understood and saw was the wife of the king. They are the people of God. They are the saints of Christ and that because of their union with the Lord Jesus Christ. All of the saints together in their communal sense are being addressed by Paul. This letter would have been probably read just as we read it in the midst of worship and so on, and then copied and passed on to the other congregations, the other saints throughout the world.
Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
A highlight from The Sympathy of Jesus
"Welcome to Gospel in Life. For many of us, trusting Jesus with our lives is challenging. How can we trust Him in light of so much suffering and pain? How can we know He is the One who will make things right, both in our lives and in the world? Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller continues looking at the Gospels to show us who the The passage on which our teaching is based this morning is printed in your bulletin. It's Mark chapter 7 verses 24 through 37. Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it, yet He could not keep His presence secret. In fact, as soon as she heard about Him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at His feet. The woman was a Greek, born in Syria and Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. First let the children eat all they want, He told her, for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs. Yes, Lord, she replied, but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. Then He told her, for such a reply you may go, the demon has left your daughter. And she went home and found her child lying on the bed and the demon gone. Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. There some people brought to Him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Him to place His hand on the man. After He took him away, away from the crowd, Jesus put His fingers into the man's ears. Then He spit and touched the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, Ephphatha, which means be opened. At this the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak plainly. Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone, but the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. People were overwhelmed with amazement. He has done everything well, they said. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. This is God's Word. What we've been doing here on these morning services over these weeks is we're actually building a biography of Jesus, where we're putting together a life of Jesus, and so we're looking at the main events of His life. Now, these few weeks right before Christmas is the time in which the Church looks at the grand miracle of the Incarnation. It looks at the fact that Jesus Christ is God become human, and for these weeks before Christmas, what we're going to do is we're going to look at events in the life of Jesus that show His humanity, who show His solidarity with us. And the interesting thing about this particular event, or these two stories of healing, which Mark puts back -to -back, is this is the only time that we know of, there might have been other times, but it's the only time we know of that Jesus ever left His country. This is the only time that Jesus ever went abroad, the only time that He ever left the boundaries of Israel. He did so for a purpose, and He did so to teach us something, and let's take a look at it. There's two stories, the healing of the little daughter, the healing of the deaf mute. Let's look at them and see what they teach us. Now first of all, we see, and let me show you here in the very beginning, Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. Now this is a Hellenistic area, a Gentile area, and the reason that Jesus went there is only really possible to understand if you read the first part of chapter 7. Let me give you a synopsis. The first part of chapter 7 of the Gospel of Mark, immediately before this passage, Jesus has a knock -down, drag -out fight with the Pharisees about cleanliness, about ritual cleanness. The Pharisees, the religious leaders, came to Jesus and said, why don't your disciples follow the laws of ritual purity? What were the laws of ritual purity? Well they were the laws that had to do with washing your hands continually, only eating certain foods, only wearing certain garments and clothes, and not touching or dealing with Gentiles or with the sick or with deformed people. And the reason that the Pharisee had developed these elaborate rules was because in the Old Testament, when God set up the worship in the Old Testament, in the Old Testament before you would go into God, before you go into the temple, you had to cleanse yourself. You had to wash. There was a large laver, sort of like a huge bathtub in a sense, right before you came into the holy place, into the sanctuary. You had to wash. And there were a number of rules that God gave to the Israelites to say, now cleanse yourself before you go in. And these rules were visual aids to remind you that you needed not just to go into God, but you needed repentance, you needed to be cleansed of your sin.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from The Preeminence of Christ in Evangelism
"Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 17. Well, this verse, verse 17, is a Campbellite killer. But I'm not going to preach on that tonight, even though the part of me really wants to. Paul said, For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. But unto us which are saved it is the power of God. Verse 21, For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. I want to preach tonight a message titled, The Preeminence of Christ in Evangelism. Paul the Apostle boldly proclaims that the primary function of his life and ministry was to preach the plain gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially as revealed in his perfect life, his sacrificial death, his burial and his glorious resurrection, would be the consistent theme of his preaching and his ministry. He said as much, Christ and Him crucified was the preeminent message in all of Paul's evangelistic endeavors. Look at chapter 2 and verse 1. And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Now what does it mean when we assign preeminence to something? When I say the preeminence of Christ in our message, in our evangelism, what do I mean by that? Well, when we assign preeminence to something, we are saying that it is to be first in importance, rank and influence. It is to be above everything else, superior, peerless, supreme, the greatest and most noble of all missionaries in the Bible, consistently appointed men, women, boys and girls of every race, creed, and social position to the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we should be committed to doing the same. I fear that much of modern day preaching that passes for evangelism does not assign preeminence to Christ and His finished work. Instead the focus has become so man -centered, it has devolved into a mere exercise of persuading someone to make a profession of faith. The focus is on getting a decision from that person, and as a result, religious assemblies all across the world, not just in America, but all across the world are filled with professors who responded to some psychological techniques and a promise of heaven. You don't want to go to hell, do you? No. You want to go to heaven, don't you? Yes. Well, just follow this simple formula. Follow these simple steps. Repeat after me. Embrace the formula of easy believism and voila! They are hastily assured of their eternal security. Do you really believe that exists? I've knocked on so many doors. I've visited house to house, found people who will tell me right to my face that they're saved. I said, well, tell me about it. Well, I went forward. When they had the invitation, I went forward. I shook the preacher's hand. He told me what to say and I said it. And I said, so are you faithfully serving the Lord? Are you attending church? Do you love the Lord? Well, I don't ever go to church. That's a huge problem. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. When somebody is saved, their life changes forever. And that won't happen by merely repeating a formula. There has to be an inward work of grace in the heart. You're not saved by... You don't get people to be saved by psychological techniques. They're saved because God uses the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring men to an end of themselves and draw them invincibly where they desire to know Christ and the free pardon of sin. May God help us to see that we cannot, we must not trifle with or change the message or the methods that are prescribed in the Holy Book, in the Word of God, regarding evangelism. We are not to water down the claims of Christ and the gospel. We must proclaim it boldly, accurately, plainly. And praying that God would open hearts to receive the truth as it is in Jesus. The preeminence of Christ in our evangelism must be revealed, first of all, in the message that we preach. I'm going to tell you something. If you're wrong about the message, if you don't know and obey the gospel, if you don't understand, this is something you can't be wrong about and go to heaven. It's an impossibility. There are certain doctrines that you may not fully understand, but this is something you cannot be mistaken about because there's only one message of salvation. Paul emphatically states that the message of the gospel is centered around the cross. He's not talking about a piece of jewelry. It was an instrument of execution. It signified a horrific death. And the cross represents the death of Jesus Christ, His redemptive work for sinners, His suffering, His bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, His offering of His body and soul in order for us to be saved. The cross is a message of Christ's sacrifice that He offered Himself literally in the stead of His people. He, instead of me receiving all of the wrath of God, it fell upon His worthy head and body and soul. I'm the one that should have spent an eternity in the lake of fire, tormented day and night forever and ever. But while Jesus Christ was on the cross, He suffered the equivalent of what I would deserve in the lake of fire and not just for my sins, but for all that the Father gave Him, for all the way from Adam until the very last person is saved. Can you imagine the weight and the magnitude of that debt that He paid? But He did it with His life and His blood. His merits were offered. He died in the stead of His people acting as their surety, their substitute. You understand what a substitute is. It's someone who takes the place of another and assumes all of their obligations, all of their responsibilities. And that's what He did for me with regards to the law and the condemnation of God. He was my propitiation. He appeased the wrath of God on my behalf, and if you're saved, He did the same for you. You see, this message was considered by the world and by the elites and by the educated to be foolishness. To the Jews it was a stumbling block, and also to the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles. I'm going to tell you something. If lost people understand the gospel, then you're probably not preaching it right. Now, what I'm saying is this. Lost people, they want you to tell them, give me a little step -by -step formula, how to join the church, how to be a better person. We're telling them, here's the real issue here. You're wicked. You're broken. You're polluted with sin. Your only hope is to trust. You have no ability in and of yourself to save yourself. You're wretched. That's just not a popular message. But it's one that has to be preached. And then we tell men, women, boys and girls, don't look to yourself. Look outside of yourself. What did John the Baptist preach when he saw Jesus the first time? Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. The message was look to Him, trust Him, believe on Him. Not on yourself, not on your religion, not on your works. The message is all about Christ. He's the only Savior of sinners. And this message must be accurate. It must be biblically authentic and authoritative. It must be pure without the admixture of man's wisdom or supposed innovation. And he states it so clearly. You're not saved any other way than by faith in the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nothing else qualifies. Here's what he said. I mean, I don't know how anybody can read 1 Corinthians 15 and not see what the truth is about this. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel. By the way, there's not many gospels. There's not a gospel for different disciplines. There is one gospel. Which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved. Delivered from the penalty, the power, and ultimately the presence of sin. That's the magnitude of this work that Christ did. You're saved. If you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain, for I delivered unto you first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures. It's according to the Word of God. This is our authority. this Look, was the message consistently preached by the early churches in the book of Acts. Think about the message of the book of Acts. You don't ever hear a preacher get up and say, God's done all He could do. I've done all I can do. Now it's all up to you to bow your head. They didn't even say, I've often thought about Noah, and he preached righteousness. And, you know, he was mocked, he was derided. But I don't think he ever put any bumper stickers on the ark that said, Smile, God loves you. I mean, he is warning people of the judgment to come. The wrath of God's about to be poured out. You need to get in the ark. There's only one door. Only one way. It's a serious matter. But let's look at just a couple of verses. Well, maybe more than a couple. But Acts 2, 23 and 24, it says, Him being delivered by the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. Now didn't that sound just like something I was saying? You're wicked, you're guilty of the death of Christ, but he was crucified, he was slain, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holding of it. And then the same chapter, Acts chapter 2 and verse 36, he says this, Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ. The message is all centered on the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at chapter 3 and verse 13. The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus, whom ye delivered up and denied him in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One in just and desired a murderer to be granted unto you and killed the Prince of Life whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are all witnesses, and his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know, yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. You see, Peter and John gave no credit to themselves. They were just pointing to the work of Christ. That was their mission. That was their message. It's all about Jesus Christ. Verse 19, repent ye therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Acts 030 - Power Through Purity
"All right, well good evening everyone. Let's open our Bibles to the book of Acts chapter 5 and verse 12. I want to invite the men in the room to our men's fellowship breakfast 8 a .m. Saturday. Paul Scharf is going to be presenting. And then we have a family fun day I think in the afternoon, right? So we're trying to put the word fun back into fundamentalism. That's our new motto here. So big day Saturday. But for this evening, let's open our Bibles to Acts chapter 5 verse 12. And verses 1 through 11, Ananias and Sapphira have been slain in the Holy Spirit as we saw last time. Don't mean to make light of that. So there was sort of an issue of purity within the church. As you had these two people that were kind of bringing in sin into the church and the Lord dealt with them through maximum divine discipline. And then what typically happens is when the issue of purity is handled correctly, then the church sort of takes on new power. So you have, beginning with the rest of the chapter, the power of the church. There's a tremendous description of its power in verses 12 through 16. But as typically happens when God starts to bless or use somebody, it invokes jealousy. And so you'll see jealousy there in verse 17 amongst the Sadducees leading to persecution. So the rest of chapter 5, you can kind of divide it up as the apostles' power, verses 12 through 16. And then how they were consequently persecuted, verses 17 through 42. So let's go ahead and start off here with the apostles' power. Here's a little outline of the apostles' power, verses 12 through 16. And we start off with apostolic authority, verse 12. It says, At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people, and they were all with one accord in Solomon's portico. So the first thing you see here, verse 12, is apostolic signs. And again, the apostolic signs are following how the Lord dealt with purity. So the church is now practically purified with Ananias and Sapphira, who were bringing Satan's agenda into the church, now out of the scene. And then the church takes on new authority or new power. So I guess one point of application for us is if we want to see the Lord's power in our lives, we need to maybe, I don't know, spend less time seeking power and more time seeking purity, because God uses pure vessels. And the more we give ourselves to the issue of practical sanctification, the more we give room for the Lord to work through us via his power. And the power here in the first century was manifested through the apostles. Signs and wonders were taking place. This is a sign gift. You have to understand a lot of these things in the book of Acts in the context of it's the apostles on the earth. They are sort of foundational to the outworking of the church. And so what you see in the book of Acts is miracles, signs and wonders will cluster around the apostles. Paul in Ephesians 2 verse 20 says of the apostles, having built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So the first, in this metaphorical temple, the first stone that goes in is the cornerstone. And then the cornerstone, and that's Jesus. The cornerstone is very important because through the cornerstone, you arrange all the other stones in the whole structure of the temple. And after the cornerstone is put in, then you put in the foundation stones. And so the Lord built the church, first putting in the cornerstone, Jesus, the most important stone. The stone by which all other stones are gauged and measured. And then after he was put in, in this metaphor that Paul is using, as he analogizes the church to a temple, in came the foundational stones of the apostles. And so that's what you see happening here. 2 Corinthians 12 and verse 12 talks about the signs of a true apostle. It says, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs, wonders, and miracles. So that's what's taking place here. And one of the things to understand as we go through the book of Acts is every single miracle that happens in the book of Acts was performed either by an apostle, or it was performed by someone operating under the delegated authority of an apostle. So Arnold Fruchtenbaum writes of verse 12. He says verse 12 provides evidence of apostolic authority. The account of the second persecution of the church begins with apostolic signs. Again, it is important to note that in the book of Acts, only the apostles and the apostolic delegates who were appointed by the apostles by the laying on of hands were able to perform miracles, signs, and wonders. This fact has come out four times before in the book of Acts, and he's got the verses there in parenthesis. Acts 2, 43, Acts 3, 6, and 7. Acts 4, 22, and 33. And then he says, and now it's once again repeated in this verse. So you see these apostolic signs taking place, and then you see the oneness that the believers here had with each other. You get a glimpse of their spirit of unity, because the rest of verse 12 says, and they were all with one accord in Solomon's portico, Solomon's porch. Now when the church was just getting ready to start, because it was birthed on the day of Pentecost, just prior to that, in Acts 1, verse 13, they were meeting in the upper room. It says, when they had entered the city, they went to the upper room, where they were staying, and then it lists the 12 apostles. Well, by the time you get to Acts chapter 3, you can't cram everybody into the upper room. Peter preached that opening sermon on the day of Pentecost, where about 3 ,000 were saved. And according to our last numerical count, Acts 4, 4, now at least 5 ,000 are saved. And now we're in Acts chapter 5, some estimate that there could be as many as 10 ,000. So the church, just like was predicted, once the spirit fell, would start to grow exponentially. And so they couldn't fit in the upper room anymore. So they had to move to the portico, or the porch of Solomon, within the temple. You see them doing that in Acts 3, verse 11. It says, while he was clinging to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them at the so -called portico of Solomon, full of amazement. So part of the temple was named the porch of Solomon, because Solomon was the builder of the first temple, all the way back in 966 BC. And one of the things that's interesting is the early church had no problem meeting in the temple. They weren't saying, you know, we've got to get out of here, you know, we need to become Methodists as fast as we can, we need to become Presbyterians as fast as we can, we need to become Episcopalians as fast as we can, we're going to need some stained glass windows. Let's get rid of all this Jewish stuff. They had no intention to separate themselves from Judaism. All the believers at this point are Jewish. And you don't even have a Gentile converted in the book of Acts until in Cornelius Acts chapter 10. And as Jews, they had no problem celebrating Yeshua. Jim, in his opening prayer, used the word Yeshua, which is just the Hebrew name for Jesus. Jesus is the Greek name. But they had no problem celebrating their newfound life in Yeshua, in the temple, because they saw Jesus as the fulfillment of Judaism. Judaism points to Jesus. The whole purpose of the nation of Israel, one of its major purposes, is to bring Jesus into the world. So, you know, we sort of have drawn this, as Gentiles, this sort of line between us and the Jews, but the early church never did that. They didn't see the need to because they saw Christianity. In fact, this movement isn't even called Christianity yet. The word Christian is not even going to be used until Acts 11. They're just believers in Yeshua, or Jesus. And they saw that as being connected to Judaism. Judaism pointed to that, and they had no ambition to, you know, disconnect themselves from the temple in Israel. And then this expression, one accord, is very interesting to me, because that's what Jesus said would happen in the upper room. He said in John 17, verses 20 through 23, just a few days before his death, when he prayed, and he prayed there the Lord's Prayer. John 17 is the Lord's Prayer, right? Because that's the Lord praying. Matthew 6 is not the Lord's Prayer, although we errantly call it the Lord's Prayer, because Jesus never prayed that prayer in Matthew 6. That's the disciples' prayer. He was teaching the disciples how to pray. And I hope he didn't pray that prayer, because one of the lines in it is, Forgive us our debts. Jesus was sinless. So if you really want the true Lord's Prayer, read John 17, where he prays first for himself, verses 1 through 5, and then he prays for the 12, really the 11, because Judas left the room, verses 6 through 19, and then from there, I think to verse 26, the end of the chapter, he prays for the church, or those that would believe through the ministry of the apostles. And as he's praying for the future church, he mentions the unity that the Holy Spirit would bring to the church. He says in John 17, verse 20, he says, I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those who believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may also be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one, just as we are one. I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me, and love them even as you love me. So there's a prayer there in his true Lord's Prayer, where he says, everyone that's going to be affected by the ministry of the 11, I pray that they would be just as unified as we members of the Trinity.
Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
A highlight from Lord of the Wine
"Jesus was the most influential man to ever walk the earth. Is it possible to really know him? And how does he change our relationship with our Heavenly Father, our relationships with family and friends, and our approach to our work and service to others? Find out today on Gospel and Life as Tim Keller looks at the life of Jesus. The passage of scripture on which the teaching is based is printed in your bullet in there. It's John chapter 2. We're going to look at verses 1 through 11. John chapter 2, verses 1 to 11. On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there. And Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, They have no more wine. Dear woman, why do you involve me? Jesus replied, My time has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, Do whatever he tells you. Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from 20 to 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, Fill the jars with water. So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet. They did so. And the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, Everyone brings out the choice wine first, then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink. But you have saved the best till now. This, the first of his miraculous signs Jesus performed in Cana in Galilee, he thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him. This is God's word. We're looking at the life of Jesus, and what we're really doing is we're building a biography. We're looking not so much at his teachings, which is often what we do here, but we're looking at the events of his life, the main events of his life. And we're developing, therefore, a biography of the single most influential person that ever walked the face of the earth. I think that's an uncontroversial statement. And anyone who wants to live intelligently in this world would want to know something about something, a person like that, and so we're doing that. Now, why do we talk about this one? We have to be selective in a biography, so why do we come after this one? Why do we bring this particular one up? And the answer is, this is not just a miracle, but as you see down in verse 11, look. If you see down in verse 11, it's not just a miracle, but a miraculous sign. It is a picture, and it was chosen by Jesus to be the first sign, and because it was the first miracle, it's a picture, almost a parable, an acted -out picture of all that he is and all that Christianity is. Now, if you want the evidence for that, recently I was reading a very interesting book by Reynolds Price. He's a Duke University English professor, very prominent. put He recently out a book in which he translated the Gospels, some of the Gospels, and it was very well -reviewed here in the New York Times. It's quite an interesting book, but he writes fairly lengthy introductions, and in the introduction to the Gospel of John, which he translated, he looks at this and he says, if you just read this, and if you're a writer yourself, you know this must have happened, and the way he puts it is this. He says, if you were inventing a biography of Jesus Christ, you would never invent for your inaugural sign a miraculous solution to a mere social embarrassment. Now, here's what he says, the only logical explanation for this particular sign being the first one is that it must have happened, because he said, I as a writer, I know this, if I was inventing a life of Jesus, I would want to make sure that the first miracle was extremely quintessential. Any leader of a great new movement, when they make their first public presentation, they take tremendous care to give a balanced exact picture of what the movement's all about. And therefore, since Jesus was clearly the greatest movement leader in the history of the world, obviously the very first sign, the very first thing he did, not walking on water, not raising somebody from the dead, not all the other possibilities, far more dramatic, but instead, what you have here is a not very big deal. A party looks like it's going to go two days instead of three days, wow, what a shame. If you were going to develop your own, if you were going to fabricate your own first miracle for Jesus, he says, you would never in a million years do this, but Jesus did. Why? Why did Jesus do this miracle? Why did he do it this way? Why was this the first one? How does this reveal his glory? If you ask that question, oh, there's so much in it, you have the whole nine yards here, who he came to be, what he came to do, what he has to offer, how we can receive it, it's all here. Look, first of all, first this passage shows us who he was. Well, who was he? Take a look here at verse 8 and 9. There's a very interesting term here that you don't find anywhere else in the New Testament. At the very, it says after he told them, draw some of it out here in verse 8, and he says, now, take it to the master of the banquet, and we're told they did so. In verse 9 it says, the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine and so on. Now, what's the master of the banquet? This is a term, it's one word in Greek and it's translated this way. Essentially, this is close to what we might call a master of ceremonies, it's close to what we would call the toast master. It was the person to preside, but this is, in a sense, this is a hired life of the party. You know, if you're having a really good party, and it's a big party, you want someone to preside, and a presider has to be someone who's a very hail, fellow, well -met kind of person, you know. The master of ceremonies is someone who says, now let's do this, and let's do this, and here we go, and you know, you have to be the person who gets things stirred up and makes it a great party. Now, this party is about to fall absolutely flat, and Jesus saves this guy's hide. And because he provides what is necessary for the party, he reveals himself to be the true master of the banquet, the real Lord of the feast. Now, let's ask the question point blank. Why would Jesus Christ, in his first miracle, his calling card, as it were, why would he do this to show the world who he was and to show us who he was, to create 150 gallons or so of the most delicious, headiest wine in order to make a dying party into an incredible party, lifting it to new heights? Why is that his very first miracle? Because what he's saying is, I come as Lord of the feast. He says, yes, I come to do self -denial, I come to suffer, and I come to be humbled, and if you follow me, you will, too. There'll be plenty of self -denial and suffering and humbling, too, but these are just means to an end. Here's the end. As master of the banquet, as Lord of the feast, I'm come. Jesus, in a sense, says this in this miracle, which is a parable. He says, you know all those old stories, all those old Dionysian tales that you find in all the old ancient traditions of days in which the forest would run with wine and there would be feasting and dancing and revelry? He says, kid stuff compared to what I have come to do. He says, haven't you read what the prophets said about my day? Isaiah 25, in that day, the Lord of hosts will make for his people a feast of the finest meats and wine well -refined. And on this mountain, he will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and your reproach and shame will be taken away forever, for the Lord God has spoken.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Nine Gospel Truths
"I invite you to turn with me to Romans chapter 10. Take a break this week from Exodus and take a look at this wonderful passage in Romans chapter 10. Reading Romans 10 verse 9 through verse 17, though as we dig into it we'll really just be looking at 14 through 17. Romans chapter 10 beginning in verse 9. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news, that they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Let's bow together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come to ask you that you'd bless this word to our hearts. You give us an understanding by your Spirit of us and we believe in rich, strengthened in our faith. Pray for those who perhaps have no faith this morning that this would be the time that you would stir in a new life that they might believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to call on his name and be saved. Father, I pray that you would encourage everyone here and give us all attentiveness to your word and pray in Jesus' name, Amen. The question at hand in this passage is pretty straightforward and it is this, it is how will anyone personally experience the gift of salvation from the wrath of God and receive the gift of eternal life? It's a basic question. It's really a fundamental question to the whole of scripture. Some people come to a religious kind of mood or spiritualism and have different conjectures about how they would answer that question. Some people think that every last person on the planet will be saved. That's universalism. That is a doctrine that finds absolutely no credibility in scripture. Jesus states pretty clearly that the path to life is narrow and few find it. Some people think that salvation, eternal life, comes to those who are good enough. That is self -righteousness. The Bible likewise gives absolutely no credibility to that doctrine and obliterates it almost from the very start by condemning mankind as a whole because of our sin and makes it absolutely clear that no amount of good works can ever dig you out of the hole of the sin that you have gotten yourself into. Some in this room right now have a lack of eternal life. You do not possess it and you need it. Because if you do not have it, then the whole of your life is a complete and utter failure and only headed towards eternal condemnation. Some of you know the Lord Jesus Christ and have received his salvation and you know it's not of yourself. You know it's completely of grace and the only merit to your life is that God has intervened incredibly and miraculously to save you from the path of destruction you were on. And you know personally the urgency of the Gospel message because you yourself have experienced salvation from condemnation and given the gift of eternal life and a relationship with God and you know that there are others around you who do not have that and it's not as though they have an infinite amount of time to figure out life and eternal life because in a moment their life will be snuffed out like the flame of a candle and they head into eternity either with Christ or without Christ and what's going to make the difference? This text is really about that problem. How does anyone receive eternal life, the gift of God? In the context of the book of Romans there is a very significant theological question that is being wrestled with in Romans 9, 10, and 11 and the question that's being wrestled with is this, God says that he is a faithful God who makes promises to his people that he is going to take care of them, protect them, save them. The people that he made those promises to in the Old Testament was the people of Israel and yet the people of Israel by and large had at the time of Paul's writing rejected God's salvation in Jesus Christ and so the question arises, is God going to make good on his promises? Is God someone who can be trusted? He said he would take care of this people and then when salvation comes they reject it and so can we trust God? In Romans chapter 9 verses 4 and 5 describes how God has singled out that people of Israel, that he made great and powerful promises to them. Romans 9 verse 4 says they are Israelites and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, and the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs and from their race according to the flesh is the Christ.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Evangelism 101
"Gospel is a way of life. As believers, we should be intentional. It should be something we do, is share the gospel. So maybe you're like this when the term of evangelism and sharing the gospel comes up. You're like the guy here on the left that as soon as somebody talks about evangelism, you're like, I'm out. That's it. I'm out. Or you may be kind of like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, like the guy on your right that seems like the gospel is this burden that just sits on our back, and if we don't share it perfectly, if we don't get them to conversion, all of a sudden we have failed. And these are two avenues that have plagued us quite often when we look at us as believers. But I want to share with you today as the first part of this, this is a burden that's really been on my heart when it comes to sharing the gospel, is I want to remove that backpack from you. And part of the way to do that today as we work through this is we're going to talk about whose role is it anyway when it comes to the gospel. I'm going to take a look at what is the gospel. Oftentimes I think we don't share the gospel because one, we don't know the gospel or we can't articulate the gospel. And then I want to talk about, I object. What are some of the most common objections I've heard? There's really only one that I'd like you to focus in on because in one way shape or form this comes into play every time I've talked with somebody. Turn, turn, turn! What are some ways that we can turn gospel conversations in everyday life? And then talking about just some of the common witnessing scenarios that I've encountered throughout my ministry. So whose role is it anyway? Defining roles in evangelism. If we look back at God's Word itself, John 1, 11 through 13, He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him. But to many that did receive Him, to those who believe in His name, He gave them the authority to become children of God. Who were born not of blood, not of will, nor of the flesh, but of who? God. It's God who gives people the right to become children of God. We don't. It's God who saves. Jeremiah 31, the new covenant. I'm not going to read the whole thing throughout this, but you will see I've bolded some words. Who's the I will? Yahweh God. I will make a new covenant. I will make with the house of Israel. I will put my law in their hearts. I will write it on them. I will be their God and they will be my people. I will forgive their iniquity and I will no longer remember their sins. What part do you play in that? Nothing. Nothing. John 6, 35 through 39. Jesus says, I'm the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never hunger. The one who believes in me will never thirst again. But I say to you that you have seen and yet do not believe. Everyone when the Father gives me and comes to me and the one who comes to me I will never throw out because I have come down from heaven. Not that I should do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. Now this is the will of the one who sent me that everyone whom He has given life, I will not lose any of them. But I will raise them up on the last day. And a very familiar verse, John 6, 44. No one is able to come to me unless who? God. Yahweh God the Father draws him. Are you getting a sense of hopefully like Christian that burden is coming off your back? What part do we play in this? Well, first of all, don't fear. God is with you even in our miserable failings of sharing the gospel. At the same time, what role do we play? Well, the beautiful thing is Yahweh God the Father orchestrated this plan from the beginning before the foundation of the world. Jesus Christ the Son accomplished the plan on the cross. The Holy Spirit applies that plan. What role do you play? John alluded to it in his prayer. You deliver the mail. You declare the plan. You don't change the heart. You don't convince people. You don't convert people. It's a beautiful thing that I get to share with people when I preach in the open air. I tell them right out, right off the gate. I don't convert people. I don't convince people and they look at me weird like, why are you out here? Because I'm here to declare the one who can. And that's what we're there to do. Declare the one who can convert the heart. The one who can convince them of their unbelief to belief. So hopefully the burden if you haven't felt it that you will continue to feel it. It's it's not our role. Our role is just to deliver the good news of Jesus Christ. So what is the good news of Jesus Christ? If I were to ask you, what is the gospel? What would you tell me? Yes. Yeah, what would you tell me? Good news. Okay, what else? Okay, we're all born sinners. We need Jesus as our Savior in order to get to heaven. What else? There's judgment if you reject, okay. What else? Died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead. What else? We need to be reconciled to God. Okay, we were purchased at a great price. Good. Eternity in heaven or eternity in hell. Eternity in heaven or eternity in hell. Okay, not by works. Can you articulate the gospel in 30 seconds? Can you articulate the gospel in a minute or five minutes? Can you articulate the gospel in 45 minutes? These are things we hopefully should be able to do with as much time or as little time as someone gives us. The Bible declares 30 second gospel message Christ died for the ungodly. You leave that with somebody, they'll ponder it. Who's Christ? Who are the ungodly? Why did he die? Those several words sum up the gospel message Christ died for the ungodly and all of this that you've talked about encompasses in the gospel. But it's not just pieces of it. I know one of the things when we think about the gospel we think about the death burial and resurrection of Christ and that's it. But the gospel is not just the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's certainly no less than that. But that is the anchor point of who the person and work of Jesus Christ is. His whole life is the gospel. It's the person and work of Jesus Christ that is foundational in the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So let's take a look at what is the gospel message determining the gospel message. The beginning of Mark I know here currently in a sermon series on Mark. So Mark 1 1 the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ Mark tells you that all of his 16 chapters are going to be about what? The gospel of Jesus Christ. He lays out the foundation for us. Luke 24 the road to Emmaus toward the end Jesus said to them thus it is written that Christ would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day and repentance and forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to the nation's beginning from Jerusalem and you are my witnesses of these things earlier in the road to Emmaus. Jesus says that the law the writings and the prophets testify to who to him that means the coal cannon the whole Bible testifies to Jesus Christ. Romans 1 16 through 17 Paul declaring I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes the beautiful thing about this is oftentimes we quote 116 but 17 goes on to explain what the gospel is. To everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek for the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel from faith to faith as it is written the just or the one who is righteous by faith will live. First Corinthians 15 you're very familiar with it Paul opening up or should might be familiar with it. I don't know if you are not but I'm not going to make a blanket statement. But in case you're not familiar with it now, I know make known to you brothers the gospel which I proclaim to you which you've also received in which you also stand by which we're also being saved if you hold fast to the message I proclaim to you unless you believed to no purpose for I passed on to you as the first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and then he was buried and then he was raised upon the third day according to the scriptures. These are all verses that we look at when we think about the gospel itself, but there's four things to think about if you had an outline and I don't like outlines that much they help me get started. I won't negate the fact that they've helped me get started. But as you understand scripture and as you start reading through in your daily time, you're going to start to see things that are like wait a minute. That's really good. I could have I could have used that in that conversation. So you put it in your back pocket. And you have another opportunity and then you get to bring it out of your back pocket and share it with somebody because it's something that God is placed on your heart as to how he can move and work throughout the gospel anybody familiar with what is the gospel the book by Greg Gilbert? Great book. It's a great book. He includes this in page 32. He says whatever else the Apostles might say there are the issues that seem to lie at the heart of their presentation of the gospel. Context change angles change words change and approaches change but somehow in some way the earliest Christians always seem to get at these four issues. We are accountable to God who created us we have sinned against that God and will be judged but God has acted in Jesus Christ to save us and we will take hold of that salvation by repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from God Comes to Man_05PT4
"Hi, I'm Darrell Bailey, thank you for tuning in on the Gospel of John as we continue our Wednesday in the Word, the identity or the deity of Jesus. Here as we're talking about chapter 1, we're talking about God comes to man. Here this is the fifth in the series, part 4 of God comes to man. We pick up with verse 35 going all the way down to verse 51 to the end of chapter 1. When we look at Genesis of the New Testament. And so when we look and we begin to realize, now John mentions the first in John 2, which is basically the most unique thing about the book of John. When you look at all the comparisons of the portrait of Jesus as the king, the servant, the teacher and the son of God. John in the fourth column. Here we see that his key phrase is believe and but what you can't see is right down where my face is located is the most unique thing about the book or the Gospel of John is there's three Passovers involved in it. In the Synoptics of Matthew, Mark and Luke, there's only one Passover mentioned. Remember, Jesus mentions or John the Apostle mentions so many things that were unique in the Gospel of John. He talks about his sermons. He only mentions seven miracles where there's only two that coincide with the Synoptics of Matthew, Mark and Luke. And so John mentions the first in John chapter 2 and the second Passover is in John chapter 6 verse 4 and the third Passover is in John chapter 11 verse 55. It extends on into John chapter 12 verse 1, John chapter 13 verse 1, oh so as it hits back on John chapter 18 verse 28 and 39 and John chapter 19 verse 14. This third Passover was really the one that occurred on the night before Jesus died and it was the one recorded by all four Gospel writers in conjunction with the Last Supper and the death of Jesus Christ. So the first Passover is only recorded in John's Gospel and it may have been the Passover around April the 18th, 8029, the first year of Jesus's public ministry and so as these three Passovers occur in the three years of Jesus's earthly ministry, John alone records the three separate Passover celebrations that he mentions again as I said a while ago. The first one, John 2, the second Passover is in John 6 verse 4, then the third one extends from chapter 11, 12, 13, 18 and chapter 19. And so what an extraordinary writings of the book of John that we see that's in front of us and so this is very, very unique because the Passover as the Jew that obeyed the Mosaic law according to Deuteronomy chapter 16 in keeping with the mission to fulfill the law, the first Passover John records, he's running out the money changers and so in John chapter 2 verse 12 that I said a while ago that after he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples, they stayed there a few days and so it deals with that first Passover in John chapter 2 and how he deals with things there as well. And so you can compare this to Luke's account of Jesus is doing the same thing two years later in Luke chapter 19 and you know as he was throwing the money changer that my house shall be a house of prayer but you've made it a robber's den and so each and every one of us when we look at the different accounts that each begins to transpire, the most unique thing again I say that in the Gospel of John is there's three Passovers where the synoptic of Matthew, Mark and Luke only have one Passover. Now John tells about the witnesses to the revelation of Jesus Christ, John begins his Gospel by talking about the deity of Christ. He describes the ministry of John the Baptist and then Jesus is baptized and he calls his very first disciples and so Matthew emphasizes his kingship to portray Jesus as the son of David, the Messiah, the king of the Jews and it's directed especially toward a Jewish audience. The genealogy traces the Lord's family tree from Mary all the way back to Abraham and the key word as we said of Matthew is fulfilled because the messianic prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ then we see Mark in his servanthood and in that it betrays the Lord as this suffering servant with the Roman reader in mind it opens the beginning of public ministry of Christ and it records even events of his life that's the key word of straightaway meaning and indicating immediate action and so when we look at Luke and his manhood the Gospel of Luke portrays Christ as the son of man that emphasizes his humanity and of Christ it traces the genealogy of the Lord back to Adam and has the Greek and the Gentile reader in mind. The first three Gospels as we said the synoptics of Matthew, Mark, and Luke describe the events and the life of the Lord Jesus Christ but when we come to the Gospel of John, John his godhood, we find that he emphasizes the meaning of the events in the Gospels that he records much of what is unsaid. He portrays Jesus as the son of God tracing not to Abraham, not to Adam, but before time there was no genealogy, there was no major scene, there was no boyhood, there was no baptism, there was no temptation, there was no amount of transfiguration, there was no guessing domain in the book of John, there was nothing, no publicers, no demonics, there was no parables. The Gospel of John was written with the church in mind. I thank God Pastor Keith preaches a great deal out of the Gospel of John, amen. And so when we look and begin to realize as we said then we noted that every chapter in the book of John emphasizes the Hebrew alphabet. There's only 21 chapters so it leaves off it doesn't get all 22 because there's only 21 chapters but the first chapter everything about that chapter deals with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the aff, the symbol of God as the creator and the master of the universe. When you get to chapter 2, when you get to chapter 3, every one of them follows the lead on the standing of the Hebrew alphabet of what it says in verse 34. Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the witness of Andrew verses 35 to 41. And so remember what we said in Matthew chapter 3 verses 13 through 17. This is the record of John the Baptist of the synoptics of his baptism that he was baptized, amen. And Mark the same in Mark chapter 1 verses 9 through 11, the second of the synoptics of Mark where it talks about how Jesus was baptized. Then of the third synoptics of Luke chapter 3 verses 21 through 22 that it talks about where Jesus was baptized. These took place in the synoptics but notice the events that recorded the record of John the Baptist and his baptism that Jesus occurs not only in Matthew chapter 3, not only in Mark chapter 1 verses 9 through 11, not only that but in Luke 3 verses 21 and 22 that we see the testimony of Jesus baptized. Here the events take us back to that day because John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan River immediately after Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. This is verse 35 but as we get on down it can jump back to verse 29, amen. If you go back into verse 29 you'll see that because even in verse 29 it said the next day and I thank God that Satan appears before Jesus with three Pacific temptations when Jesus resists these temptations Satan leaves him in time and so I'm glad in verse 29 if you go back to it it says the next day John says Jesus coming unto him and said behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. That's verse 29 the next day but when we start up in verse 35 in just a minute you're going to see the phrase again the next day and these are the events that transpired. I'm glad that we see again. Meanwhile back at the Jordan John speaks to the delegation from Jerusalem about his ministry and verses 19 through 28 that's already the 40th day. The 41st day was the 29th of the next day that you look and you'll see that all the way down to verse 34 that John had already publicly introduced Jesus and described the events that took place 31 days earlier at that baptism, amen. And so I'm glad that as we see this on the 42nd day we actually get to verse 35. John points out Jesus to two of his disciples and they follow him that day with him and later that day one of them they bring their brother to Jesus which is Andrew that brings Simon Peter and so as we get all the way to the end you get to the 43rd day that Philip and Nathaniel meet Jesus. Remember this because this is what's so unique about John because here we see the three temptations of Jesus by Satan. Stones in the bread in John chapter 6 verses 26 and verse 31 to make the bread in the wilderness jump from the temple and thirdly the kingdoms of the world in John chapter 6 verse 15 to take the kingdom by force. What a temptation that the devil tried upon him. The testing and trying that he went through just like the Paschal lamb went through for those 40 days. And again what did I say? It's the same as in verse 29 here you see in verse 35 and again the next day after John stood and two of his disciples the day after he made the previous statements Andrew and no doubt John who at that time they were disciples of John the Baptist. The two disciples were with John immediately they became disciples of the Lord they followed Jesus they may have been Andrew I know and I believe they were John and Andrew and so John did not give his own name nor did he refer to himself by name in the Gospel of John. His experience was very simple of he basically as many of us are that we come to Christ and so Andrew he stood where preaching was.
Discerning Hearts - Catholic Podcasts
A highlight from POA11 Keep the Enemy Out of the Camp Put On The Armor A Manual for Spiritual Warfare w/Dr. Paul Thigpen Ph.D. Discerning Hears Catholic Podcasts
"Discerninghearts .com, in cooperation with TAN Books, presents Put on the Armor, A Manual for Spiritual Warfare, with Dr. Paul Thickepen. Dr. Thickepen is an internationally known speaker, bestselling author, and award -winning journalist who has published 43 books in a wide variety of genres and subjects, including The Rapture Trap, A Catholic Response to End Times Fever, and The Manual for Spiritual Warfare, the book on which this series is based. In 2008, Dr. Thickepen was appointed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to their National Advisory Council. He has served the Church as a theologian, historian, apologist, evangelist, and catechist in a number of settings, speaking frequently in Catholic and secular media broadcasts and at conferences, seminars, parish missions, and scholarly gatherings. Put on the Armor, A Manual for Spiritual Warfare, with Dr. Paul Thickepen. I'm your host, Chris McGregor. Paul, thanks for joining me. Chris, great to be here. God bless. Keep the enemy out of the camp. Boy, now that's solid spiritual advice, isn't it? Well, you know, if you're going to win, you just don't want to be opening the doors of your fortress to the enemy. You know, the Scripture talk about the Trojan Horse, that well -known story of how you had the Greeks besieging the city of Troy for years and years, and they couldn't get in, they couldn't get in. And the way they finally got in was by creating a very beautiful horse figure that was large enough for them to put troops inside and leaving it on the gates of the city and making it look like they had abandoned the fight. And the Trojans, the people of Troy, were so taken in by the beauty of it, and they thought, oh, this lovely gift, let's bring it in. And then overnight the Greeks came out and they were inside the city and they destroyed it. It's a great image. You know, it's from classical files, not from Scripture, but I think it's the perfect image of a spiritual reality that we can do all the defending we want to of this castle that is our soul, this fortress. But there's some things we can do that are kind of, you know, not too wise, not too smart, that will actually invite the enemy inside, where we're opening the door to him and saying, come on in. And those things we have to be aware of. It is a very powerful section, though it's a small one, in the Manual for Spiritual Warfare, because the focus on it is the actual direct battle. But those Trojan horses, as you say, as others may describe them as entry points, even demonic entry points, it's important that we identify those and guard against them, isn't it? It is because the temptation will be that the devil will tempt us to embrace what looks like a gift, you know, looks like a desirable thing. But despite the attractive appearance, it's a catastrophe waiting for an invitation to invade. So it's just so important because, I mean, some of the things we can talk about will actually just open the door to demonic activity in your life. It really is. I mean, it can begin with just even simple things, the images and the things we view with our eyes in areas, whether it's horrifically violent or even areas of pornography or pornographic material, that it doesn't have to be as explicit in the beginning. But it's like a slippery slope, isn't it? It is, in part because our memories are such powerful things that we allow the thing in and it doesn't go back out. It stays. It's like the Trojan horse that stays behind the doors. But also, when we get into certain, you know, addictive, destructive habits, the way we're hardwired given the fall now is that a little bit will satisfy for a while, but then it demands more. And so we give it a little more, a little more. And it's that slippery slope you're talking about that ends up, can start out with something so small, end up with something so powerful. It's that notion of the vice again, that it makes a rut in your soul so deep that it's almost impossible to get out of it. It can start very early in our lives, can it? I mean, the exposure to these Trojan horses can happen in the lives of children, maybe through the activities of parents, maybe just being left alone and exposed to things that seem harmless in the beginning. They do, I think, especially Ouija boards. I was very sad to hear that there was, for Christmas shopping this year, there was this great spike in the sale of Ouija boards that probably can be attributed, at least in part, to some recent movie about a Ouija board. And even though the movie portrayed the Ouija board as this portal into something demonic, it sparked still interest on the part of a lot of people. I had one when I was a kid. I regret that day, but we didn't realize it. But it was this fun little parlor game we thought that we brought right inside the fortress of our home, and it wasn't a good thing. So that kind of thing, or you've probably heard of the children's game Bloody Mary or those kinds of things. They may seem harmless. And some people may have done it and not exposed themselves, but it's happened too often. It's such a dangerous thing that we have to make sure that our children especially are not exposed to those. And what our kids watch in other homes, I remember when my daughter was about four, I was in grad school and we didn't even have television and we were so careful to make sure we knew that whatever went into her mind by way of a screen was something healthy. And she went to visit with a little friend one day and they were playing in the back of a room where the father was watching, not something pornographic, but something very graphically violent. And she happened to turn right at that moment and look at the screen and see a man stab another man. And it just terrified her. She'd never seen anything like it. And it took us the longest time to help her get healed of that. So it's a small thing, but we just have to be very vigilant with our children and with ourselves. Today, Paul, I mean, our children are exposed to graphic violence on a scale that we've never really have ever experienced maybe in human tradition. I know people will bring up in conversation what ancient Rome did, but considering how between video games, movies, television, is it any wonder that a violent surge can take over and plant itself in the hearts of our young as well as the old? And yeah, I mean, iPhones, you know, and pads and pods, we can bring it with us wherever we go. It's the kind of thing, you know, when I was a child, I only dreamed of that you would have a, you know, Dick Tracy wristwatch that would actually have a little TV on it or something. But we've basically got that now, you know, with the images that can be wherever we are. And so it's all that harder for parents to track what our kids are doing, kids sending texts back and forth to each other. You know, it just goes on and on. It's ubiquitous. What an assault on the family, an assault on our individual characters.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Persecuted Apostles, Prevailing Gospel
"When I was a child there was a time in which trick birthday candles were all the rage. It was always somewhat interesting to watch someone's face as they tried and tried and tried again to blow out those candles but to no avail. Some of us tried with all of our might and no matter how hard we tried the light that we had thought that we had snuffed out came back. It's been like that throughout as history different leaders have tried to snuff out God's Word. Whether it's Antiochus or Diocletian, whether it's philosophers or false religious systems or communist regimes, many have tried throughout history either to chain or to cut off the Word of God. Some have tried to prohibit transmissions, others have tried to cut off translations, but they all have one thing in common. They have all ultimately failed and that long list of failure you might say in the New Testament Church begins right here in Acts chapter 4. As we make our way into the text first I want to briefly create some context. We have been studying Acts chapter 3. We just finished that. We're making our way into Acts chapter 4 but I want to remind you what happened in Acts 3. There was a man who had been crippled for over 40 years. He was lame from his mother's womb and he was miraculously healed. You'll remember that a crowd ensued as a result of marveling at the miracle and that a massed audience provided an occasion for Peter's evangelistic preaching. Those who played a part, some role or another, when you look at Peter's speech, Peter's preaching, some who had some role or another in Jesus's crucifixion were actually given an opportunity to have that sin and all of their other sins blotted out, wiped away. They could have left in that time. If they would have heard the gospel and repented they could have left being like those who would come to sing in later generations that hymn, my sins are blotted out I know. And there would be many that day that would respond to the gospel by God's grace but there would also be those who would add to their guilt. And I'm not simply referring to those who would hear Peter's message and then in an unwise and undiscerning way not respond to it with faith by God's grace. I'm talking about persons that we know. Familiar villains will reemerge on the scene in our study of Acts chapter four and they are going to try to snuff out what was to them a familiar name. We'll see all of that and more as we get into our text today. We begin in Acts chapter 4 verse 1 where we read, Now as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them. So in the beginning of verse 1 of chapter 4 you see it says now as they spoke to the people. Doubtless this refers to Peter and John. You're going to see that the lame man was with them. He was with them on this day and he's actually going to be with them when they appear before the Sanhedrin, before the Jewish Supreme Court if you will the next day. But right here you get the idea that Peter and John at least primarily are the ones who are doing the preaching and teaching because look at verse 2 they were teaching the people and they were also preaching in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Now before we get to verse 2 just a little note here a couple of notes about these parties that were involved in coming upon Peter and John. If you look at verse 1 we have three groups mentioned. The first one is the priests. The priests. They were the ones who essentially functioned in different roles at the temple. They had different responsibilities in the service at the temple. They might burn incense, offer sacrifices, teach the people, do whatever tasks pertained to the sanctuary. Now there were in 1st And now interestingly it looks as though they would serve in kind of rotations. So it could have worked out in one of two ways people usually say. It could have been that they served for two weeks during the course of a year. They would go to the temple and officiate at the temple because remember these were priests and Levites and remember they were scattered throughout the land of Israel to teach the people the law and so on. But two weeks out of the year they would come to the temple and they would serve at the temple. You also have the possibility that they would go to serve at the temple once every two years and they'd stay there for a month. So that's the first group here. The priests. They officiated in the temple. They offered sacrifices, burned incense, taught the law. Then you have the second group or a second person. The captain of the temple. Now he was essentially the chief of security and if you look through commentaries you find over and over again this role was a highly regarded one. It is repeatedly said that his position was second to the high priest. That's how prominent this role was. He served over the temple guard. He was kind of over the Levitical police force if you will. So he's there. And then you have the last group, a group that many of you doubtless are familiar with, the Sadducees. They were a religious group in Israel. Power brokers if you will. They had a lot of political clout and they also had a lot of religious clout within the nation of Israel but I think they are best known for what they didn't believe. Remember the Sadducees are those who did not believe in a resurrection. They are not they are those who do not believe in angels or demons. They did not believe in an afterlife. They only believed in the first five books of Moses it is often said as being divinely inspired. They had a lot of sad beliefs and like my grandpa used to joke that is why they are sad you see. They had a lot of sad erroneous beliefs. They were also political opportunists. They were those who were in positions of power. It appears that they came to their power after the period of the Maccabees, that intertestamental period. They're like a group of priestly families that get connected with the power brokers in the land and they try to solidify their power. That's why they tried to keep things nice and calm with Rome because they had a nice set up for them and they didn't want anybody rocking the boat. They're also have said to have been a pretty cruel group. Josephus had noted and I saw this in the pulpit commentary that the Sadducees were more severe and cruel in their administration of justice than any other Jews. They went on to note their tenant of no life to come made them look to severe punishments in this life and doubtless they would have looked for severe punishments right away for Peter and John but you're going to see in God's Providence God set it up in such a way in which they weren't going to be able to do what they wanted to do. The Lord will and will see that in future studying. So that brings us to verse 2. They make haste these three groups the priests the captain of the temple in the Sadducees and the reasons for their haste are found in verse 2 where we read being greatly disturbed in other words they were greatly annoyed in the Greek here this verb annoyed or irritated or angered and it's compounded by the preposition dia so they were very upset very disturbed and we're told that they were disturbed because they Peter and John taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead so this is why they were angry reason number one Peter and John are teaching and they're like who are these guys well we didn't give them the green light to teach we are in control we are the Sadducees they did not go through the rabbinical teaching system who was their rabbi we don't know who these people are so they were bothered that these people were teaching and they didn't have the the right to it as it were the religious leadership of that day they hated anything that infringed upon their authority that's one of the reasons why they hated Jesus he infringed upon their authority and they thought he needed to be stopped well Peter and John were doing so and they thought they needed to be stopped as well second reason why they were upset is basically I think this was multifaceted because Peter and John were preaching in Jesus the resurrection from the dead I think there's a lot of aspects to why this made them upset first they were a part of the Sanhedrin many note a primary part of the Sanhedrin the majority part of the Jewish religious ruling council that wrongly sentenced Jesus to death and handed him over to Pilate so a lot of these Sadducees were the very people who looked at the Son of God the Messiah and said he deserves to die and now Peter and John are preaching no no no Jesus has risen from the dead so they were upset doubtless they were also upset because they didn't believe in a resurrection and now they're teaching people that Jesus has rose from the dead and that's going to undercut their erroneous message and if you undercut their erroneous message you're going to undercut their clout and they didn't want their clout to be undercut being right wasn't the priority as much as having power and wealth and influence being right was incidental if they were right along the way that was great but protecting their power was the priority think about this you see this even in Matthew 28 remember after the soldiers come back and they are telling to the religious leadership what happened and they're saying that the tomb is empty and so on what does the religious leadership tell them they create a lie for them Matthew 28 verse 12 they give them money they give them a large sum of money Matthew 28 verse 12 they tell them the lie Matthew 28 verse 13 and they assured them that if this ever got to Pilate that they would cover for them suffice it to say the Sadducees in this case did not have righteous indignation one other possibility as well and maybe they're all together these aren't mutually exclusive is that they thought if word got around to the Romans that a Messiah was being preached who rose from the dead the Romans could esteem this as being somewhat revolutionary and what would be the problem with that it could ruin the nice gig that the Sadducees had so maybe to one degree or another all of these things are what bothered them in Peter and John preaching in Christ the resurrection but you'll find in verse three their indignation didn't just stay mental they weren't just upset on the inside it manifested itself physically look at verse three and they laid hands on them please know this wasn't a good kind of laying on of hands you know they weren't praying for them they weren't like ordaining them to ministry they weren't doing any kind of a good laying on of hands or so on this was a laying on of hands that was a seizing interestingly the word that's used here in the Greek epi ballo that word ballo means to cast to throw epi you think typically of being a preposition that means upon it's like they threw their hands upon them they seized them so that's the picture that I think is meant to be painted here they come down they laid hands on them now I just want to tell you something that I would do if I was a filmmaker and if I were recreating this scene in the kind of movie where we're trying to depict acts chapter four what I would do is that the moment that acts for three happens the beginning of it and they laid hands on them at that moment I would all of a sudden insert a flashback to Jesus's teaching on the Mount of Olives where he said but before all of these things they will lay hands on you and persecute you delivering you up to synagogues and prisons you will be brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake here is the initial fulfillment of those very words and it would keep manifesting itself but I want to remind you here that this was a prophecy that Jesus made this was the initial fulfillment of it and his word always comes to pass you can believe it you can believe the words of scripture you could believe every word that Jesus said he has a perfect streak that will never be broken some of you might remember my favorite pitcher when I was younger oral her shizer he pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers believe he's a professing Christian brother in Christ and in 1998 he had an amazing year the Dodgers go on to win the World Series I believe he won the Cy Young Award that year and that year he pitched what I believe still is the record for number of innings pitched without giving up a run 59 innings pitched without a run being given up and if you were a baseball fan if you were oral her shizer fan then you were watching those games saying it's the street going to continue is it going to continue and when it did you were excited but eventually you were disappointed because that streak like other streaks in professional sports don't go on forever but with Jesus you will never be disappointed his perfect streak of having his words fulfilled will always stay it will never be broken and this is a witness to that right here in Acts chapter 4 verse 3 so they seized them and they put them in custody until the next day so the Sanhedrin had a rule they had a law that they essentially subscribe to that they would not try people at night before dawn didn't stop them when they wanted to kill Jesus that rule so they were okay with breaking their own rules probably they based this rule on Jeremiah 21 12 and ministered justice every morning and it didn't stop them from persecuting Jesus and having their kangaroo courts happen during the night but in this case they were going to wait they needed some sleep perhaps and they were going to wait until the next day Peter and John are put in custody until then and then we're told to get a it was late to use language from Matthew 14 15 notice a little bit of context here this event began at around 3 p .m. because remember that Peter and John were going up to the temple around the ninth hour that was 3 p .m. now that it's late now that it's evening you know that it's at least 6 p .m.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Ministry Life | 2 Corinthians
"Stay awake and remember that by the space of three years I cease not to warn everyone night and day with tears. Stay awake. Watch. There was another time Paul preached all the way until midnight and some kid fell asleep, fell out of the windowsill, crashed and killed himself. Paul went to him, got him up, got him back from the dead and finished his message. He said, stay awake this time, boy. 2 Timothy chapter 4, 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 5, Paul says to Timothy, I'm leaving. You stay awake. Watch thou in all things. Stay awake and do your afflictions. Do the work of an evangelist. Make full proof of thy ministry. Know your ministry by experience. Teach it, but not just with words, with an example. Make full proof of your ministry and fastings. Let's glance back at chapter 14 of Acts. Chapter 14 of Acts, this page 1169, verse 23, when they had ordained them elders. This is Paul and Barnabas going back through all the places they had preached, even the ones that had rioted against him. When they preached the gospel in Derby, then they went back again to Lystra, which is where he was stoned, and Iconium and Antioch and Cilicia, confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, say it's going to be a lot of trouble. And when they had ordained elders in every city and prayed with fasting, they said, we're not going to eat right now, we're going to just pray, they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed. We read in 2nd Corinthians chapter 11 already, I think. We went through verse 25. Let's look at this, 2nd Corinthians 11, verse 27. I did read this already. He said, watchings often and fastings often. He just often did without what we consider normal things. We get back to this chapter 6 passage here and look again what comes next. Oops, that was not the right button. This is the right button. He says, after watchings and fastings, we have all these things that says, buy. Everything before there was in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, and now we get to buy. In truth, in the Greek language, this is still in until you get down to, I wrote it down here, give me a second. The armor in verse 7, that's where the word changes from in to buy. But here in chapter 6, verse 6 and the beginning of verse 7, it's still in. In pureness, in knowledge, in long -suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Ghost, in love unfeigned, in the Word of truth, in the power of God, and then it goes to the other word, buy. Not a huge difference, and the translators were not wrong in saying buy, because they did translate words that meant the same thing by different words sometimes, so it's okay. That's all right. We're in, according to the King James text, by pureness. This ministry has an aspect where you need to be pure, by pureness. First Timothy chapter 4, verse 12, Paul exhorts his young, calls him son in the Lord, he says, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in love, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. I think perhaps young men and old men alike need be exhorted to purity. It's one of those words that's hard to define, because the only thing you can say about it is, it's not dirty. Purity. Doing right, because it's right. Well, the clock is running out on us here in another minute and a half or so. All these things Paul gives as aspects of his ministry, and he's going to go on for a bit longer, but what this ministry was, he explained at the end of chapter 5, and we've talked about this many times at the wrong part of the thing here, at the end of chapter 5, we have the ministry. In verse 18, he says he's given to us the ministry of reconciliation, and then he says in verse 19, this is what it is, to wit. I want to explain to you what that is. That's what to wit means. God was in Christ. There's the incarnation. God in heaven became a man. The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, reconciling the world unto himself. What was in between the Father and the Son, the sin that separated them, the Son took the sin out of the way so that the world could be with him again. The sin of all mankind, he says he's not imputing their trespasses unto them, but not all mankind goes to heaven. There's a word of reconciliation, the explanation of this salvation that God has provided. He calls the word of reconciliation. In verse 20, he says we are the representatives. We're the ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you, lost person that doesn't know about the payment for sin, we pray you in Christ's stead be reconciled to God. He already took the sin out of the way. Be reconciled to God, and he explains it again in verse 21. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Just as Jesus said to Nicodemus, God so loved the world, sin and all, that he gave his only begotten Son. Jesus took the sin on himself. He died, he was buried, he rose again, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That's the ministry of reconciliation. God did the work and says we are to present, to explain it. We are ambassadors for Christ, and just the way as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, we beg you in the stead of Jesus Christ, be reconciled to God. He did the work. All that is left is to believe in him. Father in heaven, thank you for this morning's message and lesson. We pray for the preparation of our pastor, that you'll bless it and increase the effect of your word, because he speaks it with boldness and clarity, and bring those who are on their way safely here to be with us and enjoy and share their gifts to build the church, to edify, to add to and build up, strengthen the other believers. In Jesus' name, Amen.
The Charlie Kirk Show
A highlight from Three Lessons from the Book of Exodus: Charlie's Speech to Colorado Christian Academy
"I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created. Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Brought to you by the loan experts I trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandtodd .com. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Okay, please take a seat. I'm going to close this. Okay, so I want to get to question and answer because I think that's actually the most fun, and I have a feeling there's a lot of questions. There's a lot I could talk about. First, I just want to say there's something really exciting happening in the country where I'm getting invited to speak at schools like this all across the country that didn't exist a decade ago, where parents are starting to rise up and start new communities and start new schools. This is exactly what is necessary in the country right now. Because there if is a woke private school and a failed public school, just start a new school. And we are really good at starting new things. We're really bad at preserving our things from getting captured and infiltrated. That's a separate issue. They're experts at infiltration, experts at destabilization. But I just want to compliment and commend the whole team here. Think really big because the demand is greater than you could ever imagine. I Colorado. love I hate what these people have done to it. And you have to think multigenerationally. You really do. And that's why this effort is so incredibly important. And you have no idea the child that you might be helping educate at Colorado Christian, the impact that they might make. You have no idea if they might be a changemaker, an entrepreneur, a senator, a congressman, something beyond your wildest imagination. Or the most important thing, a loyal husband and wife and someone who loves the Lord, honestly, even beyond a massive changemaker. So I'm going to actually talk about my favorite book of the Bible. I don't think you'll really guess it. It's funny. I love the word and I love what it does to you through different walks of life. And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I've decided to go through the first five books of the Bible in original Hebrew and go verse by verse. If you want a really big challenge, do that. Just finished Leviticus. That's no fun at all. It's unbelievably awesome as a Christian to read Leviticus for many different reasons. And it's amazing. But my favorite book of the Bible is the book of Exodus. And it's not quoted enough or understood enough. And I really think that there's more parallels for what we're living through right now in the book of Exodus than almost any other part of the word. I And so was studying and studying Exodus and so much pops out. So I'm going to go three lessons that I think we as believers, we as patriots, can derive from the book of Exodus. And some you say, OK, I've heard that one before. But I guarantee you I'm going to isolate a verse that you've probably never heard any pastor ever isolate. It's just kind of what I call a flyover verse. You know what I'm talking about? Where you just kind of skim. You're like, OK, let's go. You know, it's like the verse before John 3 16, John 3 15 and John 3 17. Does anyone know those? Probably not. Well, maybe in this room. But very few people do, right? It's a flyover verse. So it's first important to remember Exodus in Greek means the way out. Ex hodos, right? And the actual labeling of the verse is Israelites oppressed or the captivity in Egypt. The whole Old Testament, the first five books of the Bible of the word of God is centered around Egypt. Egypt is actually the villain of the Torah. Egypt is tyranny. Egypt is authoritarianism. Egypt is paganism. Egypt is godlessness. Egypt is one size fits all rule. Said differently, Egypt is the Biden administration. And so now if I offended you, you're in the wrong dinner. I'm sorry. Like so and the whole Bible is written even in Genesis. It's written as a refutation of Egypt. And if you know anything, devout Jews will tell you that the Exodus is the most important thing. Creation and Exodus are the two most important parts of Jewish life, right? Whether it be the Passover Seder, whether it be the Shema, whatever it is, Egypt is the whole ballgame, right? And like remember how we were delivered from Egypt and I'll dive into that. So there's this amazing thing and you remember the end of Genesis, right? Joseph does this remarkable stuff. He doesn't do it. God doesn't through Joseph and he's just a messenger. And he basically saves Egypt from famine and from starvation and saves the whole civilization, right? And the first chapter of Exodus sets up the whole, it's what I call the turning point chapter and we're living through this right now in America. And this is why Christian education is so important and why supporting this academy is so important. And it's a verse that you would just kind of read over and like, okay, yeah, whatever. Then rose a king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Okay, Charlie, what's the big deal? That's exactly what's happening on university campuses across the country. Then rose a generation that did not know George Washington. Then rose a generation who did not know Abraham Lincoln. You get tyranny when you forget the sacrifices that were made before you. You get tyranny when you don't know your history. Right there, the entire book of Exodus gets set up. So here's Joseph that through God saves them from famine, saves them from starvation. The Egyptians should have statues made to Joseph. They should have songs made to Joseph. But all it took was one king who didn't have the memory of what Joseph did before. And then what happens? That king rises and everything changes. He says, who are these Israelites? They multiply like insects. Let's get rid of these guys. If you fail to pass down your values from one generation to the other, you can quickly all of a sudden get authoritarianism, tyranny, murder, genocide very, very quickly. It can happen in one generation. And I don't think we as Christians isolate this teaching enough because we act as if it happens automatically sometimes. Like, oh, I can send my kid to government school and they'll still share my values. You know, we go to church once a quarter and, you know, we listen to Christian music, you know, every so often and, you know, like through osmosis. And even in the cocktail reception, people come up to me and they say, Charlie, how am I supposed to deal with kids that don't share my values? How did this happen? And my question is always the same. You know, what college did they go to? Always. And in this case, it was Northwestern in Michigan, right? So nice selections. But again, I'm not picking on you guys. It's a very sweet couple. But it was just stood out, right? And you're here tonight because you want your children to share your values, that you want your children to live in liberty. And so that verse right there should be our mission statement. We never want to have a king or a sovereign, the people, ever not know the sacrifices that were made before. When I visit college campuses, and I visit college campuses so you don't have to, I am told, Charlie, the founders were a bunch of racist old dead white guys. We're a colonistic, colonialistic, misogynistic, homophobic, terrible country. That's a generation that did not know Joseph. So then all of a sudden they have a willingness and openness for tyranny, for totalitarianism, authoritarianism, because that is actually how we are naturally programmed. I actually didn't plan to talk about this, but it's just a little bit of a side note. The human being wants to be taken care of far more than they want to be free. Freedom is a value. You naturally do not want to be free. And if you disagree, you are not paying attention during COVID. People that were otherwise some of the most rational people that I knew lost their bloody mind masks wearing in a car alone because they wanted to be told what to do. Freedom requires risk. You cannot be free without chance. You can't have both. If you want to have everything taken care of, go commit a federal crime, or just become a conservative, because inevitably you'll end up in federal prison, and then you'll go to jail. There's no freedom, but there is assuredness at prison. Three meals a day, bunk you don't have to pay for, you don't have to work for what you get. Prison is the opposite of freedom. And so here's the Israelites that are living in total totalitarianism because a king came who did not know what the previous generation did. The next verse, Exodus 1 17, one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, and I screamed this at pastors, and I yelled it at pastors, and I was unsuccessful. And I'll tell you why. But the midwives to the Hebrews, as in the original Hebrew it says this, feared God. Now the verse before it, Exodus 1 16, the king who forgot Joseph was like, hey, murder all the firstborn, murder them all, kill the babies. Now we would know nothing about killing babies in our civilization. We're way more advanced than that, obviously. We would never do such a thing ever, obviously. Look how advanced we are. We have Twitter and air conditioning, right? So this is, I always laugh when people say the Bible is such a medieval text, we've advanced so far. Yeah, right. No, we just do the evil things quicker and better and quieter and more secretly. So of course, we're more advanced than that. But the king or the pharaoh says, kill the firstborn. And I love this. The midwives disobeyed Pharaoh because they feared God. And it goes on to say that the Hebrew is not a great translation. God dealt well with them or God found favor in them. God loves when you defy tyranny for liberty. That is the heart of God. God wants you to reject tyranny if it engages in somebody's life or interferes with their liberty. A regular woke skinny jean -wearing pastor will tell you, no, no, no, Romans 13, man, submit to the rulers and authority because God put them there for your good. And then I say, OK, rocket scientist, constitutional scholar, man, your TED Talk rock concert, a thing you call a church with organized parking and a coffee bar. Let ask me you, since you're super smart, who are the leaders in America exactly? In Romans 13, God put the leaders in authority because they're there for your good. Who are the leaders? And they say the mayors, the congressmen, the senators. No, no, the people are the authority. So when the people's rights are infringed, the mayors and the state senators and Governor Polis should be submitting to us. We don't submit to them. So I love this verse. And God dealt well with the midwives. Let me ask you, is the American church, are we as Christians fighting tyranny the way the midwives fought tyranny in Egypt? I don't think we're doing a good job. I don't. I think you guys are. I mean, there's an exception. But the large part of the American church, American Christianity is submit to the government authority, submit to the cultural tyranny, submit to the pressure of the day. Submit to what other people are saying. That is not what God wants. And by the way, it's not just in Exodus. In Daniel, Daniel disobeyed the king and still prayed his prayers, ended up in the lion's den, right? In Acts, it says we obey God, not man, time and time again. Psalm 97 10 is my favorite, one of my favorite verses of the Bible. I have a lot of favorite verses. If you love God, you must hate evil. I don't think that we as Christians are doing a good job fulfilling that verse. I hear all the time, but Charlie, we must be nice. And I say, great. Right by the other point. Where in the 66 books of the Bible does the word nice appear in Aramaic or Greek or Hebrew? Waiting. Ready, set, go. And they say, well, we have to be loving. I said, yeah, but what does loving mean? Tell me in the original Greek. You know, is it agape, storge, phileo? You know, they say, well, oh my goodness. We kind of had this discourse earlier. But we're not called to be nice. We're called to tell the truth. And honestly, we've done a pretty crummy job of telling the truth the last 30 years here in America. We have allowed the worst of all evil, institutionalize itself, go after our children. And I finally am starting to see a response. This school is evidence of a response to all this institutionalized evil. And the midwives feared God and God dealt well with them. If we want God to deal well with us, maybe we should start fighting for liberty against tyranny. So God delivers his chosen people out of Egypt. And every time you hear Egypt, just think tyranny. Every time, right? And so he delivers them out of Egypt, one of my favorite parts. They're in the desert, you know, God, 10 miracles, the sea is parted. And this is why I always laugh when atheists say, all I need to do is see a miracle and I'll believe in God. Like, no, you don't. Like next Tuesday, you'll forget about God, right? Because you have a heart problem. You are your own God, right? That's not true. The Hebrews saw God move in an amazing way. They get into the desert. Within days, they're complaining. That's all the Jews do the entire Old Testament. They complain and they complain and they complain. It's why God had to let them all die off and, you know, have Joshua generation going. He's like, these people are not ready for Israel. They complained way too much. We want melons, we want meat, we want all the cucumbers. Literally, translation. So they get into the desert and they say, we want to go back to Egypt, because at least we had meat. At least we had melons, at least we had leeks, at least we had cucumbers. They wanted slavery over freedom because they ate better. And God's like, what am I going to do with these people? And I honestly think that's, I agree with Dennis Prager on this. It's one of the reasons why God chose the Jews. If you could do it with this group of people, you could do it with any group of people, right? If you could get this group of misfits to be successful in finance and business and education, there's something to this book, right? There's something there that we can all learn from. Anyway, so God then, God is a God of order. We as Christians don't do a good enough job. It drives me nuts when Christians only say God is love. Yeah, but he's also other things, okay? He's like judging God. Oh, you can't say that. Well, it's true. Jesus will judge the sinners at the end of the age. One of the main reasons why the church has gone woke is you'll never hear the three -letter word that every person needs to hear, sin. How do you know what redemption is if you don't know what sin is? Unknown concept. We just tell people, oh, you're perfect the way you are. Actually, you're not. Like you're pretty crummy in Jesus, like really bad, like really bad. All of us do, all the time. And we're going to keep sinning and we keep on eating Jesus. And so God established order for us. Of course, the Decalogue being the Ten Commandments or the Ten Statements. And of course, it begins, I am the Lord your God who delivered you from Egypt. He reminds them before he gives him the Decalogue. Moses, the Decalogue. Just in case you forgot, I delivered you from tyranny. God's heart is not for people to live in tyranny. That's when it drives me nuts when people say, Charlie, you're too political as a Christian. Look, God calls us to fight authoritarianism all the time. So then, my favorite one of the commandments that comes tonight, that pertains to tonight, is the one that every one of you are vigilant and why you're here tonight. Honor your mother and father so that you may live long in the land of which God is giving you. And I'm going to spend the remainder of my remarks on this and then he'll do some questions. Everything that the culture is doing when it comes to anybody under 18 is about trying to is this commandment the most proven commandment to have a free society. If you were to say, Charlie, out of all the Ten Commandments, what is the one that if you stop doing, you get tyranny the fastest? You actually more so than murder, more so than stealing, more so than not even having any gods before God. If you do not honor your mother and father, and I'll tell you exactly what that means, you 100 % will lose a free society. You cannot have a group of young people that dishonor or curse, which is the opposite of honor, their parents, and also live in liberty. It has never happened in the history of the species. Now, I'm a student of history. I love history. If anyone can tell me an example of a superpower that went out of their way to teach their children to hate the country that they're in, I'm all ears. I think it's the first time it's ever happened in the history of the species, and I've asked many different historians. When a wealthy, powerful, benevolent superpower has decided to teach their young, we actually hate the place that is pretty awesome. It is civilizational suicide. There will be historians 50 to 100 years from now writing books and teaching college classes, trying to try to answer the America question. How could a country that did so much good in World War II be so wealthy, be the beacon of light and liberty, have so much opportunity for so many people, go out of its way? And my answer is very simple. When you are secular and you do not believe in God, you must fill it with fake religions. Don't believe me? Go drive in one of these neighborhoods like I just did. BLM, gay pride, those are the pagan religions of the day. You always have to fill it with some source of meaning, whether it be the false god of BLM or the false god of trans surgeries for kids, whatever it is. They have to feel an attachment to something, and it's out of guilt. If you don't know how to deal with your guilt, because everyone feels guilt at some point, you're going to do some pretty wacky stuff. And boy, are we living in a society that is just ridden with pity and guilt. Pity for ourselves and our own state of affairs, it's rather remarkable. But if you have a strong attachment to the generation that came before you, you can inoculate yourself against that virus. So let's go through it. It's the only one of the Ten Commandments that involves a direct promise and also your nation. So we talk about politics, we talk about our country, we should probably isolate the one of the Ten Commandments that deals with the country. So honor, what does that word mean in Hebrew? It means heavily or to treat with seriousness or intentionality. What does curse mean in Hebrew? Lightly, it's the same root. So if you were to treat your parents lightly, you were to curse them. Now what does that mean to honor your mother and father? It means that when you're at college, you enter college believing that your parents are more correct than your professors. That does not happen. Professors at almost every single university across the country go out of their way to invalidate everything a parent has taught them up until age 18. Your parents are outdated, they're probably racist, they're terrible. Oh by the way, thanks for paying to the tuition to bring you here, but we're going to turn you into little revolutionaries basically. Finally, honor your mother and father so that you may live long in the land of which you are in. Marxism depends on three things. The obliteration of religion, property, and family. Private property, they're doing a great job and they're going to continue to do it. Religion, church rates are going down dramatically and they've infiltrated the American church. But the family was always the one that was able to say no. And you are going to have to, someone's going to have to explain this to me, how so many suburban house moms here in Colorado want their kids to suffer. It is unbelievable to me. This is one of the most radical like trans sanctuaries in the entire country. It's not ISIL, I'm sure you all know families or kids where you have parents that are excited to go get their 15 -year -old's breasts removed. It's amazing to me. And so the family's totally getting obliterated and deteriorated. That's why this school matters so much though, and why what you're doing matters so much, is that a strong nuclear family is a bulwark to any form of tyranny or any sort of despotism that we live through. And is Marxism really the kind of diabolical, and I use that word intentionally, enemy to the American republic and the American project. As it aims to do these things, as it continues to try to put these ideas into the zeitgeist, we ask ourselves the question, how does one fight back against it? And that's why the rise of homeschool and this alternative schooling is so exciting. They want you to just release your kid to the public government school and never ask a question after that. If you actually read their literature, they don't believe that it's your child. It's the state's child. That's not an exaggeration. You might say, Charlie, how did Colorado get so wacky? You know Colorado is the second most educated state in the country? College -educated state? There is your answer. Is that if you are non -stop producing people with college diplomas that believe men can give birth and have degrees in North African lesbian poetry, don't be surprised when your politics go insane. I trust welders, plumbers and construction workers far more than any given professor at, no offense, CU Boulder. I'm sorry, I just have to say it. I'm sorry. And so we must build new things. And I mentioned this earlier, we do not do a good enough job of defending our institutions from infiltration because we let our guard down and they take advantage of our good intentions. How many times do you feel like, well, what's the big deal? I want to be accepting to all people. So here's the playbook. It's so simple. Get a seat at the table. Complain relentlessly till I'm able to debase the leader on fake accusations and then I control the institution. How many times have you seen that? FBI, military, university campuses, major corporations, and they're relentless. You know what they operate? They operate like a bacterial infection that will not go away, that will just gnaw and gnaw and grow and grow and multiply. And we're like, well, my goodness, the CRT, DEI people, they used to have two seats at the table. Now they have 10 seats at the table and I don't want to be called a racist because that's the worst thing that you could be called. And so let's just let them control everything. So how do you summarize CRT? Call everything racist until you control it. That's it. That's what CRT is. Queer theory, call everything transphobic until you control it. It's a means to power. It's not about liberation. It's not about teaching history. It's a means to institutional takeover. And so the alternative is once they take over everything, build new stuff. And that's what you're doing. And so my one piece of advice to you guys, build, be bold, but please be vigilant about them trying to capture your institution. Because they don't build new stuff. That's what's crazy. They don't ever build anything beautiful or bold. They just take over stuff that we have built with our value system. And then we're like, well, we used to have that great thing. We used to have that church and used to have that school and used to have that place and used to have that company. And so they're experts at takeover. And so building new things is quite honestly the only and the best option. So I'll say this in closing. I get asked all the time, Charlie, this is a Christian audience, Charlie, do you think that we're in the end times? And I'm not a pastor, I'm not a theologian. So I'm not equipped to answer that, but I can say this. I'm very concerned that people are being taken advantage of by some pastors out there where they say, Charlie, Jesus is coming next Thursday. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to fight. Look, people ask, are you pre -trib or are you post -trib? I'm pan -trib. It's all going to pan out in the end. So I'm on the welcoming committee, not the planning committee. Okay. So this whole thing is a bunch of, you know, it's somewhat of a distraction. And, but, you know, people say, Charlie, you know, we must look, yes, we must look at the signs at the time. It's important to know what it means in the days of Noah. All that stuff is great and really important. I understand that. However, here's where it drives me nuts and I see it happen. And I want to make sure this might, if this touches one of you tonight, I will have done my job. Okay. Because you might be listening to some of those overly emphasized end times pastors, and you might feel disempowered and you might feel like you don't have to do anything. If I could just reach one of you, I feel I've done my job, which is the right response is if you feel that the world is ending and Jesus is coming soon, is not run to the Hill with the kids, is to occupy till Jesus comes. Is to hold as much turf and must terrain for his imminent return. And that must be our attitude because I'm afraid it has become an excuse. And I mean that very carefully. I've seen it where people say, Charlie, I don't need to donate. I don't need to start schools. I got asked by a Christian the other day, why even have kids? Because Jesus is coming again so quickly. I was like, wow. Jesus said the time or the day and the hour is unknown. It could be five minutes. It could be 50 years or 500 years. I get in trouble for even saying that because people say, Charlie, it's no more than five years. I said, listen, we don't know. It's what you do that matters. The enemy would love nothing more than to have us remain complacent, remain neutral if we are off by 200 years. God wants us to fight for what is good and what is righteous, regardless of what the signs of the times are telling us around us. And the most important thing that we as Christians have done a bad job and we as Protestants have done a bad job of is this. And I have to brag on the Catholics for a second. They have done a much better job than we as Protestants have done, a much better job at building colleges. And they're all woke now, but at building. But that's what happens. We don't defend anything. We build these beautiful things and the bacteria takes over. And so then at K through 12 schools, and I'll prove it to you, how many Bible believing spirit -filled Christians are on the US Supreme Court? There are far more Catholics. It's because they are experts at multi -generational type building and passing down values. I think we can learn something from that. And I think that one of the reasons we haven't done that is that since 1950 there's been a strain of Christianity that has told us we're getting zapped up in the next five minutes. And that might be true, but you have to act like it's not. And you have to act like you could have a lot more time left on the clock. And so if we change that attitude, by the way, the whole ball game changes. I hope you understand. You will ignite one of the most powerful silent majorities if you get Christians that have been waiting for the imminent return the last 60 years and done very little, and you get them into an action phase and realize that they have to try to act, watch out. All of a sudden the enemy is going to be on the run in a very, very big way. Okay, let's do some questions and I'll stay as long as you'll have me. So, okay. Okay, so I have one question and I'm going to turn it out to all you guys. So get your questions ready. The college thing is a big deal. I feel like we've been even asked, do you send your kids to college? My husband's out of the room so I can say this. They're not going to Boulder. For those of you who don't know where my husband went and where he's very involved with right now, but it's a tough call. What do you think the chances are if let's say our kids go through a school like this, make it, get into a college percentage wise, where are we at with dropping off the bandwagon? You'll lose one out of four. Across where that's what you see in universities. Even the strongest K through 12 that I've seen, homeschool, one out of four will be lost. If they have a public school, you'll lose closer to 50, 60 percent. Wow. Okay guys, we've got a lot of work to do. We're going to try to break that statistic. Or just not send them to college. Yeah. Okay. Well, yes. Well, right. Well, that'll be an open thing. Unless they go to Hillsdale or CCU, but yes. But those are the exceptions. Let me be very clear. Yes. That is not how most schools are. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good. Very good. That was very enthusiastic.
Myths and Legends
"greeks" Discussed on Myths and Legends
"We real? That was the low point in my life. In a life where I was abandoned by my mother and thrown off Olympus. Twice, that was rock bottom. There was no hiding. That was the world saying you don't belong. And you know what? It was right. I didn't belong up there. Their monsters, the Olympians, hephaestus, decades older, sat back in his forge on lemnos. Golden automatons, gold robots, a festus actually built the mythology, brought the pair some drinks. Okay, so what did the next few years hold for you? It's been a while. Dionysus looked at his recorder, hoping that hephaestus would keep it brief because this episode was going long. Glad you asked D the festus lean forward on his elbows. The next few years? They were learning experience for him. He couldn't really blend in among the humans, given his sweet prosthetic legs, so he took some time for quiet contemplation. He met and spent some time with Maya, Hermes mom, they both hated the Olympians. The Romans would make a bigger deal of that relationship, but a relationship built on shared loathing can't last. He wanted one based on love. He searched the world over and made a lot of wonderful Friends, inspired people, and then, well, then he came home. To where he grew up. Lemnos, and he reconnected with her. Caballero. They were friends when he was a kid. She was a nymph and one of the daughters of proteus, the old man of the sea, and they hit it off. She knew him and she loved him. They had two wonderful kids, twins known as the cabaret, and they were happy. He finally found that place he had been looking for his whole life. A place where he belonged, his home. Hephaestus called in his family, and hugged his two kids. His wife threw her arm around him. In that way, he was greater than Zeus. Because he was there, he loved and accepted his kids as they were. He wasn't a monster who assaulted people, and tried to bend the world to his will. Hephaestus smiled. And he took a deep breath. He was happy. And he was home. All right. I think we got it. Thanks, bro, dionysus said. Then hephaestus's eyes widened. As out the cave door, he saw a traveler off in the distance. He was happy. He was home. All right, that was the cue, dionysus, end of the episode. Happy ending. Lessons learned and all that legacy intact. Voice cracked? Dionysus said, yeah, if it was cool, he was just going to sit with the room sound in case they needed to do any noise reduction later. 30 seconds should be more than enough. No, no, turn it off. Now, hephaestus blurted. Dionysus looked at his half brother's face, then followed his gaze. Who was that? It's nobody, and the episode is panic grew. Well, now, dionysus, king of drama, who was mad he wasn't getting his own episode this time around. Grinned. He kept the micro. Papa? Hephaestus smiled a pained smile. What? He knew all of his children, and he had never met this kid. Never had any with Aphrodite and if she did, he could be certain they weren't his. My mom was not Aphrodite papa. It's Gaia. The kids smiled. She says, I'm your problem now. Ew. Bro, that's grandma, bro dionysus couldn't help himself. Hephaestus wife turned to him, eyes wide. Why did his great grandmother Gaia give birth to his child? She recoiled and pulled her hand away from him. He could explain and his wife agreed that he better, because what she just said, that's a statement that required some explanation. The child gave an explanation that his mother, Gaia, had given him. She said papa saw Athena at his forge. And got real excited. He chased her because he loved her so much, but he loved her too much and got too excited too soon. Athena laughed at him, but whatever fell to the earth, well, my mama made me. She says don't come and visit her for the holidays. The kid explained to the horrified family. You tried to you acted like him like Zeus with Athena? His wife screamed at him? Babe, please, nothing happened. Hephaestus pleaded, his wife said that the child here would seem to indicate otherwise a festive said he was in a bad spot after Aphrodite. It was before they got together. He was a different person. His wife scooped up the kids. That wasn't better. It's never justified. She was going to go stay at her mother's in the ocean. It was before I met her, though. Said to his brother, after his wife left. So it doesn't like undercut my family man redemption arc, right? Dionysus could see that the drama was winding down, so it was time for him to go. He didn't need to hang around and hear his brother's myriad justifications for being terrible. Attempted sexual assault, yes. Yes, it does undermine your family man arc, but episode construction wise, it really fits at the end. Like we're ending at the beginning. You kept going to Zeus when he had to accept you. And then at the end, your own son comes here wanting you to accept him and you reject him, it's perfect. When it has happened, dionysus packed up his mic, when I was so in my wild oats after Aphrodite was a mistake. A festus looked to the ground. Yeah, obviously, it was a mistake. Athena, huh? Didn't know you were a helmet guy. Sewing your wild oats too. I'm really descriptive there because it fell to the ground. And you know what, I don't want to think about it. This is really gross. The fastest begged him, please. He couldn't leave him like this. He had to help festus redeem himself. Dionysus side, please. That's enough. Shut up, hephaestus. And hephaestus, again, was
Myths and Legends
"greeks" Discussed on Myths and Legends
"As the chair pulled her into the darkness of the cave. We'll see what happens when Olympus comes knocking, but that will, once again, be right after this.
Myths and Legends
"greeks" Discussed on Myths and Legends
"Hey, so we need to talk. Hephaestus told his mother, as he took a seat across from her in his forge, on the island of lemnos. She glared at him. It's just 6 months ago I was up on Olympus and Zeus started to tell where I came from. I lost my cool, telling him it was unfair, and he sent me away. Since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I don't remember waking up in your arms. I don't remember anything other than the ground hephaestus side. Where did I come from? Who is my father? Hair sat there a long moment. Before Hera looked down at her mouth and then back to hephaestus, the smith smacked his forehead. Oh yeah, sorry, that's right. The gag. So sorry. He waved his hand and the chair, the one he spent months building after leaving Olympus. The one that could hold a God, unwound the bronze gag from his mother's mouth. But that's the only thing it unwound. It remained wrapped around her arms, torso, and ankles. Herat told her son to release her right now and she would only have him severely beaten. A festus said that she wouldn't be able to do anything at all if she could never leave. If she told him what he wanted, he wouldn't hurt her. Which was true, he was super uncomfortable, even having her here like this. She was going to be so mad at him. He would never hurt her. That just wasn't who he was. And said, okay, she would tell him the story of where he came from. But, like a lot of stories, it started before him. You see, when hephaestus came around, Hera had already settled on the idea. That Zeus had to die. He was a monster. She had been piecing it together. His long, long list of lovers of victims. Hera remembered her, his first wife, his first queen, meatus. She had helped Zeus. She was an ocean it. The daughter of two Titans herself. She helped to overthrow her own parents out of love for him. And, for a while, they were happy. Then, Zeus got a glimpse of a possible future, a child. A child born amides will be stronger than him. Mightier it would overthrow him. For the rest of them, one day, meatus was simply gone. The queen disappeared and no one would talk about it. Harold learned through whispers that Zeus ate her. It wasn't long before Zeus took a new queen. His own aunt themis she was divine justice, like literally divine justice personified. And together their children were the seasons, wise laws, human justice, peace in the fates. He didn't get rid of her. Only left her, and the symbolism that was about as blunt as Heracles club wasn't lost on the women of Olympus. That Zeus was divorcing divine justice. Your enemy was next. She was either the primordial goddess with whom the world was made because she didn't have a place to rest her feet in the unending void, or the sister of Zeus's first wife. Sources aren't incredibly clear, but what they are clear on was, at this point, something monstrous was growing inside the king of the gods. This was where the Zeus we know emerged. He chased down his own sister next. Demeter, and forced himself on her in the form of a bull, and she became pregnant with Persephone. In addition to Demeter, there were countless nymphs, humans, and oceans. Before his gaze fell on her, and Hera stopped him in his tracks. There were many versions of the story that would emerge over the years. Hera refused because she knew the type of man her brother was. Also he was her brother. He would spread the rumor that they had a forbidden love, hiding from their mother, or that, when she was hiding out in a cave, a human came and convinced her to give him a chance. Zeus emerged with a sheepish grin and flowers and said he didn't want just a night with her. But a lifetime, eternity, he loved her and he wanted to marry her. She accepted, and their wedding night lasted 300 years. That was the lie. The truth was that Zeus was afraid of his older sister. And being the protector of women, the goddess of women, family and marriage, she held a power he didn't completely understand. Her flat refusal of him gave Zeus pause. For so long he had felt all powerful that no force in the heavens, earth or underworld could stand against him. And here was her. Telling him he couldn't have something he wanted. Because of that, she became all, he thought about. Then, one morning, while he watched her from afar taking care of a cuckoo, he
Myths and Legends
"greeks" Discussed on Myths and Legends
"Podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore. Some are incredibly popular stories you might think you know, but with surprising origins. Others are stories that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen. We're doing this thing where each month, we tell a story of one Olympian from Greek mythology. This time, it's hephaestus, the sad lad smithy, who just can't catch a break. We'll jump in pretty much immediately after last month's Hermes episode, with little baby Hermes needing a
Myths and Legends
"greeks" Discussed on Myths and Legends
"This one was a lot of fun, and it helps to shine light on stories we might have missed. Early May we'll get into face to the story. Next week, it's a story of friendship from the folklore of the Korean Peninsula, the week after that, it's the story of a cat kingdom from France. Then we're back with the Monkey King and the journey to the west. It's a fun month coming up. If you're looking for something else to listen to in the meantime, though, best of the worst, our show where we tell the stories of awkward, terrible B list villains from comic book history, is back in full swing. Yesterday, we tackled the question we've all thought of at some point. What if inspector gadget was a Nazi spy? And Thursday, we'll talk about the villain asbestos lady. The woman with the superpower of an asbestos suit. And I bet you can't guess what got her. If you're interested, you can find more at villains dot LOL by searching
The Eric Metaxas Show
"greeks" Discussed on The Eric Metaxas Show
"You were just talking about what I threw out this idea that gnosticism can be laid at the feet of my people the Greeks. So talk more about that. Yeah, I want to exonerate you guys a little bit, actually. I mean, it's definitely true that there's a tendency in platonic thought to draw this dividing line between body and soul and this becomes really exaggerated and extreme among the neoplatonist guys like plotinus and I talk about this in the book in the body crisis section. It's also true that that concept of hylomorphism, the fusion. That's also a Greek idea. I'm getting it from Aristotle and from his work on the soul. And of course, it's really it's Thomas Aquinas who kind of baptizes Aristotle, brings this guy into the fold in a certain way. And adopts highly morphism as one of his governing mechanisms for understanding what we are. But there's this point that I make in the book that I think is kind of important. We think that people say Aquinas baptizes Aristotle as if that just means he's kind of claimed foreign tradition for himself and he's kind of ignoring the scripture at this point. But in fact, if you look at what Aquinas is doing there, it goes right back to genesis where there is a remarkable feature of the description of man that gets overlooked. And that's God takes the dirt DOM. And he molds it, and then he breathes into the breath of life. And that moment that the fusion of the two becomes a Jaime, a living soul, that it's not actually the dirt, and it's not even the breath of life, the kind of disembodied air that makes up man or the soul. It's the combination of the two, and it's perfectly. So there's kind of an amazing marriage there of Athens and Jerusalem. Well, that's very nice to know. That's actually beautiful news to hear. You've seen the fish haim. But it is a radical concept. The breath of God coming into the dirt and then the two become one thing somehow. That's kind of the history of the world after that, obviously. But what a radical idea in many ways. And a stumbling block, in fact, you might say, a scandal. It's a stumbling block and it's becoming more of a scandal with every day because we're living in a world as you mentioned earlier that it's kicking against these goads of what I like to think of as reality. Trying to square the circle. I don't know how you put it. But so when you say ancient wisdom for 5 modern crises, that's the subtitle of how to save the west. Talk more about what these crises are. We've been talking about a couple of them. Yeah, we've covered the first two now and the second two are also kind of a pair. They're the crisis of meaning and the crisis of religion. And the meaning crisis is where the stuff we were talking about earlier about scientism really begins to make itself felt. Dawkins, the famous new atheist in his book, the selfish gene. He invents our modern word meme. He talks about all of life as if it were governed by kind of evolutionary rules, imitation replication, mimesis. That's the Greek word of repeating constantly the same patterns again and again and mutating them. In Greek means a replicated thing. And so meme becomes our word for the things you share online. This is a bit of a vision of the world that's almost lifted out of Plato's timaeus, the sort of literary sequel to the Republican notion that we're all kind of copies of copies of copies. Is there in the tradition, but what Dawkins does is he takes away the original model. He says there's nothing outside of this evolutionary battle. And that means that there's nothing that the replications are replicating. There's no object of imitation. There's just constant imitation all the way down. And I argue in the book that this just doesn't work. It doesn't work if you want to retain what Dawkins and other atheists want to retain, which is morality. That's the key. And I take him to task, unlike anything I've ever done really, taking the test because when you read Dawkins, what a scandal that he basically says, everything is utterly without meaning. There's no such thing as meaning. And then he prays as Shakespeare and the works of Christopher Wren and bob. Where do you get that from? Why do you want that, how can you talk about beauty? You just basically said that there is no such thing in there can be no such thing. So the intellectual poverty of folks like Dawkins, I find it astonishing. I cease to, I cease to be anything but astonished by how very quickly you see how they defeat themselves. They don't have a leg to stand.
A List Podcast with A. Sherrod Blakely and Kwani A. Lunis
"greeks" Discussed on A List Podcast with A. Sherrod Blakely and Kwani A. Lunis
"We also touched upon the injuries, hopefully that they are not as bad as they seem to be, but as we know Marcus left the game twice, and then Robert Williams gets hit in his groin area. There was just like a lot of banging up in this game. So one, what do the Celtics do if Marcus doesn't play in this game, but how do they just protect themselves from getting bullied? If I could just frame the look on quarantine space where she had to describe Robert Williams injury. That was priceless. But go ahead Garrett. But for context, I had a taping earlier where I just blatantly said what happened to him and I was like, can I say that? And then it was just too late. Yeah, at this point, I just tried to keep it PG. We also Robert's paying on that one. When he went down. I did not, but I'm sure we didn't feel honest. He said, I do not. Yeah, he's like, I do not approve. I will not go inside. Give me my pen back. I'm not cozy. His sound bite all Monday, though, after when he said the trainer said that we need to look at it. And he's like, look.
A List Podcast with A. Sherrod Blakely and Kwani A. Lunis
"greeks" Discussed on A List Podcast with A. Sherrod Blakely and Kwani A. Lunis
"I'm really interested to see because to me, when you talk about who's the most important figure in game two, it's email. It's email because email is the chess piece master writing. He's the one that's going to put all the pieces where they need to go and only then will we know whether it's going to work or not. So I'm really interested to see how he's going to respond because this is his first real challenge since the roller coaster smoothed out. You know, he, when they weren't winning, it's just like, you know, okay, they're not winning. He's the first year goes blah blah blah. But once they got a style of play, down pat. And now they got punched in the mouth. How is he going to respond to that? How are they going to respond to that? Is he going? That to me is why this series is so now it's interesting. Before it was interesting because you had some good teams, but now when one team clearly got to ask it, there was no drama. There was no controversy. There was a last second buzzer beat, it got day ass is whipped. How are they going to respond to that? Great points are made. What happened, honey? I'm.
A List Podcast with A. Sherrod Blakely and Kwani A. Lunis
"greeks" Discussed on A List Podcast with A. Sherrod Blakely and Kwani A. Lunis
"You need to be engaged. You need to be just full blown. We going to the cup and we're going to force them to defend us. We're going to force them to, if they can defend us with our filing, we're going to put that to the test. And I do believe in and we've seen this time and time again. Over the course of a game, if there's one team that's aggressively getting to the rim and attacking, eventually, the calls are going to go their way. Eventually, they're going to get the benefit of a friendly whistle. They're going to be able to do some things that otherwise they might get called files on that won't get called. And I thought, again, I've been walking. I thought it was brilliant strategy for them to full court press from the very beginning. The officials were very hesitant to call their guys for files, even though when you go back and look at the tape, they were following the hell out of the selfish guards. I mean, bracelet Allen had the forearm shiver all up in Marcus smart's guts. Multiple times. And Marcus, you know, as we know, didn't like that. And swiped his hand a couple times. And that's exactly what you wanted to happen Milwaukee. You want him to think about getting this man off of him as opposed to running whatever set. He's supposed to do. And so Boston, you have to be that team. The walking just shows you the blueprint of how you can win in this series. Are you up to the challenge of replicating that for your own team or are you just going to play what we saw in game one? Which if you do, that will be a second now because Milwaukee is not going to get any worse if you don't make them. Do you think having this that sweep against Brooklyn maybe had them to believe that they could come into this Milwaukee series with a little more ease than they did? I don't think so. I think the bigger problem was sleeping Brooklyn is they never really got a full sense of just how hard it is to win in the playoffs. Because the first game was, that was Brooklyn's golden moment. That was Brooklyn's best chance of stealing. And Brooklyn did enough to position ourselves to win that game. They just basically fell asleep in the will at the most inopportune moment of the game in laws. So the Celtics haven't really been pushed the way they were by Milwaukee. And Tim Milwaukee's credit. Every time the Celtics seem to be kind of getting into flow, I think Tatum had a couple of moments where we made back to back shots..
Two Friends Talk History
"greeks" Discussed on Two Friends Talk History
"Historical write ups for the stuff. Shields was a number of related activities and educational social media pages. Which include harry potter lego. Where she includes images of harry potter in lego and tells the story in latin so you can follow along with her post their She also has drawing ancient history where she explores the ancient world through digital illustrations and different types of material culture. that way. there's a few different places you can check out what l. k. Is up to working on our some educational which you can. Actually you already find on the website including a werewolf game that this set in sparta during the peloponnesian war and other thing that i'm working on which will also hopefully appear later on this year is a m. Would you rather engine history which is sometimes not suitable for work. But you know. It's basically aimed at friends who are looking especially. Now that everything's opening up again can meet up and and had like a little bit of a drinking game or something that's doing exactly it's going to appear but a third thing i'm doing but it's only for people who speak dutch. I'm going to be doing a write up about my thesis for the m ancient history research group at the university here given and every month for the next year i will also be writing a series on madison politics in hellenistic end cusco periods For which is dutch mythological association and. i'm also always looking for people. Who if they wanna guests block for the websites just Get in touch. You can reach me at contacts at telling us a kiss dot com perfect. That's great yeah usually. Oh i'm not really doing much except all of these things you know. It's it's been busy but it started kind of like when during lockdown last year. When i was on furlough for a few months and now you say yes yes yes yes yes. Really done yeah. You're just too busy now. I don't have a life anymore but happy with us. Yeah brilliant. Well thank you so much. I really appreciate it and it has been awesome to hear about this really interesting topic that i generally have the impression very few people have ever heard of. So it's very cool to get that out there so yeah i would just like to thank you for joining me today. Onto friends talk history. No problem you're very welcome until next time. Thank you for joining us today. As we explored the coin on. If you have not a redone so please rate and review to friends. Talk history on apple. Podcasts it takes just a second helps people find the show. Don't forget to hit like subscribe or follow whatever platform you. listen on. you never miss an episode..
Two Friends Talk History
"greeks" Discussed on Two Friends Talk History
"Willoughby's actually help them do it. So my ideas of you're actually paid that good role Also paints himself as the sort of liaison between the romans and the he helps decanes in several ways because he ends up going back decrease after one. Four six living there. My question is how big impact did it have. No if you go into roman greece there are there's talk again of kwena and the key cohen on exists again but just in a different form than has this period and just as the hellenistic coin is different from the one that we had in the classical period where low since yeah it just keeps evolving. And it's a big deal. Of course the destruction of coral they didn't they can use the city for more than a century. We were always portrayed as as the end of an era. But is it actually. How how different is it. So it's something i've wondered. yeah absolutely. That's a really good point. And let corinth wasn't incredibly important trading hub for that region. It was probably old city and it was rooted in the mythic past of greece. And all that stuff. So there's a of knock on effects probably that having corinth destroyed would have but you're right. It does tend to get painted as sort of like and that was it greece's Greeks were destroyed by this. They never recovered their confidence. And you know that's impossible argument to make so there's no point making it. Yeah i mean it's complicated event but it really kind of an interesting journey for the league and and it kind of sounds like that's part of what might resonate about this research with you. The unanswered pieces areas that you can probe into but don't necessarily have a tidy resolution or a tidy answer. Yeah that's exactly the thing that you know. Even though we don't know for sure it allows you to go back to it and let's be honest. This whole idea of local identity and multi-layered identity is a fairly modern concept. If you look at the sources if you look at the material you can see that there is evidence for it being supported. Because why can i say today at. I'm belgian i'm european also flemish. I'm also from a small town called akhil. it's just identity is very complex. And why shouldn't have been complex back. Then absolutely and i think the coin example is a really cool way to visualize that were part of the whole part of the greater and then also that local identities so important as well so this brings us to the section of the show called. But where i asked guests like. Why should this matter to the modern time. But i think listening. You can probably already make some guesses as to why the stuff matters in the modern period but though pose it to you like why do you think this area of study or maybe the group itself like why do you think this matters to a modern audience or matters to a modern moment because you see federations are everywhere. There's the us which you have belgium. We've got germany there. So many federal states that are in existence or even that are turning towards the concept of confederations. They're selling this day and may people know that actually just like democracy you can already find them with the greeks and i think that's an interesting thing that more people could be era of if you just look at the history of the us The akins have been cited in the federal papers where they've actually been used as an example of how the american federal states should be organized because they mention it and they refer to it. So it's not just that it's just an interesting thing anyone thinking about politics or thinking about identity 'cause okay you have two political organization. Which for me isn't wasn't that interesting. I was more looking at the interaction. Interplay of different types. And it's still important today..
Two Friends Talk History
"greeks" Discussed on Two Friends Talk History
"And because of this new type of opinion leader which you have increased elias clayton important role in how the dealt with rome idea of broom being told what to do by small confederacies cities never know so there are tensions there and apparently also the fact that there are some doubts about the akin to rome during the third macedonian war because there were police mentioned that there are some greeks who actually agree with versus the last macedonian king but actually sort of starts this whole process of rome's discontent with the qin's with many of the greeks and results in the banishment of libya's and other about a thousand key to rome. When's leaves this this whole room. For new generation of of qian leaders that apparently chose the wrong path to go down and which is also describes as demagogues who just use the league for their own political and who don't have the wisdom of dealing with rome that previous generations had done all experienced politicians are stuck in rome. It's an interesting aspect of how local politics kind of in my opinion local politics contributed to this this deterioration in relationships between the greeks and the romans in the buildup to koren's all has to do with how individuals perceived and thought they should deal with an ally or a powered that was way bigger than them and they didn't know how to deal with it. You can also see that if you look at the war itself. They're totally unprepared. They have to actually use slaves as an army and there there no way match rome which kind of indicates to me that at no point they were actually gonna go through with award. It didn't actually think that there was going to be a war and then they realize at the last second. Oh my god. They're they're coming here. Well then they're just instead of running away screaming they said okay. Let's pretend this is a battle for greek freedom and then you see we you can see like a heroic glass stand but yeah and so says accounting of it isn't even if he's got his own personal life story that colors how he views the events like sound entirely like he's wrong. It's sounds like there was. They did not accurately or adequately size up the situation they were facing and what was a likely outcome of that but i mean fair enough in a way because there have been so few examples up to that point of rome turning an ally like that or maybe they didn't see it coming which seems odd. 'cause obviously those are not too far away twice..
Two Friends Talk History
"greeks" Discussed on Two Friends Talk History
"You start writing. So that's what he did. Police started writing. He started writing about how rome was able to conquer most of the known world in fifty three years time the to thirties and is going all the way until one sixty eight which was just as you know the third macedonian war exactly and i think that's also the reason why he was banished in the andes decides to continue until one four six. That's why it's important. He's the only contemporary who wrote about the period and he's the only person from within the acuity tells us a little bit more about how it functions how it works what it was history of what happened. Of course his as. I've already said a few times now. This guy is very petty so his his personal views come through quite a lot is problematic. If you have an objective view of what. This league was like what they wanted to do. Yeah i think. Obviously he's gonna work his grudges out in the margins of his text and get some therapy but He's also an affair. You useful vantage point for talking about the sort of events as they're unfolding the personalities involved and gives us what the normal narratives of war really can't or like evidence from an archaeological site can't is the sort of grudges that are being played out and how power can shift from one person to the next person or one political party to the next one i think. Sometimes he kind of characterized this change from greek autonomy to roman control to down to somewhat of just a lot of bad leadership like the populace is basically being guided down pathways. That have no real hope of winning sick. You're looking for it or demagogues. Thank you see he. He always calls his opponents. They're all demagogues they're all The the entire downfall of the greeks in general is because they followed bad leaders. And that's why he doesn't feel guilty writing about it 'cause you know. What do you expect what happens when you follow bad leaders. Of course you're gonna end up with a lot of tears. Many theaters like every writer for this period. He's like every sources are problematic source. And you just have to treat it with that kind of gentle critique exactly it doesn't mean though that we can enjoy what he writes. We can't use it. 'cause it's been immensely useful for my phd. Were a reached the same conclusion as you just said that local leadership local identity was such an important thing in this in these federal states so the local elements is something that we can't ignore. We're talking about these these leaks about these federations and especially about international politics relationships with rome or with mastodon. My my season concluded with local identity always plays a part in this. You have the cities. You have these greek cities. They didn't have this level above them. And it's not a surprise that it's still praise the parts when they're dealing with these bigger players that come onto the scene and elena sick period. Yeah absolutely and i think your premise makes a lot of sense. There is no homogeneous overarching identity. No larger figure whose can make the decisions on behalf of all of these cities it does make sense to have for their protection and for negotiation. A stronger voice because on their own. they're quite small. There is also some ship that's paying more and more attention to local identities and localism within federations. And so if anyone is looking for something to read. I suggest to look into hunt spec. In and the whole localism i think it was published last year but there are some very good books written about the accused league in about like interstate relations and stuff that i wish i'd known about for years ago. Well they didn't exist..
The Patriot AM 1150
"greeks" Discussed on The Patriot AM 1150
"In your body, the Greeks would spray Windex or WD 40 on your joints. Same thing is artificial doesn't last So when that wears out, then they send it to a surgeon. And typically, he'll take extra an M R I and he'll put your like. Put your image on the view screen. Say, Mr Mrs Jones, your knees bone on bone. We have to replace it. But a lot of these replacements failed because it caught it can cause an infection causes a lot of Mercer viruses in the surgical centers in cause a blood clot in a stroke because a lot of people are on blood thinners and you're opening the knee up. Lot of bleeding occurs. Oregon cause hardware failure. A lot of these hardware, the metal leaks into the patient's body and medals and neuro toxin, these heavy metals and poisoned you're bringing your organs or You can have hardware failure. Where? Because the hardware doesn't work. You can't bend your knee past 90. You have a lot of scar tissue on the knee and inside of it, you know it. Interferes to the range of motion and even it's a replacement works. It's temporary because a lot of times that wears out after 10 15 20 years because your age get osteoporosis and the bone can't stabilize the metal that's implanted. Your knee comes loose. Have to either do a revision or they have to do another knee replacement on the road. So we do is We take more of a natural route, where sometimes just because your knees bone on bone, it doesn't mean that's causing the pain because a lot of men over 55 years old Of spinal stenosis and the general diss disease. Which means you're l 45 year. L five s one disc in your low back is bone on bone. But a lot of those patients don't have back pain. Even in the X ray shows their bone on bone so the pain in the knee can becoming elsewhere. It could be referred from the back. Now there's a nerve called your ephemeral nerve, and that's branches of L 23 from your lower spine. Those nerves branch out from your spine, and they control your knee muscles is for muscles require steps. And if those nerves if there's compression on the nerves in your spine because of the stenosis, they can't send Activate those muscles in your knee. So the tracking gets messed up to the knee starts grinding. It wears out, and then it goes bone on bone from a nerve problem, But few of these Most of these surgeons don't even look at other body parts and just look at that knee. Okay, so are missing the big picture that right that leads me to my next question, Which is if somebody comes into your office for the first time, or you're not just looking at the knee. You're trying to figure out where that pain is actually coming from because you conduce all the work on the need you want. But if the pain will just come back if that That problem isn't exactly so. I know you think of it like this. So let's say, um, You have some knocking noise in your car like this, all right, and then you take the transmission center and they said You know what your transmission is worn out. We gotta replace your transmission. That's a big job. It could cost you like $3500. And you said no thanks. Let me get a second opinion, so going to the transmission and replacing that is like having a knee replacement. The big surgery, right? And they could bill your insurance up to what? You know 45 $50,000, right? And then so let's say You want a second opinion, so you go to the tire center. You say? Hey, I got this knocking noise, right? An entire guy says you know what? Start your transmission. Your front right tire is misaligned. And then the tire guy aligns your your wheel. And then there's no knocking noise so and that cost you what $25 to get that wheel align, and you avoided that $3500 transmission repair, So that's what we do. We look at the whole body. What is causing that popping click in your knee? The grinding the pain. Every step you take. You can't go put downstairs Can't even get off the toilet seat because that excruciating bone on bone knee pain can't golf. You know you can't hike stuff like that. So look at the whole body to test the nerves in your spine that control the quadriceps, the federal nerve. We look at the knee structure. That's another misdiagnosed because of knee pain, so Normally, um so I'll take Ah front image. It's a literal picture of your whole body. Right? And then I have these laser lines that go down each of your legs. And if that laser line is not in the center of your hip Knee and ankle. We know that there's undue stress on the knees because you're not aligned with gravity. It's called your cue angle. And then that Q England's off in your knees if you're bowlegged The knees are curved. That means you've lost cartilage and inside of your knee is getting bone on bone. That's why you have paint on the insides. Now Some people are opposite. They have knocked knees. The needs that kind of cave in. They lost cartilage on the outside of their knees. But we've we've billable wedges called unload her wedge. Where if you have Oleg's the wedges thicker on the inside, so it pushes your need. In and its opposite for the knock knees. I'm going to stop you right there because we have to take a break. This is all great stuff. So we're gonna pick up on the other side of the break right where we left off? Because I want to learn more about that. But are you suffering with meeting? Are you listening to this and your suffering with knee pain, and this is all resonating with you? Have you tried.
The Great Fail
"greeks" Discussed on The Great Fail
"The levels of leverage that they took on was multiple higher than even the most risky hedge fund. That's out there. Welcome to episode thirty. Two of the great fail a podcast that examines the greatest success. Stories and they're spectacular fails would lead to the demise of the most prolific people brands and companies. I'm your host deborah chen and this week we'll be looking at parque goes capital on march twenty six 2021 the financial world woke to the news the first signs of trouble trickled into the different media outlets and within hours. The buzz grew loud enough to rattle some of wall. Street's biggest players to the outside world in the center of it all was an unfamiliar and obscure name r k goes capital and then an even more unfamiliar name. Bill wong the founder of the investment fund. The word on the street was that are case. Had defaulted on loans that were used to build a one hundred billion dollar portfolio. The default men that now at stake was the face of some of the largest investment banks in the world along some complex derivative trades several march media stocks asian stocks and billions upon billions of dollars in losses. Dramatic headlines rolled out bill. Way the greatest traitor. You've never heard of and our cables liquidation triggers record crash confirming the onset of a meltdown for the financial markets. That long had desperately tried to contain days earlier would would be uncovered would become one of the most astounding and free just financial failures in modern history..
Harvard Classics
"greeks" Discussed on Harvard Classics
"Well then antony who was a friend of caesar's and a robust man was detained outside by brutus albinas who purposely engaged him in a lengthy conversation. But caesar went in and the senate rose in his honor. Some of the partisans of brutus took their places round the back of cesar's chair while others went to meet him as though they would support the petition which italia's cimber presented to caesar in behalf of his exiled brother and they joined their entreaties to his and accompanied caesar up to his chair but when after taking his seat caesar continued to repulse petitions at as they pressed upon him with greater importuner. Thirty began to show anger towards one. Another of them tilles seized his toga with both hands and pulled it down from his neck. This was the signal for the assault. It was casca. Who gave him the first blow with his dagger in the neck not wound nor even a deep one for which he was too much confused as was natural at the beginning of a deed of great daring so that caesar turned about grasp the knife and held it fast at almost the same instant both cried out the smitten man in latin accursed casco. What dualist thou- in greek to his brother brother help so the affair began and those who were not privy to the plot were filled with consternation and horror at what was going on. They dared not fly nor go to. Caesar's help nay nor even utter a word but those who have prepared themselves for the murder baird each of them his dagger and caesar hemmed in on all sides whichever way he turned confronting blows of weapons aimed at his face and is driven hither and thither like a wild beast was entangled in the hands of all for all had to take part in the sacrifice and taste of the slaughter therefore brutus also gave him one blow in the groin and it is set by some writers although caesar defended himself against the rest and darted this way and that and cried aloud when he saw brutus had drawn his dagger he pulled his toga down over his head and sank either by chance or because pushed there by his murderers against the pedestal. On which the statue pompes stood and the pedestal was drenched with his blood. So that one might have thought that pompey himself was presiding over this vengeance on his enemy. Who now lay prostrate at his feet quivering from a multitude of wounds for it is said that he received twenty three and many of the conspirators were wounded by one another as they struggled to plant..
Harvard Classics
"greeks" Discussed on Harvard Classics
"Sixty four but at this juncture decimates. Brutus surnamed abayas. Who was so trusted by caesar. That he was entered in his will as his second air but was partner in the conspiracy of the other. Brutus and cassius. Fearing that if caesar should allude that day they're undertaking would become known ridiculed the sears and chided caesar for laying himself open to militias charges on the part of the senators who would think themselves mocked at for they had met at his bidding and were ready and willing to vote as one man that he should be declared king of the provinces outside of italy and might wear a diadem when he went anywhere else by land or sea but if someone should tell them at their session to be gone now but to come back again when cal purnea should have better dreams what speeches would be made by his enemies or who would listen to his friends when they tried to show that this was not slavery and tyranny but if he was fully resolved out binds said to regard the day inauspicious. It was better that he should go. In person and address the senate and then postponed its business. Wile saying these things routes took caesar by the hand and began to lead them along and he had gone but a little way from his door. When a slave belonging to someone else eager to get at caesar but unable to do so for the press of numbers about him forced his way into the house gave himself into the hands of california and bathe her. Keep him secure. Until caesar came back since he had important matters to report to him. Chapter sixty five. Furthermore are A canadian by birth. A teacher of greek philosophy at on this account brought into intimacy with some of the followers of brutus. So that he also knew most of what they were doing came bringing to caesar in a small role the disclosures which he was going to make but seeing that caesar took all such roles in handed them to his attendance. He came quite near and said. Read this caesar by yourself and speedily for it contains of importance and of concern to the accordingly. Caesar took the rule and would have read it but was prevented by the multitude of people who engaged his attention although he set out to do so many times and holding in his hand and retaining that role alone he passed on into the senate some however say that another person gave him this role. And that are doris. Did not get to him at all but was crowded away all along the route chapter sixty six so far. Perhaps these things may have happened of their own accord the place however which was the scene of that struggle and murder and in which the senate was then assembled since it contained a statue of pompey and had been dedicated by pompey as an additional ornament to his theater. Made it clear that it was the work of some heavenly power which was calling and guiding the action thither indeed it as also said that cassius turning his eyes to the statue of pompeii before the attack began invoked it silently although he was much addicted to the doctrines of epicurious but the crisis as it would seem when the dreadful attempt was now close at hand replaced his former cool calculations with divinely inspired emotion be placed his former cool calculations with divinely inspired emotion..