All right. So again, good morning. Thanks for being here. We're doing a series on biblical truth for confused times, and we're covering various topics, cultural topics that are really hot issues, things like we'll cover the LGBTQ stuff, social justice, abortion, topics such as that. And this morning, what I want to speak about is the subject called Christ or Chaos. I don't know if you've ever heard that before, Christ or Chaos. And I'll explain here in a little bit what we mean by that. We'll get into that. But what I want to do is I want to encourage everyone this morning, not everyone if you don't feel comfortable doing it, but to try and participate. Because I think that this early hour setting is really good for that. So I encourage you, invite you to ask questions, to give additional insight to things that are talked about, your perspective on this. And so this is a good time for that, this early hour for us to really interact with one another. And it's a little bit different from the next service that's more formal to where we're actually hearing a sermon preached. So I do encourage you to do that. I think it's important. So, Christ or chaos? We are certainly living in times of uncertainty right now. One in which our minds are bombarded with just the depravity of man. Brother, you were out at the, what was it, the Gay Pride rally. Yeah, there was like a Gay Pride event. It wasn't a parade, it was an event in a Coliseum, so it wasn't as crazy as like a parade would have been. Yeah. little spurts of people walking by, so it wasn't as crazy as what we were expecting. Yeah. So the depravity of man just on full display, it's being celebrated. You know, we have things in libraries across the country where you're having drag queen story hour or story time, where you have men dressed up like women reading about transgenderism and other sexually immoral things to little children. Last year, we really witnessed this on full display when we saw anarchists burning down communities. And they did it in the name of social justice. They went into people's businesses, looted them, rioted, burned things down. And they said they were, again, doing it in the name of actual justice. We had government mandates to wear masks, to socially distance, to avoid large gatherings because of COVID-19. We have pastors being arrested right now in Canada for holding church services in defiance of their government mandates. These are Western nations, or Canada is a Western nation who historically is founded upon a Christian worldview. And you have things such as this happening there. We have massive pressure from world health leaders in media to take an experimental mRNA vaccine with no meaningful study done of its long-term side effects for a virus that you have less than 1% chance of actually dying from. But come and take this experimental vaccine. We encourage you to do that, right? We're being pressured in that. In my workplace, I get constant emails to remind me to go get vaccinated. When flu season comes around, or any other kind of like the flu season, I've never seen that. But with this, I need to go get vaccinated. And so, again, we're living in times of uncertainty. Really, we could say we're living in chaotic times. We're not surprised when we hear these kind of things happening in communist countries such as China and North Korea. But these things, again, are happening in Western nations who historically were founded upon the Christian worldview. And so that really leaves us with the question is, what happened? What happened to the West? How did we get to where we are today? And how did our society begin to repudiate the very heritage that blessed them and prospered them? How does a free society begin to reject the worldview that is the very foundation of a good and free society for something that is oppressive and evil, such as Marxism? The answer to this question is very simple. We have proudly embraced as a society that we are a post-Christian society, that man is not made in the image of God, but rather he's a highly evolved ape, Western cultures have exchanged their beautiful garments of a rich Christian heritage that made them the most prosperous, just, and free societies in the history of the world for the pig slots of secularism or humanism. We've exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and therefore God is giving us up to our own destructive desires. And so I won't go into The details of the history of our nation's subtle drift away from God and adrift to a more secular and atheistic philosophical mindset. You can read about that. There's a lot of godly men that have written on that. There's a lot of lectures and messages. You can look up, I mean, I encourage you to go look at Francis Schaeffer. This guy, long before today, was really sounding the alarm on the stuff that was coming, the stuff that he saw in the West. But anyways, instead, what I would like to do is look at the scriptures and demonstrate that God actually warns us that when we reject him as our creator and his law as our standard, we will be left with chaos. That's why we've titled this topic. It's either Christ or chaos. As individuals in a society, we will either submit to the unchanging, objective, perfect rule and wisdom of God's law as our standard and authority, or we will choose the ever-changing, relative and subjective foolish wisdom of men to govern and decide what's good and evil. God has spoken. Brethren, sisters, the truth has been revealed. rejected, and it will be to your own harm to try and fill in the blank. We will either have God's rule or we'll choose autonomy. One will lead to blessings in this life and in the age to come, and the other to destruction in this life and to the age to come. So really, what's implied by the statement Christ or chaos? Well, the Bible teaches us that man is born with a sinful nature, and his natural disposition is for sin. From our mother's womb, we love evil and we desire evil. Our understanding is darkened by the deceitfulness of sin. In Romans chapter three, the apostle Paul writes, none is righteous, no, not one, no one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. The Bible teaches me that man is born with original sin, and apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in a person's life, he cannot understand the things of God, nor does he seek what is good. Again, it's only when the sinner takes the yoke of Christ upon himself he can have peace with God and hope for eternal life through the gospel. Until then, he remains in darkness and cannot understand the truth of God's Word, and when it comes to himself, or even the world around him, he can't make sense of his reality while he's living in it. Since he does not have God and His Word to guide him, he will be left with chaos." So let me define the word chaos. This word is simply used to describe a state of confusion and disorder. Brothers and sisters, aren't we sitting front row watching chaos unfold in America, just confusion and disorder? And this is to be expected when the dominant worldview of the culture by and large is secular. So what does this word secular mean? What is secularism? It's derived from a word. that means simply belonging to this age or worldly. It's more specifically the belief system that denies the reality of God, religion and the supernatural order and hence maintains that reality and tells only this natural world. Secular humanism in turn promotes and glorifies the human creature to the exclusion and denial of the creator. So what do most people believe today about man and the world? It's a question for y'all. What would you say... I mean, brother, in your evangelism out at Denton Square, what do you think the predominant belief is about man and the world around him? Do you think most people say, yeah, I'm created in the image of God, and God created the heavens and the earth. What is it? enchanced by evolutionary process, that they're autonomous. They're a lot of themselves, like you're talking about. They don't actually have a standard to live by. Yeah. So most people, by and large, at least if you're doing any kind of, if you go out to Denton Square, which is really Denton's a college town, so there's a lot of university students there. Most people have adopted the belief that they're not made in the image of God, that they're actually highly evolved apes, and that this world came about by just random chance. It's an accident that we're here. That there's no God who is sovereignly and providentially guiding the course of history to his intended end. Instead, again, it's just random chance acting upon matter in an unguided and purposeless universe. Listen to Richard Dawkins, a renowned atheist. He's really what you could call a prophet for secular humanism. He's considered and touted as one of the high minds of our time. He's an intellectual. He's the cream of the crop when it comes to philosophy according to the culture. But listen to what he says, quote, on the meaning of life. He says, quote, having human. Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life. Life has no higher meaning than to perpetuate the survival of DNA. Life has no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." What a sad quote. What a sad quote. Paul Kurtz, he was an American skeptic, and he's also been called The father of secular humanism, listen to this quote, he says, if man is a product of evolution, one species among others, in a universe without purpose, then man's option is to live for himself. So these aren't just like some obscure ideas like in the corner of the world, like this is predominant in universities, this is This is mainstream. If you don't think this way, in a lot of places, you're not considered intelligent or scholarly. You'll be cast out or your voice won't be heard if you don't adopt this worldview. And this is a worldview that's being opposed upon college students and even being opposed upon kids in public schools. Again, this is a worldview that our public education system and universities embraced decades ago. I'm not going to get into that, but you can look that history up. There's a lot written about it. The new religion of our culture is secularism, and this is why God and religion has been driven out of these areas of culture and deemed as intolerant and offensive. You know, if the belief that the chief end of man is happiness instead of the glory of God, This is why this kind of thinking widely dominates all of these institutions today. Because I don't actually exist to glorify God, I exist to be happy. I'm the center of the universe, and so I'm going to find a philosophy and a worldview that makes me the center of the universe. So God is seen as a restraint to man's happiness and something that needs to be cast off. This worldview that we're speaking about briefly here, this is the same worldview that gave birth to Marxism. Karl Marx was a naturalistic materialist. He believed that all there was was time and chance acting upon matter, that there was no divine creator and mind behind the existence of the universe. Marxism, the philosophy that's being embraced today by so many people in our own nation, is fundamentally atheistic. It fundamentally denies the existence of God. Their understanding of man is that he's not made in the image of God, because there is no God. And you could just carry that out. If there is no God, there is no such thing as original sin, so the problem in the world It's not man and his sin, but if you study Marx, you can see that it's class structures. It's the oppressor and the oppressed. Man doesn't shape the culture around him, but he's merely shaped by his culture, his environment. Man's not the cause of the problems in the world. He's a victim of his environment. Man is not made in the image of God. In a sense, they believe that man is made and needs to be conformed to the image of the state. Karl Marx, who is the father of communism, said that his, listen to his object in life. He said this, it was to dethrone God and destroy capitalism. Former dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, who actually implemented communism in Russia said this, you know, they're fooling us. There is no God. There is no God. And I share these quotes with you because it really shows you the worldview and the mindset behind these ideas, these philosophies. They're godless. They're godless. They're not compatible. with Christianity. So many of our leaders in the government today and even the academic community have embraced the same worldview as Karl Marx. I mean, you have professed Marxist in the American government today. It's incredible. I mean, you got Ocasio-Cortez. You got Bernie Sanders. You got men like this that are, they are bold. in their Marxism, and they actually are in the United States government. Again, the vision that these people have for American society is a Marxist one where the state is God. God is removed. God's law is removed. His standard is removed for society, and it's replaced with a secular humanistic one. So in order to achieve this end, they must again break apart They've got to break apart the moral fabric of society. Much of what I'm saying is not new to y'all, which y'all have heard. They've got to break this apart, the created order, and you're witnessing it, such as gender distinctions, the different God-given roles of male and female, the family, et cetera. It goes on. They've got to create division. Again, in a secular worldview, there is no God. There is no lawgiver. There is no objective standard of good and evil. But instead, morality is subjective and can be changed societal contracts, because God is not the decider of what's good and evil, because God doesn't exist. Man is. Man is ultimate. He has to determine what is right and wrong in and of himself. So communism and secular humanism will do a lot of damage to society. But in the end, it'll never actually be successful. It'll never be successful because it fundamentally misunderstands who man is, the origin of the universe. Marxism is a broken and faulty political and philosophical idea, and atheism is a bankrupt worldview. I mean, you could go out and you can evangelize, and Didn't Square, I keep bringing up Didn't Square, because it's a great example of just the absurdity of secularism, of a humanistic worldview. If you go out there and you have debate with someone that's in a university, you'll hear a statement like this. And this comes from this worldview. They'll say, I'll give you all just a really popular one. They'll say, there's no such thing as objective truth. What's the problem with a statement like that? They're making an objective truth claim and saying that there is none. Exactly, so you just you see how the actual worldview in and of itself it eats its own self it eats itself It's it's not sustainable. It's not consistent. It doesn't comport with actual reality the reality that they live in Right? This same person that will deny things such as objective morality, objective standards of good and evil will turn around and call the police when someone breaks into his house and robs him or steals his car because he, in that moment, he's not, his viewpoint isn't relative to these things, right? It's not subjective. He's been wrong. He's been wrong and he knows he's been wrong. Again, it kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier, whenever you were quoting Dawkins and the other atheistic philosophers, where they're saying, you know, all that matters is self, like we matter, like sort of this selfish worldview. But then the same people who are saying, oh, like, only I matter, are also the same ones saying, we need justice for George Floyd, or we need justice for all these things. They're saying, there's this need for justice. There needs to be justice. There needs to be justice. But they have a worldview that is saying the exact opposite. They're not acting out. Yeah, they're acting in a way that's contrary to what they're professing. They're professing one thing over here, but then they're living in a way that's in complete contradiction. That's good, brother. Yeah, so it's a self-refuting worldview. It contradicts itself. Because the same kind of individual that will come and make these bold, absurd claims that there is no such thing as absolute truth, which is a... No such thing as good. No such thing as good and evil. But we need justice. But we need justice. Or they'll go to the preacher on the street corner and say, why do you hate gays? Why do you oppress people with this message? And a simple response is, well, what is oppression? What's the problem of hate in a world where there is no God? There's just pitiless indifference. What's the problem with hate in something like that? So, they're doing that because they can't shake off, as Durbin would say, they can't shake off the image of God in them. They're made in the image of God. They can't escape that. They're God's creation living in God's universe. As much as they want to try and get away from that, they'll never be able to do that. They'll always appeal to these things. The problem is they can't justify them, they can't make sense of them apart from God and apart from God's Word. That's why I can stand up here and tell you that communism, Marxism, atheism, secular humanism, all the isms out there, though in the end, they will never be successful. They can do a lot of damage and a lot of harm to society, but in the end, it's a house built upon sand. It won't last. It's a bankrupt worldview. And I think we're witnessing that right now. Again, it's nothing more than a house built upon sand. To reject God is to willfully choose absurdity and chaos. In Psalms chapter 14 and 53, both chapters in verse 1, we're told this, we're told that the fool says in his heart, there is no God. There is no God. When a man denies the existence of God, he is willfully choosing to be a fool. He's choosing foolishness, to be a fool, To be a fool is to be someone who lacks the ability to judge correctly and to use sound reason. So the moment that someone denies Christ, denies the existence of God, they're surrendering the ability to use correct judgment and sound reason. What God is saying is this simply. He says if you deny Him, you're denying the obvious. To deny God is to choose to live in absurdities. When we read Romans 1, verses 18-32, this is clearly stated by God. The Apostle Paul writing, we're confronted with this reality of just the self-destroying nature of sin and a rejection of God. I'll read it. If you have your Bibles, go to Romans 1, and I'll read verses 18-32. Alright, verse 18, Romans chapter 1, listen to this. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves a due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them." So let's look at this portion of Scripture real quick. And I want to ask you a question, just from observing the text. According to Romans chapter 1, Is there such a thing as an atheist? No. Do atheists exist? So the same way that our atheist neighbor is going to deny the existence of God, I'm going to deny the existence of an actual atheist. They don't exist. So where would you go to demonstrate that? What verse in this chapter from what we just read? It's good, brother. So it says this, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. So according to Romans chapter one, There's no such thing as an atheist. There's no such thing as an atheist. God looks down at men and he says you're without excuse. If you're an atheist, if you're Richard Dawkins, if you're someone that denies my existence, he says you don't have an excuse for your atheism. Why? Because I've clearly revealed myself to you through the creation. Through the creation. So according to this text, why are they adopting? Why are they embracing? Why are they saying they're an atheist? Why do they have this worldview? Why do they deny the existence of God? It's good, sister. They're claiming to be wise. Amen. Those are good. Given over to their lusts, lusts of their hearts. So they're giving over to their lust. So my sister here says they're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. They're suppressing it. And a picture, you get this picture in your mind of somebody standing in a pool. I didn't create this analogy. I'm using it. You know where it came from, right? I don't. Greg Bonson. So Bonson. OK. Greg Bonson. OK. The analogy is you're standing in a pool and you have a beach ball, and you're holding it underwater. The moment you let that beach ball go, it'll rise to the top and smack you right in the face. I mean, have you ever tried to hold a beach ball underwater? So the analogy is used to describe what the atheist is doing. God has clearly revealed Himself through creation, through His own conscience. through his own conscience, and he's having to willfully, key word, willfully suppress that truth in unrighteousness. As they shared, they're doing this because of the lust of their hearts, because of their sin. They're claiming to be wise, they're proud, they're arrogant. And so why would they willfully suppress the truth about God? It's because they love their sin. They love it. God confronts them. and their sin, God confronts them in their absurdity, and so they would rather willingly choose to live according to a lie to exchange the glory of the immortal God for images that resemble men, so for idolatry is really the point there, than worship their creator. Listen to Psalm chapter 19, verses one through four. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes throughout all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun." And you could go on to read that psalm, but simply according to Psalm 19, every day when you wake up, creation is preaching a sermon to you. And that sermon is that God exists. God created the heavens and the earth. And that's not just for the believer, but that is for the unbeliever as well. Every day, he wakes up, he sees the sun in its place again, he feels the breeze, he beholds the beauty of God's creation. When he partakes of food, he's partaking of God's provision and His mercy and His kindness, of His common grace, as some theologians would call it. All of these things are declaring the existence of God. Leaving this man without excuse or this person without excuse on the day of judgment. Again, we're told in Romans 1 that when men deny the existence of God, it's not because they lack proof, Our sister pointed out, it's because they're suppressing the truth in their unrighteousness. And the consequences of this truth suppression, when we willfully reject God, He gives us over to a debased mind so that we become futile in our thinking and our hearts are darkened. This is what sinful men do. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Again, it's not a lack of evidence, but a love for sin. A love for sin. God, so for the believer, think of it this way. The thing that you hate the most is your sin because it's what's actually keeping you away from the thing you love the most, which is Christ. And so you war against sin. For the unbeliever, it's the opposite. The thing they love the most is their sin, and God is actually the thing that gets in the way of them of what they want the most, which is their sin, and so they hate God and they war against God. It's a way to think about it. Again, they're having to willfully suppress the obvious, or it's going to rise to the surface and it's going to smack them right in the face. One analogy I heard is that, think of an atheist, a skeptic, as a small child that his father, God is the father in the analogy, has to lift up, sit on his lap so he can smack him in the face. And the point is, the atheist is employing all of his reason, the laws of logic, all these things that come from God to try and argue against the existence of God. Apart from God, he wouldn't have these things. Also Greg Bonson. Greg Bonson. Thanks, Will, for pointing out. If you're not familiar with Greg Bonson, he would be considered a Christian philosopher. Yeah, he had a PhD in philosophy. He sort of popularized what we call presuppositional apologetics or Vantillian apologetics. Great, great defender of the faith, great gift to the church. And his nickname was actually the man who atheists feared most. So that's what they called him. If you listen to his sermons on Sermon Audio, they're uploading pretty much all of his Yeah, I actually encourage you to go, sorry, listen to that debate. It's a really good debate. But thanks for sharing that, brother. Yeah, for anyone that's more interested in giving an apologetic against atheists or skeptics, I would say that Greg Bonson is probably going to be your go-to resource in that. I could attest that I can understand why they said he's the man that atheists feared the most. That's not really like a proud claim, as in atheists were literally terrified of him. They didn't want to debate him because he was very efficient at pointing out their inconsistencies. And he actually did it by standing upon the truth of God's Word, which would be an encouragement to us. This is a side note. This is something that I learned from him that's actually really good. Neutrality is a myth. There is no neutrality between the believer and the skeptic, right? It's a myth. And the idea is that You might have heard this, the atheists in this debate, this form of debate, what do they say? Hey, you leave your Christianity at the door. I'll leave my atheism over here. And they don't really do that. And we'll just come to the middle and we'll examine the evidence. We'll examine it. We'll put God on trial. We'll see where the evidence leads us. And the problem is, that's not actually what happens. We all have our presuppositions. We all wear a lens in which we're examining the evidence. The question is, which presuppositions, which actual lens is more consistent with reality, or whose position is more consistent? Go ahead, brother. As long as you set aside Christianity and God, you've already accepted His presupposition. Amen. Amen. What else does God say in Romans chapter 1 when men do this, when they deny the existence of God? As we've briefly touched on, they come up with these highly complex, intellectually inconsistent philosophical systems to try and explain away the obvious. Explain away the obvious. Again, this is what it means when it says they're claiming to be wise while they're actually fools. So they sound very intelligent. They're given the best seats in the college institutions. They sound wise. People get duped by them. They use very, very, very academic words and terminology. And there's a lot of isms to explain everything. But the problem is when you actually carry out the worldview to its conclusion, it's actually a foolish worldview. It's inconsistent. And we can observe this when we examine the history of Western culture compared to today. In history, we had a basic foundational presupposition about man in the universe, historically, in the West, that God was the creator of the universe, that man was made in the image of God, and that the Bible was the infallible Word of God and the supreme authority in all of life. I mean, you can go study that if you want to debate that and disagree with that. I encourage you to go look into that. If you've got Amazon Prime, there's actually a really good documentary out that's almost three hours long. It's about the Christian heritage of America, and it starts all the way back from after the Reformation that brings us all the way to where we are today to show that that's not just some conservative campaign saying to get the evangelical vote. Historically, America was great because it was Christian. No, it actually was founded upon a Christian heritage. And so that's why we can look at the past and go, man, they seem to be deeper thinkers. They seem to come up with better governmental systems, better laws, and all these things. It doesn't mean that there was ever this golden age of society. There never was this golden age in society. But we can look at that and examine where we're going today and go, You know, what's the cause of that? How have we come so far from that heritage? Well, it's the worldview that we've adopted. We've replaced God, the knowledge of God, with humanism, with atheism. We've embraced that. And so the point is, when we reject Christ, We're willfully choosing chaos or absurdity. When we adopt a worldview that's not compatible with reality itself, we will see the collapse of societal structures, the family, the individual, and so on. Because it's not based upon the objective truth of the Creator and the universe. I mean, this is what we're told in Proverbs 1, verse 7. Listen to this. It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and fools despise wisdom and instruction. In Proverbs 9, verse 10, it says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is insight. In Colossians 2, verse 3, we're told that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Jesus Christ. And so, until I begin with Christ, or I begin with God and His Word, I can't be wise. I can't have insight. I can't have understanding. Instead, I lack understanding about myself. I lack understanding about the world around me, the purpose of creation, what's going on, why is there evil in the world. Again, because all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ Himself. Think about it, if my basic presupposition about the origins of the universe is a secular position, you know, it's the Big Bang, that nothing made something out of nothing, I'm going to be wrong about a lot of things such as the problem of evil. I don't even know how I could ask that question. Evil, what is that in that world view? What is it? Why is it a problem? What's a problem? Isn't it just the natural reaction of this Big Bang? This is just what happens. Again, the moment someone abandons the belief in the existence of God, they've chosen disorder and confusion, they have chosen chaos. They will have to redefine every aspect of man, the meaning of life, morality, the origins of life, etc. Go on. I mean, you're seeing it all today. Whereas, when someone begins with the fear of the Lord, they understand this simple truth that in the beginning, simple but glorious, right? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and that man was made in the image of God. And man rebelled against his creator in the garden, causing sin and death to enter into the creation, bringing about all the problems in the world today. They understand their purpose of being here is to glorify God and the created order in which God has set in place, and they do it joyfully. We're witnessing this absurdity in things like the gender debates today. Like, this is literally a debate. And I don't say this to be arrogant. Like, we are literally wasting time, money, debating whether boys are actually boys and girls are actually girls. How does that happen? How? It's the rejection of God. God tells us in Romans 1, it's a suppression of truth. It's an idolatry of man. It's a turning away from Christ as a society, as individuals. And what does God do? God judges us. When I say us, I'm not speaking about us in this room, obviously. But He judges mankind. He gives them over, it says, to a debased mind in Romans 1. He darkens their hearts. He gives them over to futile thinking. And it leads to these things. So when you see that, there's actually, I'll say this, when you see that, know that God is in control. God is sovereign. When you see Biden's assistant health secretary, Rachel, I believe, Levine, a man who's pretending to be a woman, when you see that, It's easy to get discouraged and to go, where's God in all of this? He's abandoned us. No, God is sovereign. God's sitting upon His throne and God is laughing. He's holding us as a nation in derision because we actually, think about it, you have the health secretary assistant, the one that's going to help make policy on American health, is a man who thinks he's a woman. Is that not a clear sign of judgment? Is that not a clear revelation of what God says in Romans 1? You can look at the racial tensions going on in America today. You can look at that. We don't deny the realness of racism. Racism is real. Because we believe we live in a fallen world. We believe that man is radically depraved from the womb. So yes, racism is a real thing. But you see, racism is not only a white problem. It's a black problem too. White people can be racist just as well as black people can be racist. And you're actually seeing some pretty radical statements made I mean, I was watching By the Standard. And these are black brothers that are within the Southern Baptist Convention. And some of the things that they're saying, you're going, that is just, it contradicts the actual gospel. It undermines it. It undermines it to actually promote things such as critical race theory and intersectionality. You're basically saying that the Gospel is not the solution to unify man, to reconcile sinful man, to God and to one another. You're saying we need these other analytical, briefly, I don't have much time, critical race theory. Race was added to it, but it's really critical theory. And where did it come from? Marxism. So it came from a worldview that denies the existence of God, but we're going to use that to analyze how we can bring the gospel to bear on culture. Christ or chaos, Church? It's either the clear revelation of God's Word and what's been spoken, or it's chaos. It's disorder and confusion. And so, I mean, that's another area. It's another area, so we're running out of time. We've got ten minutes here. But apart from the uniting power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which teaches that all men are sinful and need forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ, there can be no reconciliation among men until we have first been reconciled to God. So in conclusion, when we reject God and His created order, We will inevitably be left with confusion and disorder in every area of society in our own individual lives. We won't be able to make sense of things. We won't be able to make wise decisions. We won't be able to live according to the truth. Until we begin with the foundation of the one true God and his word, we can't fully know ourselves and the meaning of our existence. And, I mean, we'll merely be chasing after the wind. We'll just be striving after vanity. And so, does anybody, brother? Yeah If you stick with these foundations in your life, the values of what the world is opposing, and they're coming at you. If you stick with the foundations, you stay there, while God has revealed, he's ultimately true, he's the author of truth. I think it's really good, brother, you bring up those passages for the Christian people. If you hold your ground there with the foundations, you may be able to stand against the tide that's coming from the Lord. Amen, brother. So, yeah, it's important. I mean, we've spent, I think, Phil, the first teaching was on the authority and the inerrancy of the Scriptures. We've talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the hope of the Gospel and the Kingdom as a foundation. And we've built upon that. We've talked about this morning how you have Christ and the revelation of His Word Or you have chaos. And so all these foundations are being laid for a purpose. Because before we get into any of these individual topics, if we don't have a good foundation, we're going to make some really bad conclusions about what we should think, what we should do, how we should interact with these things. Again, like what's going on in the SBC and even some reform reformed churches with the critical race theory and the intersectionality as a demonstration of when you don't have a solid foundation, when it's the revelation of God's Word or nothing else. It's not the philosophies of men. It's not their ideas. It's what God's clearly revealed. I don't care if it's popular. I don't care. I'm going to stand on the truth of God's Word, even if I'm the only one doing it, when we abandon that position and we begin to go, you know, yeah, I'll listen to this guy. I'll use this analytical tool. We're doing two things. We're rejecting the very truth that God's Word is infallible, right? And then the other thing is, we're saying that God's Word isn't actually sufficient. That's what we're telling the world, right? His Word's not sufficient for all of life. We need other things to come in and to help us. Because God doesn't have anything to say about transgenderism or racism. He doesn't have anything, any answers for us. Let's go to the Marxists. Alright, let's go to them. They'll give us help in that area. That's absurd. Does anybody have anything else? Questions? I think another problem is a lot of Christians have sort of an escapist or retreatist worldview where they just kind of stick to the church or their local body. Like a lot of pastors just stay with their local body. They're not actually engaging with the culture because they don't think that's their responsibility as pastors. And so then you have men who aren't even Christians, bearing the name of Christ, going out to the world, saying that they're representing Jesus, like Pelagians or Westboro Baptists, and all they're doing is calling people disgusting and evil, not sharing the gospel of Christ, and it's futile. And so then you see chaos right there. People who are bearing the name of Christ are really not, and they're actually acting chaotic, just like the homosexuals, and we were engaging with that yesterday, so that's why. Yeah, I saw your video. Yeah, so there was the God hates fags people were out there. So again, that's another example of what Will's sharing is. It doesn't mean every single person in the church is obligated to go be involved in some kind of evangelistic ministry or engaging the culture in this exact same way, but if we're not out, us who have the actual truth, who understand the Gospel, if we're not out at the gay rallies, at the abortion mills, in front of our representatives, if we're not bringing the Gospel to bear on our society, someone's going to be doing it, right? There's an example. And they don't even have the Gospel. I mean, I think I was watching your video. The sad thing is that they weren't even preaching The Gospel. There was an example where they were just condemning. They were out there to condemn. And they weren't offering the free gift of grace in Jesus Christ. And so that's a good example. And so with that being said, it's real easy, like if you study presuppositional apologetics, And you study Reformed doctrine, it's real easy to become arrogant and puffed up and kind of mock atheists. I mean, I went through a phase, I wouldn't say I was rude, but I did go through a phase where it's like I wielded that presuppositional shotgun and I was going out to evangelize, to use these new tools that I had learned, to refine them, to exercise them, but I wasn't actually out there at times to win people to Christ. And it showed. and how basically those conversations were just mere philosophical debates. And as they're walking away the last 30 seconds, it's like, hey, repent and believe the Gospel. And that's a poor witness. And so there are helpful tools. Use them. But the primary purpose, our ambition, our goal, our charge is to see men reconcile to God through Jesus Christ. And so we have to preach that. We have to extend that offer to men. Brother, you were going to say something? I was, man, just on what you just said, I think that's so important. I remember hearing a message or a Q&A by Vorten Vossen. And even dealing with brothers who are kind of, even brothers in the church or pastor that are following this kind of, adopting this kind of ideology, But he mentioned something, but just adding to what you said, where that verse in 2 Corinthians 10, 5 says, we destroy the arguments and every lofty opinion, raise against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. But he also said, we destroy arguments, but we don't destroy that person. You have to keep that in mind. You care about this person. That's really good, Alex. Thanks for sharing that. Anything else before I close this out in prayer? Alright. Anthony, you want to close this in prayer, brother? Sure. Heavenly Father, thank You that You have revealed Your Word to us so that we can walk in the light. Help us to always bring these things to our minds walk in Christ, to put away our sin, to love you, to tell of you to others, that you would tear down the idols in this culture, that you'd exalt yourself as God over all, that you'd bring salvation to the preaching of the Word of God, new life. Ever since our rebellion against you, we've had chaos. Thank you for Christ who came to restore and redeem, to cause order to return. Thank you for the day that is coming where all will be perfect. To dwell with you, to behold Christ, Help us to have a mindset fixed upon you and Jesus name. Amen.